The Good Soldier

by L. T. Ryan

  "Aren't you going to uncuff us?" the man with the tracking device in his head said.

  I swung my right arm hard and fast and my clenched fist connected with his jaw. He dropped to the ground, his body folding over itself.

  "Anyone else want to be uncuffed?" I said.

  The two remaining conscious men shook their heads.

  "Your boss will be here soon." I turned and climbed into the Suburban, resuming my position in the same seat.

  Frank turned the key in the ignition and the big V-8 engine roared to life. We idled for a minute, watching the men and watching the road and breathing heavily enough to fog up the windows. Frank shifted the transmission into drive and pulled out of the parking lot, heading east, toward Cherry Hill.

  "What do you think?" Frank said.

  "I think he's got us by the balls at the moment," I said.

  "That's going to change, though," Frank said.

  "I know."

  "Any requests for breakfast?"

  "Doesn't matter to me." My stomach felt empty and my head like lead. I needed food and coffee, and not necessarily in that order. "Stay off Springdale Road," I added.

  "Why's that?" Frank said.

  "He recommended we go to a place on Springdale."

  "You think he was hinting at something maybe? Like you'd find something there?"

  "Yeah," I said. "A bullet to the back of the head."

  Frank chuckled the way that only a man who'd done the things we'd done, and seen the things we'd seen, could.

  We drove for twenty minutes and found a place on the northern outskirts of the city. I leaned over and got a look at the clock in the dash. Almost six a.m. Almost thirty hours remaining. I laughed at the fact that I'd threatened myself. Only I didn't know why.

  Chapter 17

  We took a booth in the back corner of the diner. I sat so that I had a view of the restaurant, the front door, and the parking lot. The only thing missing was the entrance to the kitchen. Sarah sat across from me and had that covered. When Frank returned from washing up in the restroom, he sat next to me.

  We had a laptop computer set up in the middle of the table, facing the window so that all three of us could see it. The computer ran a special program that linked up with the tracking device installed in the man's neck. I had no idea how it worked, and when Frank tried to explain something about GPS tracking, I waved him off. All I cared about was whether it would track the man with any measure of accuracy. And based on experiences, I knew it could.

  We picked them up as they hit I-295, northbound. They stayed on the interstate for twenty minutes or so, then exited onto a major road. They stuck to main roads for another ten miles. A few more turns and they were driving through a stretch of map that didn't have a road that registered with our program.

  Frank leaned over the table, his eyebrows hunched over squinting eyes. He reached for the laptop and pulled it close to get a better look at where they were heading, I assumed. This was his home territory, after all.

  "What do you think?" I said.

  He shrugged. "No idea where they're going."

  "Maybe they have a house out there?" Sarah said, half statement, half question. This wasn't her specialty, so I figured she felt a little out of place or a little intimidated.

  "Possibly," I said. "Let's give it a bit and see."

  They drove until they were deep in the country. North of a place called Hopewell and west of Princeton. Then the dot on the screen stopped. It remained still for five minutes, then ten. Ten turned into thirty.

  "I think we got them," Frank said.

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Harris. He answered on the second ring.

  "When's the last time you checked up on Tammy Nockowitz?" I asked.

  "About fifteen minutes ago," he said.

  "And?"

  "I went myself, Jack. She's fine. Doing well. Healing up. We got two guys there and there'll be a shift change at ten a.m."

  "OK."

  "How are things up there?"

  "OK. I think we have their location."

  "Great," he said. "Say the word and we're there."

  "OK, will do." I ended the call and placed the phone on the table in front of the computer.

  "Everything OK with the woman?" Sarah asked.

  "Yeah," I said. "She's fine."

  The waitress came by and refilled our coffee. For the first time in twenty minutes, I looked away from the computer screen and noticed that the crowd in the diner had thickened. The breakfast crowd, consisting of people in too much of a rush to enjoy the bacon and eggs and pancakes they scarfed down. A crowd could be beneficial at times. This wasn't one of those times, though, and I found myself not wanting to be inside the diner much longer.

