The Tracker

by Chad Zunker

  I forced a fake chuckle, as if I understood, but I had no idea what he was talking about. 10,000 points? Figured it was some kind of fantasy Dungeons and Dragons type game they played online together. Eugene probably operated in a world where everyone knew what the term “action points” meant and just assumed that I did, too, if I was pals with Maverick. I would not burst his bubble. God bless Tommy Kucher. Sounded like he really pulled out all the stops for me. The Hog found what he was looking for, handed me a thick, weighty manila envelope.

  “Here you go, man. You’re all set.”

  I looked down. “Everything’s in here?”

  The Hog shrugged. “Everything Maverick sent over for me to put together. Check it out. It’s all there. New driver’s license, a credit card, Social Security card, passport, cell phone, and tablet.”

  I undid the clasp, peeked into the envelope. I pulled out the stack of new cards, wrapped in a rubber band, grinned for a brief moment at the name listed on a newly issued Texas driver’s license that shared a slightly altered photo with the one that was on my current Colorado license. Dobbs Howard. I knew immediately why Tommy had chosen that name. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Tommy’s favorite western movie of all time, starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston. He insisted I watch it. Bogart’s character was named Dobbs. Huston’s character was named Howard. Dobbs Howard. It could be a whole lot worse, I guess. At least he knew better than to go back to John Wayne. I needed zero extra attention right now.

  I flipped through the other cards, finding Dobbs Howard listed on each and every one, including my new passport, which was stamped. I had apparently been to Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and France in the past two years. I also found a new phone and new tablet. I turned them both on. They were fully charged and already pre-programmed to an account that belonged to an individual named Dobbs Howard. I was in awe at the attention to detail. These guys were amazing. I was a brand new man. If only it was that easy.

  “You need a gun?” asked the Hog, eyeballing me.

  I looked up, hadn’t considered it.

  The leprechaun shrugged. “Maverick didn’t ask for it. But you’re in the middle of a crapstorm. That’s pretty clear. I’ve seen the news. Not that I care. But I know some people.”

  It was tempting. But I couldn’t get a gun on an airplane to DC, which is where I was headed first thing in the morning. “Nah, I’m good. Thanks, man.”

  “Sure, good luck, Dobbs.”

  FIFTEEN

  Saturday, 10:27 p.m.

  Austin, Texas

  2 days, 1 hour, 33 minutes to Election Day

  I was being followed. I was sure of it.

  I felt a chill rush through me and settle in my chest.

  I was right smack in the middle of the thick throng of party-goers, the envelope stuffed in the back of my jeans, when I spotted him. He was dressed in a black leather jacket, jeans, black cowboy boots. He was fifteen feet ahead of me, standing next to a street pole on the corner, looking like he belonged. But he stood out because, for one, he wasn’t moving along with the masses, and second, his eyes were already locked in on me, as if he’d been tracking me up the sidewalk. I jerked to a stop, causing two drunk college girls to bump into me. They yelled at me, gave me dirty looks, but I paid little attention. Square Jaw was already sizing up the situation. He glanced behind me, made a subtle motion of his head. I turned and found Elvis, in a brown jacket and jeans, twenty feet down the sidewalk. They had found me. And they had me trapped. Did they know about Affinity Tattoo? No, I doubted that. Only Tommy knew about that. And there was no way Tommy would ever give up that info. I was sure of that. The Hog? I wasn’t so sure. Eugene had showed his hand by offering a gun and telling me he’d seen me on the news. Which didn’t make me too comfortable.

  I stood still for a second on the sidewalk, a host of people brushing past me on both sides, bumping my shoulders, annoyed at me for causing a traffic jam and not moving along with the crowd. Live music from a hard rock band was blaring out from the open door of BD Riley’s directly to my right. Surely they wouldn’t shoot me in public. No, they would have to get me alone first. I had a chance. My mind was mapping it out. Time to go. I ducked in quickly behind the crowd that was cramming into the pub. It was packed to the walls, as the partiers flooded the wooden bar, the booths, and every square inch in front of the band area. The lead singer was half singing, half yelling, and sweating profusely. The crowd loved it. It was a massive hard rock jam session.

