Both Ends Burning (Whistleblower Trilogy Book 3)

by Jim Heskett

  I looked through the chaos of the crowd to find two men in suits at the opposite edge, near a pizza place. One of them met my eye.

  “You need me,” Susan said. “I have combat training. I can help.”

  The man across the street raised what looked like a submachine gun and spit a half dozen shots. Screams filled my ears as I saw a man fall to his knees. Susan whirled, a jet of blood spraying from her chest. She hit the ground and gazed up at me as blood darkened the snow around her.

  Her mouth moved, but no words came out.

  What should I do? Go back upstairs and be with Grace? Or chase after these attackers? Cross had only brought two cops with him, so he could keep this mission quiet. But the gunshots would bring more cops. Real cops. Maybe if I went back upstairs, we could wait it out. Or maybe these IntelliCraft men would circle back, toss a couple grenades, and kill the only people left in the world I cared about.

  I knew what I had to do.

  Kill them both. Add two more notches on my bedpost.

  Head down, I raced through the crowd after the two men.

  They took off down an alley, and I shoved several frantic people out of the way to clear a path. I bumped into crazed skiers and boarders unsure which direction they should flee. Had to leap over people huddled on the ground with their hands protecting their heads like the nuclear drills from back in grade school.

  The alley between the two buildings led out into a vast snowy field littered with a collection of hulking Snowcat trail grooming machines. Rows of them, like tanks with their treaded tires, but with glass-enclosed driver cabs atop the treads.

  Above, the cloudy sky shifted from gray to white, threatening snow. I could hear some classic rock echoing from a faraway sound system. My gloveless hands stung from the cold.

  One of the men ducked into a row of the Snowcats. I followed, knees bent and staying low, pistol out and pointed at the ground. I counted four rows, four of the giant machines in each row. When I reached the first row, I poked my head around the edge of a Snowcat. A bullet whistled past, just a few inches from my head.

  “You missed,” I shouted, my breath puffing out like fog.

  No reply. I was hoping they’d say something and give away their location. Backtracking, I creeped to the middle of the line. I ducked down, keeping my body shielded by the giant tread of the tires. Reached the end of the machine, and peeked just to the side of the cab. Saw two sets of arms.

  I leveled the gun, took a breath, and pulled the trigger. Hit him right in the stomach. As he wailed, the other man retreated around the Snowcat, and I jumped out of cover. Fired off another shot, but I was a little too late as he disappeared behind the machine.

  The man I’d shot was bleeding in the snow, writhing and cursing.

  Another blast of a gun rang out, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I waited, listening, trying to hear him, but there was too much noise coming from all sides.

  An idea struck me. I stepped onto the Snowcat tire, then hoisted myself up to the cab. Threw my legs over the top of the thing, then pulled myself up.

  I was now above all of them and could see all four rows at once. I kneeled as the metal roof of the cab dimpled under my weight. Couldn’t see anything at first, then a hint of motion between the second and third rows revealed the last gunman. I raised my own weapon, but I couldn’t get a clear shot at him from back here. I needed to move to the next row. It was a ten foot jump to the roof of the next Snowcat, so I stashed the gun in the waistband of my jeans and readied myself to jump.

  I’d hop, then hop again, landing on top of him.

  Ducking down and gathering all my energy, I pressed through my thighs and envisioned myself landing on top of the next Snowcat. But halfway through the air, the man stepped out into full view. He whirled, raised his gun, and squeezed the trigger. I heard the shot squealing through the air, then felt the strangest pinching sensation in my left hand. Like I’d slapped it against something icy.

  My hand jerked, and my angle of descent changed. I toppled through the air, my body twisting and out of control. I bounced on the roof of the Snowcat and then fell over the other side, colliding with the man.

  Our eyes met as we hit the ground, and I noticed the strangest thing. I knew this guy. I’d seen him in the kitchen at the IntelliCraft office in Dallas one morning when I was there for a training boot camp, and he’d told me where the coffee filters were.

