Killed in Action

by Michael Sloan

  CHAPTER 35

  McCall drove down South Sycamore Street, over the I-85 freeway, turned right onto Belmeade Street, drove right to the end, where it petered it out into dense forest. He parked the Hyundai off a rutted track. He checked the Glock 19 in his jacket pocket and the chronometer on his wrist that contained the coordinates Brahms had plugged in. Then he got out and headed north-northwest, following the GPS signal. It was just a blip in the green gray on the dial with no distinguishing features except for paths that cut randomly through the trees. There were no signposts. After a mile and a half he passed a road completely obliterated with tangled vegetation; a sign said OLD HILLCREST ROAD, but that didn’t lead anywhere. The density of the forest had given way now to sparser trees and foliage. In another five hundred yards McCall saw a wooden fence ahead. He came out into a clearing.

  The fairground lay before him rotting in the Virginia sunlight.

  The fencing had barbed wire intertwined across the top, but there were gaps in the wooden slats. He saw the top of the Ferris wheel and, beyond it, the skeletal spike that had once held rides that whirled around in a full circle. It still held the struts with hanging chains dangling. McCall ran to a stretch of fence and found a gap he could squeeze through.

  He wandered into the old abandoned fairground.

  The remnants of the vendors’ booths were weathered and rotting. McCall noted there were shooting galleries, hook-a-duck, Tin Can Alley, a sign proclaiming ALL PRIZES CAN BE WON. All of the arcades were empty. There was the wreckage of the Tilt-A-Whirl with two cars left, their colors indistinguishable. Both cars had been dismantled and left in pieces. The Kamikaze pendulum had also been ravaged, with only one ride remaining intact. Litter was everywhere, Diet Coke cans and McDonald’s wrappers and chicken boxes around the arcades. Some teenagers had snuck into the abandoned fairground recently, but he doubted there was anything much to hold their attention now. One lone red-and-green bumper car was intact on a circular flooring. At intervals throughout the fairground were swings, some set in concrete, some swinging over tall grass.

  That left the Ferris wheel.

  It stood imposing against the sky. McCall found a mechanism and pulled on a lever. As he thought, there was no electricity to power the ride. But it was high enough and the steel rims were intact, although a healthy coating of rust was on them. McCall climbed up the structure to its center point. He went hand over hand along one of the spokes until he reached a car that creaked in the wind. McCall reached up and unlatched it. He climbed into the Ferris-wheel car and swung the door closed.

  The car swung crazily with his weight.

  He waited for it to stabilize. Then he looked down at the forest hemming in the abandoned fairground from four sides. He was at the highest point he could get to unless he flew a chopper across the woods. He took out the Steiner LRF binoculars from his jacket pocket and swept the trees. There was nothing to see, just acres of forest. Intermittent shafts of brilliance were among the sentinels, but no houses. McCall thought of Emma’s description of Control being in the woods stalked by leopards with his imaginary RAF hero, someone from the pages of a book. All made up. McCall realized the fairground must have been closed since probably the late eighties. The boy would have moved away with his parents long before then.

  The Ferris-wheel car swung again.

  A flash of light blinded McCall’s eyes, just for a moment.

  He raised the binoculars. The sunlight was reflecting off something. McCall adjusted the focus and found it.

  An ornate, marble stairway.

  It had thick marble balustrades on either side, the stairs sweeping up as if it had been lifted from the ballroom of the Titanic and transported to the middle of a Virginia forest. There were sixteen or seventeen wide steps, and then it just ended. McCall could see there was no back to the stairs.

  He had his own staircase, Emma had said. He said it wasn’t high up and didn’t lead anywhere.

  McCall climbed out of the Ferris-wheel car and slid hand over hand down to the center spoke. Then he climbed down the rest of the skeletal structure to the ground. He ran over to where the fence had partially caved in and kicked in one of the boards. He went under it and plunged back into the forest. Five minutes later he came out of the dense shrubbery into a small clearing where the marble staircase stood. It was surreal, sunlight shafting across it in places. McCall ran to the staircase and up the steps, the way Control must have done when he was a boy.