  I pushed my way aggressively through the crowd. I glanced back. Square Jaw was already inside the joint with me, but I didn’t spot Elvis. I shoved my way around a gang of frat boys toward the very back. One of the guys shoved me in return a little, shot me a look. A fight look. Then I had an idea. Nothing like a good old drunken frat boy brawl to create a sudden and chaotic distraction. I spotted the back door in the hallway by the restrooms. My target. I had my path. Time to pick a fight. I had multiple opponents, but I could take them if I moved fast. I reared back my right fist and popped the frat boy in front of me, the guy who gave me the dirty look, solid in the jaw. Not so hard as to do any serious damage, but enough to shock him and piss him off. Then I elbowed the big guy behind me in the gut and with a quick lunge from side to side, shoved two more guys to my left and right. The whole crowd kind of shifted and swayed with the ruckus, like a ship tilting on large waves, as the frat boy turned back and swung wildly, not hitting me, but connecting with the ear of another guy right next to me. The big guy I elbowed was unsure who did it and just started shoving everyone within reach. Within seconds, more shoving ensued and fists started flying. We were off and running. I got popped once in the neck. Then I ducked my head low, avoided a few punches, pushed my way through the wave of twisting bodies, and found the clearing to the back hallway.

  I pressed through the rear exit door into the alleyway a few seconds later.

  I could hear the fight growing wilder and more out of control behind me. It had completely drowned out the band. The cops would probably be in the pub within minutes.

  The alley was dark with overflowing metal dumpsters that smelled like rotten food and vomit. I stepped into the clearing, peered both ways up and down the alley. Then I saw the silhouette of Elvis enter the opposite end. I knew it. They weren’t stupid. He had circled the building strip, anticipated my escape. Forty feet away. Worse, he spotted me and began a dead sprint. I saw his hand reach under his coat. While they wouldn’t shoot me in public on the main street in front of the bar, they sure as hell would shoot me in a dark alley.

  I turned, leapt over some boxes, raced in the opposite direction. The alley poured out onto Brazos Street, where the sidewalks were busy but not as full as 6th. We were a block off the party strip. I spotted the famous Driskill Hotel on the corner across the street. I raced across through oncoming traffic, causing a taxi to screech to a halt and several horns to blare.

  I hit the glass doors and found the plush and spacious Driskill lobby. The Driskill was active even at this late hour. Lots of folks huddled everywhere. It was obviously a popular stay for the music festival crowd. I took a peek behind me. Elvis had not yet followed. Had I lost him? I wondered if he’d got caught up in street traffic. I peered to my left, to the main entrance of the Driskill off 6th Street, the opposite side of the lobby. That’s when I noticed Square Jaw suddenly walk in from the front sidewalk. His eyes again connected with mine. He’d somehow made it out of the pub unscathed. I spotted a man in a room service uniform step out of a service hallway near the front desk. It was no longer time to be cool, to avoid attention and blend into the crowd. It was time to run.

  I exploded forward into the service hallway and burst through a swinging door to the hotel kitchen. I was greeted with the clanking of dishes, the hissing, the steam, and the commotion of a busy restaurant kitchen, guys in room service uniforms loading or unloading trays, men scrubbing dishes with hot water sprayers, a few chefs whipping things on and off burners and barking orders like dr
ill sergeants. I dissected a path around them, took off running again, but not without knocking a kid right over and sending a dinner plate sailing through the air and crashing to the floor. I zigzagged and found the back hallway on the opposite end of the kitchen. Racing past a service elevator, I turned a corner, spotted a big red exit sign above a metal door. A wave of relief hit me. Freedom. I hit the door with the full force of my shoulder, pushed it wide open, poured out into another dark alley behind the hotel, my lungs so on fire that I thought I might collapse.

  Then I froze in place, stopped breathing altogether.

  Elvis was standing right outside the door. Like he was waiting on me. A gun was in his hand, a small smile spread across his face. I had no time to rush him or take a swing or do anything as the long skinny black barrel of his gun lifted up, pointing right at my forehead. I had come so far. I thought of my mom. And the girl. I heard two quick and powerful puffs of air. Thump. Thump. But I felt nothing. Instead, Elvis jerked. Then his eyes went glassy and I saw blood starting to roll down his face. He fell to his knees on the concrete, dropped his gun, and collapsed awkwardly.