  I was on my back, and he was struggling to get to his feet. I reached out and grabbed the leg of his pants, gave it a firm yank, and pulled him back to the ground.

  Gripping his pant leg sent my hand into agony. I screamed, then looked down at my hand. There was a piece of skin missing. I could see snow on the ground through a hole in my hand.

  A hole in my hand.

  For a second, the world went grainy, and I thought I was going to pass out. Pain swirled up through my fingers and into my forearm.

  The man, who’d landed on his stomach, spun around to face me, and I elbowed him in the nose with my good arm. Could feel warmth on my injured hand as blood made my fingers slippery. I pressed it against my side, told myself I had to leave it there and use only my right hand from now on.

  Blood spouted from his nose, but he was still trying to scoot away from me and get to his feet.

  I reached back to my waistband. The gun was missing.

  I looked around. Must have fallen out when I was jumping.

  I jabbed him in the face again, and he pushed himself to his knees.

  Then I saw his gun, a couple feet to his left. He saw it too, and lunged. Instead of going for the weapon I opted to grab at him, my hands landing on his belt. I growled as I pulled him back and away from the gun, then I leapfrogged over him. I dug the gun out of a pile of snow.

  He smacked me in the back, and I fell in the snow, landing on my face. I spun onto my back just as he fell on top of me. He reared back, preparing to punch me in the nose.

  I pointed the gun at his chest and pulled the trigger.

  His eyes, red with rage, suddenly went blank. He grunted, then landed on top of me. I remembered that he’d introduced himself to me, that day in the kitchen. I think his name was Dave. Had seemed like a nice guy, actually.

  The air rushed out of my lungs, and I struggled to breathe. Using my good hand and the elbow of my injured hand, I pushed to the side until I’d heaved the dead man’s body off mine.

  Got to my feet, then stumbled back to where I’d left the man I’d shot in the stomach, to make sure he was still there. He was dead, resting on a bank of bloody snow. He was gripping his tie in one hand as if he’d been trying to take it off.

  I looked down at my left hand, which was coated burgundy with my blood. I went woozy again. Aching, throbbing, pain like I’d never experienced before.

  I snatched the tie from the dead man’s neck and wrapped it around the hole in my wrist. Agony. Pulsing, screeching anguish shot up through my hand and stabbed at my arm. I hit my knees and vomited for the second time today, but only a little bit of sour yellow liquid dribbled out.

  I stumbled out from the Snowcat row, into the open. I was in a flat, snowy field, the Keystone parking lot to my left and the ski resort to my right. I felt dazed, unable to think straight.

  And that’s when I saw my dad. He was running for me, his hands out. “Tucker! Get out of here! He’s coming! You need to get out of here!”

  Dog was at his heels, jumping and yipping.

  I wanted to open my mouth and shout at him, tell him I was fine, please go back and stay with Grace, but my mouth didn’t work.

  And then Thomason stepped out from between two Snowcats, just behind my dad. He was holding a small black object in his hands, like a flashlight. He flicked his wrist, and the object telescoped out to about two feet long.

  Dad didn’t see it coming. Thomason cracked the object on top of his head. Dad fell to his knees, and Thomason smacked him again.

  He fell face-forward into the snow.

>   CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The clouds above parted, and a blast of sunlight filled my eyes. It reflected off the field of snow, and since I wasn’t wearing sunglasses, my eyes burned with snow blindness.

  I yelped and buried my face in the crook of my arm.

  But Thomason was still out there. Squinting, eyes on fire, I tried to find him. I could see his dark shape advancing on me. I raised the pistol and fired off a shot, but he didn’t fall. I squeezed the trigger again.

  Empty.

  Empty empty empty.

  I dropped the gun in the snow. My vision returned as my eyes adjusted to the brightness of my surroundings. I blinked a few times and my eyes fell on the shape in the snow. My dad, brutalized by Thomason. A small patch of red snow in front of his head. Thomason was standing ten feet from me, holding the baton. Grinning at me.

  Police sirens echoed in the distance.