  It led nowhere.

  The marble stairs just stopped. It was a good eight feet to the ground. McCall descended the stairs and immediately found a path through the trees. It was trampled down, but passable. He ran down the path until it petered out.

  McCall saw the shape of a house through the trees.

  He ran closer and saw a distant wraparound porch in gray paint. He came out of the trees at the end of a sweeping gravel driveway. A road curved through the trees in both directions.

  The house was a two-story, cedar-sided log cabin, probably a thousand square feet, with a back porch where wood was stacked.

  Three men were seated on the front porch in wooden chairs, drinking coffee.

  McCall knelt down in the shrubbery and dialed Cassie. Softly he told her the GPS coordinates. She said she would be there in twenty minutes. She didn’t ask how he had found the house. McCall put the iPhone into his jacket pocket.

  It took him about fifteen minutes to find the two motion detectors hidden in the trees. They had been painted dark brown to blend in, with a field of view of sixty yards. He deactivated both of them and ran around to the deserted back porch. He climbed up to one of the two eaves. The window there was unlocked.

  McCall climbed into one of the bedrooms.

  There was a stone fireplace and rustic furniture, all of it in cedar, on wood floors. He checked out the other bedrooms on the second floor, both of them in use. There was no sound or movement. He was halfway down the wooden staircase when he heard a car driving up the winding road to the front of the house. He heard gravel spitting from under the wheels as the vehicle halted. A car door slammed. McCall reached the ground floor, an open plan with a kitchen, living room, and dining room. A heavy oak door led to the rear of the house.

  McCall heard one of the guards jumping down from the porch. Cassie’s voice reached McCall through an open window in the kitchen.

  “Hey, there! Boy, am I glad I found you guys!”

  The man who responded had a slight accent, maybe Croatian, his voice pleasant. Nothing in Cassie’s body language would be threatening, but they were in the middle of nowhere and visitors would be scarce.

  “Can we help you?”

  Cassie kept her voice raised, mostly for McCall’s benefit. “I am seriously lost! I’ve been driving around these woods for the last forty-five minutes! My GPS is on the fritz and the directions I was given sounded like they were written out when Davy Crockett had a homestead here! Except we’re in Virginia, not Tennessee, but really, I was going to call in the National Guard to come and find me!”

  “Where are you from?” the Croatian asked, his voice still friendly.

  “New York City. I’m visiting some friends of my daughter who live somewhere out here, but God knows where!”

  The man laughed. Through the kitchen window McCall saw the other two men relax and sit back down to finish their coffee.

  “I’ll show you my directions.” Cassie’s voice still echoed through the open window. “It’s a bluegrass log cabin like this, but much smaller.”

  There was a rustle of paper. The Croatian said, “You’re way off course.”

  “I know! Can you point me in the right direction?”

  “Of course. It will be my pleasure.”

  The way the Croatian said it gave McCall pause. In this lonely, secluded area, the three men were bored, babysitting some old spymaster, if indeed they were incarcerating him, and the arrival of a beautiful women in her forties might provide some welcome diversion. McCall could wa
lk out onto the porch and shoot all three of them, but that would be the end of any stealth, he thought wryly. He needed to get Control away from here before any of his captors had even realized he had gone.

  “Thank you so much,” Cassie said, laughing. “I feel like a Manhattan native who can only find her way around Broadway and Brooklyn.”

  “I’m familiar with Broadway, but not Brooklyn,” the Croatian said. “You have a map of this area?”

  “I do!”

  “Let me see it.”

  McCall moved through the oak door into a spacious study.

