The Island (Rob Stone Book 3)

by A P Bateman

  “So we can go across their ground?” Stone asked.

  “Yes.”

  They walked onwards and traversed down a steep dune. The ground that stretched out ahead of them looked rough and unkempt, but three strands of thick boat rope draping from posts denoted the boundary. It looked quaint, but a little over-thought. Stone would bet the owner had a skipper’s cap that he wore for sailing. Most likely with a blue blazer. The ground gradually became more cultivated and the grass twenty-metres from the house had clearly been recently cut. The grass was full of sand though, and the plants in the garden looked like different varieties of seagrass. The view was stunning, an uninterrupted vista of the Chesapeake. The house was constructed largely of chrome and glass and old reclaimed ship’s timbers. In front of the house, secured on a trailer, a sizable silver-coloured RIB with two notably large engines that had been covered with tarps, was attached to a pulley winch system that looked as if it could pull the boat all the way up the beach from low water. To the side, nestled into the ground between the beach and the garden, an ancient forty-foot wooden sailboat had been beached and turned into a child’s climbing platform, complete with pirate flags and lengths of dangling climbing ropes and netting. Stone wondered how much the owner earned to justify such an expensive climbing facility for a child. Or how much was in their checking account. He smiled to himself. Ironic when he thought how much was in his own account after today.

  The no-man’s land of scrubland and dune between the two houses afforded them the perfect view of three-quarters of Kathy’s father’s property. Apart from the Jeep there were no vehicles in the driveway, nor in the road outside. The house blocked Stone’s motorcycle from view. To all intents and purposes, the property appeared deserted. They only watched for ten minutes. They had been away from the house for over two hours. There was no point watching indefinitely, so Stone made a move.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll go ahead and check it out.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “No, I’m coming.”

  “Look, just…”

  “Don’t waste your breath!” she snapped, but there was a good-natured tone to it. “I’m coming with you. I’m unarmed, so there’s no way I’m staying here on my own. Besides, we’re better in this together.”

  Stone considered this for a moment then nodded. She had a point. She was unarmed and it was better to stay together. She was a tenacious woman, and he had to change the way he handled her. In fact, he knew he was handling nothing. Kathy would do what she wanted and he had to live with it. Besides, she had been pretty handy with the shotgun. It would be beneficial to keep her close

  “Was the shotgun yours?” he asked, pushing himself up out of the seagrass and brushing the sand off his damp suit.

  “Dad’s,” she replied.

  “You were pretty handy with it.”

  “I watch movies.” She smiled. “Dad taught me to hit cans and bottles with it. He did some dove shooting a few times, but he softened with age. Didn’t really enjoy killing them. He never was a big shooter, but he kept it for home protection. A cop friend of his said it was the best weapon for home defence, that people under duress tend to miss with pistols and a shotgun takes no prisoners.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Stone agreed, then prompted her, “He’s in a retirement home?” He held her hand and helped her down over a steep part of the slope. “That must be tough.”

  She nodded. “Mom died twelve years ago. The day before I graduated. That was a really shitty day. Dad insisted, along with the principal, that I attend the graduation the next day. All my friends and fellow students were so happy! Full of hopes and dreams and promises, and I was just…” She shrugged, her eyes glossy. “Anyway, Dad is seventy-five and physically fit, but his mind? Well, there’s more and more they can do, close to good treatment, I guess. But the retirement home was always meant to be short-term. I want to sell this place and my apartment when it’s re-built and get a ranch-style single storey on the outskirts of Washington DC for him to come live with me. If I could get things settled, get working properly again and without having to travel to see dad, then I could afford to hire a carer. But there are problems.”

  “Such as?”

  “My job, for one. It’s finished, this story was to be my trump card. Then there’s getting power of attorney over his affairs. It’s not been easy so far. Dad is what you would call in-and-out. He’s fine one day, doesn’t even know who I am the next, then angry that he’s in a home, other days he loves it in there and he’s cleaning up playing poker. I just don’t know what to do.”

