Stuart Woods_Stone Barrington 14

by Shoot Him if He Runs

  He went to the garage, started his vehicle and drove down the mountain, heading over the hills into Markstown. He drove through the hilly streets, his headlights off, past the apartment building where Marcel duBois lived, and up a small hill to a little park that overlooked the residence. He pushed through some bushes to a five-foot wall made of coral, checked his sight lines and walked himself mentally through the shot. All was ready, though he reckoned he would have no more than five seconds from the time duBois left his building until he entered his car.

  He would be ready. He glanced at his watch. If he got to bed early, he’d get a good seven hours of sleep before the alarm went off. He got back into the vehicle and headed back to Black Mountain.

  Stone and his party lingered over coffee, enjoying the pleasant night air. Thomas came and joined them, bringing a bottle of brandy and some glasses.

  “Thomas,” Stone said, “is life going to be easier, with Colonel Croft out of your hair?”

  “It’s going to be cheaper for a while, until his replacement, duBois, finds his feet, but soon enough, he’ll be around with his hand out, and I’ll have to pay.”

  “That’s a permanent condition, then?”

  “The cost of doing business. You know, our native folks would be embarrassed to ask a bribe from someone; that’s why I think Sir Winston hired the two Haitians. Their experience at extracting blood from stones runs long and deep.”

  “The St. Marksian reluctance to bribe doesn’t seem to extend to Sir Winston.”

  “No, once political power is achieved, embarrassment vanishes. Sir Winston just looks at the money as his due.” Thomas smiled. “But taxes are low, and so is labor, so it all evens out. I’ll get by.”

  They all raised their glasses and drank their cognac.

  54

  Lance sat in the study of his new house, surrounded by boxes of unpacked books, and read one. He needed to clear his head of work, he knew, so he’d be fresh tomorrow, when he started reading operations files again. Still, Holly’s non-communication nagged at him. He dialed her satphone number again and waited: no answer. Then, just on the off-chance, he called his office number and entered the codes for his voicemail.

  Holly’s voice came through clearly; she had done everything he’d instructed her to and had come up with nothing. Pemberton and Weatherby were dry holes. She finished with a plea for the jet to pick them up. That didn’t concern Lance, since Carolyn would have already notified her. Having e-mailed her Mona Barry’s photographs, he had done all he could do, too. He hung up, took a deep breath and gave himself over gratefully to Winston Churchill’s account of World War II tank operations in North Africa.

  Teddy woke five minutes before the alarm would have gone off. He dressed, brushed his teeth, went to his workshop, grabbed the sniper’s rifle and went outside to his vehicle. Twenty minutes later, he was climbing the hill that overlooked duBois’s apartment building. He parked among some other vehicles, walked into the park and looked carefully around. The sun was not up yet, and the place was deserted. He made his way through the bushes to the coral wall and opened the rifle case.

  He fastened the stock to the gun and screwed in the silencer and, first making sure that no one could see him, laid the weapon on top of the wall while he set up a small tripod. Then he hoisted himself up and sat on the wall, waiting for sun.

  The sunlight illuminated the top of the building first, then began working its way down as the orb rose. Teddy saw some movement inside the penthouse. He didn’t know in which apartment duBois lived, but he hopped down from the wall and sighted through the powerful scope. He saw movement again, a figure crossing a room behind some sheer curtains.

  Then, in an amazing stroke of luck for Teddy, a sliding glass door opened, and duBois, wearing pajamas, stepped into the sunshine striking his deck. Teddy perfected his aim and waited for the man to stop moving.

  DuBois took a few steps, then stopped and spread his arms in a great stretch, yawning. Teddy squeezed off the round and saw the red plume from the chest as the tip of the .223 bullet exploded. DuBois staggered backward and fell into the plate glass door behind him, smashing it.

  Teddy did not tarry. He disassembled the rifle, packed it into its case, viewed the park from the bushes to be sure he was still alone and walked unhurriedly toward his vehicle, pulling his baseball cap low over his face and donning sunglasses.

