Simon Sees (An Art Jefferson Thriller Book 5)

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  But resistance from the house meant they’d been spotted, he knew. That was a risk in making a hasty approach, but he’d been given no leeway by the man paying the bills and calling the shots. They had to have the target under their control without delay.

  “Hold fire unless you have a solid shot,” the team leader said. “Do not jeopardize the target. We’re moving in.”

  He signaled the ten men under his control, splitting them into the two groups which would envelop the house. They moved in two columns, skirting the driveway, weapons up, half shifting to the right, half to the left. Within three minutes they had the simple house surrounded.

  With a nod the team leader signaled his elements forward. They staged next to the front and rear doors, staying below the window line. One man from each group reached to each barrier, pulling the screen doors outward and placing small charges just below the knobs. Plungers on each package of explosives were pressed and the operators turned their heads away as the internal countdown went from three, to two, to…

  BOOMBOOM!

  Both doors, front and back, were blasted inward nearly simultaneously, the entry elements pouring through the openings. They moved down the hallway, through the bedrooms, living room, kitchen and dining room. But they found no one.

  “The cellar,” the team leader said, pointing to the door just off the kitchen.

  Seven men lined up at the door, the lead operator pushing it fast open, their weapon lights coming on as they moved quickly down the old wooden stairs.

  Ring…

  The team leader and the two operators who’d remained with him upstairs looked toward the sound, all instantly seeing the cell phone sitting on the kitchen counter, its screen alive with an incoming call.

  Ring…

  “There’s something down here,” an operator shouted up from below. “Some sort of cavern or tunnel opening.”

  Ring…

  The team leader heard the relay of information, but his attention was fixed fully on the ringing phone. He took a step toward it. Then another.

  Ring…

  * * *

  The tunnel exit in the old icehouse was a hundred yards behind them when Kirby Gant heard the call go to voicemail, a single beeeeep indicating it was time to do what the plan called for. He continued to rush down the opposite slope of the hill, the house on the far side. Emily was just ahead of him, almost dragging Simon along, his head bobbing from side to side, legs little more than noodles.

  “What’s happening, Kirby?” Emily pressed him.

  But the old hacker didn’t answer. He focused on the screen of his phone, a single finger pressing the first number—an eight—then two more—three and six—before hesitating for just an instant and entering the final six on the virtual keypad.

  * * *

  The team leader’s hand was an inch away from the cell phone on the kitchen counter when it disappeared, along with the counter, the house, and a chunk of woods in Western Pennsylvania. A seventy-foot crater was cleaved into the earth, the remainder of the blast concentrated in the quarter mile wide bowl created by the surrounding hills. Mostly.

  Like water finding the weak point in a dike, the force of the explosion, as it expanded outward from the point of detonation, was forced through the tunnel, its energy focused to a point of ferocity as it reached the end of the cavern under the hill. A blast of hot, hurricane-force wind erupted, snapping trees and setting them afire in a line that stretched from the now-obliterated ice house to the spot on the backside of the hill that Emily, Simon, and Gant had just reached.

  “Get down!” Emily shouted to Gant as she pulled Simon behind the stump of an old fallen tree.

  Kirby Gant only managed to turn away before the slowing wave of destruction clipped him. The phone flew from his hand and he tumbled down the slope, bouncing off trees that bent, but did not snap.

  “Kirby!” Emily shouted, looking across the stain of fallen trees and smoldering undergrowth between her and the man who’d helped her find Simon. “Kirby!”

  He didn’t answer. And he didn’t move.

  * * *

  He’d made the drive from Washington to East Hickory, just across the Allegheny River from West Hickory, in under six hours, and was standing outside his car in front of a rural pizza restaurant when the crack shook the world around him, a warm wash of air rolling past from the west. Within seconds the sky in that direction was roiling with a rising black cloud, its top curling out and back in to form the shape of a mushroom.

  How is it…

  But it was more than possible, Damian Traeger knew. It had happened. Before his very eyes. The same thing which he’d arranged in Baltimore had just occurred here, hardly a mile from him.

  Behind, the few people who’d been inside the restaurant rushed out, their gazes cast to the west in horror. It was expected that most were connecting what they were witnessing with scenes from television reports on the Markham Tower attack. How confused they must be that such a thing would happen near their tiny hamlet, he thought.

  But a fair amount of confusion also plagued him at the moment. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the device which had been in his control since being delivered to him in London. Only, that could not be the case. He powered the cell phone up and eyed the screen, bringing up the keypad. With the certainty of a man who understood when he’d been bested, Traeger entered the four digit code.

  And nothing happened.

  He walked to the trash can near the restaurant’s entrance and dropped the device in. For a few seconds he just stood there and smiled, his face turned away from the awful sight billowing into the sky.

  Then, he returned to his car and drove off, heading north along the road hugging the Allegheny River A few minutes outside the tiny town, the first emergency vehicles raced past him, heading south, some volunteer fire company self-activating to deal with the unknown disaster. He had to deal with it as well, and placed a call on his cell phone. His pilot answered on the second ring.

  “Arrange departure,” Traeger said. “We’re leaving.”

  “Buffalo is still the plan?” the man asked.

