Never Back Down

by William Casey Moreton

  “Mrs. Vanderhook,” he called. “I’m sorry about your loss, but my friend was a friend of Dustin’s. They died at the same age. I’m just trying to fill in the gaps of my friend’s life, so I thought maybe learning more about Dustin would help me fill in some of those.”

  Coburn waited. He saw a movement of the drapes again. There were lights on inside but there was a glare on the window so he couldn’t see anything past the glass.

  Suddenly the bolt turned again. Then they heard the scrape of the chain and the door opened. Coburn turned and saw a thick man of about eighty-five standing in the open door.

  “My grandson is dead. Please don’t bother us,” the man said in a big, unwavering tone.

  “I’m only asking for five minutes.”

  “I don’t care if you want five seconds. We’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  “What if I told you I don’t believe your grandson’s death was an accident, or at least that the truth might not have been what it appeared to be?”

  “Then I’d call you a damn fool and run you off my property.”

  “I believe that your grandson was a Marine,” Coburn said.

  Blair Vanderhook was standing just out of sight. Coburn heard her whispering to her husband. Norman Vanderhook tilted his head to listen and nodded.

  “I’m going to close the door,” he said. “And if you two aren’t off my property in twenty seconds, I’m calling the police.”

  The door slammed shut.

  “Nice,” Sabrina said without emotion.

  Coburn backed away from the porch.

  “They know more than they’re telling. We came to the right place.”

  “All the more reason he’s not going to talk.”

  They skirted around the rear of the Toyota and opened the doors of the rental and were startled by the sound of the garage door opening. Coburn was prepared to see Norman charge out with a twelve-gauge and start blasting.

  But that didn’t happen. Instead, a man in a wheelchair rolled out to the edge of the sunlight and stopped and stared hard at them.

  The man had no legs.

  84

  “Hurry inside so I can shut the door.”

  The man in the wheelchair rolled backward out of the morning light as they ducked inside. He slapped a button on the wall and the power door opener in the ceiling lowered the door. The man in the chair did not sit still long enough to see it shut.

  He led them through an open door into the house. A short hallway ended at a cramped kitchen. Everything was simple and modest. It was a scene straight out of the early 1970’s.

  “Follow me,” the man in the chair said, rolling forward without glancing back.

  “Lee, this isn’t a good idea,” the old man called from the next room.

  Lee ignored him.

  It was a straight shot to the laundry room. Lee was busy opening doors, working the wheels of the chair, rolling forward, turning, adjusting. He seemed quite skilled at getting around inside his little world.

  “Close that door if you would,” Lee said as Coburn came through last.

  Coburn pulled it shut.

  Lee led them through another door and suddenly an inclined ramp fell away at the back of the house and leveled off at a covered walkway. The walkway was made of wall studs and wood siding, with a sloped roof. A single strip of cheap blue artificial grass had been stapled to the floor and ran the entire length.

  Lee glanced back at the entrance to the walkway after he wheeled through. “Close that one too,” he said.

  The walkway had no windows, but there were a couple of skylights. The result was a slight green glow. There was no ventilation and they immediately began to sweat.

  The covered walkway was only about forty feet long. It ended at a metal door. Lee had keys on a brass hoop attached to his waist. He turned a key in the lock and they followed him in. Coburn guessed this was the building that he had assumed was a workshop. Maybe originally it had been, but not anymore.

  When they were inside, Lee shut the door and set the lock. He was dressed in black sweatpants, with the cotton legs folded and tucked under his stumps, and a faded Redskins jersey. His hair was thin on the top, showing lots of scalp, and in back it was long and greasy and held in a ponytail by a thin rubber band. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in about a month. He was pale. His eyes were dark pools streaked with red.

  “My name is Lee,” he said, positioning the chair so that his back was to the door.

  “I don’t think it is,” Coburn disagreed.

  “My name is Lee Tennyson.”

  “No, I don’t think it is.”