  He reached the vehicle, and as his hand touched the door handle, a woman stepped out of her house a few feet away, bent, and picked up a newspaper, then glanced up at him as he started the engine. She smiled and gave him a little wave, and he waved back. She didn’t know him, but he had been seen.

  He drove back to Black Mountain, never going faster than thirty miles an hour. Then, as he approached the turnoff to the road up the mountain, the black Mercedes that carried Sir Winston Sutherland to his office each day turned onto the main road and passed Teddy, going in the opposite direction. Before Teddy had even had time to think, he had made a U-turn and was following the Mercedes at a distance of a quarter of a mile.

  Teddy’s mind began to work at top speed, calculating time and distance and plotting an escape route over a road through the hills. All this just in case the opportunity arose. He had thought about doing this many times but he had devoted his energies to eliminating Croft and duBois; Sir Winston would be more complicated, he knew, and he had not done the planning, and he was cautiously excited.

  He watched as the Mercedes entered the outskirts of Markstown and came to a screeching halt. Children dressed in their Sunday finest were pouring out of a church and crossing the road toward three school buses, apparently for an outing of some sort. A nun stood in the road holding a stop sign.

  Teddy stopped some distance back and watched; then Sir Winston made his decision for him. He got out of his car and waded into the group, kissing them and touching their hands. The nun remained at her station, stopping traffic, as did another nun on the other side of the children.

  Teddy turned right and up a hillside, then made a left into a dirt track that ended in a small clearing. Occasionally, he caught sight of the Mercedes and the crowd. He turned his vehicle in the clearing and pointed back toward the road; then he got out, grabbed the rifle case and started back on foot, looking for gaps in the foliage. He came to one that gave him a view of the rear of the car and part of the crowd, knowing that Sir Winston was a few steps away, among the children.

  Teddy was not willing to risk hurting a child, but Sir Winston would have to return to his car, and when he did, Teddy would be waiting. He knelt, opened the case and quickly assembled the weapon. It would be a standing shot, and he clipped on a shoulder strap, wound his arm through it and sighted. He had a window about a yard square, and he knew he would have only a second or two to fire.

  Then Sir Winston appeared in that frame, his driver holding the door open, no policemen in sight, and he did something unexpected: he stopped at the open door, turned and stood waving at the departing children.

  Teddy got off his shot, and he was reminded of the effect the bullet had had on Colonel Croft’s head. He carried the rifle back to the vehicle, trying not to hear the screams of the children, tossed the weapon onto the front seat, started the truck and drove. When he came to the road, he turned left, away from the scene of the shooting, and began climbing into the hills.

  The road turned to dirt, and Teddy drove through a series of crossroads, always turning right, making his way back to the main road. Along the way he stopped for a moment, disassembled and repacked the rifle, then continued on his way. He reached the main road and stopped to check for traffic. He turned left and made his way back to Black Mountain Road. In the distance he could hear sirens.

  Back at the house he noticed that low clouds were moving over Black Mountain. He went over every surface of the truck with a cloth soaked in Windex, then locked the vehicle in the garage and went back to his workshop. He switched on his police scanner and began to wipe down every surface of th
e workshop. The scanner was alive with police broadcasts, directing cars both to duBois’s building and to block off streets around the church.

  He turned on the local radio station to hear the first news reports; TV wouldn’t come on until seven o’clock.

  Stone woke up a little before seven, got out of bed and switched on the TV; out of habit, he wanted to get the local weather before flying. He went into the bathroom, peed and brushed his teeth, then came back into the bedroom, where Holly was sitting up in bed and pointing silently at the TV.

  First reports from the police are that Colonel duBois was standing on the terrace of his penthouse apartment when he was struck in the chest by gunfire. This recalls the death earlier this week of his predecessor in the police, Colonel Croyden Croft, who was shot by a sniper while he sat in the courtyard of the police station.” The reporter accepted a sheet of paper from off-camera. “We have a report that an attempt has been made on the life of the prime minister, Sir Winston Sutherland, but no confirmation yet.”