  Blood soaked the tie covering the bullet wound in my hand. I felt my heartbeat pulse in the wound.

  “For a second,” Thomason said, “I thought you broke my jaw, back in that motel room. I have to hand it to you, kid, you were quick. Much quicker than an old man like me. And your little distraction earned you one more visit to your wife, so hooray for you.”

  “The cops are coming,” I said.

  “Yes, and this is going to be a tricky one.” He reached behind into his jacket pocket and removed a stun gun. He pressed the button and light crackled between the two points at the end, just as they had on a similar weapon, a month ago, when Kareem had met me at Ernie’s Bar.

  The magical man, dead. His brother, dead. So many others as well.

  Thomason lurched forward, struggling to breathe. “Wow, this altitude gets me every time. Now, why don’t you play along and come over here, so we can make sure your prints get on this baton?”

  Dog came out from between the Snowcats, padding on quiet feet in the snow. After Thomason killed me, would he kill my dog too? Seemed like the kind of thing he’d do.

  “Did you like what I did to your next-door neighbor? I decided to handle that one myself.”

  Rage welled up inside me. Clouded my thinking. “You’re evil.”

  “I’ve had enough of your bitching and moaning. You think I like having to come out here and deal with this personally? I should be on a beach in Costa Rica. I shouldn’t be trifling with such matters as petulant children who think they have a higher moral standing.”

  Dog lowered his head and sidestepped, moving within a few feet of Thomason.

  “What’s the point of all this?” I said. “All these people dead. All this chaos.”

  “It’s just business. That’s all. It’s always just been business. Your leash has been entirely too long, young Candle. I accept some of the blame because I’ve been too lenient with you. After you murdered Wyatt, Glenning told me he wanted to flay the skin from your bones and drag you behind his car down I-35. I said no, but I should have let him do it. Short-sighted, on my part. But all that ends today.”

  He pressed the button on the stun gun and then sprinted at me.

  Dog raised his head, bared his teeth, and leaped at Thomason. He sank his teeth into Thomason’s exposed wrist.

  Thomason fell to the ground, howling, flailing, trying to push Dog off him. They twisted in the snow, the sounds of Dog’s growling and Thomason’s screams melding together.

  He’d dropped both the baton and the stun gun.

  I scrambled across the snow and picked up the stick. I figured the stun gun might be wet and may or may not work.

  Dog had Thomason pinned, and I knelt in the snow next to them. Dog looked up at me, released his grip on Thomason’s wrist.

  I pressed the baton against his neck and pushed. The wound in my hand screamed at me, but I ignored it.

  Thomason’s eyes shifted from Dog to me as his face went red. His eyes pleading. He tried to open his mouth to speak as his chest heaved.

  I straddled him to keep him in place, keeping pressure on his neck. I knew I should stop. I knew that he held IntelliCraft’s secrets in his head, but I couldn’t help myself. For everything he and his people had done, he needed to die.

  He struggled, so I pushed harder. Felt the strain in my injured hand, but I gritted my teeth and pushed as he started to sink into the packed snow.

  He gasped, choking, spurting. Drool cascaded from his lips.

  I pushed harder.

  Ten seconds later, his eyes rolled back into his head and a last little breath escaped his lips.

  Thomason was dead.

  I dropped the baton and Dog sniffed at Thomason’s temple. Dog looked up at me, the fur around his face red with Thomason’s blood. Tail wagging.

  I got to my feet and ran back to my dad. Turned him over.

  He drew in a breath. His head was split open, blood pouring down his face. He opened his mouth and some blood dribbled in, which made him cough.

  “Dad?”

  “Tucker, I’m sorry. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “Don’t talk, Dad, you’re going to be okay. I can hear the cops coming, and you’re not that injured. There will be an ambulance.”

  He shook his head and pointed down. I followed his finger to see a red swath of clothing covering his stomach. Blood leaking out, coating the snow around us. “There was one more of them back in the village. Your friend with the shotgun took care of him, but not before he gave me this.”

