by Eddy Will
Todd Ashley was contemplating the city lights, when the secure phone on his desk hummed discreetly. Ashley turned quickly, set down the company mug and picked up the phone.
“Yes,” he said. There could only be one of two people on the other side of the connection and both knew who he was. There was no need for introductions.
But the words he heard on the secure line made Todd Ashley sink into his desk chair, the expensive comfort eluding him at this moment.
Chapter 8
Huarez, Peru, August 2, 2012, 1:58 AM
Jack Storm hurried down the dark street, oblivious of the icy cold. The police station could not be much further, he thought. It was a small precinct, he remembered, in the center of town. He had stared at the slain body in his hotel room before he found the strength to move. Despite military training he had never killed a person and his mind was struggling to process his new reality. He had become a killer even though he had acted in self-defense. He had searched the dead man’s pockets for clues explaining the attack or creating a connection to Anna. He had found none. The dead man had carried no wallet, no papers, no passport or other identification. That in itself was unusual, but on the face neither a crime nor evidence supporting conspiratorial theories. He did carry a cell phone, but not a single contact had been entered in the address book, all recent calls had gone to a blocked number and the calendar section was equally devoid of entries. The photo gallery contained a dozen photos. None of the images were of Anna, all were of a scantily clad lady in provocative positions.
Frustrated, Jack had scanned recent internet searches. Here too, the dead man’s interests were confined to websites containing barely dressed women.
One website, however, did not fit into the killer’s area of interest. It belonged to a divorce attorney in Beverly Hills. Was the killer married and looking to be unmarried? The dead man seeking legal counsel from a Beverly Hills lawyer did not make sense. Yet, the dead man had visited the website and scrolled through a number of tabs.
Jack had read the top banner of the understated website: Ashley, Ezra, Gold and Winchester: Divorce and Family Law.
The light of the neon sign of La Polizia spilled onto the sidewalk. Jack hurried up the steps and entered a well-heated and deserted lobby. The reception was unmanned, a lone bell on the counter the only connection to a police officer. Jack punched the bell and took a deep breath.
Chapter 9
Teniente FAP Jaime Montreuil Morales Airport, Chimbote, Peru, August 2, 2012, 1:59 AM
A persistent drizzle fell on the black tarmac causing the colored runway lights to reflect off the shiny surface in an erratic interpretational dance. Captain Jonathan O’Malley knew the light rain was a harbinger of a far more menacing storm laboring toward the Peruvian coast. The latest weather report assured him the front was hours from Chimbote, but O’Malley was concerned. Within an hour he would steer his late model Lear jet head-on into a massive storm front, and even though he would keep the aircraft at around thirty thousand feet the incessant lightning inside the storm system was cause for concern. O’Malley sipped coffee from a paper cup and adjusted himself in the comfortable cockpit seat. It was a long way from the utilitarian, hard-seated bombers and transport planes he had flown as a younger man when he had been less concerned with comfort and more with adventure, hungry and eager to prove himself to the world and his own doubts. He did make a name for himself, if for no other reason that he was still alive and able to fly. He had hired on with a private aviation firm and flew millionaires and CEO’s around the world. From time to time there would be an interesting assignment. This was one of them. Two or three times a year he was hired by a medical charity organization to transport sick individuals to cities with modern medical facilities. It made the job somewhat unpredictable for there was never time to plan. He generally had twenty-four hour notice to shuttle his Lear jet to some distant place in the world. Of course he was compensated handsomely for the inconvenience. The charity was nothing if not generous he thought as he looked out at the wet tarmac. He never met the patients he ferried across the world for life-saving treatment, but he had been able to catch glimpses of hunched and sickly looking persons rolled onto the plane in wheelchairs. There had been talk of contagions and protecting the health of the flight crew. O’Malley happened to be somewhat of a hypochondriac and being sequestered from patients with contagious diseases suited him just fine.
Tonight was another such Sick Flight. The patient to be transported would be arriving within twenty minutes and he sat in the cockpit ready for take-off. The destination was a small airport in northern Romania. The weather report forecast rain and thunderstorms across Romania and Eastern Europe. The bright headlights of a car turned onto the tarmac followed by a security vehicle, its blue lights flashing, announcing its presence from afar. The car cut in front of the jet and O’Malley recognized the boxy shape of the Mercedes Benz Off-Road SUV. The driver of the security vehicle stopped a distance from the Benz and O’Malley watched one of the occupants from the SUV jog to the security vehicle ducking his short cropped head from the drizzling rain. The security officer rolled down the driver’s side window but did not get out of the car. The men briefly talked and shook hands, at least that was what it looked like from O’Malley’s vantage point. The man with short cropped hair then hurried back to the Benz, where he with the help of a second man placed a patient into a wheelchair and proceeded up the ramp with quick steps.
O’Malley squeezed the paper cup into the cup holder and directed his focus to the instrument panel in front of him. With the permission of flight control they would be airborne in less than five minutes. There was no air traffic at this late hour. Assuming the approaching storm did not throw a wrench in the works, he should touch down in Romania in about twelve hours.
