Silent Partner

by Stephen Frey

  Reluctantly she turned her head, then the world was gone behind a soft fabric extending from her forehead to beneath her nose. “Not too tight,” she protested.

  “Sorry.”

  “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she muttered to herself.

  Tucker knotted the blindfold at the back of her head, then slipped the Jeep into first gear, turned right at the intersection, and gunned the engine.

  She gripped the Jeep’s door and the console between them tightly, now unable to anticipate the turns of the narrow lane. “Hey, slow down!”

  “Okay, okay.” Tucker eased off the accelerator. “So, what else is going on in your world?”

  Her feelings for him had come from nowhere. Suddenly she’d realized that she cared about him, but, just as she thought the spark was about to ignite and that he felt the same way, he had pulled back. Perhaps he was afraid that Jake would find out. “I’m seeing my son this weekend,” she said. “My ex-husband is dropping Hunter off tomorrow evening.”

  “Didn’t you just see Hunter last weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I thought Mr. Lawrence told me you only got to see him once a month.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Then what’s going on?”

  “My ex seems to be developing a conscience.”

  “This would be the guy who brought you to Richmond in the first place, the one who didn’t turn out to be your knight in shining armor.”

  “Yes.”

  “Be careful, Angela.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why. He wants something.”

  Angela gripped the Jeep door tightly as they went around a sharp curve. “Maybe he does, but I can handle myself. Besides, any extra time I get to spend with Hunter is worth any risk.”

  Tucker slowed the Jeep down and they coasted across a narrow bridge spanning a creek. “Why aren’t you seeing anyone, Angela?”

  At least he was still trying. That was a good sign. “How do you know I’m not?”

  “Colby gave me a full rundown on you while you were having dinner with Mr. Lawrence.”

  Of course they knew. They seemed to know everything. “I’ve been too busy lately.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How long until we get there?” she asked, her thoughts turning to the voice mail she’d received from Liv this morning. The man who had claimed to have information concerning Bob Dudley had called back and wanted to meet. She had tried to call Liv to warn her against going—or at least to be very careful—but hadn’t been able to reach her.

  “Not too long.”

  Five minutes later Tucker stopped at the first checkpoint. It was another bridge crossing a creek. Two armed men emerged from the woods, pointing a flashlight into Tucker’s face and on Angela’s blindfold. “Half a mile ahead up on your right,” one of them said gruffly. “There’s an entrance to a dirt road between two large oak trees. Follow that road until you arrive at the first T. A person there will direct you further.”

  “Right.” Tucker gestured at Angela. “Can she take off the blindfold?”

  “Not yet,” came the sharp reply. “Now move ahead.”

  A half a mile down the lane Tucker identified two huge oak trees and a dirt road leading off into the forest. As he turned onto it, two more men appeared from the brush and signaled for him to stop. Once again, Angela and he were inspected, then waved ahead. Once again, Angela was not allowed to remove her blindfold. But at the first T in the road—where they were instructed to go left until they reached the next fork—she was given permission to uncover her eyes. Tucker had convinced the guards that there was no reason to impose such strict precautions at this point. Angela had been blindfolded for fifteen minutes and would never be able to find her way back here again. The guards had relented because they’d been given strict orders to treat her respectfully. She was not to be frisked this time.

  “It sure is lonely back here,” Angela observed as Tucker guided the Jeep along the rutted dirt path. “Kind of spooky too.” Tall, bare oaks and elms rose above them into the winter night. “Why do you think this road is here? It doesn’t look like a driveway.”

  “Probably an old logging access route,” Tucker responded. “Doesn’t look like it’s been used in a while.”

  Once more, armed men appeared like specters from the woods as Angela and Tucker rounded a bend. This time there were five of them. Once more the Jeep was waved ahead after being closely inspected. Then the road opened up onto the edge of a small field, and Angela spied several other Jeeps as well as what appeared to be about fifteen to twenty men standing around the vehicles in groups of three and four, rifles slung over their shoulders. Then she recognized William Colby striding purposefully toward them in the headlights.