  “Holy shit,” Stone said quietly.

  “You’re damned right,” Holly said.

  “What do you make of it?”

  “I make of it that Teddy Fay is alive and well and shooting people,” Holly said.

  “And what do you want to do about it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what to do about it,” she replied, “but I’m going to ask Lance.” She got her satphone, switched it on and went outside for reception. No answer on Lance’s satphone; no answer on his office phone, so she left a message about what had happened; no answer on his home phone, either. Where the hell was he? She looked up at the sky: looked like it was going to be a cloudy day, the first since they had arrived.

  Lance had left his house, on his way to Langley, five minutes before Holly called him there. He picked up coffee, a Danish and copies of the Sunday New York Times and Washington Post at a deli near his house, then drove in a leisurely fashion, listening to local news radio, alert for any story that might involve the Agency on a Sunday. He was waved through the front gate, after showing his ID; he parked in his reserved spot in the basement garage, near the elevator, swiped his ID card at the door and went upstairs to his office, clearing three more security checks.

  He put the papers and his breakfast on the coffee table and sat down on the sofa, glancing at the headlines while he sweetened his coffee and munched on the Danish, not noticing the tiny, flashing red light on the phone behind his desk. He switched on the TV, which was already set to CNN.

  He had finished his breakfast and was halfway through the Times when he glanced at a clip of yesterday’s golf tournament and, almost simultaneously, caught sight of the tape crawling across the bottom of the screen:…TWO POLITICAL SHOOTINGS ON CARIBBEAN ISLAND OF ST. MARKS

  Lance walked around his desk and picked up his phone, noticing the flashing red light. He dialed voicemail and listened for a moment, then dialed Holly’s satphone number. “You’d better answer the bloody thing, girl,” he said aloud to himself.

  55

  Holly grabbed the ringing satphone and went outside.

  “Hello?”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Lance demanded.

  “Right here,” she said. “I left a message for you.”

  “I just got it; do you know who got shot on the island?”

  “Only what I’ve seen on local TV,” Holly said. “A policeman named duBois was shot, and they’re saying there was a reported attempt on the PM’s life, but no confirmation yet.”

  “Jesus, that has ‘Teddy’ written all over it.”

  “I don’t know what we can do about this, Lance; our search for Pemberton and Weatherby came up dry, and we don’t have any other suspects for Teddy.”

  “Did you go over the photographs I sent you?”

  “What photographs?”

  “Check your e-mail; our photo analyst says Pemberton and Weatherby are the same man, and she’s made up sample photos of what he might look like in different disguises.”

  “I’ll check that out right now,” Holly said.

  “Forget about Robertson; he turns out to be one of the Heathrow Robbers, a guy named Barney Cox. Call me back if you have any ideas. You know about the airplane?”

  “Yes, at noon; I hope he can land; they’ll probably shut down air travel again.”

  “I’ll get word to the pilot to declare a fuel emergency, if necessary; then they’ll have to allow him to land. You just be there.”

  “Okay.” She punched off the connection and ran into the house.

  “What’s going on?” Stone asked.

  Holly switched on her computer and waited for it to boot up. “Lance had the photographs of Pemberton and Weatherby analyzed, and the analyst says they’re of the same man.” She typed in her e-mail password and waited. “Here we go.”

  “They don’t look like the same man,” Stone said.

  Holly scrolled down. “Look at this; without the facial hair and the wigs they do,” she said and kept scrolling. “The analyst has made up some others showing what he would look like in different disguises; here they are.” She scrolled slowly through a dozen pictures.

  “Wait a minute,” Stone said, pointing. “Look at that one. Who does that look like, except for the hair color?”

  “Holy shit,” Holly said. “That one is a ringer for Harold Pitts! But he sailed yesterday, didn’t he? I mean, we saw him.”