  Stone didn’t mention what her editor had said about her employment prospects or status. Maybe her story would swing it for her with the paper. He felt for her. In a time when people regularly and selfishly turned their backs on family, Kathy was front and centre. He looked at her, not knowing what to say. They had reached the boundary of the property, so silence was both necessary and a somewhat convenient distraction.

  Stone took the pistol out of his holster and held it out of sight down by his leg. He was coming up on the upturned skiff. He scanned the ground around him, turned to Kathy. “They’ve cleaned up. There’s no shell casings and the guy you hit fired a dozen or so rounds from here.”

  “That’s strange, isn’t it?”

  Stone nodded, his eyes on the house. “I’ve only seen it once before.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last night. When two guys shot at me, tried to run me off the road. When I got back to the scene, it was as if it never happened.” He shook his head, thinking of what had happened. Suddenly he realised how tired he was. “Jesus, these guys really have resources. I’ve been on the back foot ever since.”

  “It will be dark soon,” she said. “Where are we going to go? I can’t stay here, it’s not safe.”

  “I’ll find somewhere safe.”

  “What, your place?” she laughed. “What? Is that your standard woman in distress scenario? No thanks, I’ll take my chances in a Days Inn!”

  Stone hesitated. “No, I just meant…”

  “I know what you meant!” she chuckled. “You won’t be recognising my lipstick the next day, Agent Stone.”

  Stone looked away from her. He was annoyed. Not really at her, but at himself. He had fallen into a honey trap with Kathy’s imposter, merely so she could take his mainframe computer log-in card. He had made mistakes, but he would be on it now. He would get Kathy to safety and go back to Secret Service headquarters and lay himself bare. It wouldn’t be easy, and it would take time, but he would work towards clearing his name and making amends. Even if it ultimately cost him his career. Kathy would be able to add what she knew, if he could persuade her to help him, and that would lend credence to his report.

  Stone positioned himself in front and to the right of Kathy as they approached the house. It gave him the best arcs of fire. He moved around the decked porch and peered inside. The house had been wrecked, completely riddled with gunfire. He walked around to the back door, Kathy following three paces behind as she was told to. When Stone turned to check her distance she clasped her hands together, bowed and shuffled like a dutiful geisha. He turned back, but she didn’t see him smile.

  Stone checked the rooms, but it was a largely open-planned building and obvious that nobody was there. He walked back outside, Kathy following him. “Go and fetch anything you may need,” he said, then added, “If everything’s not full of holes.”

  Kathy bowed. “Certainly, Rob-San…”

  “Cut it out,” he said as he stepped down the wooden steps and walked towards where the Ford Taurus had been parked.

  “Yes, Rob-San!” she shouted.

  Stone looked at the tyre tracks. They had clearly taken off at speed, digging two trenches in the sandy earth with the wheels of the Ford Taurus. The ground was littered with 5.56mm shell casings. There were hundreds of them. Nobody was going to stick around to pick them up, so why had the 9mm casings from
the MP5 been removed? It puzzled him as he walked over and looked over Kathy’s Jeep. The hood was undone, raised on its springs. Stone got down and peered inside. He did not touch anything for fear of a booby-trap or IED. There were leads and wires that had been ripped out and left to dangle across the engine block. He stepped back and inspected the wheels. The two front tyres had also been punctured, gouged with a sharp knife. He looked up as Kathy walked over with a tiny rucksack. It was garishly coloured and patterned with flowers. It was essentially a Hawaiian shirt turned into a beach bag. It suited her. She was an upbeat, ageless woman. Perhaps it was her size and demeanour, or maybe her Asian features, but Stone could imagine her passing for eighteen in beachwear or look to be in her early-thirties in a business suit.

  “You look confused,” she said.

  “Just trying to make sense of it.” Stone pointed at the ground and the glistening brass cartridge cases. “What was the point in removing the cases left by the man you hit?” He waved a hand towards the house. “It’s obvious what happened here. Unless the MP5 could be traced? If the man with the machine pistol was in government service and was using an accountable weapon, he may well have taken extra precautions.”

  “So someone working for the government, attempting to murder a Secret Service agent? That sounds pretty reckless,” she said. “But if it was sanctioned to some extent, then it’s terrifying.”