  Frank must have felt the same way, because he said we needed to get ready to move and he tried to flag down our waitress. The woman noticed him and nodded. She was busy with a half dozen new tables. I wondered how long it would take her to bring our check.

  My phone lit up with a new call. The vibrations caused it to dance across the surface of the table, away from me. I grabbed it, flipped it over, and looked at the display. Unknown caller, my new best friend.

  "Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

  Two things struck me at that moment. First, the voice wasn't disguised. I recognized it, somehow, from somewhere. I couldn't place it though. Of course, it could have been my mind working against me. With six billion people in the world, there's bound to be some crossover in things such as looks and the way a voice sounds. I recalled the blip during an earlier call when the machine momentarily allowed his real voice to filter through the phone line. I decided I couldn't dwell on it, at least, not yet. The second thing that struck me was that the man had likely discovered our tracking device, and that was the real reason it stopped moving.

  Frank leaned in toward me, angling his head. Trying to listen in, I figured.

  "I'm not sure what you're talking about." I said, calm and controlled.

  "The device, you idiot. You think I wouldn't notice?"

  I didn't reply. Instead, I swallowed hard and tried to think of a way to control the situation.

  The line went silent and I pulled the phone away from my head to confirm that we were still connected. When I saw we were, I said, "You didn't leave us much choice-"

  "Oh, shut up, Noble. You can reclaim your device whenever you want, if you've got the sack for it."

  "All right."

  "By the way, the boy will pay for this screw up. You might be picking him up along with the device."

  This time there was no sweet, innocent voice in the background disguised by pain and anguish. There was nothing but the heavy breathing and the occasional sound of sandpaper as his stubble scraped against the mouthpiece of his phone. Then I heard a gunshot, and then the line went completely silent.

  I stared at the cell phone's screen. The words call ended flashed repeatedly in bold white letters. My eyes drifted to the upper right corner of the display and settled on the time. Eight a.m. "Twenty-eight hours to go," I said.

  "What the hell happened?" Frank said.

  His words hung in the air in front of me as I processed what I'd heard. An angry man called me. He caught us with our pants down. He told me to reclaim my property and said there might be a parting gift of sorts there. Then silence followed by frustration. And a gun shot.

  "Jack?"

  I looked at Frank and shook my head. "They found the device. Said we should go get it. Then he shot someone." I swallowed hard, and then took a drink. "After he threatened the little boy's life."

  Frank's face went slack, then turned red. He leaned forward and slammed a clenched fist against the table. "Son of a bitch," he said, a little too loud. The heads of several patrons of the restaurant whipped around, and they were looking in our direction. Eyes peered at us. Ears opened, hoping to catch a glimpse of the conversation that had elicited such a violent response. Violent for a normal person, that is.

  "Let's
get moving," I said.

  "OK," Frank said.

  "OK," Sarah said.

  "Not you," I said, turning toward Sarah. "This is too dangerous. I have no idea what we're going to find when we get to that dot." I gestured toward the map on the computer screen.

  "There could be a hurt child there," she said. "You need me."

  "I'll call an ambulance."

  "No you won't. You don't want the attention if something went bad. You don't want to have to answer those questions. Not now. You're not calling anybody." She leaned over the table and poked her finger into my sternum, like a cop does when he wants to make a point.

  "Let's bring her, Jack," Frank said.

  Surprised by Frank's relenting, I nodded in agreement. Part of me didn't want to have to watch her back and protect her, which would ultimately require me to drop my own guard a bit. But part of me was glad to have her along.

  Chapter 18

  The drive took half an hour, maybe longer. I didn't bother to look at the clock. My mind raced through at least twenty different scenarios that boiled down to two possible outcomes. Either the boy was there, or he wasn't. I couldn't plan my next move without knowing that critical piece of information.

