He didn’t know how long he’d been out or what he’d find as he got down to one knee and looked into the van’s interior. Through the cracked window he saw the bodies of several men, crumpled and folded over themselves. He saw blood but no obvious gaping wounds. No idea if these men were dead or alive. And no time to check.
Six men, he counted. Five in marshals’ windbreakers. One in army camo.
Nobody else.
Mason stood back up and circled the vehicle. The window was completely gone on this side. Large enough for a man to crawl through. He got down closer to the ground and saw a drop of blood reflecting back the moonlight.
Wallace got out.
He’s gone.
• • •
WHEN HARPER OPENED HIS EYES, he tried to twist his body free, but he couldn’t move. He was trapped upside down against the steering wheel. The Ranger was next to him, his eyes closed.
“Captain,” he said, but there was no answer. Harper felt along the man’s neck. A pulse. He was alive.
“Who else is here?” he said. “Who else can hear me?”
Nothing. He turned his head, counting bodies. Someone was missing.
Wallace. Fuck.
Harper worked against the steering wheel again, trying to get himself free. Then he heard the sound of footsteps. He stayed quiet as he heard a man circling the van. A few seconds later, he saw the man’s shoes, his pants. Then the barrel of a gun as the man bent down to look through the window. Harper made himself stay still, caught one quick glimpse of the face. But it was covered by something black.
Mason, he thought. I know it.
Harper waited until the man walked away from the van. He made one more attempt to free himself with little success. The next challenge was whether he could get to his phone. It felt an eternity, but he was finally able to pull it from his pocket, then it clattered to the floor. Another eternity to reach it again. When he had it in his hand, he dialed the marshals’ emergency hotline. Better than 911 because he knew that not only would they be sending police and ambulances, they’d also call Camp Merrill. They’d already sent down one truck full of Rangers to rescue the helicopter. Now every other Ranger in the camp would be woken up and sent out to find Nick Mason.
A few hundred highly skilled Army Rangers, all of them interrupted from their precious few hours of sleep, all of them storming into the forest in a seriously bad mood. Not a training exercise this time but a real enemy.
No way Mason gets out of this one, Harper said to himself. I just hope they find him before he finds Wallace.
The next thought hit him as he started to work his way free:
The leak couldn’t have come from Chicago after all. I have a bad marshal in my own office.
• • •
MASON TOOK OUT his pocket flashlight and followed the trail of blood. He had no idea how badly hurt Wallace was, or how fast he could move, but Mason could already hear the emergency sirens in the distance. He was running out of time.
He followed the blood a hundred yards into the forest as it grew darker and more foreboding. Mason stopped for a moment and listened. He heard something up ahead. He kept on moving, walking several yards, seeing signs that someone had fought through the same underbrush just moments before him. More blood on the ground.
He’s close. I’ve got to be—
He felt the impact before he could finish the thought. Something heavy on the back of his neck, driving him forward into the ground. The gun came out of his hand as he rolled onto his back just in time to see something coming down at his chest. He rolled farther and felt it glance across his ribs, saw the huge figure looming over him, blocking out the moonlight.
Mason grabbed at the man’s leg, felt fabric, the weight of muscle and bone. He pulled just as the man was swinging the branch again and the man fell backward, letting out a cry of pain as he hit the ground. Mason rolled up onto his knees and hit the man in the face. He hit him again, then one more time just to be sure. He found his flashlight on the ground next to the man and used that to search for his gun.
When he found it, he brushed it off and pointed it at the man, who was sitting up by now. It was Isaiah Wallace.
“Let me see your face,” Wallace said.
Mason pulled up the balaclava.
“Why’s the Angel of Death always gotta be a white boy?”
“You know who this is from,” Mason said.
Wallace nodded. “Yeah, I do.”
He said it with something that sounded almost like relief, then let out a loud breath. “You gonna do it, white boy, do it. You ain’t, I can find somewhere else to—”
Mason shot him twice in the chest, twice in the head. Then he put the gun in his belt and started walking.
A hundred yards later, he started to hear the movement in the forest. Behind him. To the left. To the right. They were suddenly all around him.
He quickened his pace and tried to remember the way back to the road.
You get lost out here, he told himself, you’ll be wandering all night.
Unless they find you first.
He tried to pick up the trail of blood again, but he didn’t want to turn on his flashlight and risk giving himself away. The road ran roughly from the southwest to the northeast, he remembered, and through the gaps in the clouds he was able to find the North Star and orient himself. He kept working his way in what he thought was the right direction, listening for more footsteps around him, trying to stay quiet.
Mason came to a steep ravine and almost lost his footing in the soft dirt at its edge. That’s when he heard someone dangerously close. Easing himself down the ravine and into a slight depression under the exposed roots of a tree, he sat there for a moment and listened, hearing the unmistakable sounds of a man walking just above him.
Mason waited until it was quiet again. Waited another minute to be sure, then eased himself the rest of the way to the bottom of the ravine. There was a small stream that he crossed slowly, careful not to splash. He climbed the opposite side of the ravine and kept working his way toward what he hoped would be the road.