  “Unless you can land on the road here and gather me up, then yes.”

  Traeger ended the call and kept driving. It would be hours before he reached his point of departure. Hours to think. Hours to consider what he’d done wrong, and what others, what someone, had done right.

  Most galling, though, was the realization that it was not a government which had outclassed him. That, based upon resources alone, was conceivable. But a government, a state actor, would not have taken the device and detonated it. A government which had discovered its existence and location would have also zeroed in on him. He would be incarcerated at that very moment if a formal entity had been involved.

  But one wasn’t. Another type of organization had taken him on. And had beaten him.

  For a moment, Damian Traeger just drove, his fingers slowly bearing down on the rental car’s steering wheel. Anger was not something he was accustomed to feeling toward himself. But he let it come. Let it build. Until finally it exploded.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, slamming the side of his fist against the dash, leaving a shallow dent in the molded plastic surface. “Bloody fucking hell!”

  He drew his hand back, clenching the fist which would soon show a bruise. It hurt, and he wanted it to hurt, for the moment at least, as a reminder.

  * * *

  Kirby Gant lifted his head slowly. He could hear Emily calling out to him. And he could hear the rumble of the blast rolling through the surrounding hills, the crackle of blazing trees popping behind along the path they just traversed.

  “Kirby!”

  Emily had gotten up and crossed the decimated swath of woods, leaving Simon sitting against the protection of the stump.

  “I’m still here,” Gant said. He stood slowly, Emily helping him up. “That was fairly spectacular.”

  “Can you move?” Emily asked, and Gant nodded. “I need help
with Simon. He’s just dead weight now.”

  “Let’s go,” Gant said.

  They made their way back across the smoldering blowdown and eased Simon off the ground, one on each side.

  “Which way?” Emily asked.

  “Keep going down,” Gant answered. “Then left at the bottom of the hill.”

  They started moving again, weaving through trees that hadn’t been affected by the sliver of the explosion which had slipped through the old rum runner tunnel. The ground leveled out and they shifted direction. Just ahead, through a stand of trees, the terrain would open up. Beyond that clearing would be a road. That road would lead them to the ultimate safety they’d been seeking.

  If they ever reached it.

  “Don’t move!”

  The order came from their right. Emily and Gant stopped and turned that way, Simon’s limp body hanging between them. Between two stout pines a man in dark green stood, a suppressed assault rifle aimed at them. His face was hard, but his eyes were frantic.

  “Do not even flinch,” the operator told them. Keeping one hand in control of his rifle, he reached with the other to a mic clipped to his collar. “This is Flank, what the hell happened? I’ve got them. Northwest side of the hill.”

  He released the mic button and listened, no satisfactory reply coming through the earpiece he wore. Emily could see the panic rise on his face as he took a quick glance over his shoulder at the tower of smoke groping at the sky above.

  “This is Flank, what do I—”

  Bang!

  The single shot tore through the right side of the man’s head. He flopped to his left, rifle dropping as he collapsed to the ground. Emily looked toward the origin of the shot and saw Sanders standing next to a towering pine, pistol in his hand leveled at the fallen operator. He held the weapon in that position for a few seconds, then lowered it and looked to the trio he’d just saved.

  “I felt the need this time,” Sanders said, looking to Emily, echoing the opposite of something he’d told her at their first meeting in the alley. He tucked the pistol into a shoulder holster beneath his coat and walked toward them, fixing on Simon. “How bad is he?”

  “I don’t know,” Emily said.

  “I’ve got a car just past the trees,” Sanders said.

  They moved through the thick knots of evergreens, emerging on the far side in under five minutes. A blue Suburban was pulled off the road, waiting in a turnout.

  “Get him in,” Sanders said as he climbed behind the wheel.

  Emily and Gant maneuvered Simon into the back seat. Emily sat next to him as Gant rode shotgun.

  Sanders started the Suburban and pulled onto the back road, driving west as four Pennsylvania State Police cruisers blew past, lights blazing and sirens screaming.

  “Where are we going?” Emily asked.

  Sanders glanced in the rearview and watched the convoy of lawmen continue east.

  “The airport,” he told her.

  “He needs help now,” Emily said, cradling Simon’s head on her lap. “Not a plane ride.”

  “Help will be there,” Sanders assured her.

  Emily accepted what he said, but she wasn’t sure it would matter. Simon’s eyes were slightly open and rolled back, just the whites showing. His breaths were shallow, the space between them seeming to increase.

  “Hang on, Simon,” she said, caressing his forehead. “Please hang on.”

  Forty Six

  Simon Lynch walked into the kitchen and saw his mother. She turned and smiled at him as she stirred hot chocolate in a mug on the counter.

  “This should warm you up, sweetie,” she said.

  She held the cup out to him and he took it, using both hands.

  “It’s hot, so be careful,” Jean Lynch cautioned her boy.

  “Thank you, mom.”

  Her smile brightened at his words, and she returned to the counter where a tray of cookies was ready to go into the oven. Simon watched her. He watched what she did. How she moved. It was his mother.

  But it could not be.

  “Mom…”

  Jean Lynch looked to her son.