Chapter 10
Huarez, Peru, August 2, 2012, 2:05 AM
Minutes passed before a short, heavy-set police officer in his late forties shuffled out of a backroom. His shirt was buttoned incorrectly and partially untucked, the wrinkled fabric stretching over an ample belly. Short stubby fingers rubbed bloodshot eyes and a thick moustache found competition from the fast-growing surrounding facial hair. The officer finally reached the counter and leaned his round belly against the edge for balance.
“Si?” he said, a sleepy growl in his voice.
“There is a dead man in my hotel room,” Jack said in Spanish.
The officer’s bleary eyes blinked a number of times, struggling to focus on the tall man on the other side of the counter. His lower lip moved forward and back but no words came out. The man was processing the unlikely information he had heard.
“Dead, you say?” he finally said.
“Yes,” Jack said.
“What makes you think he is dead,” the police officer said, leaning his bulky body across the counter as if to add weight to his question.
“Because there is an ice pick sticking out from his neck,” Jack said.
“Ice pick,” the officer said, then nodded as if that was the most natural of explanation for why a man would be dead. His lips continued their confused movements for a moment. The officer nodded again.
“Have a seat,” he said, stabbing his finger at the wooden bench against the far wall, below tacked-up official announcements and photographs of wanted fugitives. The man turned and shuffled back to the room from which he had entered moments earlier. Jack sunk onto the hard wood bench and suddenly felt very tired. The last ounce of adrenaline dissipated and his body was drained of all energy. He thought of laying on the bench and closing his eyes for he did not expect a fast response from the night-duty officer. But the bench had been outfitted with short, hard-edged seat dividers for the sole purpose of keeping waiting citizens from doing the very thing that Jack was hoping to do: lay down. And so the pulled out the dead man’s phone and ran through its various programs, looking for clues as to why the killer had assaulted him. He had to assume the killer had been waiting for him, which is why th
e lights had been turned off and the curtains drawn. But why? Why would anyone want to kill Jack Storm? He had never done anything to anybody. He had no enemies, had not crossed anyone intentionally.
His thoughts were interrupted by a grunting night duty officer. The man stood in the doorway to the backroom. He had come out just far enough to make eye contact with Jack.
“Yes?” Jack said, suddenly alert, sensing movement and maybe the imminent arrival of more qualified officers of the law. He rose from the bench and approached the counter.
“Please,” the officer said. He pulled up his sagging trousers in a vain attempt to look official. “Have a seat, someone will be with you shortly.” The officer stood in the door for a moment longer, then grunted again and returned to the backroom.
Jack nodded helplessly. He sat back against the stucco white-washed wall and closed his eyes. In his mind he saw Anna smiling at him with big white teeth and sparkly blue eyes. He wanted to believe that she was not gone, but alive and needing help. Any other thought was too painful. She was not gone. Anna was not gone.
Chapter 11
San Diego, California, August 2, 2012, 3:04 AM
Matthew Remington had always been an early riser, but three o’clock in the morning was unusual for the strapping fifty-eight year old. Leaving for his annual hunting trip had infused him with the energy of a boy on the night before Christmas. This would be his third annual trip to the Carpathian Mountains in the remote northern regions of Romania. Remington had been an avid hunter ever since his father taught him how to shoot at the age of six. He had grown up in poverty in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Kentucky, but his humble beginnings had not deterred him from amassing a vast fortune in the murky business of capital investment. His ruthless and aggressive strategies had paid off and by the time he celebrated his thirtieth birthday he had been a millionaire several times over, and on his fortieth birthday, the Wall Street Journal had estimated his worth at four hundred billion dollars. At the pinnacle of his career he briefly considered running for public office, a governorship maybe or even President of United States of America. His aspirations were not driven by social concerns for the less fortunate or by a desire to give back. He had seen politics as a nemesis to his business, piling up regulations and laws slowing down the rapid expansion of his empire. He firmly believed that politicians and bureaucrats should get out of the way of entrepreneurs such as himself. It was the American way, in his opinion, the land of opportunity and it was the government elected by the people for the people that threatened America’s strength. He believed that if a business-savvy entrepreneur such as himself ran the country, he would be able to clear the path for truly free enterprise. He also believed that taxes with the exception of National Defense were the cancer of communism growing in his beloved country. Government programs that supported people who did not want to work and gave hand-outs to the weak and lazy diluted America’s strength. Remington had never taken a penny from anyone. Not ever. And if he could do it, then so should everyone else. Removing the lazy and entitled would cleanse the population of under-achievers and encourage the strong to succeed and thrive. Winners did not need government help, they needed for government to protect them from anti-American forces and otherwise stay out of the way. Yes, he had to lot to say and running for office seemed like the right path. The downside of running for higher office was the fact that the liberal and socialist media would dig in his past with the ferocity of a bull dog, dragging up any piece of dirt, perceived or otherwise. And that, frankly, was not worth all the power in the world. Let others be in the lime light, he would operate behind the scenes and fund campaigns and pull strings.
