by Matthew Dunn
Chen got on his radio and relayed updates. “We have him in our sights. Where the hell’s our backup?”
The police controller replied, “Just hold that end of the street. Multiple mobiles and on-foot units are flanking the road. Get closer if you can.”
The man was now too far away to risk a shot that could miss and enter one of the homes that lined the suburban street. Chen and Carter glanced at each other, gripped their guns, and ran after Cochrane down the center of the street.
Doors of the houses I passed were opening and closing fast—people glancing out to see what was going on. They saw me sprinting down the street, leaping over a picket fence, and running down the alley between two houses.
Gun in hand, I didn’t slow as I bolted through a backyard with a swing set and other children’s paraphernalia, leapt onto a stack of firewood, and jumped over the rear hedge into another backyard. I repeated the same process three times, my pack and the guns inside banging against my back. Breathing fast, I ran along a small arterial road, desperate to get out of Lynchburg.
Officers Chen and Carter had to slow to a jog so that Carter could speak on his radio.
“We’ve lost visual. Last seen on Rivermont Avenue, heading west. Please advise.”
The controller immediately responded. “Stay on him. We need your eyes. All units, all units—I need a perimeter around Rivermont.”
Chen led the way through the alley between two houses, shouting at a woman who opened her window, “Get back inside!”
They entered the yard containing the swings, moving carefully in case he was hiding here.
Neither of them were wearing adequate gear to protect them from a handgun powerful enough to stop their car dead.
The pilot of the NBC helicopter called out, “Okay, here we go.”
The outskirts of Lynchburg were visible.
Patty Schmidt was on her cell to NBC’s office. “What do you mean they fucking lost him? What’s the last location?” She hung up and desperately scoured a map of Lynchburg on her lap. To the pilot, she said, “Got it. Rivermont Avenue. Runs northwest in the city. He’s got to be around there somewhere.”
The pilot adjusted course, his craft now moving fast over Lynchburg’s outer sprawl.
The success of escape and evasion depends on four factors: the skill of the pursued operative, the amount of lead time, chance, and mistakes made by the pursuers. Even with all four factors in place, it is still an awful undertaking. On multiple occasions, I’d needed to extract myself from hostile locations, including Russia and Iran, and each time I’d finally reached safety I’d felt mentally and physically debilitated.
This was infinitely worse.
Lynchburg PD was a professional force, and I was running out of places to run to. There was nothing but danger wherever I went.
But I kept moving, just trying to put as much ground as possible between me and the cops. Partly it was professional pride in my skills that made me do this. Mostly, though, I just had to find Tom.
As I zigzagged along different streets and yards, my gun in hand, I saw a helicopter in the distance. Cops, I instantly thought as I clambered over a fence. No, news crew, I decided, as the shape of the craft became more distinct. But behind the news helo was a Lynchburg police chopper. Matters had just gotten terrible.
“Stop! Police!”
The voice was behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw the two cops I’d earlier shot at heading toward me from the street.
Shit.
Alongside a police helo, the NBC helicopter was over Rivermont Avenue, one of the cameras pointing down at the city, the other capturing Patty Schmidt.
She began her broadcast. “We’re here live from Lynchburg, Virginia. Below us is Rivermont Avenue and its surroundings. Somewhere down there is Will Cochrane.” She glanced at the monitor showing the city in real time. “I’m going to tell you what you’re seeing right now.” Viewers of NBC would be watching a split screen of Patty and what was happening at ground level. “The police are putting up a perimeter. I’d say about a mile, maybe a mile and a half wide. Must be about thirty squad cars down there. Looks like they’re erecting barricades on the north of Rivermont. I can see two, no, three ambulances. Got more police cruisers moving across the city. Probably a combination of city, state, and county. Officers on foot. And we’ve got . . . Now, I can’t confirm this, but south on Rivermont, looks like we’ve got a fifteen-man SWAT team moving along the road. These guys don’t look like regular cops.” Like all good broadcasters in live situations, Patty was telling her story as she saw it. She turned to her cameraman. “Eddie—can you zoom in on these guys?” A moment later the unit was in plain view, the initials swat emblazoned on their black paramilitary outfits and Kevlar. “So there you have it. In light of recent terrorist threats, SWAT and other elite firearms units have changed tactics. Faced with a situation like this where civilians are at severe risk, officers are now tasked to always step toward the threat. Gone are the days of standing back. Instead they close in for the kill, and ignore any injured or dying in their path. These guys will be heading straight for Cochrane.”
The cameraman gestured to her as he saw something else on his screen.
Patty instantly recognized its significance. “Okay, what you’re seeing now are two regular cops.” She glanced at her map, not caring that viewers momentarily didn’t have her eye contact. “I’m putting this as Hollins Mill Road. Residential street. Houses, all of them detached, on both sides of the street. They’re entering the backyard of one of the houses and . . . oh my goodness!”
The Asian American cop came into view in the yard, holding his gun in both hands.
