High Treason

by John Gilstrap

  “Mother Hen?”

  “I need another minute or two.” Her voice sounded stressed. Maybe even angry. Jonathan knew better than to press her for information before she was ready to offer it.

  An apartment complex of this size—there had to be a thousand units, distributed among several buildings—was like its own little city, teeming with people. The front doors never stayed closed for more than a few seconds as residents and visitors arrived and departed. Jonathan was struck by the fact that the mean age seemed ten years older than he would have expected. Back in the day, these roach mills were the domain of youngsters new to their careers. What he saw today were forty- and fiftysomethings. He wrote it off as another sign of the economic nightmare that would be the legacy of the Darmond administration.

  “I don’t like standing here like this,” Boxers said. “People are beginning to notice me.”

  He spoke the truth. It came with the territory when you were six-foot-huge.

  “I’m gonna wander,” Big Guy said. “I’ll be back when Mother says she’s set.”

  Jonathan didn’t object. It was probably just as well that they not be seen together. If things went really south, those were the kinds of details that people would remember.

  Ten seconds later, Jonathan’s earbud popped and Boxers’ voice said, “Hey, Boss, look to your one o’clock. The guys climbing out of the black Chevy sedan. They look like feds to you?”

  Dark gray overcoats, cut just a little bigger than they should, dark glasses and matching high-and-tight hairstyles. They were missing the curlicue from their ears, but even the Secret Service was getting away from those unless they wanted to be identified as who they were.

  “Mother Hen?” Jonathan whispered.

  The two men, trim but not especially muscled, walked with purpose toward the front doors where Jonathan was standing. As they passed within ten feet of him, the taller of the two—by only an inch or two—clearly made note of Jonathan through his dark glasses. The glasses and the scowl were well practiced to intimidate, so Jonathan made sure to smile and offer up a little finger-wave with his left hand. All of his fingers, not just the one.

  “Big Guy, come back. Mother Hen, I need information now. What’s our status?”

  Venice’s voice had a panicked edge. “Go,” she said. “Stop them.”

  Jonathan spun and pulled open the doors to step inside.

  “I thought I was coding things wrong,” Venice explained. “I couldn’t shut down the videos because it had already been done. I’m sorry, Scorpion.” The bad guys had beaten them to the punch.

  And none of that mattered now because none of it could be changed.

  Somehow, the inside of the lobby looked less crowded than the outside. Must have been the choke point of the doors. The place was done in the simple style of the early 1960s, and apparently not much freshening up had been done since the original construction. A fifty-by-fifty-foot sea of white tile floors melded with blond paneling whose plainness was broken only by a waist-level strip of stainless steel that ran the entire interior perimeter, except for the six-foot section that was missing near the elevators.

  The very elevators into which Mutt and Jeff disappeared before Jonathan had taken five steps inside the front door.

  “Shit,” Jonathan spat. “They’re on their way up. Big Guy, I need you here now.”

  “Right behind you, Boss,” Boxers said off the air. It was easy to forget how quickly Big Guy could move when he had to. So long as it wasn’t for great distances.

  “Stairs,” Jonathan said, pointing to the sign next to the elevators.

  “Not another elevator?”

  “Suppose it’s a local and stops at every floor?” Jonathan asked.

  “Ah, damn,” Boxers said. “My leg hates stairs.” Years before, Boxers had had a significant hunk of his femur replaced with a titanium rod. Shoulda seen what the other guy looked like.

  Jonathan went first. He always went first. He moved faster, but even more important, he couldn’t shoot over Boxers’ head. “Mother Hen, I need you to call this Beckeman chick’s cell phone. Tell her what’s happening and tell not to open the door for anyone but me.”

  “I might be able to stop the elevator,” Venice said.

  “But you might not. Call.”

  As Jonathan climbed the stairs two at a time, he heard Boxers’ effort to keep up, but by the third floor, Big Guy was already half a flight behind.

  David couldn’t believe the numbers. “Holy shit, Becky. The story’s not two hours old, and I’m already at three hundred thousand hits. This is amazing.”

