Hellhound On My Trail

by J. D. Rhoades

  Cordell, standing in the curtained area alongside the stage, could see some of the members of the audience lean forward as if to hear better. She’s got them eating out of the palm of her hand, he thought. Timing, dynamics…she’s a natural. He was feeling better and better about this campaign.

  “His work was too important to let it go unfinished. Too important to this great Commonwealth we all love, and too important to this country that is the last, best hope of mankind. We are in one of our darkest hours, under attack from all sides…and from within.” She was rising to the climax, her voice picking up speed and volume. The applause began to ripple just underneath her clear, strong voice as she reached it. “And that, my fellow Virginians, is why I am running for the United! States! Senate!”

  The applause exploded. The crowd rose to its feet, whistling and stomping. Cordell nodded his satisfaction. The cheering went on and on, the flashes from the cameras stuttering and strobing like lightning. Cordell felt his phone buzzing in the pocket of his suit jacket. He pulled it out and stepped further behind the curtain, sticking a finger in one ear to blot out the sound and putting the phone to the other one. “Hello.”

  “Just wanted you to know that our competitor was declared bankrupt this morning.”

  Cordell let out a deep breath. “Were there any problems?”

  “Some liabilities were incurred, but they’re going to fall on him.”

  Cordell gritted his teeth. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” Riddle said. “I’m sure.” He chuckled. “You could say our competitor’s entire portfolio has been liquidated.”

  Cordell didn’t get the joke, but he was one thousand percent sure he didn’t want to. He resolved never to use Riddle again. The former DEA operative had spent so much time in “wet work” that he’d lost understanding of just how much dead bodies could complicate a situation.

  “Good work,” he said. And you’ll never see any more from me.

  “Thanks. Now about payment.”

  “You’ll get it through the usual channels,” Cordell snapped. “And don’t call this number again.” He cut the connection before Riddle could say anything else. He could hear Kathryn finishing up, telling the rapt crowd about the campaign website that had just gone up. Cordell took a second to check on his smartphone. Yes, just as promised, SheaforAmerica.com was up and running, as were the campaign Twitter and Facebook accounts. Staffers were busily putting out messages purporting to be from the candidate herself. All was going according to plan.

  RIDDLE PUT the phone back into the pocket of his leather jacket and took a sip of his coffee. He looked out the window of the diner where he’d just had breakfast and saw only desert stretching away from him. He figured they’d be just about done with Keller by now. It all depended on just how long Jerico Zavalo intended to take in exacting his revenge.

  He didn’t take Cordell’s abrupt dismissal personally. He knew that people like Cordell had as little contact with people like him as possible. It was safer that way, and any residual hurt feelings he might be tempted to have could be assuaged by the amount of money he was about to see arrive in a shell bank account before he shifted it someplace safe and closed the account. The cheap cell phone in his pocket would also soon be gone, ground up in an industrial compactor. Everything to connect him with Cordell and his mysterious employer would be gone. He’d be like a ghost.

  The phone buzzed in his pocket again. He pulled it out and frowned as he looked at the number. He put the phone to his ear. “Yes?” Then he was forced to hold the phone a few inches away as a blast of rapid-fire, angry Spanish assailed his ears. “Wait,” he said, but that only seemed to make the person on the other end angrier. When he got a break, Riddle jumped in. “So tell me how the fuck this is my fault?” There was a pause, then a more subdued, but still furious reply. “Look,” Riddle snapped. “He was your problem once I delivered him. Anything after that is on you.”

  Suddenly recalling he was in public, he looked around. The waitress was talking with the cook through the kitchen pass-through and no one else seemed to be taking any notice. He broke the connection anyway. Shit, he thought. This was bad. Keller had escaped, apparently killing Jerico Zavalo and three of his men. The cartel was in an uproar. Heads were going to roll, most likely literally, as contenders battled for Zavalo’s position.

