Stone Cold

by David Baldacci

  “I’ll get through this.”

  “I’m sorry, Annabelle.”

  She sat down in a chair. “All these years I’ve hated my father because I thought he just let my mother die. Then I find out he didn’t . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “And now you lose him too,” Alex finished for her. “But at least you found out before he died, Annabelle. And he knew that you knew.”

  “He could’ve gotten out of that truck. He could be alive right now.”

  “For six months of the cancer eating him away?”

  She stared up at him. “For six months of being with me. I would’ve taken care of him. I guess he thought blowing himself up was a better alternative.”

  “No, maybe he wanted to get Bagger even worse than you did. Maybe he was willing to die to avenge his wife and your mother. At the very least you have to admire the guy’s courage.”

  “I do,” she finally said. “But I still wish he hadn’t done it.”

  “And he gave you that scar. He wasn’t the world’s greatest father.”

  “But he was my father,” she said quietly.

  “And a criminal.”

  “Alex, I’m a criminal.”

  “Not to me, you’re not.” There was an awkward pause before Alex added, “You said you weren’t hungry, but I’m going to make some coffee. And when you’re ready to talk, we’ll talk. How does that sound?”

  “Can I take a shower first? I feel really, really dirty.”

  He showed her to the bathroom that was off his bedroom, and then he went into the kitchen, washed up, put on a pot of coffee and cleaned himself up. By the time he was done, she was out of the shower. She walked into the kitchen wrapped in one of his bathrobes.

  “Hope you don’t mind,” she said.

  Her hair was wet and hung down straight.

  “Shower make you feel better?”

  “Not even close.”

  They drank the coffee mostly in silence. Then Alex built a fire in the living room fireplace, and Annabelle sat on the floor in front of it, holding her hands out to the flames.

  She said in a low voice, “I guess the FBI will have a bunch of questions for me.”

  “Some. But I can help you field them, if you want.”

  “Thanks for helping me.”

  “You put your life on the line too.”

  She gazed up at him. “Can you sit with me? Just for a little while?”

  Alex got down on the floor and they sat quietly in front of the fire as the flames slowly died.

  Carter Gray was brooding. None of Carr’s people had been located. Then another possibility occurred to him: the Secret Service agent, Alex Ford. He and Stone were tight. They had been at Murder Mountain together. He knew as much of the truth about what Gray had done as did Stone. If he got Ford, used him as bait? It would be a little tricky. The man was a federal agent. He couldn’t just kidnap him. Or maybe he could if he somehow discredited him first. This was a favorite tactic of Gray’s. Destroy the reputation of the victim first—indeed, make him appear to be a criminal—and then seize him at his most vulnerable. It was far easier to do than most people would have thought. And by the time it was all figured out, it wouldn’t matter. Gray made a couple of calls and put the operation into motion.

  He quickly received a call back from a mole of his at the FBI. The man there had some interesting news. He told Gray the details of what had happened that night with Ford and Jerry Bagger. And also that Ford had a woman with him, a woman apparently of questionable past. They had walked away from a fiery explosion in Washington. Ford had told the FBI that he would talk to them tomorrow. He had presumably gone home with the woman.

  Gray thanked his spy and hung up.

  This new intelligence changed things remarkably.

  Alex Ford’s career was just about to take a nasty turn for the worse.

  CHAPTER 81

  AFTER ANNABELLE WENT TO BED, Alex sat up in the kitchen drinking another cup of coffee. He glanced every now and then in the direction of the bedroom as he thought things over. But what really was there to think over? The case was done, the bad guys vanquished. This was where the movie ended, the credits rolled and maybe some outtakes played. In the real world, of course, it wasn’t quite that simple. There would be enough paperwork to fill out to clear-cut a small forest. And then an internal investigation to ensure that nothing Alex had done had improperly led to a bunch of men getting blown up over the Potomac. Explanations would be made and corroborated and Alex was confident that relatively soon, many months from now, it would all be over.

  Yet he didn’t want it to end. Not really. Because that scenario would mean that Annabelle would be on her way. He sighed. She would probably be on her way regardless. And maybe that was a good thing, at least officially. After all, she was a con, and he was a cop, and if that wasn’t human oil and water, he didn’t know what was.

  He glanced in the direction of the bedroom once more. No, it just isn’t that simple, is it?