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “Dusty Valentine?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because we have followed the trail of breadcrumbs and it has led us right to your grandparents’ door.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Coburn held out the photo of the three men dressed in jungle combat gear.

  Lee Tennyson didn’t flinch. He didn’t blink an eye.

  “What is that?” Lee asked.

  “I’d like you to tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What you were doing with Brian Ripley and Kyle Rooney in a jungle on the other side of the world.”

  The air in the room was cool and stale. An old beige couch stood against one wall and a BarcaLounger was in the corner. There was just the one window, with vinyl blinds to block out the sun and the prying eyes of the outside world. Bookshelves lined the walls, and the shelves were overflowing. A Sanyo TV was tuned to the History Channel. German tanks were rolling through a black forest in the dead of winter.

  The man in the chair stared long and hard at the photo.

  “Tell me the whole story, Dusty,” Coburn said. “Tell me about the train, and the jungle, and your legs, and how you came to be living like this. Tell me why you are pretending to be Lee Tennyson. Tell me everything.”

  Coburn noticed four closed-circuit televisions stacked on a table, camera feeds displaying live footage of the driveway, the front porch, the gate at the side of the house.

  “Tell me about the Marines and why you had to change your name.”

  “Valentine had to die because there are rules.” He let the photo drop to the floor.

  “Whose rules?”

  “The Pentagon.”

  “Did they stage the train?”

  Lee nodded, and averted his eyes.

  “Was there anyone in that car when the train crushed it?”

  “You’d have to ask someone above my pay grade. I wasn’t in the country when they say Dusty Valentine went to Heaven. How’d you know about the train setup?”

  “Because the world believes Brian Ripley was killed in an avalanche around the same time.”

  “Why would you think otherwise?”

  “I saw him in New York City on Monday night and he tried to kill me.”

  Lee grinned faintly. “The fact that you are standing here talking to me tells me he must have lost his edge in his old age.”

  “What did the Pentagon want with you?”

  “Total commitment. Body and soul.”

  “Special Ops?”

  “Deeper. We ate Special Ops for breakfast.”

  Coburn noticed the tattoos all the way up Lee’s arms.

  Lee pulled a pack of cigarettes from his sweatpants and lit up.

  “Black Ops?”

  “The blackest of black.”

  “The Pentagon made you go off the grid so you couldn’t be traced back.”

  “We could go anywhere and kill anyone, because officially we didn’t exist. Our outfit was called the Fifth Corner.”

  Coburn stood at one of the shelves overflowing with books and stacks of comics. It was loaded with militia texts, firearm manuals, and assorted right-wing conspiracy manifestos.

  “How many of you were there?”

  “Only a select handful.”

  “Were you close to Ripley?”


  “Closer than a brother.”

  “Did you see him after you got out of the service?”

  “That’s the part you don’t understand about the Corner. None of us did. That’s why I’m sitting here missing half my body, and that’s why Ripley tried to kill you. Nobody leaves the Corner alive. Nobody. It’s a one-way ticket, but by the time you figure that out, it’s too late.”

  “How do they do it?”

  “They send assassins, and they are relentless.” He rested his hands on the end of his stumps. “In my case, they put a bomb in my Mustang. I turned my key in the ignition and woke up a hundred yards away. So now I live like a vampire. I haven’t spoken a word to any other human except my grandparents until today.”

  Lee stared unblinking at Sabrina. It had been years since he’d been this close to a beautiful woman.

  “Seems they could find you easily enough if they wanted to,” Sabrina said. “You’re terrible at hiding.”

  “Who are you?” Lee asked.

  “Brian Ripley murdered my sister.”

  “How did he know your sister?”

  “Welcome to the guessing game,” she said.

  “Why hide here?” Coburn asked.