He heard more footsteps around him. The men moving without talking, without using artificial lights. Like he was the prey being hunted by silent animals.
That’s when the truth came to him, the basic knowledge he could feel all the way to his bones:
The first Ranger who saw him would kill him.
A police officer is trained to disarm a suspect, detain him, bring him back alive unless deadly force is absolutely necessary. But these weren’t police officers swarming the forest around him. These were pissed-off soldiers in training, jarred from their beds to track down an unknown enemy. It didn’t matter that this was Georgia, not Iraq or Afghanistan. Mason was dressed in black, not green. That’s all it would take.
He kept working his way toward the road. Every three or four steps, he would stop and listen. He pulled himself up into a tree and made himself one with a thick branch, held his breath for a long minute while a Ranger passed right beneath him, so close he could have reached down in the darkness and touched him.
When he eased himself back to the ground, he had to duck into the thick underbrush to let two more men pass.
He thought about Adriana, remembered how it felt to hug her before getting on the plane to come to this place. Just hours ago, according to the clock, but it felt like another lifetime.
I have to get out of here, he said to himself. I’m not going to go down this way.
He kept moving, stopping and listening, moving again. Until finally he came to the road. He ducked behind a tree as a pair of headlights swept across him. When the transport truck had passed, Mason started working his way down the road, staying close to the edge, not even sure if he was north or south of the overturned van and his own SUV. His question was answered a few minutes later when he saw both vehicles ahead. There were two ambulances on the scene. One of them pulled away, followed soon after by the other. It was quiet for a long minute as Mason
waited, not sure if he was truly alone now. He was about to step out of the woods when he heard the rumble of another vehicle. A Jeep came around the curve and ground to a halt. A single Ranger got out and stood there regarding the mayhem.
Mason moved quickly, staying as quiet as he could. The Ranger was just about to turn when Mason pressed the barrel of his gun to the back of the man’s head.
“If you don’t move,” Mason said, “I won’t have to kill you.”
“Key’s in the ignition,” the Ranger said. “But you won’t get far.”
Mason swung the gun hard enough to take the man down for at least a minute or two. Then he got into the Jeep and sped off.
He roared by a group of men, heard them yelling behind him. Then another group, one of the men inches away from getting run over when he took too long getting out of the way. Mason knew he had to ditch the Jeep as soon as he could, so as he got close to town he turned off in the first driveway, pulled the Jeep all the way up behind a detached garage.
The house was dark except for one porch light left on. Mason tried the door. It was locked. One kick and it was open, and Mason’s next potential obstacle was the homeowner coming down the stairs with a loaded shotgun. But as any experienced car thief can tell you, there’s often a set of keys by one of the doors. As Mason moved through the silent house, he saw them hanging on a hook in the kitchen. He went out the back door and found the car in the garage. A silver Toyota Camry, perfectly nondescript and forgettable. He opened the door and drove off, leaving the Jeep behind.
He stayed alert as he rolled down the dark streets of Dahlonega. When he made it to the highway, he pointed himself north. But not toward the airport in Atlanta because he knew this car would soon be reported stolen and someone might be looking for it there. It was eleven hours to Chicago, the last drive he wanted to make right now but the only smart choice.
As the adrenaline started to wear off and his heartbeat came back down toward normal, he felt the stinging, bleeding scratches on his arms and face, the burning in his neck and shoulder where the bullet wound was still healing. On top of that, Mason’s ears were ringing, his head still fuzzy from the impact of the collision.
He waited for something else to come to him, too. That familiar feeling after doing a job, after standing in front of another man with a gun in his hand—with everything turned off, every emotion, every circuit breaker in his own humanity, just long enough to pull the trigger. There was always the inevitable moment when it would all turn back on at once and it would hit him, the realization of what he had just done.
Mason drove through the night. He drove and he waited.
The feeling never came.
13
For the second time in her career, Rachel Greenwood had to genuinely restrain herself from hitting a man in the face.
The man in question was Jay Starr, a high-priced defense attorney based out of New York, a man who made John Gotti’s mouthpiece, Bruce Cutler, look like Clarence Darrow.
“Your Honor,” Starr said, “the people would have you believe that Darius Cole was somehow responsible for the murder of these two witnesses despite the fact that he’s been sitting in a federal penitentiary for the past twelve years.”
They were speaking in camera, meaning privately inside the judge’s chambers on the twenty-first floor of the Federal Building, just down the hall from the courtroom itself. For Assistant U.S. Attorney Greenwood, going to the federal court meant riding seventeen floors up the elevator. Except today she took the elevator ride with a U.S. marshal standing on either side of her.
It wasn’t the first time—protecting federal court officers was one of the primary duties of the Service. She’d even had a car with two marshals inside parked outside her house overnight. But this was different. Her husband had a marshal stationed outside his private law practice. Her stepson had a marshal literally following him as he made his rounds of his hospital residency. Her stepdaughter had a marshal sitting outside her classes at DePaul.
And for the first time in Greenwood’s career, none of this felt like a formality. Or an overreaction. It actually felt like something she and her family needed.