  “Hello, Bill,” Tucker called, stepping from the vehicle.

  “Good evening, John.” Colby nodded at the guard following him. The man moved briskly to where Tucker stood and began frisking him.

  “What the hell is this?” Tucker bellowed as the guard patted him down.

  “Shut up, John.” Colby turned toward Angela, who had gotten out of the Jeep and come around to the driver’s side. “Hello, Ms. Day. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but we’re on high alert tonight due to some intelligence I’ve just received. Mr. Lawrence was in New York City today and is flying in by helicopter to meet you. He should be here in no more than ten minutes.”

  “Thank you,” she answered. Colby seemed more polite tonight. Almost civil.

  He turned back toward Tucker. “I trust you didn’t see anyone following you. Not like the other night,” he said quietly so Angela couldn’t hear.

  “I didn’t see anything. Look I’m pissed that you would have your guys frisk me for Christ—”

  “Enough,” Colby interrupted, turning his attention to Angela. “I assume after the instructions I gave you last Sunday night, Ms. Day, you didn’t tell anyone what you were doing this evening.”

  Before leaving the hotel, Colby had given her specific instructions not to disclose her meetings with Jake Lawrence to anyone. Just before leaving her apartment, however, she had recorded a message on Carter Hill’s cell phone voice mail. “No,” she answered hesitantly, “I didn’t.” She looked away, wondering if he could tell she was lying.

  “Good.” He motioned for Angela and Tucker to follow him. “Come this way.”

  With guards surrounding them, Angela had to jog through the knee-high underbrush along the edge of the field to keep up with Colby’s quick pace. It was clear and cold, and as she hustled along, she pulled the zipper of her ski jacket up to her neck.

  “Here.” Colby held up his hand, then signaled for the detail of men to spread out along the edge of the field. “Shouldn’t be long.”

  Angela watched the guards fade into the darkness ahead of them, then glanced up. There was a half-moon low on the horizon and the sky was littered with stars. “It’s so quiet out here,” she murmured. The wind was absolutely still.

  “Here he comes,” Colby announced. “Stand by!” he shouted, then shouted it again, over his shoulder.

  Tucker tapped Angela on the shoulder as she scanned the sky and pointed to the northeast. There she caught sight of flashing green lights, then heard the sound of a rotor chopping the air. Within seconds the helicopter was hovering several hundred feet above them, transforming the tranquil evening into a maelstrom. She grabbed her hair to keep it from whipping against her face, then she shielded her eyes with her other hand when the helicopter pilot turned on a spotlight that illuminated an area on the ground fifty feet in diameter as brightly as though it were day.

  Angela spread her fingers slightly and peeked through them up at the helicopter as it hovered. Out of the corner of one eye, she was vaguely aware of a sparkling trail of light arcing through the darkness like a comet.

  As the searing light reached the helicopter, Angela screamed, aware of what was happening. But her voice was drowned out by a violent explosion as t
he helicopter disintegrated in a mushrooming fireball. A wave of searing heat blew past her and she was hurled back violently into the underbrush near the trees. She was unable to see, temporarily blinded by the explosion’s flash, and she curled up into a ball as fiery pieces of helicopter rained down on the field around her.

  A small shard of something clipped her upper leg and she came out of her tucked position, crawling wildly toward the trees for protection, her sight beginning to return. The trees were ghostly images ahead, illuminated by the intense fire behind. The field was ablaze and she tumbled into the trees, aware that she had to get out of the area. Aware that the fire could quickly race from the field to the woods and ignite the dead leaves covering the forest floor.

  She pulled herself to her feet, then glanced back for a moment. Against the flames she spotted the silhouettes of two sprinting guards, then heard a burst of automatic gunfire over the crackling of the flames and saw the guards tumble to the ground. Mowed down by someone up in the trees to the left.

