King and Maxwell

by David Baldacci

  careful. That I didn’t want him to die from an IED or a sniper. That I prayed he got back soon.”

  “And what did he say to that?”

  “He said that IEDs and snipers were the least of his worries.”

  Sean rubbed his chin. “Meaning what? That something else even worse might happen to him over there?”

  “I guess, yes.” Her features shifted to alarm at what this actually meant. “What other things could be worse than being blown up or shot?” she asked.

  “There might be something,” replied Sean.

  He confirmed some other information with Hesse and then left her there staring into her coffee cup.

  He was halfway to his car when his phone buzzed. It was Michelle. She filled him in on her meeting with McKinney.

  “A billion euros?” he said, his voice heavy with skepticism. “That’s about a billion three U.S. dollars at current exchange rates.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. And it apparently weighs forty-eight hundred pounds, crate not included.”

  “And why would McKinney come to us and offer up this information?”

  Sean slid into the front seat and clipped his seat belt on before starting the engine, the phone wedged between his shoulder and ear.

  “I think he feels hemmed in. Not trusting anyone, meaning on his side too,” she said.

  “Still, it was a stretch for a DHS guy to come to us and convey that sort of information. He could get his ass canned for that.”

  “No argument there. I was as surprised as you are.”

  “How did you leave it with him?”

  “I didn’t really. He just left and I got on the horn with you.”

  “I’ll be there in about forty minutes. Hang tight.”

  Sean put the car in gear.

  He didn’t look in the rearview mirror.

  If he had, he might have noticed the red dot flitting across his forehead.

  CHAPTER

  31

  ALAN GRANT LOWERED HIS PISTOL with the laser sight on the Picatinny rail as Sean drove off.

  It would not be as simple as a trigger pull, although the time would come when it would be something that basic. He slipped his gun back into its shoulder holster and sat there with the engine running while he thought through some things.

  Mary Hesse, a DTI grunt. Worked with Sam Wingo teaching him how to speak languages of the Middle East. She was a dead end. But there were other trails out there that could lead King and Maxwell somewhere.

  He put his Mercedes sedan in gear and drove out of Chantilly, heading west toward the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The roads turned from interstates to highway to state routes and finally to rural road switchbacks.

  He finally turned onto a gravel road, drove up a hill, turned left, and skidded to a stop in front of a small, ramshackle cabin. He climbed out of the car and checked his watch; it was nearing midnight. Time was meaningless to him. He had long ago ceased to operate on a nine-to-five schedule.

  He popped the trunk and looked down at the woman lying there.

  Her hands and feet were bound with flexi-cuffs, mouth taped, eyes blindfolded. All these steps were probably unnecessary since she was drugged. But he was a cautious man. Cautious people, he had found, lived to fight another day.

  He lifted her up and carried her to the porch. He set her down, unlocked the front door—triple locks and a security system run off a propane-fired generator that also provided lighting—picked her back up, and carried her over the threshold.

  There was nothing matrimonial about the gesture.

  He walked into the back room where the window had been blacked out.

  There was a metal table in the middle of this room. He laid her down on the table, removed her blindfold, and stepped back. He took off his coat and laid his pistol aside. It would just get in his way. He turned on the overhead light.

  As he watched, she started waking up. He looked at his watch. Right on time.

  Jean Wingo’s eyes fluttered once, twice, and then remained open. Her look was confused at first; then she looked to the side and saw him.

  She stiffened, her eyes instantly filling with apprehension.

  Grant gently removed the tape covering her mouth.

  She said breathlessly, “What are you doing?” She looked around. “Why did you bring me here?”

  “To talk.”

  “You drugged me, tied me up, and now I’m lying on a metal table. You could have just called, for God’s sake.”

  Grant could tell the woman’s courage was returning.

  She tried to sit up. He put on a pair of leather gloves and forced her back down on the table. With her legs and arms bound it was not a difficult thing to do.

  “Please let me up.”

  “Not until we’ve talked. I need a debrief.”