  It had another stone fireplace and bookshelves on three of the walls, all of them crowded with popular paperbacks. A lower shelf had hardback books, all of them mysteries or boys’ adventure fiction. Not books McCall would have expected to see in anyone’s library. The mysteries had titles like The Clue of the Coiled Cobra, The Mystery of the Grinning Tiger, The Mystery of the Plumed Serpent, with a section of colorful jackets with a jagged-lightning insignia on them with titles like The Caves of Fear, The Wailing Octopus, The Whispering Box Mystery. On the next shelf there were hardback books from England featuring a hero named Biggles, whom McCall had never heard of, Biggles Defies the Swastika, Biggles in the Orient, Biggles at the World’s End. Beside the bookcase was a passageway, also finished in cedar, that led to another room. McCall thought it might have been built as an add-on. No padlock was on the door, but no key was in the lock. McCall listened at the door and heard nothing. He tried the doorknob, but it didn’t move. Control could be in the room beyond, or it could be some locked storage room.

  McCall walked back into the study. There was no way he could break down the door into the small room. It was solid oak. He would have to get the key from one of the guards, and at that time all bets would be off.

  He turned away from the lower shelves with the boys’ adventure books, then suddenly swung back. Control had said something to Emma about being able to sneak into his father’s workshop.

  There was some workroom where his father made scale models, ships I think, where you fitted them into bottles, but Control wasn’t allowed to go in there. He had liked looking at the models his father was working on when his mother and father were asleep, but he said he had to be careful not be caught. I think he had his own key.

  McCall scanned the boys’ adventure books. He knelt down and checked out the titles. More Biggles adventures. The author had compiled an impressive number of books written during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. Biggles and the Pirate Treasure, Biggles in Borneo, Biggles Buries a Hatchet, then McCall found one where the title leapt out at him: Biggles and the Leopards of Zinn. Hadn’t Control talked about his RAF hero pal protecting him from leopards? McCall flipped through the book and came to a page near the end.

  An old-fashioned iron key was taped to it.

  McCall untaped it. He slid the book back with the others and stood silently in the study. More conversation was coming faintly from the front of the house. McCall couldn’t hear what was being said, but it sounded as if Cassie was ready to leave.

  He moved quickly to the door at the end of the small passageway.

  He fitted the key into the lock on the door.

  It turned.

  McCall opened the door and moved inside the room.

  It was no longer a workshop. The only furniture in it were a single bed and an end table. Boxes holding paintings were stacked on the wall.

  Control lay on the bed, with a quilt lying half on the floor. He was dressed in sweats, no shoes. His breathing was ragged and shallow. When McCall moved to him, he didn’t stir. McCall had no doubt that Control had been drugged, and probably for a long time. His skin was the same color as the porches. McCall pulled him to his feet. He staggered, but his eyes didn’t open. McCall hauled him up onto his shoulder. He closed the door to the prison room, turned the key in the lock, and walked back into the study. He set Control down in an antique rocking chair. He returned the old key to the pages of Biggles and the Leopards of Zinn, returned the book to the lower bookshelf, then picked Control up and carried him to the sliding glass door that led onto the back porch. It was still deserted. He carried Control onto the porch and jumped down onto the ground.

  Now McCall heard more clearly the voices drifting from the front porch.

  He didn’t like the sound of it.

  * * *

  The Croatian gunman was poring over the Virginia map Cassie had handed him. His two pals on the front porch were still drinking coffee, although one of them had got up from the table and found a spot on the porch steps. He was thin and angular with a shock of unruly strawberry-blond hair and stared at Cassie as if he’d never before seen a young woman this close. When he smiled at her, his teeth were crooked and so stained with tobacco they were yellow. He followed her every move.

  Why do I have the feeling he’s seeing me naked? she thought.

  His partner on the porch just looked bored. Cassie had noticed a silver skull ring on the heavyset Croatian’s right hand. In fact, all of them were wearing identical silver skull rings.

  How creepy was that?

  The heavyset Croatian looked up at her from the map. “Follow this road for two miles to a fork, make a right, go straight for about six miles, and you’ll come to a cathedral set of high trees, make a left, and you’ll be back on East Boulevard. That turns into West Tuckahoe Street, and you’re back on track.”

  She took the map from the Croatian and folded it. “Thank you so much.”

  “All these woods look the same, especially at night. Stay for a while. I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee.”

  “I’d better get back on the road.”

  “If you get lost again, come back.”

  “I won’t be coming back.”

  The smile on the Croatian’s face never wavered. “Our loss.”