  When she woke up what could he do? Ask her to please stay? He could invent some lie. You have to stay until the official inquiry is complete. That sounded totally bogus even to him. Annabelle would see right through it.

  The next second he stopped thinking about that issue. They were just about to receive visitors, unwelcome ones from the looks of things.

  Alex bent low, slipped to the window and looked out. Down the gravel drive, nearly out of sight, was a vehicle that he didn’t recognize. It was a nondescript black van. Alex hated nondescript black vans. They often carried nondescript men with large guns and bad attitudes. This fear was confirmed when he grabbed a pair of night binoculars from a shelf and used them to take a closer look. There was a small satellite receiver pod on the roof of the van. And if he’d still had lingering doubts, the movement in the bushes next to his house erased them. People in the bushes, satellite vans, maybe the glint of rifle optics in the moonlight—none of it was making Alex feel too good right now. And he’d thought nearly losing his life once already tonight was enough.

  Yet this was a tad different from the encounter with Jerry Bagger. This had government strike team written all over it. And why would the government be bothering with one of its own? Alex nearly instantly answered his own question.

  Carter Gray couldn’t find Oliver Stone so he’d decided to cast his net wider. Whether this was actually true or not, Alex wasn’t going to wait to find out. He had already had one near-death face-off with Carter Gray at Murder Mountain; he had no desire to go for a second round.

  He grabbed a set of keys off the hook over the kitchen phone and raced to the bedroom. Clamping a hand over Annabelle’s mouth in case she screamed at being awoken from a dead sleep, he whispered, “Someone’s outside. Get dressed. Fast. We have to roll.”

  Annabelle had barely thrown on her clothes and grabbed her bag when two men came through the front door and another pair through the rear. They had body armor and MP-5s and Alex’s pistol would be no match for them. So he opted for going out the door off the kitchen leading to the garage.

  “Stop!” one of the armored men called out to them from the hall.

  Alex had no intention of doing anything other than running like hell. He only bothered to open the garage door enough to let his Corvette scoot underneath, clearing it by about an inch. He grabbed another gear and they shot down the gravel road past the van right as the front door of his house burst open. As the Corvette spat rocks in all directions, bursts of machine-gun fire zipped over their heads. Annabelle ducked down in her seat.

  “Damn it!” Alex cried out.

  “Are you hit?” Annabelle said anxiously, as she sat back up.

  “No, but I think one of the shots hit the car.”

  He screeched onto the main road, keeping his foot mashed to the floor. He looked in the mirror and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no one back there.

  “Alex, what’s happening?”

  “I wish I knew, Annabelle.”

 
“Where are we going?”

  “I wish I knew that too. Hold on.”

  He speed-dialed one of his buddies at the Service’s WFO, or Washington Field Office, where he was stationed.

  “Bobby, it’s Alex. Something really weird is going on, man.”

  “Like what?”

  Alex filled him in. “I don’t know who those guys were, but they were carrying some serious hardware. Find out anything on your end and then call me back.”

  He hung up and looked at Annabelle. “Bobby’s good, he’ll be able to dig up something to help us.”

  “Why don’t you just go to your headquarters or whatever you call it? We should be safe there.”

  “I would except for one little tiny problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve seen the jumpsuits those guys were in before.”

  “Where?”

  “At a joint exercise the Service did down at Camp Peary.”

  “Is it that bad?” she said, looking at him uneasily.

  “It’s one of the CIA’s main training facilities, known as the Farm.”

  “The CIA!”

  “Their paramilitary units wear that sort of gear.”

  “The CIA has paramilitary units?”

  “Yeah, is that a secret outside the Beltway?”

  “So you’re saying our own government might be after us?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We got rid of a psychopath casino owner, my father just blew himself up and now the CIA’s on our ass?”

  “That sums it up pretty accurately.”

  “I have to say you’re taking it very calmly.”

  “If nothing else, the Service teaches its agents to remain cool. But I have to admit, it’s getting more difficult by the minute.”

  “It’s nice to know you’re human. What now?”

  “As much as I hate to do it, we have to ditch my Corvette and find a place to hole up. Then we wait to hear back from Bobby and hope it’s good news. But I sort of doubt it will be.”

  CHAPTER 82

  THEY JETTISONED ALEX’S CORVETTE, grabbed a cab to Old Town Alexandria and then walked to a nearby motel. Annabelle checked in paying cash and using her fake ID while Alex hid outside. They went to their room and bolted the door.