  Riddle didn’t see how he could get blamed for Zavalo’s ineptitude, but some of these narcos weren’t famed for logical thinking, and others would be looking for a scapegoat. He was the one who’d brought the tiger to the party, and he might get some of the blame for the damage caused when the beast got out. Then there was the fact that he’d failed in the mission Cordell had given him.

  Riddle took a sip of his coffee, keeping his face expressionless. He needed to get out in front of this. He had to tell Cordell that the situation had gone sideways, but he’d rather do it when he’d already rectified the problem. Keller’s death at his hands might placate the Mexicans as well. He grimaced. First, he had to find Keller. It would be difficult to do; according to the man on the phone, Keller had taken enough folding money to go to ground for a while. But there was no one who couldn’t be found. He’d proved it himself.

  He called for the check.

  “I SCREWED that up, didn’t I, John?”

  Maddox hesitated, but the rare and unexpected intimacy of his first name invited honesty. “You may have pushed too fast, sir.”

  Trammell coughed, the effort causing his face to screw up in agony. When he was done, he lay gasping for a moment. “What will he do now, you think?”

  “I don’t know, sir. He can’t go back to Arizona. He’d be arrested immediately.”

  The old man nodded almost imperceptibly. “Anything we can do about that?”

  “I’ll see, sir.” There had been a time when Trammell’s name and his network might have been able to shut things like that down with a phone call, but the power of both had waned with his health.

  “So where would he go?”

  Maddox answered immediately. “He might go back to Wilmington. It was home to him for a lot of years.”

  “He had a home before that,” Trammell said. “Charleston.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s where he’ll go first. Check there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Trammell’s eyes narrowed to near slits, the way Maddox had seen him do a thousand times when he was strategizing. “Whoever Kathryn Shea or her people have put on this will probably figure that out as well. Sooner rather than later.”

  “Probably.”

  Trammell grimaced. “Can we protect my son, John?”

  Maddox hated what he had to say. “Not directly, sir. We don’t have the reach we used to. And he won’t talk to us.”

  Trammell turned his head to look at the man who’d served him for decades. “My son hates me.”

  Maddox was glad that it wasn’t a question, so he didn’t have to answer it honestly. Trammell turned his eyes back to the ceiling. “We still have the film,” Maddox said.

  “Should we release it now? Teach them a lesson?”

  Maddox pondered for a moment. “A deterrent like that is a one-time thing. Not for teaching lessons. For complete destruction. A nuclear bomb’s usefulness ends when it’s dropped.”

  Trammell laughed. “Well put, John. Very well put. So there’d be no point in releasing it now, unless all we wanted was revenge. Not that I have anything against revenge, mind you. Quite satisfying.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do Kathryn’s people know that Jack Keller is still alive?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’m sure Ms. Shea would deny any knowledge of what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course.” Trammell thought for a moment. “Who’s her chief of staff?”

  “A man named Frederick Cordell. Career political operative.” He said the last words with an expression that looked as if someone had placed something foul on his tongue.

  Trammell�
��s lined face convulsed in disgust. “Cordell. I know him. Wormy little bastard. I can’t believe she trusts him.”

  “He’s reportedly very good at what he does, sir.”

  “What he does, John…what he and people like him have done for years, is get people like you and me killed. Or indicted for their crimes. While he and his cronies walk away whistling and move on to the next cluster-fuck.” He shook his head. “Set up a meeting with Cordell. And have the film ready to show.”

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t know that Kathryn has told him what we have on her late and sainted father. I want him to see it. I want him to see what they’ll have to deal with if they don’t leave my son alone.”

  “Do you think that’s wise, sir? Showing him what we have? It may give him a chance to prepare for the damage the film might do. Mitigate it somehow.”

  “He could try. But set up the meeting. And put all the sharp objects in the house out of my reach, so I’m not tempted to stick a knife in that son of a bitch’s neck.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  THE PICTURE was jumpy but clear, the colors vivid. The jungle was bright green, the flames deep rich orange mixed with the black of smoke, and the blood a brilliant red. There was a lot of blood.

