Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers

by Diane Capri

Now Hale’s reckless attack in the alley seemed less foolish.

  Gaspar said, “Hale grabbed Sylvia this morning because he needed a pilot, not a hostage.”

  Which confirmed one set of suspicions Kim had flushed out inflight. Sylvia had never been a dispensable pawn in Hale’s game. She was an integral actor in a long term criminal enterprise. She said, “Hale and Sylvia planned to meet Archie Leach at Wallace’s place. They planned to kill us in their crossfire.”

  “How long have we got?”

  “They’re on final approach. Five minutes, maybe?”

  Gaspar accelerated.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Landing conditions were close to perfect. Winds were blowing straight down the runway at 10 knots. Clouds at 6,000 feet. Sylvia turned to line up with the runway. They would land, switch to the waiting chopper, and take off again. Maybe to a final destination in the mountains? Somewhere the Learjet couldn’t go?

  Gaspar put the pedal to the metal and raced the Learjet to the runway.

  He didn’t make it.

  Too far.

  Sylvia landed and taxied fast and came to a stop close to a waiting Huey. She and Hale walked from jet to copter. Just the two of them. No third party. No Reacher.

  Kim was puzzled, briefly. From the air Hale must have identified the SUV as an FBI task force vehicle. He should have aborted the landing and flown on. He would have been out of U.S. airspace before Kim could have done anything about it.

  Therefore Hale knew who was on the ground, and why.

  The Huey’s rotor started turning.

  Gaspar slammed the SUV to a stop.

  Kim opened her door.

  Gaspar asked, “Do you know how to disable a chopper?”

  “I’ll think of something,” Kim said. “But feel free to chime in with ideas.”

  She slid out of the truck and ran through the downdraft from the whapping blades and the storm of noise from the turbine. Sylvia was in the Huey’s pilot’s seat and Hale was about to climb in on the navigator side. He had one foot on the ground and the other on the Huey’s step.

  Kim drew her gun.

  She called, “FBI! Stay where you are!”

  Protocol satisfied.

  Legalities completed.

  Hale didn’t stop. He was too close to an escape planned over too many years. Or maybe Kim’s voice had been swallowed up by the Huey’s noise.

  Gaspar had driven up very close to the front of the Huey, but the bird could clear the truck for lift off. That was the nature of helicopters.

  Kim aimed and fired.

  Bullets hit rotors and ricocheted.

  Hale braced himself halfway into the cabin and returned fire. Covering fire. Not aimed. He was trying to keep Gaspar inside the SUV and hold Kim back until the Huey could get in the air.

  The turbine spooled up and the blades increased their speed. Runway dirt whirled and danced. The Huey went light, and then weightless. It rose steadily. Hale was still on the step, one foot inside, holding on with one hand, and firing with the other.

  Kim had no chance to get on board.

  She did not feel relieved.

  She aimed.

  She fired.

  Four shots directly at Hale’s receding body.

  Two missed.

  But one hit him in the hip and a second in the thigh.

  He fell.

  Forward, into the helicopter’s cabin.

  Shit!

  Sylvia lifted ever higher.

  No target now except the chopper itself.

  Kim emptied her clip into the tail. Solid hits. But no result.

  Sylvia turned the Huey straight toward the SUV.

  Gaspar’s was at the SUV’s weapons locker. He had a rifle. He braced. He aimed.

  He fired.

  Straight at Sylvia as she flew directly toward him.

  The first shot hit the windshield and deflected.

  The second shot deflected.

  Bulletproof. The Huey was armored for war zones. The Learjet was not. They’d stopped for armored transportation.

  Where were they headed?

  Gaspar fired again. He hit the glass in precisely the right spot to take Sylvia’s head off.

  The bullet deflected.

  The Huey raised higher and higher overhead. It turned south, toward Mexico, toward the mountains.

  Kim took a sniper rifle from the rack. She steadied herself against the SUV. She aimed. She fired.

  She hit.