  “You died, mom,” Simon said.

  His mother didn’t respond to what he said. Her smile didn’t dim one bit.

  “You father is in the garage,” Jean Lynch said. “He’s working on your sled. It might snow tonight, you know.”

  Simon felt his heart begin to race, breaths stuttering in his throat. Something was wrong. But something was right, too.

  “Mom…”

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  He set the mug of hot chocolate down on the kitchen table and took a single step toward her.

  “I’m different now, mom. I’m not like…like I was. I can say things. I can feel things.”

  Jean Lynch listened, her face warm and pleased.

  “That’s so wonderful, sweetie. I’m going to finish these cookies. Go say hello to your father.”

  He didn’t back away from her. Didn’t move in any way he could recall. But, in the blink of an eye, he was standing in the small garage, watching his father sand the hand rails of his sled.

  “Just knocking a few splinters off, Simon,” Martin Lynch told his son. He looked away from his work for a moment to flash a quick smile at his boy. “We’ll have this ready for that snow coming tonight.”

  It wasn’t panic he was feeling. Nor was it fear. In a word, it was wonder.

  Am I dead?

  That possibility rattled about his thoughts, but Simon Lynch had trouble reconciling that with the simple act of considering it. In death, wouldn’t he simply know? Would the intellect, if it still functioned on some alternate plane of existence, still be uncertain?

  I’m still alive…

  “Dad…”

  Martin Lynch stopped sanding and faced his son. His hands, hard hands, rubbed against each other like he remembered. Hard hands which had also been capable of intense tenderness. Those hands had held him as his father sat in the red rocker in his bedroom, singing the lullaby to him.

  ‘Wander boy, wander far…’

  “I can’t stay,” Simon said.

  “I know, son,” Martin Lynch said. He took a few steps and stood right in front of his son. His boy. “You’ve become a fine man, haven’t you?”

  Simon Lynch stood before his father and began to cry.

  “It’s all right,” Martin Lynch said, reaching out to put a hard, comforting hand on his son’s shoulder. “Everything is all right.”

  * * *

  “Ahhhhhhhhhhh!”

  Simon gasped and bolted up in the seat next to Emily.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, startled by his sudden emergence from the near catatonic state he’d been in.

  He looked around, taking in the familiar and the unfamiliar. Kirby Gant was staring at him from the front seat, and the stranger who’d met them in the woods was driving, stealing glances at the back seat as he drove. Past him, through the windshield, Simon saw a fence with an open gate, and beyond that a twin-engine airplane sat near a hangar, its propellers turning.

  “Simon, talk to me,” Emily said.

  He looked to her, right into her eyes, and collapsed backward on the seat.

  “No!” Emily grabbed him, pulling his upper body against hers.

  “Is he breathing?” Gant asked.

  “Barely,” Emily said, an anger building as she looked to Sanders. “You said there’d be help. He needs it now!”

  Sanders sped through the open gate and toward the Beechcraft King Air, stopping on its left side where a crew member, the co-pilot he imagined, stood at the base of the fold down stairs aft of the wing.

  “Get him aboard,” Sanders said.

  “Where’s the goddamn help?!” Emily demanded.

  Sanders ignored her protests and got out of the Suburban. He reached to his shoulder holster and withdrew the weapon, placing it on the floorboard near the pedals. Someone would be along within minutes to dispose of both it, and the vehicle. Tha
t done he joined Kirby Gant at the back door, both of them lifting the man’s limp body out and carrying it toward the plane, Emily following, tears streaming down her face.

  * * *

  The interior of the Beechcraft was set up for passenger service, seats running up both sides of the narrow cabin. Sanders and Gant placed Simon in a seat as the co-pilot pulled the stairs up, their base the door that sealed the aircraft.

  “Get us in the air,” Sanders said, impatient.

  Kirby Gant settled into a seat across from Simon, hand running through his thinning hair, head shaking at the seemingly lifeless man he knew so well, but whom he’d just met.

  “Simon,” Emily said. She’d dropped to her knees in the aisle and had a hand on each side of his face, gently moving his head, willing him to open his eyes. To move. To talk. To anything. “Please, talk to me, Simon.”

  Sanders turned away from the scene, looking to the nearby seats, searching for what he’d expected to be waiting for them. But it wasn’t.

  “Dammit, where—”

  Then he saw it. It had slipped from the seat where Porter had assured him it would be and now lay on the floor. The padded envelope had traveled without passengers from Albany to their present location. Sanders reached down and took it in hand and hurried back to where Simon sat.

  “Move,” he told Emily, tearing open the envelope and retrieving two vials with yellow stripes and two syringes, capped needles on each.

  “NB,” Emily said when she saw it.

  “I don’t know what that is,” Sanders said. “But Leah Poole provided it.”

  He popped the cap from one needle and was about to insert it into the vial when Emily snatched the small bottle from his hand. She scanned it, eyeing the yellow stripe, noticing a simple marking upon it.

  “Fifty-two,” she said, the heart which had sunk in her chest suddenly buoyed again. She handed the vial back to Sanders and took the other one in hand, taking note of its marking. “Fifty-three. It’s fifty-two and fifty-three!”