  “It means taking this to the FBI or back to my department could be playing into their hands.” Stone shook his head dismissively. “No, I trust the Secret Service. I have to.”

  She looked at the ground, studied the shell casings littered at her feet, then pulled a face when she saw her truck’s tyres. “Oh no! Look what they’ve done!”

  Stone caught her arm as she started towards it. “Don’t,” he said. “I’ve had a quick look, but we don’t know if they tampered with anything. The doors or door catches, or that bonnet lid. Linking it to a grenade through a wire would be child’s play to these people.”

  Stone walked over to his bike. It had been kicked over. But being an open-framed motorcycle, Stone could see that nothing had been tampered with. He reached the handle bar and stood on the footrest. He pushed down with his foot, pulled with his arm and leaned backwards. The bike righted slowly, but the effort was considerable on Stone’s part. Kathy stepped in and helped finish the manoeuvre and the bike rested back on two wheels. Stone rested it on its stand and crouched down to inspect the other side of the engine. He moved around the bike and checked all around. It looked ok, certainly not tampered with, but he needed to start it. He reached into his pocket for the keys, felt the fold of paper he had recovered at Edwards’ house. He took it out an unfolded it. It was soggy and tore as he handled it. The ink had started to run. Kathy craned her neck to see.

  “Do you have your phone with you?”

  She reached into her ruck sack. “I do. It’s my Dad’s. Mine was recently disconnected, the paper paid for it,” she said, taking it out. She thumbed the screen and handed it over to Stone.

  “Fancy for a seventy-five-year-old.”

  She scoffed. “He’s got Alzheimer’s. He’s not a klutz. And seventy is the new sixty, haven’t you heard?”

  “Can I get onto the internet with this?” Stone asked.

  “Of course!”

  It was a Samsung smartphone and he wasn’t familiar with the screen. He eventually found the Google app and pressed. He typed the number into the search bar – 09008000. The first hit was an equation. Stone looked at it, then scrolled down. There were various sites involving all or one of the numbers. Three million hits in all. Stone spaced the numbers out. Nothing of relevance. He played with decimal points. Nothing.

  “Where did you find that?” Kathy asked.

  “I found it on Edwards and forgot I had it in my pocket. I tried dialling it on my cell phone back at his place. No success.”

  “Not enough digits.”

  “No.”

  “Safety deposit box?”

  Stone shrugged. “If it is, then there is little chance of finding it.”

  “What about coordinates?”

  “Of course!” Stone put a decimal point after the nine and the eighty. “South, north, east or west?”

  Kathy shrugged. “South and west.”

  “I doubt it,” Stone frowned at the screen. “About five-hundred thousand square miles of empty Indian Ocean south of the Maldives.” He adjusted the search to North and East. All he got was a ship’s blog, a log of their current course. He reconfigured the coordinates to 09.00N 80.00W and pressed the search icon. “Bingo.”

  “What have you got?” she asked excitedly.

  “Panama.”

  “Any significance?”

  Stone thought of the missing British banker, his bank about to go under amidst allegations of fraud and financial malpractice. “The payments made to the missing veterans was traced and terminated from an account held in a private bank in Panama City. The bank’s owner is missing. I don’t think it’s merely a coincidence.” He folded the damp and crumbling piece of paper and put it back into his pocket. He handed the phone back to her and put the key into the motorcycle’s ignition. The bike fired into life and rumbled away at an idle. “Let’s go,” he said, swinging his leg over and settling into the seat. “Have you ridden pillion before?”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  Stone patted the rear of the seat. In fairness, there wasn’t much for her to sit on. “Just lean when I do. Relax and don’t fight the angle of lean.”

  “What happens if I fight the lean?” she asked. “I’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”

  “If we don’t lean, we don’t turn. It’s alright at slow speeds, but once we get above twenty-five miles-per-hour we need to lean through the turns. The further down I take the bike, the faster and sharper we turn.” He looked at her face in the mirror as she swung her leg over and nestled into his back. She looked scared. He took the helmet off the handlebar and reached it around to her. “You have this. It’ll be a little loose, so just tighten the strap.” He waited for her to get it comfortable, then he dropped the gear shift and eased forwards. She hugged him tightly and he smiled. It felt good. He’d always liked bikes, especially when he’d been in college. Carefree nights, buzzing through the traffic with a girl clung to his back on their way to a party. Snapshot moments. Then the Twin Towers fell. Patriotic duty called and life got a lot more serious. It was the life he had chosen, but he hadn’t lived through many carefree days since.