  No result.

  She stared at the retreating helicopter.

  She’d lost.

  She’d failed.

  They were gone.

  Then the Huey’s blades slowed.

  The tail dipped low.

  Kim’s bullet had damaged the Huey.

  Maybe just enough to force Sylvia to land.

  Maybe not enough to make her crash.

  She fired again, and again, and again. She hit the Huey every time. It started to swing and falter. It lost power. It started to come down.

  “Get in!” she yelled to Gaspar. “Drive!” They scrambled into the SUV.

  The Huey started to fall.

  Gaspar closed the gap. The Huey lost its rotors. Began to dive.

  Gaspar reached the runway’s end and kept on going over the flat gravel apron. Kim watched the Huey fall and crash on the desert floor.

  Fifty feet away, Gaspar stopped the SUV.

  Kim jumped out and ran. Gaspar limped behind her.

  Kim felt the heat. Smelled the fuel.

  Sylvia was bloodied but alive. She was unbuckling her seatbelt, trying to rise. Hale had his pistol in his hand.

  Sylvia opened her door and got her left leg out.

  Hale shot her in the back.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Afterward Kim figured the standoff lasted less than ten seconds, but at the time it felt like ten hours. Hale was still alive, but he couldn’t move. He was wounded in the leg, by her handgun rounds, and shaken by the crash. He stayed in his seat. Small tongues of flame were starting up. The desert air was shimmering with heat and vapor.

  She walked toward the crippled Huey. Gaspar tried to stop her, but she shook him off. She said, “Hale, I can help you. Hang on. I’m coming for you.”

  Hale lifted his gun, like a great effort, and aimed it at her.

  “Are you insane?” she called. “You can’t get out of there unless we help you.”

  The flames bloomed bigger, twisting and racing, searching out air and fuel. Gaspar came after her, slowed by his wounds. He called out. She couldn’t understand his words, but she knew he was warning her to stop before the Huey exploded.

  The fire was roaring now. There was black smoke and the stench of kerosene.

  Hale fell out of his seat, to the cabin floor, then to the step, and then to the ground. He tried to crawl away, but he was dazed and his hip and leg were too badly wounded.

  He stayed where he was.

  Kim rounded the tail section. Gaspar came up beside her.

  “We have to get out,” he said.

  “Hale! Hale!” she called over the roaring flames.

  Hale heard her. He rolled on his back. He stared at her.

  He aimed his gun at Gaspar’s chest.

  Instinct.

  Muscle memory.

  Training.

  Kim stopped, braced, and fired.

  Once, twice, three times.

  Hale lay still.

  Gaspar pulled her back.

  She stood a moment longer, looking at the first man she’d ever killed.

  #

  Washington, D.C.

  November 6

  5:45 p.m.

  Twelve hours later they were sitting in a coffee shop across the street from the Hoover Building. FBI headquarters. Cooper’s lair. They had completed their formal encrypted reports to Cooper, detailing all the news fit to print about the last five days. They had divided the paperwork into two separate halves: the Reacher file and the Harry Black investigat
ion.

  They would leave it to others to testify about Black. They themselves were under the radar, and would stay there. Their personal involvement in the Margrave mess, as they’d come to call it during private conversations, was completely redacted. They didn’t know how Cooper had managed to spirit them out of the evidence trail, and they didn’t want to know. Both agents were grateful, but neither said so out loud.

  Kim’s last task was to copy everything to her personal secure storage. Paying my insurance premium, she called it. She hit the send button and watched the upload and closed the laptop’s lid.

  She said, “That feels good.”

  Gaspar smiled. “Too bad about our numbered Swiss accounts, though. Could have made several little girls happy with all that cash.”

  Kim nodded and sipped her coffee. “Have you changed your mind about Finlay?”

  “Should I?”

  “Finlay sent us to the Empire Bank. That’s how we discovered Hale had set up the accounts in our name and Cooper’s, too. Those accounts would have lived forever. Without Finlay, where would we be? Testifying in front of a Federal Grand Jury and dodging the IRS, that’s where.”