  “Where are we?”

  “In a safe place.”

  He pulled up a chair and sat next to her.

  “Can I sit up, please?”

  He put an arm under her back and helped her to a sitting position.

  She eyed him warily. “What do you want to know that I haven’t already told you?”

  “For starters, why did you leave?”

  “Tyler hired these detectives. I got nervous.”

  “You left without permission. You signed on for the mission. You can’t change the rules midway through.”

  “I understand that, Alan, I’m sorry. But conditions on the ground change. And I had to change with them. These detectives—”

  “I have that under control. Your leaving has complicated things. Tyler is now with King and Maxwell. I lost three men to them. This all could have been prevented if you had spoken up and controlled Tyler. If he hadn’t gotten suspicious he wouldn’t have hired anyone. He would have believed what the Army told him and that would be that.”

  “Wingo sent him an email.”

  “Which we know about. But it could have been sent by anyone. Not necessarily his father. Again, if you had stuck to the script, which had this contingency built in, it would have been taken care of.”

  “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Every plan does not go smoothly.”

  “Mine did. Until now.”

  “What, did you bring me here to torture me? Or kill me? How is that going to help things?”

  Again, Grant could tell she was nervous but trying to cover that with bravado.

  “No and no. And it wouldn’t help things. I just want to see if you have any useful information to convey. Then I will redeploy you. But you need to understand that you screwed up. There have to be consequences, Jean.”

  “I think I more than carried my weight. I got designated as Wingo’s ‘bride.’ I carried this whole thing pretty flawlessly the last year. The kid never warmed up to me. And Wingo was Wingo. It hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park.”

  “I understand that. Just tell me anything you might have learned and we can head back to town.”

  “I left the house when things started to get hairy. I called you and told you what I was doing.”

  “And I told you to stay the course.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s pretty much it.”

  “Any more communications from Wingo on his son’s email?”

  “There was nothing. Wingo hasn’t tried to contact him again.” She looked curious. “What exactly happened over there? You never said.”

  “Wingo lost the cargo, but my people lost him. He’s out there. Probably trying to figure out what happened and attempting to get back here. He has made contact with his immediate superior. Said superior did not believe his explanation. He is a marked man. DoD is putting major resources toward finding him. We’re of course looking for him too.”

  “So he won’t stay out there long.”

  “But we don’t need the DoD to find him, because they might just believe that he didn’t take the cargo. Then they start to look elsewhere. I want their focus on hi
m.”

  “So you need to find him first.”

  “As you remarked before, easier said than done.”

  “Then we better get to it.”

  “Agreed.”

  He pulled his knife, cut her hands and feet free.

  He flipped her his Glock 9mm.

  She checked the mag, chambered a round, pointed it at him. “Sorry, Alan.” She fired the weapon. Or at least attempted to. But there was no bang and no bullet was propelled down the barrel.

  “Helps to have a firing pin,” said Grant, who seemed unsurprised by her attempt to kill him.

  He struck, the knife passing across her neck, severing all her major arteries. He backed away from the blood spray. Her gaze was on him and he continued to watch her. Waiting.

  Jean fell to the floor and a few seconds later finished bleeding out.

  He stared down at her for a few moments. “Consequences, Jean.”

  He wrapped her in plastic and tied her up tight like a present.

  The dug grave was waiting in the woods a quarter mile away. As he put the last shovelful of dirt over the hole, he said a silent prayer and considered the fact that Sam Wingo was a widower for the second time.

  He doubted the man would care about that right now. He had other things to worry about. He walked back to the cabin, cleaned up, and got back into his car.

  He didn’t like losing Jean, but some things were sacrosanct. You followed orders. You didn’t make the rules up as you went along. There was a chain of command for a reason. A very sound, historically verified reason.

  And Grant was, above all, a disciplined soldier. It didn’t matter that he no longer wore the uniform. It wasn’t about something you wore. It was all about what was inside the clothes. Discipline. Honor. Respect. Reliability. Professionalism.