“McLaren and Wallace were both scheduled to testify in Cole’s retrial,” Judge Oakley said. “If you have another explanation, I’d love to hear it.”
Judge Oakley was a black woman who’d grown up in Chicago, a woman who’d had to steel herself against whispers of preferential treatment ever since she graduated at the top of her class from Northwestern Law School. But Greenwood had been more than happy to hear she’d drawn Judge Oakley for the retrial. Not so much that she doubted the eventual outcome—she still believed, even with two dead witnesses, that she could win using only the physical evidence collected for the original trial—but because she was already imagining the scene in the courtroom when the retrial was over and Oakley had her chance to speak directly to Darius Cole. As a Chicago native who had grown up surrounded by gangs, drugs, and street violence, she had a now-famous habit of eviscerating any gang leader or dealer who happened to come through her courtroom. If she peeled the paint off the walls while sentencing a mid-level Latin King to twenty years, what would she do to a man like Darius Cole before sending him back to federal prison for the rest of his life?
“McLaren and Wallace are two career criminals,” Starr said after taking a moment to compose his answer. “Their pasts finally caught up to them.”
Starr was a long way from his office in Manhattan, which instead of an elevator ride meant a limo to the airport, a first-class plane ride, then another limo downtown.
And he didn’t need any U.S. marshals watching his back.
“Both of them,” Greenwood said. “In the same week. Just before Cole’s retrial—”
“It is a hell of a coincidence,” the judge said.
“If Mrs. Greenwood has information that can connect these crimes to my client, she would have already produced it,” Starr said. “And knowing her somewhat aggressive tendencies as I do, she would have already filed new charges against my client. Given the fact that she’s done neither, I suggest that she either put up or shut up. The next sound you hear will be her resounding silence.”
“Enough,” the judge said to him. “We’re in my chambers, Counselor, not open court.”
“I’m feeling a little ganged up on here,” Starr said, straightening his tie. “You’ll have to forgive me.”
“I’m sure this isn’t the first time,” the judge said. “But let me remind you, Mr. Starr, that you are an officer of this court. And if you have any knowledge of witness tampering, witness intimidation, witness murder—”
“Of course I don’t,” he said, cutting her off. “And frankly, I find the implication prejudicial.”
“You see those marshals outside my office,” the judge said. “They’re here for Counselor Greenwood. Mine is down the hall, getting me some coffee. It’s a nice gesture, but I don’t think it makes up for the fact that I suddenly feel like I’m living in Mexico, getting ready to preside over the trial of some cartel boss.”
“I understand the concern,” Starr said. “But I assure you my client has nothing to do with any of these occurrences.”
“And Al Capone had nothing to do with the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre,” Greenwood said.
“Your Honor!” Starr said.
Greenwood saw her suppress a smile. “I’ll be filing for a delay,” Greenwood said. “At least four weeks.”
The judge’s half smile disappeared and Greenwood knew why. For her, just as much as for Greenwood, a four-week delay meant another month living with U.S. marshals watching her every move, walking her to her car and starting it for her.
Another month living in fear.
“I have an even better idea,” Starr said. “I’ll be filing a motion to vacate the charges outright.”
“Oh, you go right ahead,” the judge said. “This court could use a good laugh today.”
“Look,” Starr said, taking another
moment to straighten his tie, “I know there are some extraordinary circumstances surrounding this retrial—”
“Do we have any other business here?” the judge asked, already looking past him to the doorway through which he’d soon be leaving.
Starr cleared his throat and handed her a sheet of paper. Then he handed a copy to Greenwood.
“We’re adding another name to the list of witnesses for the defense.”
As Greenwood looked at the name, it took her a moment to process it. It had been thirteen years since she’d last seen this name.
Now, as she saw it again, the outcome of the retrial suddenly seemed a little less certain.
• • •
IN 2003, Rachel Greenwood had just joined the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Northern District of Illinois after eight years of putting in her time with the Cook County State’s Attorney. The move to federal was a big step up.
She was thirty-two years old. Not married yet. Ready to work sixteen hours a day if that’s what it took to make it as an AUSA. Late one Saturday night, it was her turn to cover what they called “duty day.” The least favorite part of the job for any AUSA, especially on a night when everyone else in the office was home or out enjoying the weekend. But it was an absolute necessity to have coverage at all times because federal charges can be filed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week—and in every arrest that might involve federal charges, the law enforcement officer must call the U.S. Attorney’s office to have the charges approved before moving forward. If it’s after hours, the AUSA on duty will consult the latest declination guidelines and either approve or decline the charges. The bigger the office’s current caseload, the tighter the guidelines—a suspect might draw a federal felony charge for possessing twenty ounces of marijuana one month, then get kicked back to the street with a misdemeanor ticket the next, all based on how much time the overworked AUSAs had to spare.
The federal agents in town—FBI, ATF, DEA—all knew this routine, but even the local Chicago police officers would have to get on the phone if they wanted to file federal charges. Which is why so few of them ever bothered.
Exit Strategy Page 13