  “What else am I gonna do? I have no money, no income, no benefits. Remember, I’m officially dead. The government doesn’t write checks to veterans who are dead. I can’t beg the VA for anything. I’d go in and fill out a form with my address and someone would show up at my door the next day to put a bullet between my eyes. For the first few years after I lost my legs I lived in a hunting cabin in the woods an hour and a half from the city. It was a nightmare. I was stranded. I couldn’t communicate with anyone because there was no phone line out in the wilderness. It was insane. Nearly lost my mind. I became very suicidal. I decided it was better to take my chances where at least the bears and coyotes couldn’t tear me apart.”

  “So now you hide in plain sight,” Coburn said.

  “Bingo. Right under their noses.”

  “Risky.”

  “There are no other options. I can’t get a job. I rely totally on my grandparents for shelter, food, clothing, everything. Besides, I don’t know how many years I have left in me. I’m forty. Every day is a slog through depression. I’ll never marry, never have kids. I’m fat, diabetic, and my blood pressure is through the roof.” His eyes fell to the floor and lingered. He sucked in a long breath through his teeth, then let it out. “I don’t expect to see fifty, and I’ve made peace with it.”

  “I went to college with Ripley,” Coburn said. “I saw him in a bar in New York the other night and said hello. And then he did this to my face.”

  Lee nodded. “You scared him.”

  “I need to find him.”

  “I can’t help you.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. I wouldn’t have a clue where to look. I always assumed he was dead. Assumed they got him years ago. I thought I was the only miserable bastard who managed to survive.”

  “Did he talk to you? Tell you about his family?”

  “No,” Lee shook his head.

  “Siblings?”

  “Been a long time, man.”

  Coburn crossed the room toward the door. Sabrina moved toward the exit with him.

  “My memory is toast,” Lee said. “The bomb scrambled my brain.”

  “Not to mention the smell of modeling glue in this place,” Coburn said.

  “I remember he did have a half-brother. Kind of a black sheep of the family.”

  “Remember a name?” Coburn asked.

  “Nope. All I recall is it seems like he was a bit older and leased bulldozers out of an office.”

  “Where?”

  Lee shrugged. “Somewhere in the D.C. area.”

  “Why would you remember the half-brother?”

  “I met him one time, at his office late at night when the rest of the building was dead. He and Brian used to be tight. We were there like five minutes and then we jumped on a plane that eventually dumped us in a jungle halfway around the world. Anyway, the guy was shady. Like I said, he was the black sheep.”

  “Bulldozers?”

  Lee said, “Grab that phone book on top of the TV and I’ll see if I recognize anything. He opened the thick directory on his lap and leafed through a quarter inch of pages at a time. He hit the yellow pages and skimmed down the columns of listings with his middle finger.

  “Why didn’t you just let us get in the car and leave?” Coburn asked. “What made you decide to talk to us?”

  “Maybe I’m tired and bored and depressed. Maybe I just don’t care anymore. Maybe I’d be relieved if someone ended it all for me. I didn’t have much to lose if you turned out to be government assassins.”

  “So Ripley is running scared because he’s convinced that the Pentagon will still come after him after all these years.”

  “They cannot afford to have us running around. We know too much. We know the secrets. They sent us on illegal missions. I could have killed Castro. I had him in my scope, but they called us off at the last second. I’ve carried around some heavy stuff like that for a lot of years.”

  “That’s quite an imagination you have,” Sabrina said.

  “Believe what you want. They blew my legs off trying to shut me up.”

  Lee’s finger stopped on a page. “Damn, that looks familiar,” he said.

  He backed his chair up to one end of the sofa and leaned over, clawing at a seat cushion. He found a pen and marked a listing on the page. Then he ripped the page out and handed it to Coburn.

  “Bottom of the page. I think that’s it,” he said. “I recognize the logo. Saw it stenciled on the door. The memory is a funny thing. I can’t explain it.”

  “Folston Industrial Leasing?”

  Lee nodded. “Folston is the guy. Maybe he can help you, and maybe he can’t, but don’t mention me.”