  Instinctively, she staggered into the forest, guided by the intense light from the fire. As she moved forward, the light dimmed and she had to slow down for fear of plowing headlong into a tree. Then she was plunged into total darkness, and she was feeling her way along, hands extended in front of her. Slowly, her eyesight improved, but her progress was still slow. And she was certain she could hear footsteps behind her, crashing through the leaves.

  She forged ahead, dodging trees that loomed out of the darkness. And then she was down, tumbling over and over until she reached the bottom of a steep ravine and splashed into a creek. She was up instantly, wiping leaves, twigs, and moss from her face and her soaking hair as she stood thigh-deep in water. She had to keep moving. She knew that.

  She stepped forward and slipped off an unseen ledge in the stream bed, totally submerged for a moment until she could fight her way back to the surface of the freezing water, the breath ripped from her lungs by the intense cold. Despite her soggy clothes, she was able to make her way to the far bank. She glanced up the ravine, decided it was too steep to climb, and moved further downstream. Finally, she found a spot that seemed scalable, grabbed a thick vine tightly with both hands, and began pulling herself up.

  As Angela made it close to the top of the embankment, she heard voices. Quick, muffled commands from the other side of the ravine. And then there was a beam of light playing on the trees to her left. Moving toward the spot where she would emerge from the ravine. She clawed at the soft earth, frantically trying to pull herself the last few feet to the top, but the soil was unstable and gave way. She caught herself on a root, then glanced over her left shoulder and saw the spotlight being aimed down into the stream and quickly scanning the water. There were several dark forms on top of the ravine on the other side. Friends or foes? No way to tell, and finding out was not a risk she was prepared to take right now.

  With all her strength, Angela lifted herself the rest of the way up the embankment, tumbled into the woods, then quickly scrambled behind the base of a thick tree, aware that she’d made a good deal of noise crawling through the leaves. Instantly, the light was streaming past her on all sides, reflecting off the trees. She glanced up and saw the animal bearing down on her. It seemed monstrous, but somehow she kept herself from screaming as the massive buck darted past and along the top of the ravine, crashing away into the darkness. Then the light was pointed in another direction, and she heard the people moving off. She waited for several moments, shivering in her wet clothes, then made it to her feet with the help of the tree and jogged deeper into the woods.

  Several hundred yards farther into the forest, Angela turned right and walked for a quarter of a mile along the top of a ridge. As best she could tell, she was headed away from the logging road she and Tucker had come in on. Her plan was simple. Keep moving until she reached civilization. If she came upon one of the narrow roads back here, she wouldn’t flag down a passing car. There could be no telling who they were or who they represented. Jake Lawrence hadn’t been paranoid at all. He was a hunted man. Even his army hadn’t been able to protect him this time. No, she would keep going until she reached a major road or a residence. She had learned her lesson.

  Angela stopped, turning instantly into a statue. There was a voice in the night. A single speaker, words coming quickly, demands being made. Then another voice in answer. A voice she recognized. As she lowered herself to her hands and knees and began to crawl along the forest floor, she felt her heart pounding. The voices she had heard were close. No more than fifty feet ahead and slightly down the slope to her left. Every sound she made seemed loud, every leaf that crunched beneath her palm and every twig that snapped under her knee amplified by the stillness of the woods. But she kept going.

  Her eyes had now become accustomed to the darkness and she could see two people in a small clearing. One man—the one with a rifle—standing behind another who was kneeling, hands clasped behind his head. She was only twenty feet away and they were unaware of her presence. As she focused on the rifle, her instinct was to run, to turn and get away as fast as she could. But that was not an option.

  “Tell me!” the man holding the rifle demanded. “I know you have important information.”

  “You don’t know anything,” Tucker replied calmly, despite the barrel of the rifle pressed roughly to the base of his neck.

  Angela’s hand came to rest on a thick branch a foot and a half long.

  “Tell me about the network! Tell me how it works. Give me details.”

  “Piss off.”

  She was at the edge of the clearing now, just ten feet behind the man pointing the rifle at Tucker.