From my position against the back wall of the house, I grabbed his collar, threw him to the ground, and stamped on his jaw and gut. All his partner would have seen was the cop suddenly move left. I heard his fast footsteps. The moment he appeared in the yard, I struck his gun-carrying hands to one side, wrapped one arm around his arms, twisted them up, and punched the officer so hard he just crumpled to the ground.
I didn’t like doing that one bit.
I clambered over the hedge at the back of the property.
The whole of Lynchburg was a blanket of wailing police sirens.
“Any police commanders watching this broadcast—you’ve got two officers down on Hollins Mill Road! And we’ve got a visual of Cochrane. He’s heading west. Off the road on open ground between Hollins Mill and Elmwood Avenue.” Patty made no attempt to hide the intensity in her expression. “He’s running at full speed, but erratically. I guess he’s looking for a different route. He’s . . . Where’s he gone? Eddie—get that camera closer. We need to get closer!”
The pilot, however, elevated the craft by a further two hundred yards, shouting “Police orders!”
Though she was utterly pissed off, she adopted a composed expression as she addressed the camera. “Ladies and gentlemen, quite rightly, we’ve been instructed to move aside and make airspace for the police helicopter. Cochrane’s got to come back into view any second, and the police need to be all over him when that happens. But we’re still here and are keeping our cameras rolling on everything that’s happening down there.”
I opened the back door of a house on Norfolk Avenue. The house was random. I had nowhere left to run; a net had been tossed over the city and the nearby police chopper combined with the news helo meant I didn’t have a chance of escape until it got dark. And that wasn’t for another two hours. Even then, the city would be swamped with searchlights.
I entered the house, silently closing and bolting the door behind me. It wasn’t large—a family home with a downstairs kitchen and living room and three upstairs bedrooms. I could tell the place belonged to a married couple with no kids. Everything was too tidy: no cute children’s drawings stuck to the refrigerator, no piles of dirty gym clothes, no drying dishes from breakfast, no signs of sugary cereal, no toys, nothing. I wished the occupants had been away at work.
But the back door had been unlocked.
And the living room TV was on, broadcasting a news network.
I moved slowly forward through the kitchen, my gun in both hands.
In the living room was a thirty-something woman watching the news, her face partly visible, though she had her back to me. She was engrossed in the live broadcast coming from the helicopter hovering over her neighborhood.
I strode up to her, put my hand over her mouth, and held her head firm. Her body jolted.
I whispered, “I won’t hurt you if you do exactly what I say.” My gun was against her head. “I want to stay here for an hour or two. Nod if there’s anyone else in the house.”
Wide eyed, the woman shook her head.
“I only said nod! Stay still if there’s no one else here.”
She was motionless, but I could feel her trembling.
“Turn off the TV. Carefully.”
She grabbed the remote and complied.
“Once again, only nod if someone is due home in the next two hours. Kids? Husband? Anyone?”
She didn’t move.
“I’m going to remove my hand. If you scream or shout or do anything stupid, I’ll shoot you in the back of the skull. You happy with that trade-off?”
She nodded fast.
I removed my hand. “Is your front door locked?”
“No.”
“Speak quieter. You’re going to lock the door, then turn off all downstairs lights. I’ll be right behind you the whole time. Then we’re going upstairs.”
It took her thirty seconds to complete the tasks. She whimpered, “Please don’t hurt me!”
“I can’t promise that.” It was a lie, but she didn’t need to know that.
When we were in the upstairs bedroom that faced Norfolk Avenue, I told her to close the curtains. All upstairs lights were now off. The room was in half-light.
“Sit on the edge of the bed.”
She did as she was told.
I sat in a chair opposite her, my gun still pointing at her head. Outside, the city was bedlam, with emergency services racing in different directions. But in the room, all was calm, even though the woman had tears running down her face and was shaking.
“What’s your name?”
The woman frowned, as if this question was absurd under the circumstances. “Ni . . . Ni . . . Nicola.”
“Okay, Nicola. We’re going to sit together until it gets dark. Within that time frame, there’re three possibilities. The first is we get on swell, and I walk out of your life once all the fuss out there has calmed down. The second is cops storm your house and things get messy. The third is you freak out, try to get help, and I have to kill you just to shut you up. Two of those options are within your control.” I didn’t mean a word about killing her, but Nicola had to believe I was capable of such a thing. If I showed the slightest doubt, she might risk summoning help, thereby jeopardizing her safety.
“I . . . I get it. I’ll be quiet.”
“Good.” I smiled. “My name is Will Cochrane. I’ve been framed for murders I didn’t commit. But just so we’re clear about things, that doesn’t mean I haven’t killed lots of people before. And I’ll kill you if I have to.”
Chapter 21
Viktor Zhukov parked his car half a mile north of the police barricade on Rivermont Avenue and walked, wearing an earpiece attached to the cell phone in his hand. He was listening to the audio feed from NBC, receiving updates on police movements.