  Jean had violated all of these.

  He didn’t have the option of court-martialing her.

  There was really only one option left. He had employed that option but only after she had failed his loyalty test. He was a fair man. If she hadn’t tried to kill him, she would still be alive. She had and she wasn’t.

  He drove on.

  He had a list. He had checked it twice. It was time to move the ball forward.

  He had one billion euros. He didn’t personally need all of it. He just needed a tenth of it.

  But he believed it would be money very well spent.

  CHAPTER

  32

  THE NEXT MORNING MICHELLE DROPPED Tyler off at school.

  She said, “If anything seems weird or if strange people show up looking for you, lock yourself in the principal’s office and call me.”

  Tyler promised that he would, and Michelle watched him all the way into the school. She had never been a mother and had never really even imagined herself in that role. But she felt like an overprotective momma right now. In fact, the weight of responsibility she felt was even greater to her than when she’d protected VIPs at the Secret Service. Go figure.

  She drove off and phoned Sean on her Bluetooth.

  “Baby bird is dropped off,” she said. “Where do we go from here?”

  “You think McKinney will meet with us again?”

  “I don’t know. He left his card. I can call him.”

  “Do that.”

  “Why McKinney?”

  “We need official access, Michelle. He provides it. Otherwise we are cut out of the loop and have no leads to follow up.”

  “He’s not going to just invite us to the investigation.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  “What do you know that I don’t?”

  “Just call him. Noon at our office.”

  “What are you doing in the meantime?”

  “Checking on Dana.”

  “But you said you weren’t family.”

  “There are always ways.”

  “What do you want me to do besides call McKinney?”

  “Play detective and try to get a line on Jean Wingo.”

  “Okay. I’d say be careful but I know you will be.”

  He clicked off.

  Michelle drove to Tyler’s neighborhood. It looked just like thousands of neighborhoods that dotted the country. Working-class homes filled with working-class folks. Only this neighborhood was different. Certain people who lived here were definitely not who they appeared to be.

  Michelle knocked on the door of Alice Dobbers, the neighbor who had seen Jean leave the previous day. Dobbers came to the door. She was well into her eighties, short, and about sixty pounds overweight. Her legs and arms were swollen and she looked to be in pain. She wore glasses; a hearing aid poked out of her right ear. Michelle explained who she was and what she wanted.

  She added, “We’re trying to help Tyler.”

  Dobbers nodded. “I know. Tyler told me about you and your partner. I can tell you what I told him. Saw her leave around noon, my soap was just about to come on. Aren’t many of them left, soaps I mean, so I’m sure of the time. Just happened to look out the window, commercial was on. Coffee. Don’t drink coffee anymore. Makes me hyper and pee at night. I don’t like hyper, don’t like peeing at night. Too much effort getting outta bed. Tried Depends. Didn’t like ’em. Felt like I was being born again. Not in a good way, diaper, you see.” She slid her glasses halfway down her nose and stared knowingly at Michelle.

  “I’m sure,” said Michelle quickly. “So she had her suitcase?”

  “No, first she put out the recycling. Guess she forgot.”

  “Forgot what?”

  “Yesterday was trash pickup day, not recycling. Why they can’t do it all on the same day I’ll never know. But I don’t have enough time left breathing to worry about crap like that.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then she came back out with a suitcase, popped the trunk of her car. Put it in there. No overnight bag. Big sucker. Probably everything she owned. Don’t see her coming back. No loss there.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Dobbers gave her another knowing look. “I been married for fifty-seven years. Not to the same man, now. It was three of them, actually, but they totaled up to fifty-seven years of mostly good times until they weren’t. So I know about love. Know about commitment. Know it when I see it. Know it when I don’t see it.”

  Michelle glanced across the street. “And you didn’t see it over there?”

  “I knew Sam Wingo’s first wife. Now, there was a woman in love and a man who loved her. Not the second time around. Don’t know why he married Jean. But it wasn’t for love.”