  “I’ll kill you right here.”

  “That wouldn’t do you much good.”

  Angela took a deep breath, tightened her grip on the branch, and rushed from her hiding place, aiming for the man’s head. A step before she reached him, he turned. She smacked his forehead with the piece of wood, and he toppled to the ground.

  Tucker was on him like a cat, grabbing the rifle and slamming the butt end of it directly into one eye. The man went limp, unconscious.

  Tucker stood up, rifle in hand, breathing heavily, staring at Angela. As he gazed at her, he slowly brought the gun down until the barrel was pointed at her chest.

  She took a step back, struck by the eerie feeling that she had just made a horrible mistake, that somehow she had misjudged everything, that Lawrence had been right, that in her attempt to help someone she thought was her friend, she had sealed her own fate instead.

  Then Tucker smiled. “I’m not a very religious man, but I’ll believe in angels from now on.” He lowered the rifle. “When your parents decided on a name, they sure picked the right one.” He moved to where she stood and took her hand. “Come on. Let’s get your little tattooed ass out of here.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Colby tapped gently. “Sir?”

  “Come in.”

  He pushed open the door and noticed right away that Jake Lawrence was not sitting in front of the farmhouse window, and that the three-way bulb of the lamp on the desk was illuminated at its lowest setting. “It’s time to go. We’ve got to get you out of here.”

  When the helicopter carrying Lawrence’s decoy had exploded in the field ten miles from the farmhouse, Colby’s men had been smuggling the real McCoy to the nest in a rusting, twenty-year-old Torino station wagon. Now it had been two hours since the explosion and Colby was growing increasingly uncomfortable about having Lawrence so close to the hot zone.

  “Any word on Angela Day?”

  Colby had delivered the latest update ten minutes ago. “Nothing yet.”

  “Who did this, William?” Lawrence demanded, teeth gritted.

  “We don’t know yet. But believe me, we’ll find out.”

  “You better.”

  “The investigation is already under way. We are using every means at our disposal to identify the perpetrator.”

  Lawrence looked up. �
�You must locate Angela Day, too.”

  “We will,” Colby said. “One way or the other.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She may be dead, sir. We have to consider that possibility.”

  “But you said she was right next to you when the explosion occurred. You’re okay.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, she may have died after the explosion. Two of my men were killed by sniper fire.”

  “But it was pitch-dark!”

  “The light from the fire was intense for several minutes after the explosion. Or the enemy may have had night-vision capability.”

  Lawrence let out a quick, frustrated breath. “I don’t understand how individuals armed with surface-to-air missiles could have gotten so close with all of your men around. Don’t you sweep the area before I arrive?”

  “Of course. Several times.”

  “Then how in the—”

  “I didn’t want to have to tell you this.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “That there may have been help from the inside.”

  Lawrence frowned. “Go on.”

  “You’ll remember that I told you about a man we apprehended who was following Angela Day. We took him down one evening on a lawn across from her apartment in Richmond.”

  “Yes.” Lawrence’s eyes narrowed. “And that man has escaped. You told me that.”

  “Right. But what I haven’t told you is that the guard who was on duty at the time the prisoner escaped is missing.”

  “You think he helped the prisoner?”

  “Yes. And this guard was in the group that thought you were actually coming in by helicopter.”

  “You’re right. That’s not good.”

  “And that’s not all.”

  “My God, what else is there?”

  “I believe John Tucker may know something about the prisoner’s escape as well.”

  “What!” Lawrence rose from his seat and moved to where Colby stood. “John Tucker?” he asked incredulously.

  “Yes. I believe Tucker may have been involved in the incident on the mountain in Wyoming, and that he may know a great deal about what happened this evening, too. I suspect that John Tucker may have convinced a small cadre of my men to become soldiers of fortune, so to speak. I think Tucker may have been approached by people who don’t appreciate the causes you involve yourself in. People who want to see you dead,” he said bluntly.