  Stone picked up the phone and rang Thomas Hardy.

  “Hello?”

  “Thomas, to the best of your knowledge, did Harold Pitts sail for Ft. Lauderdale yesterday?”

  “Yes, he did. I was down at the marina, and I cast off his lines myself.”

  “Yeah, we saw him sail out of English Harbour and turn to the east. Is there anywhere along the eastern shore where he could have anchored? Another marina or a cove?”

  “No, it’s all cliffs on that end of the island, and there’s heavy surf from the trade winds, so he couldn’t anchor there, either. What’s going on, Stone?”

  “Have you heard about duBois and the prime minister?”

  “Yes, there was just a report that Sutherland was DOA at the Markstown hospital.”

  “DuBois, too?”

  “Yes. That pretty much cuts off the heads of the government and the police force. There’s going to be chaos, and I think you should expect to be questioned again.”

  “Our airplane is due at noon, and they’ve been instructed to declare an emergency, if necessary, to get permission to land. Do you think we’ll be able to get out of here?”

  “I’ll drive you to the airport and do what I can to help.”

  “Thanks, Thomas.”

  “Why are you asking about Harold Pitts?”

  “Because we think he may be Teddy Fay.”

  Thomas was silent for a moment. “Well, it wasn’t Harold who shot duBois and Sutherland. He’d be a hundred miles north by now.”

  “Could you do me a favor and call every marina and anchorage and see if his boat is still on the island?”

  “Well, there’s no way to call anchorages, but there are only a couple of decent ones; I’ll have somebody drive to them and check, and I’ll call the marinas, then get back to you.”

  “Thanks, Thomas.” Stone hung up. “Did you get that?”

  “Only your end.”

  “Thomas cast off Harold’s lines himself and saw him leave the harbor. He’s checking to see if he could have anchored somewhere else on the island.”

  “Let’s go up to Irene’s and see if he’s there.”

  “Wait a minute; don’t go off the deep end. Let’s wait to hear from Thomas. Anyway, we aren’t armed, and we don’t want to go after Teddy naked.”

  Dino was standing in the door. “You want a gun?” he said.

  “You have a gun?” Stone asked.

  “I’m a police officer; I’m armed at all times.”

  “Good thing we didn’t have to explain that to St. Marks customs.”

&
nbsp; “I don’t mind explaining to customs,” Dino said. He went away and came back with a small 9 mm semiautomatic and a spare magazine. “Here you go,” he said, handing it to Holly. “I’d rather you didn’t shoot anybody with it, unless you really have to; it’s registered to the NYPD.”

  “You don’t have any instructions to shoot anybody,” Stone said to Holly.

  “I want it for defense,” she replied. “We could need it, as you pointed out.”

  “We? What’s this we stuff?”

  “Aren’t you going with me?”

  “Where?”

  “Up to Irene’s?”

  “Before I answer that, I want to know your plan,” Stone said.

  “Well, I’m just going to go up there and confront Irene.”

  “And she’s going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, Teddy’s in the bedroom closet’?”

  “Well…”

  “In the unlikely event that he’s there, she’s going to protect him.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I think you’d better call Lance again.”

  “You’re right,” Holly said, grabbing the satphone. She went outside and called Lance’s office.

  “Yes?”

  “Lance, among the photographs you e-mailed me is one that looks an awful lot like Harold Pitts, Irene Foster’s friend from Virginia, the one you checked out.”

  “And he checked out just fine,” Lance said.

  “Also, Pitts left St. Marks yesterday in his sailboat, bound for Ft. Lauderdale. We saw him leave; we’re checking out other marinas and anchorages on the island now, to see if he didn’t really go.”

  “When will you know?”

  “Soon.”

  “Call me the minute you hear. In the meantime, I’m going to run another check on Pitts.” He hung up.

  Holly went back inside. “Lance is running another check on Harold; he wants to know when we’ve heard whether the boat is still here.”