  Soldiers in ’70s-era American uniforms moved through the village, guns at the ready. Some carried hastily made torches of gasoline-soaked rags wrapped around branches then set alight. Here and there they applied the torches to the grass huts, which caught immediately and began to burn. Other soldiers herded weeping women and screaming children to a place in the center of the village where bodies already lay face down, in a neat line. There was no sound on the film. None was needed.

  The women and children were forced to their knees before the line of bodies. One soldier grabbed a handful of an old woman’s gray hair and yanked her head up, forcing her to look at the dead laid out in front of her. Her toothless mouth gaped in a silent scream and she looked up at the man holding her hair, clasping her hands together in front of her chest as if praying. He was shouting something at her, and the cameraman zoomed in to catch his face, contorted in rage. Then the picture pulled back to a wide shot and panned to the right.

  Two men walked into the frame. One was tall, with close-cropped blond hair and a red face already becoming jowly. He was dressed in an American uniform with lieutenant’s bars glittering on the shoulder.

  “First Lieutenant Michael Shea,” Trammell said from where he sat slumped in his wheelchair next to the whirring projector. “Later Congressman Shea, later Senator—”

  “I know who he is,” Cordell snapped. He was seated in a chair positioned in front of the screen. “I suppose the other fellow is you.”

  “Yes.” Trammell’s voice sounded almost wistful. “Mike was Regular Army at the time, but the Agency already had its eye on him. I was…well, there wasn’t actually a name yet for what I was doing. That came later.” He chuckled. “No one was making movies about us then.”

  The man walking beside Shea—Trammell—was slender and wiry where Shea was broad and fleshy. Trammell wore green fatigue pants, Army jump boots, and a green boonie hat pulled down over his eyes. He had bandoliers of ammunition crossing his chest and he carried a black submachine gun that was different from the M-16 rifles carried by the soldiers. He said something to Shea, who turned and yelled something to the soldiers. One of them snatched a young woman up from the line of kneeling people and hauled her over to stand in front of Shea. He pulled a black pistol out of the holster on his hip and held it under the woman’s chin. He shouted into her face, obviously demanding some sort of information.

  “He’s asking where the young men of the village were,” Trammell said. “The unit we were shadowing had just been hit hard by Viet Cong. It was inconceivable that these people didn’t know where they were. And let’s just say tempers were running high.”

  Either the woman didn’t have any information, or more likely just didn’t understand what the angry American was yelling at her. Trammell hung back, but the cameraman caught the smile on his face. It was a grim rictus, devoid of humor or mercy. He took another step back as Shea pulled the trigger. The young woman’s head snapped back, the bright red blood arcing through the air. The line of kneeling people began to wail, their mouths dark and wide in soundless anguish.

  Trammell moved forward, said something else to Shea, then his eyes turned toward the camera. He shouted something as the lens zeroed in on him and caught his face. Then it zoomed back to encompass both men, headed toward the camera. The picture jiggled as the still-unknown cameraman began to move backwards away from the two men advancing on him. Shea raised the pistol. Suddenly, the view arced upwards, until it was pointed straight up into the sky. After a second, the camera fell over, and all that could be seen was the tall, bright green grass. Then the screen went dark.

  “The cameraman,” Trammell’s gravelly voice came out of the darkness, “was named Remy Duplassis. He was a French stringer for Reuters. He’d heard rumors of some sort of firefight going on a few klicks from where he was.” Trammell coughed painfully. “He should have stayed where he was.”

  “The film is faked,” Cordell said. “It’s easy to do.”

  “I could have experts test it. Determine its authenticity. Oh, wait, I already have.”

  “Experts can be bought. Besides, all of this was, what, forty years ago?” Cordell’s voice sounded weak, even to himself.