  The sky was darkening and Stone flicked on the headlight. The road was bumpy and the sand was still a consideration as they motored along. He didn’t want Kathy to experience any skittish handling and make her nervous, he needed her to be relaxed for when the road opened up and he would be able to make swift progress along the forty or so miles back to Washington DC.

  A car came down the road towards them. It was a black Mercedes SUV. When the driver saw Stone’s light they switched theirs on and for a moment Stone couldn’t see against the glare of full beams. The driver seemed to notice their error and dipped. The SUV drove past slowly. Stone saw an attractive middle-aged woman at the wheel talking to her two children strapped into boosters in the rear. He eased back out into the middle of the road when he was clear and accelerated until he neared the next pile of sand in the road. He slowed, and Kathy squeezed him a little. The road bent round to the left and Stone accelerated and leaned into their first real corner. Kathy leaned with him and they travelled through the apex seamlessly. He felt confident in her and built his speed as the road started to leave the coast behind and the sand became more infrequent, until he was confident there would be no more drifts. There was forest on both sides of the road now, the dunes far behind them. There were residential pockets, with houses built like a slice of suburbia and plenty of road turnings leading to cul-de-sacs, but no shops or street malls. The houses would thin out and then there would be nothing but woodland on both sides of the roa
d for another half-mile until the next cluster of homes.

  Stone caught a dazzle in his mirror and saw the vehicle behind them gaining steadily. The driver had their lights on main beams and hadn’t dipped. Stone wound the throttle on and dropped a gear and the bike shot forwards urgently. Kathy gripped tightly, her hands linked together. A right-hand bend was dispatched quickly and smoothly and the bike was up and level again, a little light on the front wheel, and charging down the straight ahead. Stone noticed the car had accelerated rapidly too and its lights remained on full beams. He eased his speed for the approaching left-hand bend and they rounded as smoothly as they had through the previous corner. He accelerated and eased off when he saw the needle nudge way into three figures. The car behind had unnerved him, but it also had a good turn of speed. He would have to get into a dangerous road-race to lose the car, and the car could well have a higher top speed. It couldn’t match the Ducati on acceleration, but it seemed to catch up quickly as Stone braked for the approaching corners and was forced to travel slower than the car through the bends. The next residential area was well-lit and as Stone slowed and took a sharp right-hand bend, he could see the front quarter and bonnet of the car in his mirror. It was a silver sedan. He would bet it all that the car was the same silver Ford Taurus that had been driven by the gunmen.

  “What’s wrong?” Kathy shouted into his ear above the wind and exhaust note of the Ducati. “You’re going too fast!”

  Stone half turned his head, keeping his eyes on the road ahead. “That sedan is following us, matching our speed. Or at least trying to.”

  Kathy turned around to look and the bike swayed half a car’s width across the road. “Sorry!” she screamed back in Stone’s ear. “Is it the same car they used back at the house?”

  “I think it is,” said Stone. “It’s pretty distinct looking.”

  Stone had driven the three-hundred-and-sixty-five horsepower model Ford Taurus in his line of work. The Secret Service procured domestic vehicle brands and specified the higher performance models, and Stone knew how effortless its automatic gearbox was. It was an easy vehicle to drive fast and was making short work of the bends and straights, barely having to slow before the corners. The bike, in contrast, had to slow down and take the corners at a steady speed. The advantage they gained over the car from acceleration seemed to be countered by the corners. The result was an even distance between the two vehicles. A stalemate. Stone knew that in around five miles the road would join a two-lane and that would give him the opportunity to get ahead. It would also have more traffic, and that would seal the deal. If he could weave his way through the traffic and get some vehicles between them and pursuing car, then he could lose them.