  “If he gave us a heads up, he had his own reasons.”

  “I was wrong about him,” Kim said. “And at least I can admit it. He hated Hale, not Cooper.”

  “Probably hated them both.”

  “Maybe.”

  Across the street a young man in a suit came out of the concrete fortress. A junior agent. Little more than a messenger boy.

  Kim said, “Now what, compadre? Back to Miami? Hug the kids, say hi to the wife, drink sweet coffee and sit behind your desk for the next twenty?”

  The young man in the suit was crossing the street. Heading straight for them.

  “That would be a wonderful life,” Gaspar said. “But I think someone has other plans for me. Reacher is still in the wind.”

  “He had nothing to do with any of this, did he?”

  “He was in Margrave fifteen years ago. I bet he never went back. Why would he? So no, he had nothing to do with any of it. We wasted a lot of time.”

  The junior agent approached their table. He said, “Otto? Gaspar?” When they acknowledged, he handed each a small padded envelope.

  Unmarked. But recognizable.

  Gaspar ripped his open. A cell phone. He shrugged. He slipped the phone into his pocket. Kim looked up at Cooper’s office window. Was he standing behind the reflective glass? Right then? Watching? She saw the messenger boy head back toward the building.

  And she saw a man, too, motionless in a shadowed doorway. He was looking straight at her. He was tall, easily six-five, and broad, easily two-fifty. A giant, really. He wore jeans and a leather jacket. Work boots on his feet. He had fair hair and a tan face and big hands. Sunglasses hid his eyes. He looked infinitely patient, just standing there, self-possessed, self-confident, simultaneously alert and relaxed, both friendly and dangerous.

  She turned to Gaspar, to point the guy out. When she looked back, he was gone.

  THE END

  #

  More adventures with Otto and Gaspar on the Hunt For Jack Reacher coming soon!

  For new release notification, to participate in a monthly $100 egift card drawing, free offers, gifts, and general information for members only, please sign up for our Diane Capri Crowd newsletter mailing list. We don’t want to leave you out! Sign up here:

  http://dianecapri.com/contact/

  If you haven’t read my Justice and Fatal series books, maybe it’s time to give them a try.

  (Click each title to buy or download a sample)

  Jess Kimball Series:

  Fatal Distraction

  Fatal Enemy (short story)

  Hunt for Jack Reacher Series:

  Get Back Jack

  Don’t Know Jack

  Jack in a Box (short story)

  Jack and Kill (short story)

  Justice Series:

  Due Justice

  Twisted Justice

  Secret Justice

  Wasted Justice

  Raw Justice

  Mistaken Justice (short story)

  Author’s Note

  Thank you for reading my books. You’re the reason I write! If you liked my books, you can help keep my work going by posting your honest reviews of the book to help other readers decide whether it’s worth their reading time. I hope you will. You can find a complete list of my books with links to the book pages for reviews and other information here:

  DianeCapri.Com

  Sign up to be on our mailing list so we can let you know when new adventures are ready and make sure you don’t miss opportunities for free books. We’ll give you a free book simply for subscribing. You can sign up for either list easily here:

  Sign me up!

  If you want to read the stories Behind the Book you can find them on my website.

  http://www.DianeCapri.com

  Readers know my books are heavily researched, edited, proofed and professionally formatted. If you find errors, please let us know and we’ll fix them if we can. We’re committed to presenting the best possible reading experience and we appreciate your help.

  http://www.DianeCapri.com/contact/

  While you’re there, send me your questions.

  http://www.DianeCapri.com/contact/

  I love to hear from you and I answer whenever I can.

  That said, the criminal activities herein depicted are pure fiction, as are the characters. Any events or real places mentioned are used fictitiously. As we all know, truth is stranger than fiction.

  Thanks again for reading!

  About the Author

  Diane Capri is a lawyer and multi-published author.