  “It’s scary,” Becky said. She’d never been on board with this broadcast plan. “A few dozen of those three hundred thousand want you dead.”

  David pretended not to hear. “At this rate, I’ll be at a million by midnight. God knows what it’ll be by six a.m. tomorrow.” He clicked away from Kirk Nation to the Google Diagnostics page. “Look at this. Twenty-seven countries. Christ, what time is it in Austria now? Two in the morning? And I’ve got over three hundred hits just from there. This is friggin’ huge.”

  “David, look at me.” Becky’s tone was identical to one his mother used just before something really bad happened to him.

  “Please don’t speak to me that way.”

  Becky’s jaw dropped. “Really? That’s your comment to me? Don’t speak to me that way? You let Grayson talk you into a bad idea.”

  David gaped. How could she be this far out of touch? This was the twenty-first-century Watergate, and he was Woodward and Bernstein combined. How could she not see the significance? “I’m reporting fact, Becky. When this all settles out, I’m going to be famous.”

  “Jack the Ripper is famous, David. Erik and Lyle Menendez are famous. Jeffrey Dahmer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and John Wilkes Booth are all famous.”

  He felt as if he’d been slapped. “What are you saying?”

  Her face red, she leaned forward and planted her hands on her hips, her shoulders out. The posture reminded David of a chicken. “I’m saying that fame for fame’s sake is a fool’s errand. You’ve invited millions of people who’d otherwise never have known about this stuff to join the rabble that’s calling for your head.”

  David shook his head emphatically. “No,” he said. “I’m the voice of reason here. I’m the one who’s telling the truth here.”

  She looked stunned. “The truth?”

  He waited for it.

  “At what point in your life did the truth become the driving element of media coverage?”

  David didn’t know where she was going, so he didn’t know what to say.

  “Jesus, David. What we do isn’t about discovering the truth. It’s about telling compelling stories that happen to be true. Well, within the sleeve of being true. There is no absolute value to truth.”

  Something tugged in his gut. “What are you saying?”

  “Nixon,” Becky said. “He ended the war in Vietnam, he opened China to the West. What’s he remembered for? Watergate. Clinton. He balanced the budget, he ended genocide in the Balkans. What’s he remembered for? Boffing trailer park trash. Both sides are true, but only one side is the good story. You’re dishing up conspiracies, and the government is dishing up simple cause and effect. Which one do you think is going to resonate more loudly with the average citizen?”

  “I don’t get it,” David said. “Which side are you on?”

  “I’m on—” Becky’s cell phone rang. She pulled it from the pocket of her jeans. “Does an 804 area code mean anything to you?”

  “Richmond?” David offered. It was a guess.

  Becky pressed the button to dump the call to voice mail.

  At the seventh-floor turn, Jonathan felt the first sign of fatigue in his legs. This is the kind of shit he used to be able to do without limit, and the tingling in his thighs pissed him off. Big Guy had dropped three half-flights behind now.

  “Scorpion, Mother Hen. They’re not answering.”

  �
��Keep trying,” Jonathan commanded. “It’s all we’ve got.”

  “I disagree,” David said. “Is it a risky strategy? Yeah, but it’s the only one that—”

  Someone knocked at the door.

  He shot Becky a concerned look. “You expecting someone?”

  “I never expect anyone who knocks at my door. Including the one who turned out to be on the run from police.” When her little joke turned out to be not funny, she winced. “It’s usually Jehovah’s Witnesses, Girl Scouts, or—”

  Her cell phone rang again.

  “Jesus, when it rains it—”

  Another knock. This one sounded more like a pound. “Federal officers. Open the door, Ms. Beckeman.”

  David felt the blood drain from his head. “How did they find me?” He spoke at a whisper.

  “Dammit, David,” Becky spat. “I told you this would happen.” She checked the number on the ringing phone and dumped it again. “Same number.” She plowed her fingers into her hair. “Oh, Christ, what am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to ignore them,” David hissed. “You sure as hell can’t open the door.”