For Matthew Remington had skeletons in his closet. At age seventeen he had killed. He had lured a fifteen year old neighbor into the woods and stabbed her in the heart with a hunting knife just to watch her die. Remington had stolen the hunting knife from a solitary cabin dweller, whom he and his friends would taunt and tease. The man had no family, no means and as it turned out no alibi. Remington had volunteered for the search party and once the body had been found, naked and dead, it was Remington who pointed out to authorities that he had seen the murder weapon in old Ray’s cabin. It took a jury of peers two hours to convict Ray of the heinous crime and the state another twelve years to execute him.
Remington had been awed by the rush he had experienced when he plunged the long knife into the unsuspecting and surprised girl and he had later wished he would have taken more time. It had all gone too quickly. It had been over before he could savor the rush. Hunting gave him a similar rush. Having his prey in the sights of his rifle, grazing innocently without knowledge of its impending fate gave the young Remington a surging sense of power he learned to crave. But it wasn’t until decades later that his ultimate fantasy met with reality. His darkest desire was to repeat his heinous murder, but he wanted it to last longer. It was not about torture. It was about the hunt, the chase. And when he learned there was an organization that accommodated his fantasy in absolute secrecy and security, he had become hooked. It did not surprise him that he was not the only human being harboring the dark twisted fantasy. He believed in a natural predatory instinct that separated the winners from the losers, the strong from the weak. The hunting grounds had been established in the Carpathian Mountains on a private estate, the size of a small state, and for a price the organization would provide a fit and athletic human prey. Most male hunters preferred females and Remington was no different. This would be his third trip, his third hunt. The first two had been exhilarating and, of course, successful, but the prey had been chosen by the organization. This time Remington had requested a specific female, a young woman he had been following in the media, after discovering her on the cover of a mountain climbing magazine during a mountain climbing trip with his wife and two daughters. He had been told that if he doubled his standard fee the request could be granted. A price worth paying, Remington had thought.
Remington closed the rifle case of his favorite hunting rifle, when his personal assistant, Lucy, labored down the circular staircase carrying his bags. Her shoulder-length blond hair had not been attended to and her eyes were swollen from lack of sleep. But she was a good worker, Remington thought. It was not her fault that she worked for a man twice her age who had twice the energy she would ever have. She was a good worker, but not a winner, he mused, as she plopped the heavy bags on the stone floor.
“Ready to go, Mr. Remington,” she said, pulling a renegade strand of hair from her pretty face. “The car is waiting outside,” she said and checked her phone for last minute messages for her boss.
“Very good, Lucy,” Remington said and placed the rifle case by his bags. “Now, I want you to return to Colorado right away. Mrs. Remington needs a lot of help right now and I want you to make sure she gets all the support she needs.”
“Yes, Mr. Remington,” Lucy said. She spent half her time in airplanes flying from and to the Remington’s various residences. The main home was outside Aspen, Colorado.
“Oh, and before I go, I’ll need one for the road,” the CEO said, as he winked at his personal assistant.
Lucy stared at her boss for a brief moment, then said “Of course,” and sunk to her knees, her hands instantly working on her employer’s belt buckle.
Remington watched the tussled blond hair moving back and forth and briefly considered what it would feel like to kill Lucy.
Chapter 12
Huarez, Peru, August 2, 2012, 3:07 AM
Jack Storm woke with a start from a bad dream. His head had dropped to his chest and the subsequent kink combined with the sudden movement was painful. He snapped open his eyes. The slovenly night duty officer stood inches from him, his hands in his pockets and his black eyes boring holes into the sleeping Jack. Jack focused his eyes on the man’s face and he read something different than he had seen before.
“What? What is going on?” Jack stammered, struggling to make sense of the officer’s proximity.
“Le
ave now,” the officer said in English, as if he had been rehearsing the two words for a long time.
“Excuse me?” Jack said, confused and stunned.
“Leave now,” the police officer repeated in English, as if not speaking in his native tongue disassociated him from his actions.
“Why?” Jack stammered. The officer’s eyes were serious, pleading. The man was afraid. He walked to the entrance and pulled open the door, allowing an icy wind to rush into the warm lobby.
Jack rose, unsteady and stunned.
“Ok, ok, I am leaving,” he said and pulled up the zipper to his parka. He stepped outside and the night duty officer instantly closed the glass door and hurried to the safety of the back room.
The officer’s fear was contagious. Jack felt uneasy, though he had no idea why. He pulled the hood over his head and tilted his face down to avoid the biting wind. He had walked a block when a car turned the corner, its bright headlights blinding Jack as it sped past. It was a black Mercedes Benz SUV, the same kind that had taken the Russians away earlier. The car’s brake lights lit up and the Benz came to a sudden stop in front of the police station.