  “Forty-six. I’m sure you’ll make all of those arguments, and more, when this comes out. Pity I won’t be around to see it. But Kathryn Shea is using her daddy’s legacy as the foundation for her whole campaign. How will that go over if it’s revealed that her father was a war criminal who murdered not only helpless women, but newsmen? One who could have exposed him? One thing I’ve learned, those media scumbags get very unhappy when you kill one of their own.”

  “If he’s a war criminal…” Cordell began.

  “Then so am I?” Trammell finished for him. “Of course. The difference is, Mr. Cordell, that I’ve never pretended to be anything else. I’ve done things over the past forty years that make that look like a Cub Scout meeting. All for my country, of course.”

  Cordell heard the wheels of the chair on the hardwood floor, approaching from behind him. He turned around. Trammell’s gaunt appearance and the dim lighting made him look like an evil spirit, a revenant who’d risen from death and come to extract vengeance. “I have no reputation to lose. All of my commendations and medals are classified so deeply they’ll never see daylight. Some of them I got thanks to Mike Shea.”

  Cordell shifted his chair around to face Trammell. “So why try and destroy his daughter?”

  Trammell shrugged. “Shits and giggles. But it doesn’t have to happen that way.”

  “Now we get down to it. Leave Jack Keller alone.”

  Cordell sighed. “You have this obsession about Kathryn and your son. It’s insanity. Whatever problems he has, he brought on himself. He needs to turn himself in.” He was startled to see that Trammell was actually smiling. “What?” he said.

  “It seems that you, or whoever you retained to kill my son, fucked up. He’s alive.”

  Cordell felt like he’d been punched in the gut, but he tried to keep his face impassive. The look of glee on Trammell’s face let him know he was failing. “Didn’t expect that, did you, Mr. Cordell?”

  “You need to have your medications adjusted,” Cordell said, “if you think that Kathryn Shea tried to have your son killed. It’s a fantasy. “

  Trammell spoke as if he hadn’t heard. His voice was subdued as he said, “I feel partially responsible. When I contacted Keller with a video, how was she to know that it wasn’t the one she was worried about? But someone”—his eyes narrowed—“probably you, Mr. Cordell, overreacted. Tell me, did you know what was on that film before you came in here today?”

  Cordell shook his head. His mouth was dry. “No.”

  Trammell sighed. “We keep secrets. Fr
om everyone. We tell ourselves we need to keep everything on a need-to-know basis. But the people who really need to know, don’t. And bad things happen.”

  Cordell couldn’t disagree. He stayed silent.

  “So,” Trammell said at last. “That’s the price. Call off your dog. Whoever he is. Or they are.” He raised a hand to stop Cordell’s next words. “I know. There is no dog. Call him off anyway. And see what you can do with those charges in Arizona. Because if Jack Keller gets so much as a sprained ankle or skinned knee, copies of that film go to every major news outlet and a few of the minor ones. And the original goes to the one person in the world who most wants to see it and can make use of it. Along with all the information I have about the efforts you’ve made to suppress it. Efforts that have resulted in the deaths of several people. The person I’m thinking of would be extremely happy to have that.”

  Cordell was baffled. “Who? Other than Keller?”

  Trammell still wore that infuriating smile. “That’s something you don’t need to know.” He turned the wheelchair in a gesture of dismissal. “Mr. Maddox will see you out, Mr. Cordell. Please give my regards to Kathryn.”

  Cordell stood up as Maddox appeared at his elbow as if by magic. “This way, sir.”

  Maddox led him through a house as quiet and gloomy as if its occupant was already dead. As they reached the front door, Cordell said, “There is no conspiracy, Maddox.”

  Maddox didn’t answer. He merely opened the door and stood impassively by it, waiting for Cordell to leave. As he stepped out into the sunlight, Maddox spoke. “Safe travels, sir.”

  Back in his car, Cordell waited to start the engine. He took out his cell phone and dialed the number he had for Riddle. He needed to shut this mess down, and quickly. It had already gotten out of hand. The line rang three times, then Riddle picked up. “Yeah?”