  Another pounding. “Ms. Beckeman, this is your last chance. Open the door before we open it for you.”

  “I have to, David.” Becky’s face was a panicked mask. Her cheeks were red even though her lips had turned pale. Tears balanced on her lower eyelids. “I cannot go to jail for you. I don’t mind helping, but I just can’t.” She started walking toward the door.

  David launched himself from the sofa to get between her and the door. “Please don’t. Please just give me a chance.”

  “To do what? You can’t run from here, David. You know, we have laws for a reason. Maybe if you just—”

  The phone chirped again.

  “God damn it,” she said. She pushed the connect button while she undid the bolt on the door. “What?”

  “Don’t open the door,” a woman’s voice said. “No matter what you do, don’t—”

  It was too late. The instant the knob turned, the door exploded open. It hit Becky hard in the face, sending her tumbling to the floor.

  David recognized these men the instant he saw them. They were the men from the carousel last night.

  Only now they carried guns.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  All semblance of fatigue evaporated when Jonathan’s feet hit the eleventh-floor landing and it was time to do business. He never looked behind as he shouldered open the stairwell door and stepped into the minimally carpeted hallway. One stride in, he heard someone bellowing a command to open the door.

  “Step it up, Big Guy. This thing’s going down now.”

  Boxers didn’t answer, and he didn’t need to. An impending fight was the perfect Boxers bait.

  Tactical options spun through Jonathan’s mind as he quick-walked around the corner to the right, toward the source of the shouting and pounding. He wanted to avoid firearms because of the population density. An errant bullet fired in this cheap construction could travel through walls from the front of the building to the rear until it hit either a structural member or somebody’s body. Plus guns made a lot of noise and raised a lot of attention.

  Not wanting to shoot brought with it a necessity not to draw fire from the opposing force. If he rushed the bad guys, they likely would panic and start firing. If he just strolled in, he might arrive too late. In this business, a microsecond too late meant forever as a corpse.

  He slowed his gait, settled himself with a breath, and straightened the front of his suit, making sure that the coat was unbuttoned, but his .45 still concealed. He walked with purpose to the turn in the hall. He was a step or two away from the turn when he heard the stairwell door open and close, and Boxers’ heavy footsteps approaching from behind.

  “I was gonna kick your ass if you started without me,” Big Guy said.

  “Hey, if you stroll when others are running, you miss the good stuff.” Jonathan noted that for all the effort, Boxers wasn’t even breathing heavily. “Our guys are right up here.”

  Scorpion and Big Guy turned the corner together, nearly in step. Jonathan saw the two guys in the suits braced against the wall on either side of a door six or seven apartments away. Both had pistols drawn—they looked like SIG Sauer P226s, but it was hard to tell from this distance—and they stood off to the side, as if preparing to dodge bullets fired through the door.

  Boxers reached to his hip to draw his weapon, but Jonathan placed a hand on his forearm. Not yet.

  The look he got in return was exactly the one he’d been expecting. Are you nuts?

  It wasn’t the first time the question had been asked of Jonathan. Whoever these guys were, they hadn’t yet noticed their approach, and if they did and saw weapons—

  The guys moved like lightning as they crashed the door open and slipped inside.

  It was time to run.

  They say everything happens in slow motion during moments of mortal terror, but for David Kirk, life became a freeze-frame, an impossibly distended moment in which the entire world reduced to the reality of the gun muzzle that seemed bigger than a railroad tunnel when it was pointed directly at his head.

  He had some vague awareness that he was diving to the floor, but even as he fell, his eyes stayed focused on the big black circle that would launch the bullet that would kill him.

  Becky had been in the midst of saying something about there being no escape, and the precise accuracy of the statement pissed him off. Maybe if she’d shown a little more positive—

  More men charged the room, one of them a man like any other, though lean and powerful with piercing blue eyes that burned with anger. It was the other one, though, that triggered a new round of fear. The guy was huge. And he seemed to be enjoying himself.

  In seconds, it was over.