  Cassie was trembling just a little as she opened the car door. It caught on the seat belt.

  “Let me help you,” the Croatian said.

  He held the car door open for her. Cassie looked at the porch, where neither man had moved. The smaller one was stoic with eyes as cold as ice. The thin one on the porch steps was smiling at her and picking something out of his teeth.

  “Get this kid a banjo,” Cassie murmured, and slid into the driver’s seat.

  After the barest pause, the Croatian slammed the Mercedes door.

  Cassie drove away from the house. She had never been more grateful to have got out of anywhere in her life.

  CHAPTER 36

  McCall carried Control through the forest, past the marble staircase that led nowhere, until they came out of the trees and he saw the top of the Ferris wheel. He kicked out another slat from the fence and carried Control into the deserted fairground. He was conscious. McCall set him down. Control staggered a little, bleary and disoriented.

  “I’ve got you,” McCall said.

  Control nodded, but McCall didn’t think he knew who McCall was. He helped Control past the arcade stalls, what was left of the Tilt-A-Whirl and the dodge-’em car, past the Ferris wheel with its cars swinging in the strong breeze. McCall found the gap at the back of the abandoned fence. It took ten minutes to reach the parked Hyundai. By that time Control had lost consciousness again. McCall set him down gently on the backseat. McCall turned the vehicle around and headed out of the woods. In another ten minutes he was back in Petersburg. He saw Cassie waiting beside her Mercedes on Market Street near the city hall and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. He locked up the Hyundai and walked to Cassie. Her hands were still trembling.

  “I’m glad you found your friend. Is he all right?”

  “He’s been drugged.”

  “Why did those men incarcerate him?”

  “It’s a matter of national security.”

  “Will they come for him?”

  “I’m taking him somewhere they won’t find him. Thanks for having my back.”

  “The life you lead is suicidal. I don’t want any part of it. If you have run out
of backups, I’m withdrawing my name to be thrown into the hat.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Be careful.”

  Cassie kissed him on the cheek, got into her Mercedes, and drove off. McCall bought a blanket and a pillow in the Walgreens in the square. He transferred Control to the trunk of the Hyundai, put the blanket around him and the pillow beneath his head, and closed the trunk.

  McCall drove back to New York City and met Mike Gammon at the Hertz place at Morton Street. Gammon transferred Control to the trunk of his Prius. He was still unconscious. McCall came out of the Hertz office and slid into the passenger seat. Gammon drove north and parked on West Seventieth Street between Columbus Avenue and Broadway. McCall opened the trunk and picked Control up, still wrapped in the blanket, and heaved him up onto his shoulder.

  Gammon put a BROOKLYN SOUTH HOMICIDE SCENE placard in the driver’s window. “Comes in handy when you’re trying to get through traffic.” Gammon didn’t know who the unconscious man was or why McCall had rescued him. “Where are we taking him?”

  “Right here.” McCall set Control down so that he was lying flat on a bench. “Help me with the manhole cover.”

  McCall and Gammon moved the manhole cover, which might have weighed two hundred pounds, but it was not secured tightly. McCall remembered where this location was from the times he had walked the subway tunnels with Jackson T. Foozelman, when McCall had first discovered the subterranean dwellers beneath the Manhattan streets. It took McCall and Gammon’s combined efforts, but they moved the manhole cover far enough to one side. McCall climbed down the rusting metal ladder. Gammon picked up Control and handed him down to McCall. The New Yorkers around them were only mildly interested.

  Brooklyn Homicide business.

  “Good luck,” Gammon said. “You get any word on Granny, you can find me in Central Park at the chess tables.”

  McCall nodded. He carried Control to the bottom of the iron ladder, stepping into dank ankle-deep water. Work lights provided wan radiance in the tunnel. McCall hoped he remembered which way to go. It took him twenty minutes to find the subway tunnel beneath the streets that housed Fooz’s homage to Sherlock Holmes. The old black man was up on his feet as soon as McCall carried Control in. He laid him down gently onto Fooz’s Lucinda sleigh bed.