The Good Soldier

by L. T. Ryan

  "You keep threatening me with the boy's life," I said. "Sooner or later I'm going to tell you I don't give a shit. Your game is getting old."

  "Twenty-seven hours," he said, almost humming it.

  "What the hell happens in twenty-seven hours?" I yelled into the phone, loud enough that it got the attention of the three cops. They perked up, leaned forward, then tried to act like they weren't listening. I took a few steps toward the far end of the barn.

  "You'll find out soon enough."

  The line went to dead air. I moved to throw my phone against the old wooden planks of the barn. Stopped mid pitch and yelled.

  "Jesus, Jack," Frank said. "Get a hold of yourself, man. We gotta stay in control here."

  I shoved the phone back in my pocket and started toward the Suburban. The tall cop met me at the door. We stood there, eye to eye, not a word spoken between us. For a second I had a feeling he was about to arrest me. Why? I had no idea. A sad smile formed on his lips and took a step back.

  "I became a cop after my boy was abducted and killed," he said.

  I looked over my shoulder at Frank, who nodded. He'd told them what was going on, which demonstrated a lot of faith on his part. Alternatively, maybe he had no choice if he wanted to keep this under wraps. I feared it wouldn't stay that way for long.

  "Sorry for your loss," I said.

  He nodded. Smile faded. "If you get these guys," he paused a beat, "when you get these guys, make sure they suffer."

  "Will do." I opened the rear passenger door and waited for Sarah to climb in, then I pulled the front door open and slid into the passenger seat, slamming the door behind me. As soon as Frank was in his seat and had the door closed, I said, "What the hell did you tell them?"

  "Enough to get us out of there, Jack." He turned the key and fired up the big V-8 engine again. "And they're going to walk away from here. Say they found nothing. And our guys are going to show up in a little bit and scrub this site clean, after gathering all the evidence, of course."

  "Of course," I said.

  He backed the SUV up, whipped it around and drove back the way we came. We hit pavement and headed north.

  "Where are we going?" I said.

  "Newark."

  "Why Newark?" Sarah asked.

  "We have a field office there," Frank replied.

  "OK," she said. "But again, why Newark?"

  "Outside of New York, close to Philly, close to airports. A big enough city, but far enough away from the big ones, allowing us to operate out of sight when we need to."

  She shrugged. "OK, I guess. Still don't know why anyone would want to base themselves out of Newark."

  Frank laughed and turned his head toward me. "I like her," he said.

  Me too, I thought.

  Chapter 19

  Halfway to Newark our plans changed. Harris called and said that Tammy Nockowitz was up and coherent and seemed to be holding something back when he questioned her, but he couldn't quite figure out what.

  Frank got on the phone and arranged for a private jet to be ready for us at Princeton Airport. We doubled back the way we came, which was no big deal except that we were working under obvious time constraints.

  We boarded and were in the air by ten a.m. Twenty-six hours to go. I left my cell switched on and waited for a call from the man to confirm it. He didn't.

  I sat next to Sarah. Frank sat across from us, facing us. "What's on your mind?" he said.

  "I don't get why he wants the boy. Why Christopher? Of all the kids, why him?"

  "We've been over this, Jack."

  We had, but that didn't erase the question from my mind.

  "He saw you," Frank said. "The two of you, emerging from the house. The pictures of you and the fire. Whether he saw it on the news or saw a picture of you, that's why. He got the boy, and he's got you." Frank paused a moment. "I mean, he's got us."

  "At some point it's only going to be me," I said.

  "Not if I can help it."

  I shrugged. He could talk all he wanted. Facts were facts. The guy called me. He spoke to me. He wanted me. In the end, this would boil down to the two of us. And anyone else he had on his side.

  "Back to the guy," Frank said. "He's embarrassed and he's pissed. He knew how to reach you, which means he knows you."

  "How?" I said. "He doesn't disguise his voice anymore. I can't place it, though. It sounds familiar, but not really."