  Coburn asked, “Do you believe me that Ripley is still alive?”

  “Doesn’t matter much,” Lee said. “None of us will live forever.”

  85

  Christopher Folston was on his back staring up at the ceiling. He was struggling to breathe. Struggling to focus on something, anything, beyond the pain. The leather belt around his throat was choking out the air from his lungs. Most of his ribs were broken - he was certain of it. And he could no longer feel his legs.

  He had underestimated the small blond woman. She was strong and fast and merciless. She was going to kill him. There was simply no way around it, but first she wanted to know where to find Brian Ripley.

  Folston was stalling. The pain was unbearable, but at least he was alive. The minute he gave up his half-brother she would cut his throat.

  She had stepped out of his office and put a bullet in the back of the secretary’s head, then she had dragged the body in beside him and closed the door. Half of Mary’s face was gone.

  Folston stared at the blood pooling around Mary’s body and knew he was next.

  86

  “Folston won’t answer his damn phone!” Armstrong hissed. He was arguing with Smith.

  “I’ll find him. Let me worry about him,” Smith said.

  “I’m loading my helicopter.”

  “Sit tight. You’ve got to be patient,” Smith said.

  “I’ll make Caspian sing, you just stand back and watch.”

  “Use your brain. Wait. Stay away from the city.”

  “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  “Don’t be an idiot.”

  “I want to deal with Caspian myself.”

  “Fine,” Smith huffed. “You win, but let me bring him to you.”

  Rain was blowing against the windows. The weather had turned. Armstrong pushed through the door and stepped into the downpour. He jogged through the rain to the helicopter, heaved open the door and slung his pack onto the seat of the passenger side. He raised his voice so Smith could hear him over the sizzle of the rain.

  “Load him up. I wan
t him here by early afternoon.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Make it happen!”

  • • •

  Smith slapped his cell shut. Armstrong was pushing him over the edge. Smith was standing beneath an eave, taking shelter from the rain. The city skyline was shrouded in gloom. He hammered his fist on the metal door and Brown opened it. He went down the short ramp and gave Brown, Miller, and Jones the order to pack everything back inside the Tahoe.

  “That’s not smart,” Miller protested.

  “Didn’t say it was, but the man who writes our checks wants him moved out of here. End of discussion.”

  The work took ten minutes. They opened the rear hatch and piled everything in. Smith wanted no trace left to show they’d ever been there. Caspian remained strapped to the chair until the last minute then they cut his legs free. Smith held a Maglite and watched the work. Brown cut the strap that had pinned Caspian’s head to the back of the chair. The bag stayed on his head. They quickly dressed him and led him, hobbling badly, out of the concrete room and around the corner to where the Tahoe was waiting with its lights on and its engine running. They seated him on the second row bench, sandwiched between Brown and Miller.

  Smith rode shotgun while Jones drove.

  The Tahoe bumped up the ramp into pale, muted sunlight.

  Smith glanced around his headrest at the prisoner. Caspian rode perfectly still. His hands were in his lap, bound at the wrists by a plastic tie. Caspian did not ask any questions. He did not say a word.

  Smith faced forward again and sent another text to Folston, telling him that Caspian was loaded and they were on their way out of Manhattan, and that he expected to arrive at Armstrong’s place in a couple of hours.

  He waited for a response from Folston, but none came.

  • • •

  Folston Industrial Leasing had a Bethesda, Maryland address. Sabrina found it using the atlas from the gas station. Coburn took the shortest route he could decipher from the colored lines on the atlas page. The address from the phone book put them outside a four-story commercial building near a busy interchange.

  Coburn stopped the rental at the curb and they stared across the street at the building. Coburn didn’t know what to expect from Folston. What could you expect from a man orbiting fifty who leased industrial equipment? It sounded harmless enough, and it probably was. On the other hand, Lee had described him as the black sheep of the family, and something about him had apparently retained Brian Ripley’s loyalty.