  He was dead and I was still alive.

  Fifteen feet behind him, near the corner of the dark alley, I noticed him. It wasn’t more than a half-second before he slipped away, but I took a clear mental snapshot. Gray beard. Trimmed neat. Short white hair. Probably in his early sixties. Wearing all black (black turtleneck, black blazer, black slacks). He had quickly shoved a gun with a silencer barrel back under his blazer and pivoted around the corner. Gone. Just like that. He clearly was a professional. And though it was only a millisecond, and the security light in the alley was sketchy, I swear the man had the most crystal blue eyes.

  SIXTEEN

  Sunday, 12:32 a.m.

  Austin, Texas

  1 day, 23 hours, 28 minutes to Election Day

  I stood bare-chested in my blue boxers in my motel bathroom.

  My hair was now blonde, almost white. This time around, I did a much better job with the hair coloring kit I’d purchased at a 24-hour drugstore. I had more time and space to really get the colors right. Maybe in my next life, I would just become a hairdresser. That sounded a whole helluva lot better than my current life at the moment.

  My motel room was on the second floor of the Quality Inn & Suites, a half-mile from the Austin-Bergstrom Airport. Fifteen miles from the dead body of Elvis behind the Driskill Hotel. I was sure he’d been discovered by hotel staff within minutes of my rapid departure. The fourth dead body I’d witnessed in twenty-four hours. The blonde woman. Rick Jackson. Ted Bowerson. And now Elvis. I walked to my room window and gazed straight down at the parking lot. Still no sign of anything suspicious. Not yet, at least.

  I’d disposed of yet another bloody shirt. I’d purchased a new blue hoodie to replace the gray pullover that was now in the dumpster behind the motel. I felt fortunate when the motel front desk clerk swiped my new credit card and it went through without a hitch. Thanks, Mr. Howard. Enjoy your stay with us. Man, I owed Tommy.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the gray-bearded man. His face and eyes were branded into my mind. He had swooped in and saved me. Two perfect bullets and then vanished. I couldn’t help but believe he was the same man who’d been inside my mom’s room earlier that morning, claiming to be an FBI agent. I mean, seriously, how many nice-looking sixty-something-year-old, gray-bearded men with the “prettiest blue eyes” could there be in this situation? I highly doubted more than one. Could he have been in DC that morning, then jumped on a plane and traveled to Austin the same day, just in time to rescue me?

  To clear my name and get back to DC, I needed to figure things out.

  Who was he? And how did he find me?

  More importantly, why did he want to keep me alive?

  I thought about Lucas McCallister. Did someone set him up? Could this have been a last ditch resort by the Mitchell campaign to stop their plummet in the polls and save the election? Was that why I’d received the text? Then I thought about Square Jaw, who was working security for Congressman Mitchell, and became even more confused. Why would they text me to witness the event and then want to kill me? And why would Lucas McCallister take the bait this close to Election Day? With a growing four point lead? Even the weakest man I knew could keep his pants zipped for four days, especially when you considered what was at stake.

  So many questions. My head hurt.

  But each of these questions paled in comparison to the biggest in my mind right now.

  Did someone want Lucas McCallister elected so badly this coming week that they would help cover up a murder and then send out a team of professional killers within hours to eliminate any and all possible connections to it? Because I highly doubted that McCallister’s campaign manager could pick up the phone and make such calls. There was no twenty-four-hour assassin hotline. No, it would have had to be someone else. Someone close to the campaign. Someone much more powerful and capable. And someone with a whole lot at stake on Tuesday.

  I needed to find out that answer. It might be my only way out.