  "Don't know, Jack. But if I had to lay money down, I'd say this guy knows more about you than we want him to."

  Done talking, I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. The plane would land in thirty or forty minutes and that stretch of time might be my only shot at sleep for the next twenty-six hours.

  I woke up after the plane had landed. First time I ever recalled sleeping through a landing. Sarah stood in the aisle, looking down at me, a smile across her face. For a moment, the situation facing us slipped my mind and I couldn't help but think about how beautiful she looked.

  "What?" I said.

  "You snore," she said.

  "No," I said.

  "Yes," she said.

  "Prove it."

  "How?"

  "Bring a tape recorder to my house one night this week and sleep over."

  She smiled, turned and walked to the open door at the front of the plane.

  "Time to get serious, Jack," Frank said.

  That was all it took. Everything that had happened in the past eleven hours rushed to the front of my brain, the weight of it nearly throwing me off balance. I glanced at my watch. Close to eleven a.m. I didn't let my mind do the calculations. Instead, I hopped in front of Frank and moved to the front of the jet, then down the small staircase that led to the ground. A black sedan waited for us. The driver's window rolled down and McKenzie nodded. I opened the door for Sarah and walked around the back of the car to get in on the other side. Frank sat up front.

  "The office?" McKenzie asked.

  "Hospital," Frank replied. "We need to go see Tammy Nockowitz."

  We reached the hospital shortly after eleven a.m. I hesitated at the front door, waiting for my phone to ring. It didn't. But that didn't mean we weren't in for any surprises.

  Chapter 20

  When we reached the room, it became obvious that Tammy wasn't in as good a shape as Harris had said. She faded in and out. Obvious head trauma, Sarah had informed us. Tammy smiled a little when she saw us surrounding her bed, and she fixed her eyes on me. I sat down on the edge, near her waist, facing her, like the night before.

  "Tammy," I said. "We need for you to tell us everything that happened last night. What do you remember?"

  She licked her lips and swallowed hard. Her words formed slowly. Her voice sounded raspy. "It's all bits and pieces. I remember being at the dinner, and then here. I also remember the accident."

  "Let's start there, Tammy. What do you remember about the accident?"

  "A man." She paused and blinked hard. "Several men."

  "Paramedics?"

  "No."

  "Cops?"

  "No."

  "Firefighters?"

  "No," she said forcefully. "I didn't see any flashing lights, like you'd see if the cops or medics were there. Only flashlights and men."

  "What did they say?"

  "I… I don't recall."

  "How did they talk?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Accents? Did any of them have a British accent?"

  Frank flinched back and shot me a look. I shrugged in return. I figured that if she was forced to remember something we didn't think was a possibility, it might jog her brain enough to recall actual facts.

  "No, I'd remember that," she said.

  "Do you remember anything at all about them that might have been different?"

  "They were Hispanic, or looked that way, at least."

  "All of them?" I asked.

  "All but one. One was white. American. I… I think I recognized him from somewhere."

  "From wh
ere?"

  Her eyes closed and her head fell back into the pillow and tilted to the side an inch. Out cold. We waited by her side. None of us spoke. We all stared at Tammy, waiting for her to come to. Finally, she did, and she picked right back up where she had left off.

  "The party," she said.

  "What about it?" I said.

  "I saw the man there."

  "Can you identify him?"

  She looked around and then lifted a bruised arm and pointed at Frank. "Him."

  Frank took a step back and shook his head. "What?"

  "What about him?" I said.

  "I remember him from the party," Tammy said.

  "And then at the accident?"

  "What accident?" Her face contorted. She shook her head, just once in each direction. Then she passed out, again.

  I looked at Sarah and held out my hands in a what-the-hell gesture.

  "She's got a nasty concussion," she said. "Head trauma. Never know how someone will react."

  "This is getting nowhere," Frank said. "I was with you all night, Jack."

  "I know, Frank. That's not a concern. We'll have to see what she says when she wakes up. Remember, first thing she said to me last night was, 'they got him.'"