  An hour later Bobby called back. That he was whispering told Alex all he needed to know.

  “The official story we just got in is you opened fire on federal agents who were attempting to make an arrest at your house. And that you’re harboring an unnamed fugitive, a woman. None of us believe it, Alex, but the director’s going nuts. Word is he and the CIA director just had a dustup on the phone.”

  “Those federal agents were either trying to kill or kidnap me, Bobby! And the only thing I’m harboring is a strong desire to kick somebody’s ass to get some answers.”

  “Hey, I’m on your side. You didn’t walk out of the office today and become a felon. But you still better come in and give your side of things.” He paused. “Alex, do you have someone with you?”

  Alex stared over at Annabelle, who looked anxiously back at him. “Thanks, Bobby. I’ll be in touch.”

  He clicked off and threw the phone down on the bed in disgust. “Okay, we’ve obviously been teleported to an alternate universe where all the good guys are screwed.”

  Annabelle sat down on the bed next to him. “Thank you.”

  “Look, sarcasm I can do without right now.”

  “I’m not being sarcastic. I’m thanking you for saving my life tonight. Twice!”

  “I’m sorry, Annabelle. I just didn’t see this twist coming until it was too late.”

  “But why would the CIA target us?”

  “The only thing I can think of is that I have a connection to Oliver.”

  “But why come after Oliver now?”

  “A while back when the president was kidnapped and the U.S. was on the verge of a nuclear strike—”

  “Oliver was involved in that!”

  “We both were. And not by choice. But when that happened, Carter Gray was also involved. And not in a good way. Oliver’s the reason the guy ended up resigning.”

  “So Oliver had something on Carter Gray and used that to make him quit his job?”

  “You got it.”

  “But Gray’s dead.”

  “They never found his body.”

  “So maybe the man’s plotting from beyond the grave.”

  “That’s what it looks like. And we’re trapped right in the middle of it all.”

  “We have to find Oliver.”

  “Won’t be that easy. If the CIA is involved you can bet they’ve put the hammer down on the other agencies either to cooperate or stand down.”

  “But we just helped the FBI,” Annabelle countered.

  “Doesn’t matter. National security trumps everything else. So that means our movements will really be restricted. And unlike in TV shows and the movies, it’s almost impossible to run from the cops. You have millions of eyes watching and somebody will see something and then that’s it. And they sure know what I look like.”

  Annabelle held up her bag. “I can do something about that. Step into the changing room.” She had Alex sit on the commode in the bathroom while she pulled out a small box from the bag and readied some items. It took an hour, but at the end of sixty minutes Alex Ford no longer looked like Alex Ford.

  He gazed at himself in the mirror. “You’re good at this stuff.”

  “Comes in handy. Tomorrow morning we can find a wig shop and get a few other clothes and things to improve the disguise. Give me a little more time with you and I doubt Mrs. Ford would recognize her husband.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard since there isn’t a Mrs. Ford.”

  She packed the kit back up. “I suddenly realized I’m starving.”

  “I saw a McDonald’s down the street.”

  “Super-size me,” Annabelle said.

  As Alex was walking to McDonald’s he got a call from Stone. “Bagger’s history but Gray almost nailed us,” he told Stone. “Paddy’s dead. Annabelle’s taking it kind of hard.”

  “I’m truly sorry to hear that, but I’m afraid I need your help, again.”

  Alex listened for a few minutes and then told Stone that he and Annabelle would meet him two nights from now, allowing things to settle down a bit.

  He clicked off and hoofed it to the McDonald’s, where he super-sized them both. On his way back, his arms full of artery-busting food, he wondered if this might be one of his last meals.

  CHAPTER 83

  FOR ONE OF THE FEW TIMES in his career, Carter Gray screamed in uncontrolled fury after being told that Alex Ford had escaped.

  With a disgusted look he dismissed the stone-faced men standing in front of him. They’d missed Carr, Lesya and her son, and now this! Such incompetence never would have happened in the old days, he told himself. When he had men like John Carr . . .

  Three deep breaths later and Gray was all business again. It was a setback, but only a setback. He had gotten another intelligence breakthrough barely thirty minutes ago. He’d discovered over the years that they tended to come in bushels.

  They had matched the man’s face to a database. The gentleman with Carr and Lesya was named Harry Finn, a former Navy SEAL who now performed consulting work with the Department of Homeland Security as a member of a