  We exited I-295 near Trenton after about twenty minutes driving. Spent another ten miles on a country road. Turned off, headed down a snow-covered dirt road.

  "Next turn is the last one," Sarah said from the back seat. She had the laptop and had managed to follow our progress along the map. Left out the guesswork, which was fine with me. I didn't want any guesswork today. Clear-cut, black and white, give it to me straight.

  Frank turned right at the appearance of another dirt or gravel road. Couldn't tell with all the snow, only knew it was something other than asphalt by the crunch the tires made. The sound indicated that under the blanket of white was a road that man had hastily created.

  "Couple hundred feet and we're there," Sarah said.

  I strained to look past the barrier of evergreens. Noticed what could have been a driveway connected to the road. Red and blue lights blinked in between the trees.

  Apparently, Frank saw it too. "What the hell is that?" he said.

  I shook my head. "Someone beat us here. Somebody heard the gunshot. Called the cops."

  "Dammit," Frank said. "Why can't anything…"

  I turned toward him, waiting for him to continue. He sat there with his mouth open, then cranked his jaw shut and shook his head. The SUV dipped and bounced in ruts hidden by the snow cover as he turned onto the driveway. We continued to bounce and rock and sway, side to side, up and down. If the road we drove in on was a suspension's bad dream, then this driveway was its nightmare. Packed snow continued to hide some of the peaks and valleys and ruts, but not all. Frank tried to swerve around the ones we could see, which only resulted in us hitting another. It would have made sense to slow down. But not knowing whether the boy lay injured or dead helped us cast sense aside.

  We turned hard to the right and pulled around the tree barrier. We saw a cruiser and an SUV, both with stenciled gold stars on their doors and the name of their police department. I didn't bother to stop and look. Two men stood outside a worn and weathered wooden building. Blue and red lights bounced off the structure, highlighting planks of wood that were anything but uniform. They were lined up randomly. Quarter inch gaps had been formed by years of humidity and hot and cold and rain and snow. The elements had caused the wood to expand, contract, bow, and bend. The result was a structure worthy of condemnation if there has been a building inspector within thirty miles of the place.

  One of the officers raised his hand. He was short and wide with a formidable gut protruding out and hanging over his belt. The other cop was tall and lean with a leathery face that, much like the barn, had spent too much time out in the elements. He clutched a rifle close to his chest.

  "You deal with the cops," I said. "I'm getting inside that barn."

  Frank opened his door, stepped out, walked around the front of the Suburban. He held his hands in the air. He clutched his SIS ID in his left hand. I heard him shout something to the men. The guy with the gun dropped his hand. The tall guy lowered his weapon and aimed it at the ground.

  "Ready?" I said.

  "Yeah," Sarah said.

  I opened my door first then took two steps back and then opened her door. She stepped out. I shielded her with my body in case there were more surprises. Turned out, there were.

  A third cop emerged from the barn, coughing and gagging. He made it ten or fifteen feet and stopped, which placed him about ten or fifteen feet away from me. If I'd been any closer, I could have identified his lunch, because he proceeded to bend over and vomit. Then he stood and wiped his mouth with his sleeve, only to throw up again.

  Things weren't looking good for Christopher Nockowitz.

  "What's in there?" I said to the guy.

  He stood there, hands on his knees, bent at the waist, breathing heavily. His head rose up and he opened his mouth to speak, but he didn't get a word out. He couldn't. It appeared to me that he'd had a large breakfast. After he finished, he lifted his head again, and said, "Sorry. It's… Oh, God." He bent over once more.

  I didn't stand around long enough to find out what happened. I grabbed Sarah by the hand and pulled her to the right, taking a wide berth around the unfortunate cop. We stopped at the door. I looked at the tall guy and said, "Why are you guys here?"

  "Someone heard a gunshot," he said.

  I knew it.

  "Then," he continued, "Someone phoned in a bomb threat."

  "Bomb threat?" I didn't see that coming.