  We waited for Tammy to rejoin us. Seconds turned into minutes. Minutes passed in bunches. I looked at the clock on the wall and it was close to eleven-thirty a.m. Close to a day left, according to the man on the phone. I half-imagined that he'd turn out to be a prophet. The countdown he gave me would turn out to be a doomsday timer, and when the world didn't end, as per usual, he'd restart the timer. Maybe tell me I had two years, three months, and four days left.

  "I'm going to grab some coffee," Frank said. "Anyone else want a cup?"

  Sarah nodded and so did I.

  "OK," Frank said. "Three coffees."

  He slipped out of the room.

  Sarah turned to me. "I thought our first date would be much more romantic than this."

  I smiled at her, then glanced down at the broken woman who lay unconscious on the bed. The smile faded from my lips and I thought of another line of questioning that might be relevant.

  Sensing my mood was too somber to discuss the start of our relationship, Sarah switched gears. "How did you manage to keep the cops out of this?"

  I shrugged, unsure of how much I should tell her. "As you've seen by now, we have our own way of doing things."

  "Yeah. And…?"

  I eyed her for a moment, and then said, "Nobody messes with us. We've got the contacts to make things happen. Our boss's boss is a powerful man. The kind of man people avoid stepping on the toes of. If we want things to work a certain way, he goes to bat for us, and things work the way we want."

  She crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. "You're talking in circles."

  "Possibly."

  She huffed and I smiled.

  A nurse stuck her head in the room and told us that she needed us to step out for a few. Sarah nodded, and since she was the resident expert in all things emergency medicine, I followed her out of the room. We headed toward the lobby, following signs that directed us to the cafeteria. Saw Frank a hundred yards down the hall and met him halfway.

  He pulled Sarah's coffee out of a cardboard drink holder, then mine, and then he asked, "What's going on?"

  "They had to run some tests," Sarah said.

  Frank nodded at Sarah and then turned his head toward me. He reached out and gestured behind him. "There's an empty waiting room back there. Let's sit for a few and figure out the best way to go about questioning her."

  Chapter 21

  The room was dim and the air was still and sterile. The smell of disinfectant was stronger here than in any other area of the hospital. It had a single door for entering and exiting, and it had been closed, providing no air exchange. Trapped Lysol, or whatever the hell they used in a place like this, prevailed. Sarah leaned against the wall next to a framed painting I'd never seen before. The artist has splashed red and purple and brown and yellow paint on the canvas. Randomly, I assumed. However, the way the colors spread, dripped, mixed and mingled formed an image. A tree and a sapling, or a flower and a petal, or a mother and child. Could have been all three. Could have been a football stadium, for all I knew.

  "So look," Frank said. "We need to get to the point with this woman."

  "What do you think we've been trying to do?" I said.

  "I know, but with this in and out." He paused to take a deep breath, then exhaled loudly. "We need to figure out where her mind is as soon as she's up."

  I looked at my watch. Eleven forty-five. "What if she doesn't remember?"

  Frank swiveled in his chair and nodded toward Sarah. "Is that possible?"

  Sarah's head bobbed up and down. "Yeah, unfortunately. Not likely permanent. But quite possibly temporary."

  "Shit," Frank said.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "So I guess we play it by ear, then," Frank said.

  "So we're right back where we started," I said.

  He nodded.

  I stood up, stretched my back. Yawned and glanced at the TV. The images didn't register, at least not at that moment.

  "Ready to go back?" Frank said.

  "Yeah." I took a few steps toward the door and stopped when I noticed Sarah staring at the TV.

  "Hey, hey," she said. "That guy looks familiar."

  Frank turned and stared up at the images on the screen. "That's Senator Burnett. Hell, we were having drinks with him last night."

  "Turn up the volume," I said.

  Sarah stood on the tips of her toes and pressed the up volume button until we could hear the reporter. The news wasn't good. Burnett had gone missing. He didn't return home after an event last night, according to his wife.

  Frank shook his head. "Next thing you know, we'll be getting a call to look for him."