  Rodrick had come through.

  “Is Grace okay?”

  “I think so. I left to make sure there weren’t any more of them in the village. And to come find you.”

  He coughed again, which sped up the rate of blood leaking onto the snow. The red patch had ballooned into a circle the size of a trash can lid.

  “I wanted to make it right,” he said.

  “Maybe you still can.”

  “How?”

  I fished into my pocket for the cell phone. Flipped it open. Squinting to see the screen in the bright light, I scrolled through the menu until I located the apps section. Found it: voice recorder.

  I clicked on it, then held it over his face. “Go ahead.”

  “What do I say?”

  “Tell me who you are and what you did. Tell me about IntelliCraft.”

  “My name is Heathcliff Alexander Candle. I formed a company with Muhammed—also known as Kareem—and Omar Qureshi, along with Frank Thomason, in Texas. We were IntelliCraft. We were initially supposed to be a military contractor, but…”

  He paused to cough more blood.

  “We sold our technology to Iran, Pakistan, and other countries, without the US government’s knowledge. This went on for more than twenty years.”

  He stopped, gagging, blood jumping from his lips and into the air with each blast.

  “Is there any evidence of this, Dad? Is there a way we can prove what you’re saying?”

  “Yes. There are bills of sale in a safe deposit box at a Nordea bank in Stockholm, under the name Roman Carter.”

  He tried to go on, but a coughing fit stopped him. More blood sprayed from his mouth.

  “I don’t have much time left,” he said, which came out as a barely recognizable gurgling sound. “You asked Susan before about why IntelliCraft hasn’t ever killed you,” he said.

  I clicked the button to shut off the recorder. “Yes?”

  “There’s something I never told you. Something about your mother.”

  He coughed, murmured, groaned. He tried to open his mouth and speak, but a grunt came out. Tears dribbled down the side of his face.

  “What about my mother?” I said.

  Our eyes locked as his breath became rapid, then slowed, then stopped. His eyes went glassy.

  Shouts came from behind me, followed by the sound of boots crunching snow. I slipped the phone in my pocket, then passed a hand across his eyes to close them. If it weren’t for the blood on his face already caking in the frigid air, I’d have said he looked peaceful.

  “You!” sa
id a deep voice. “Put your hands behind your head!”

  I got to my feet, laced my fingers over my scalp, and looked down one last time at the body of the man who’d been my father.

  EPILOGUE

  The clouds painted on the ceiling stared back at me as I rocked back and forth on the glider. Naturally, we bought the gliding ottoman as well, so with my feet up, my body cruised forward and backward like floating on water.

  My left hand still didn’t work very well, so I mostly did everything with my right. I was two or three surgeries away from being healed, and they’d told me it would never be back to normal. Guess I’d have to scratch learning the guitar off my bucket list.

  I used my left arm to hold the little one while my right hand kept the bottle in his face. Breast milk sloshed back and forth as he sucked.

  Halfway through the bottle, his little eyes dimmed, and he lost some steam.

  “Nope,” I said, “you gotta finish the whole thing. Mom says so.”

  I tugged at the bottle a bit to wake him up, and his eyes flashed open, then he started sucking madly. When he’s really into it, his right eye jitters up and down, like the flicker of a light bulb. It’s the cutest thing ever.

  He burned through the last two ounces of the bottle in sixty seconds.

  I set the bottle on the floor next to the chair and turned him over, to lay him on my chest. Patted his back. He fidgeted a bit, because this wasn’t his favorite position.

  “Nope. None of that fussy stuff. Come on, baby, let’s get a burp. The meal’s not done until you burp.”

  Now, you might think, given the fact that I have a dog named Dog and a cat named Kitty, that my son’s name might actually be Baby. Not the case.

  After thirty seconds of vigorous back-patting, he let loose a gurgling belch, and I held him out at arm’s length. The bullet wound in my hand still sometimes ached, usually when I tried to grip anything.

  He smiled at me, turning his head left and right as he did.