  "Yeah."

  "Why would anyone care about a bomb threat out here?"

  The man straightened up and shuffled his rifle in his hands. The barrel bounced up and down and settled in a few feet from my mid-section. Apparently, they take their bomb threats very seriously in the country.

  "You looking for trouble, son?"

  I felt Sarah grip my elbow. "No, sir," I said. "One more question, though."

  He narrowed his eyes, looked down, then back up. "What?"

  "Who's that guy?" I nodded toward the man still heaving in the snow.

  "Bomb squad."

  "You been inside the barn?"

  "No."

  "Why not? The bomb?"

  He shrugged and gestured with his head toward the dark opening to the structure. "You smell that?"

  "What?"

  "Death."

  I nodded, turned, and stepped inside the barn. The air felt warmer, but only by a few degrees. No wind, though, which made a difference when the temperature was below freezing.

  The barn had the smell of death, as the officer noted. It also had the faded odor of gunpowder.

  "We need a flashlight," Sarah said.

  I scanned the room, my eyes coming to rest on a bale of hay stacked six feet high. "No, we don't."

  "Why not?"

  "The boy's not here."

  "How do you know?"

  "Guess I don't for sure, but we could always ask that guy." I stretched my arm and pointed toward the hay. Perched atop was a head, and only a head. And the head belonged to the man we planted the tracking device in. "Although, I guess we could use a flashlight to see if the rest of his body is in here."

  Sarah groaned and backed up. I heard her bang against the barn door as she stepped through the opening. She asked for a flashlight and returned less than a minute later, casting an artificial beam of light into the darkest corners of the barn. The rest of the man's body wasn't far from his head. As far as I could tell, only his head had been severed.

  I walked over to the makeshift altar and inspected it from all sides. They had sliced the back of the guy's head open and removed the tracking device. They'd placed it a few inches to the left, on top of the hay, in plain sight.

  I walked toward the open doorway, taking Sarah's hand along the way. We stepped outside where Frank was waiting for us.

  "Well?" he said.
<
br />   "The boy isn't there," I said.

  Frank sighed and let his head drop a few inches. "That's a relief. You find the tracking device."

  I nodded.

  "Where is it?"

  "You can go in and see for yourself." I flipped the flashlight around in my palm, extending the handle toward him. He snatched it and brushed past me.

  A moment passed, then two. I saw the cops standing by their cruiser. They quickly averted their eyes when they saw me look in their direction.

  "Sweet mother of Jesus," Frank said. "What the hell?"

  I waited for him to return from the barn and then I gave him my thoughts. "I'm guessing they figured if we put a tracking device in the back of his head, we might have put one somewhere else."

  "Why kill him? Why not leave him on the side of the road?"

  I shrugged. "He couldn't be trusted anymore, not if he let us insert a tracking device in his head. Maybe the guy knew too much, like where they were going and why they were going there."

  "I suppose," Frank said.

  "It's what I would have done, if I were so inclined to be involved in such an illegal endeavor."

  "Half of what we do would be classified as illegal."

  "Better watch your back then." I smiled. Frank didn't. Bad joke, I supposed.

  "Why so brutally?" Sarah asked.

  "Fear," I said. "It's a message."

  "For us?" she said.

  "Partly. And for his own guys."

  My phone rang loudly. I had taken it off vibrate on the way out here. I looked at the display. It was him. I glanced at the clock in the corner of the display. Almost nine a.m. I flipped the phone open and answered, "Twenty-seven hours."

  "Your math skills are exceptional, Mr. Noble." Normal voice, calm tone.

  "What happened to the robot voice?"

  "I deemed that unnecessary. Besides, you don't know me."

  Then why did you make a point of saying that?

  "You're probably right," I said.

  "I know I'm right," he said.

  "So what now?"

  "What now," he repeated. "Well, first let me tell you that if you pull another stunt like that, it will be the boy's head you find next time."