  A brown wallet was sitting on the bed, its contents spread out in a circle around it. The wallet belonged to my dead friend, Elvis, from the hotel alley. I’d made sure to snag it before bolting. Elvis was actually Greg Carson, 28, of Morgantown, West Virginia. There was an American Express card, a Visa card, and an Exxon gas card. Twenty-seven dollars in cash. A photo of a brunette of similar age. Nothing written on the back. Gas card receipts. A former Marine Corps ID, an ID for Stable Security out of Dallas, an ID badge for a training facility with Redrock Security, and a Gold’s Gym ID. Also business cards from a hunting company, a bail bondsman, and an auto shop.

  Using my tablet, I was not able to find any mention of a Greg Carson from West Virginia who had been in the Marine Corps. That search came up completely blank. And though there were several Greg Carsons listed on Facebook, none matched the profile of this guy. Not that I expected to find a guy like this on social media. I did find the website for Stable Security Services in Dallas. They claimed to offer the highest level of private security in Texas. I wondered if Congressman Mitchell’s team had contracted Elvis and Square Jaw from Stable Security. I’d heard of Redrock Security. Redrock was a private military contractor that employed thousands of former military specialists for operations around the world. The Gold’s Gym ID was for Roanoke, Virginia. The hunting company, Jackson Wing Hunting, was in North Carolina. The auto shop, Bert’s Auto & Body, was in Blacksburg. I was at a dead end.

  There was nothing obvious that gave me answers.

  Who sent you to kill me, Greg Carson?

  I’d also started reading up on the news of the manhunt for one Samuel Callahan, a current student at Georgetown Law School. A murder suspect. It was on the homepage of USA Today. There were quotes in the article from some of my law professors and classmates, who had already been interviewed. It was surreal. They were all in shock. No one saw it coming. I was thankful there was no mention of a mother in a healthcare facility. It would be a very difficult relationship to track, which is why it was all the more confusing how the gray-bearded man was there with her this morning.

  I probably should have stopped reading, but I couldn’t get myself to pull away. It was like an out of body experience, as if I was reading about someone else’s life.

  Not my life. Not me.

  Then I read another stunner. The FBI was now officially involved in my case. They had entered the scene earlier that evening. It was no longer just some mysterious gray-bearded guy claiming to be an FBI agent while sitting with my mom. This was real. I watched a video clip from a news conference from a few hours earlier, a serious man with hard eyes in the standard dark blue FBI windbreaker, standing in front of cameras in San Antonio, promising to find me at all costs. They had reason to believe this was not an isolated matter, that I was on the run, and that I was very dangerous, which was why they had seized control of the investigation. He was right. It was not isolated.
For a moment, I thought of simply turning myself in, just walking straight into the downtown police station tonight, letting them slap on the cuffs and begging for some type of asylum. At least I’d stay alive. Tell the truth, the whole truth. Pray for the best. Even with Tommy Kucher’s help, I was surely no match for the FBI. They would discover Dobbs Howard. They would track the credit cards. They probably already had.

  They were probably on their way to my motel right now.

  I inhaled deeply, let it out slowly. Returned to the window, studied the parking lot. There was something stopping me from turning myself in to the authorities. I was no dummy. It didn’t take being in law school to figure this one out. Truth was like clay. Whoever had their hands on the clay could shape it however they wanted. My hands were nowhere near the clay at the moment. I had to change that first.

  But I was working against the clock. I had hours, not days.

  I turned from the window, fell back onto the bed. The TV was on FOX News, but the sound was muted. I was thankful for a hurricane in the Atlantic that was approaching the tip of Florida and promising to throw some houses around. There was at least some distraction going on that took a little attention away from me. I wanted to call my mom, make sure she was okay, but I resisted the urge. She would be asleep anyway. And she could very well be under some type of surveillance. I didn’t want to invite any more unwanted attention on her. No, I’d wait to see her in person. I wasn’t entirely sure at this point how I was going to make that happen tomorrow. Not with my face suddenly on all the national FBI Most Wanted posters.

  I would figure it out. I had plenty of time to think. I had all night. I was certain there wouldn’t be much sleep coming my way. My mind was too frazzled. My United Airlines flight, a ticket I purchased with my new credit card under Dobbs Howard, was set to leave in only five hours, at 5:35 the next morning, and would arrive in DC around 9:15. Right now, I desperately needed to see two people ASAP.