  She’s a snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, Novelists Inc., and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.

  Please connect with her online:

  http://DianeCapri.com

  Twitter: http://twitter.com/DianeCapri

  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/diane.capri1

  http://www.facebook.com/DianeCapriBooks

  LEE CHILD

  THE REACHER REPORT

  March 2nd, 2012

  ...The other big news is Diane Capri—a friend of mine—wrote a book revisiting the events of KILLING FLOOR in Margrave, Georgia. She imagines an FBI team tasked to trace Reacher’s current-day whereabouts. They begin by interviewing people who knew him—starting out with Roscoe and Finlay. Check out this review …

  “Oh heck yes! I am in love with this book. I’m a huge Jack Reacher fan. If you don’t know Jack (pun intended!) then get thee to the bookstore/wherever you buy your fix and pick up one of the many Jack Reacher books by Lee Child. Heck, pick up all of them. In particular, read Killing Floor. Then come back and read Don’t Know Jack. This story picks up the other from the point of view of Kim and Gaspar, FBI agents assigned to build a file on Jack Reacher. The problem is, as anyone who knows Reacher can attest, he lives completely off the grid. No cell phone, no house, no car … he’s not tied down. A pretty daunting task, then, wouldn’t you say?

  “First lines: ‘Just the facts. And not many of them, either. Jack Reacher’s file was too stale and too thin to be credible. No human could be as invisible as Reacher appeared to be, whether he was currently above the ground or under it. Either the file had been sanitized, or Reacher was the most off-the-grid paranoid Kim Otto had ever heard of.’ Right away, I’m sensing who Kim Otto is and I’m delighted that I know something she doesn’t. You see, I DO know Jack. And I know he’s not paranoid. Not really. I know why he lives as he does, and I know what kind of man he is. I loved having that over Kim and Gaspar. If you haven’t read any Reacher novels, then this will feel like a good, solid story in its own right. If you have … oh if you have, then you, too, will feel like you have a one-up on the FBI. It’s a fun fee
ling!

  “Kim and Gaspar are sent to Margrave by a mysterious boss who reminds me of Charlie, in Charlie’s Angels. You never see him … you hear him. He never gives them all the facts. So they are left with a big pile of nothing. They end up embroiled in a murder case that seems connected to Reacher somehow, but they can’t see how. Suffice to say the efforts to find the murderer, and Reacher, and not lose their own heads in the process, makes for an entertaining read.

  “I love the way the author handled the entire story. The pacing is dead on (ok another pun intended), the story is full of twists and turns like a Reacher novel would be, but it’s another viewpoint of a Reacher story. It’s an outside-in approach to Reacher.

  “You might be asking, do they find him? Do they finally meet the infamous Jack Reacher?

  “Go … read … now … find out!”

  Sounds great, right? It’s available and you can get it HERE. Check it out, and let me know what you think.

  So that’s it for now … again, thanks for reading THE AFFAIR, and I hope you’ll like A WANTED MAN just as much in September.

  Lee Child

  CRY WOLF

  A LAURA CARDINAL NOVELLA

  J CARSON BLACK

  Copyright © 2013 by Margaret Falk

  Published by Breakaway Media

  Tucson, Arizona (USA)

  www.breakawaymedia.com

  For new release notifications, sign up at:

  https://www.facebook.com/JCarsonBlack.authorpage/app_100265896690345

  For my good friend, author Christopher Smith, who encouraged me to catch up with Laura Cardinal and find out what she’s doing now—thanks, Chris!

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Crime Scene

  Laura Cardinal was just finishing up breakfast when she got the call.

  Her sergeant, Jerry Grimes, said, “You like Madera Canyon?”

  Of course she liked Madera Canyon. Madera Canyon was situated in the Santa Rita Mountains, a beautiful area south of Tucson, oak woodland, wild turkeys, cozy cabins, great hiking, and lots of birds. But Laura knew that Jerry wasn't inviting her to a picnic.