  Jonathan crossed the apartment’s threshold at a full run, and never slowed as he lowered his head and drove his shoulder hard into the middle of a gunman’s back. He heard something crack and worried for an instant that it might have been his own collarbone. As he saw the gunman’s weapon leave his hand and cartwheel through the air, he knew that he had earned them all a second or two—all the time necessary to settle what needed to be settled.

  As he and his prey lunged forward toward the floor, Jonathan made an effort to drive the bad guy’s face into the edge of the coffee table, but they fell short, so he drove the face into the parquet floor. Teeth broke, blood spattered.

  Jonathan used his driving momentum to roll to his feet, from which position he drove a savage kick to the gunman’s ear. The bad guy didn’t move.

  Through his peripheral vision, Jonathan saw Boxers’ punch nearly rip the second would-be shooter’s head from his shoulders. The way the guy dropped, he might have been dead. Either way, the imminent threats had been neutralized.

  “I’m clear,” Jonathan said, largely for Venice’s benefit on the far end of the radio.

  “Clear,” Boxers echoed. Big Guy closed the apartment door.

  Jonathan drew his .45 and pointed it at the chest of the man he assumed to be his Precious Cargo. “Are you David Kirk?” Behind him, Boxers drew down on the girl.

  The kid threw his hands in the air. “Please don’t shoot me.”

  “Please answer the question,” Jonathan countered. “Are you David Kirk?”

  The kid’s face made snow look pink. “Y-yes. P-please don’t shoot.”

  Without looking at the girl, Jonathan said, “And are you Becky Beckeman?”

  She made a squeaking sound that sensible people would agree meant yes.

  “Are either of you armed?” Jonathan asked.

  “No,” David said, with such speed and emphasis that it had to be true.

  “Becky, I need an answer from you, too.”

  “No, of course not.” As if having a weapon at a moment like this would be a bad thing.

  Jonathan made a show of holstering his Colt. Boxers, by contrast, merely let his Beretta dangle at his side, muzz
le to the floor.

  “I’m here to take you to safety,” Jonathan said.

  “To safety?” David said. “Who the hell are you?”

  “You ask that as if you had options,” Boxers grumbled.

  “You can call me Scorpion,” Jonathan said. “This is Big Guy. It seems that some people at the highest level of government want you dead. Others at that level want you protected. I’m on the protection side. Are you really inclined to debate?”

  The kid raised his hands even higher. “Dude, I just want something to start making sense.”

  “That makes you a member of a big club,” Jonathan said. “You have to believe me that I’m a friend. If you choose not to, and you instead produce a gun or a knife or a really ugly face, I promise you that I won’t hesitate to kill you. Big Guy really won’t hesitate to kill you. It’s extremely important that you understand this.”

  David looked even more frightened. As if that were possible. “Dude, I just want this shit to stop.”

  Jonathan laughed. “And the best way to do that was to poke a stick into the hornet’s nest?”

  “I told you,” Becky said.

  “Big Guy, get prints from the shooters. And a pulse if they have one.” Jonathan locked David’s and Becky’s attention with a glare and an aimed forefinger. “I’m here to be your best friend, but you can turn me into your worst enemy. Behave yourselves.”

  “Scorpion, Mother Hen,” Jonathan heard in his ear piece. “Is everything stable there?”

  “We’re stable,” Jonathan said, drawing a look from the young folks who no doubt thought that he was talking to himself. “We’ll be out of here in a few minutes. Get ready to receive fingerprints.”

  Both of the bad guys were alive, and both had strong pulses. Neither of them moved, however, as Boxers dipped their hands into their own blood and pressed their fingertips against a stray envelope he found on the coffee table. There were higher-tech electronic means to do this, but neither Jonathan nor Boxers had planned for the day to go the way it was going.

  While the Big Guy busied himself with fingers, Jonathan used his iPhone to take pictures of the gunmen’s faces—full face and profile—in order to do a more thorough database search. When the recordings were completed, Jonathan and Boxers handcuffed them to the old-fashioned radiators in what Jonathan called the elephant position, with their arms extended through their crotches, with the chain wrapped around the radiator’s water pipe.