  "Guy's corrupt, from what I've heard," I said. "Maybe it caught up to him."

  "He seemed all right to me," Sarah said.

  "You're in the business of saving people," Frank said. "Everyone has to be OK to you, otherwise you'd have to let half of them die on principle." He walked to the door and looked over his shoulder, then said, "I don't like this, Jack. The mother hurt in what appears to be a malicious hit and run. Some creep calling you. Now a U.S. Senator is missing. And not any Senator, one with ties to us."

  "Let's get back to the room," I said. "We need to get Harris to reach out to all teams and get a status update. We need to verify that everyone is accounted for and that no one else has been harmed."

  We hustled down the hall, faster than a walk, slower than a run, not quite a jog, turning left into the corridor that led to Tammy's room. The latest revelation had me on edge. I knew Tammy's place in all of this. She'd had the misfortune of being the kid's mother. Whoever was behind this wanted to get the kid to get to me. I'd screwed up their little group, disrupted their game. Now they turned their bats toward me. But what did the Senator have to do with this? I couldn't make sense of it. I didn't know much about his policy or even what state he represented. I knew it was something I'd have to look into once we got back to headquarters.

  I ran the last fifty feet to Tammy's room, extending my right arm to grab hold of the doorframe and stop myself. Tammy lay in her bed, unconscious, as expected. What I didn't expect was to see the man who stood next to her bed, needle in his hand, plunging it into her arm. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at me.

  "Who the hell are you?" I said.

  His smile broadened. "She'll be out for a while."

  The man didn't look like a doctor or a nurse or someone who should be in the room. It wasn't his hair, or his clothes, or his face. It was his shoes. The dirty, scuffed combat boots he had on had no place in a hospital.

  I drew my gun and aimed it at his head. Frank entered the room. The man turned and lifted his arms. The needle hung from Tammy's pale forearm. A thin line of blood seeped out, letting gravity determine its path.


  "What's going on in here?" Frank said.

  "He just injected her with something," I said.

  The man slowly turned with his arms in the air. "Only to keep her quiet for a bit, that's all." He looked at me and I looked at the mirror. He turned his head, then said, "Silly me, I left it in her." He turned around and withdrew the needle from her arm. He didn't turn back around slowly, though. Instead he whipped around, pistol in his hand.

  I pulled my trigger before he managed to square up. The bullet hit him in the side of the head. A cloud of blood hovered where he stood and coated the wall behind him.

  Sarah took a step into the room and stopped. Her face skewed and shock filled her eyes. "What the hell happened?"

  "We need to get her out of here," I said. "Now."

  Sarah went to work, freeing the woman from the wires that bound her, and then freeing the bed. She started pushing it toward the door.

  "Stop," I said.

  "What?" she said.

  "That won't work. What are we going to do? Steal an ambulance?"

  "What do you suggest then?" she said.

  "There." Frank stood outside the room and pointed at a wheelchair.

  "That's crazy," Sarah said. "We don't know the extent of her injuries."

  "We know she has a concussion and we'll have to assume that's it." I picked Tammy up and stepped into the hall. Frank arrived with the wheelchair two seconds later and helped me set her down. "Frank, go get the car. We'll meet you outside."

  Two members of the hospital's security department were running down the hall toward us. They shouted something, probably stop, but I didn't bother to listen. I started to push Tammy in the opposite direction. The only problem was that they were moving faster than I could with a wheelchair in front of me. I heard one of them yell Jesus Christ, and I assumed they'd reached the room and looked inside. The echo of their footsteps ceased, and without looking back, I figured they entered Tammy's room.

  The emergency exit doors loomed in the distance. There was enough separation between the room and us that we had a good chance of making it. "Go open those doors, Sarah."

  She ran ahead and hit the doors full speed, placing one hand on the red and silver handle and planted her shoulder into the middle of the door. It popped open, letting natural light flood the end of the hallway. A piercing alarm blared through the corridor. The squeal penetrated my ears and was certain to rouse at least one of the guards.