Patty Schmidt was on air. “Police are building their perimeter. The barricade on north Rivermont remains in place. They’ve got a smaller one in the south. Plus they’ve got extra security around Randolph College. Guess they don’t want Cochrane going in there. Looks like SWAT teams and other law enforcement are doing house-to-house searches. It’s a large area to cover, that job’s going to take them well into the evening. Hold on—just getting some updates. Ah, look, guys, I’m sorry to do this, but we’ve just been told there has to be a news blackout on police movements. But we’re still permitted to report as things unfold. Stay tuned. Anything happens, you’ll hear it from us first.”
Zhukov slipped his cell into his jacket pocket, alongside his gun.
The last time Simon Tap had killed a man from long range was when he was in Delta Force in Afghanistan. Back then, he’d been a clinical operator who had no views on whether his country’s military policy was right or wrong. Rather, it was a case of doing the job to the best of his ability. But when the job was done he did have feelings. When he and six of his colleagues protected a village from a Taliban assault that would have entailed all Afghan men of military age being executed, and all women and children given a worse fate, Tap had immense pride that he’d achieved something tangible and good. The trouble was, when his unit left, the Taliban returned the next day and slaughtered everyone in the village.
He supposed it started then—the ebbing away of emotion. More tours with Delta and the paramilitary work he did with the CIA evolved him into a man whose well of compassion was now dry.
Still, it made him good at what he did. Tap didn’t know any other former American operative who’d be prepared to do what he was doing on U.S. soil.
He’d put the backseats down in his car so that he could lie prone and watch the police barricade at the north of Rivermont Avenue through a zoom camera from a distance of half a mile. The Lynchburg police had more pressing issues right now, but if anyone challenged him he would say he was a freelance photographer and was hoping to get a scoop on Cochrane being caught and led handcuffed to squad cars. The city was now awash with media. He wouldn’t look odd. And no law enforcement official would have the time or inclination to search the belongings next to him, including the long metal object wrapped in blankets.
But if they did, he’d kill them.
The silenced sniper rifle was how he was going to kill Cochrane.
Next to him he had his phone intercept device. Painter was talking to Kopański. Having heard the news about what was happening, Kopański was heading toward Lynchburg. Painter was about to board a flight to JFK.
Tap looked around. This far north, there were few houses to observe him on the street, though in case, he’d put up interior black curtains on the side windows. They were for purposes of camera lighting, he’d tell an inquiring busybody citizen or cop. He unrolled the blankets, extended the rifle’s tripod, and aimed the barrel through the rear window at the barricade. If Cochrane was arrested, Tap was 90 percent sure he’d be taken there. It had a massive concentration of police units, plus fire engines, ambulances, and a large black police van that was either a critical response unit or a prison vehicle.
Knox’s instruction to Tap had been clear: Cochrane must not be allowed to be taken into custody.
If he got him in his sights, Tap would take his head off.
He draped the blankets over the weapon, knowing it was zeroed in and ready to fire at a moment’s notice.
Four cops and two detectives were helping officers Chen and Carter recover from the assault on their bodies and pride. The injured men were told to get to the southern barricade on Rivermont and grab a coffee. They’d tried to object, but the sergeant in charge could see how badly shaken they were. No matter how desperate the situation was becoming, he couldn’t afford to have officers in the team whose decision-making skills might be impaired through hurt, fear, or anger.
Reluctantly, Chen and Carter agreed to comply, their fellow officers patting them on their shoulders and telling them they’d get commendations for their bravery.
They headed on foot to the southern barricade.
“Very carefully, Nicola, I want you to go to the curtains, open them an inch, and tell me what you see.” I was no longer pointing my gun at my hostage’s head, but I was still gripping it in my lap. “If you deviate from that, I’ll shoot you in the ankle. Then I’ll put a pillow to your head and blow your brains out.”
I watched her carefully for any signs that my violent im
agery might inadvertently invoke shock or far worse symptoms. I had to maintain the façade of brutal murderer to ensure she didn’t do anything that would risk her life from trigger-happy cops. But words can also be destructive. She looked fit and healthy, and was at an age where fear was unlikely to induce fatal symptoms, but I had to be sure.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked as she stood.
“I . . .” Nicola was staring at the curtains. “I’m a nurse. This week I’m on nights at the hospital.”
“A noble profession.” I kept my eyes locked on her. “No doubt you’ve seen your fair share of awful things.”
She glanced at me with an expression of bemusement. That was good; she was getting some fight in her. “Nothing on this scale!”
I waved my hand dismissively. “Scale doesn’t come into it. Impact on persons involved is all that matters. Now—open the curtains a fraction and tell me what you see.”
Nicola looked at the street. “Police are everywhere.”
“Descriptions?”
“What?”
“You know this city. Are they all local cops?”
“Not all of them, no. They’ve got some guys from the sheriff’s department. They’re all just standing around. Nobody seems to be doing anything.”
“They’re controlling ground, waiting for the specialists to do their job. Do you see SWAT?”
“No.”
“Then they’re probably still on Rivermont, doing house-to-house before moving to another street. They will come here.”
“And what will you do to them if they come here?”
I didn’t answer. “Sit back on the bed.”
Once again facing me, Nicola asked, “Is that the gun you used to kill the woman in New York?”
