The River Murders

by James Patterson

  When she was satisfied I hadn’t been mistreated—obviously mistreated—she sat on a hard wooden chair near my cage. She scooted it in close.

  Vicki said, “I’ve never been inside this place before. It’s nothing like I imagined. More cramped and messy.”

  “This is just the administrative office. The real prisoners are held in the back.” I couldn’t wait to ask questions. I knew Jackson could come back at any moment. “Who else is coming to help you?”

  Vicki ignored my question and said, “Did you really release a bunch of Jihadis from a jail in upstate New York?”

  I almost couldn’t comprehend the question. All I could say is, “What?”

  “I asked you if you released men being held at a jail. It’s a yes or no question.”

  A little panic crept into my voice. “When are you getting me out of here? This guy is crazy.”

  “I think you’re probably where you need to be. I’ve had friends killed both here and in Iraq. Having someone like you, with no clue about what we’re doing, release potential terrorists is dispiriting. It’s bad enough that no one even thinks about the military and the risks we take without people actively hurting us.”

  I just stared at her.

  She sighed and said, “Mitchum, I’m not getting you out of here. You shouldn’t even be in Afghanistan.”

  Just then, the door from the back opened and Jackson strolled back into the office. He barked at Vicki, “Get away from there.”

  She jumped from the chair and backed away from me.

  I had hoped she was going to go off on this asshole. Now I realized I was alone. I waited but they just talked quietly. I couldn’t even pick up what was said. Then Jackson handed Vicki an envelope. Even from across the room I could see the cash when she opened and checked the contents.

  All I could say in a whiny voice was, “You warned him?” It was completely demoralizing.

  She turned to me and said, “We’re fighting terrorists, not releasing them.” Then she pulled out a stack of cash from the envelope and said, “Besides, a girl’s got to party.” Now she was smiling. Enough so her dimples showed.

  I managed to stand and wrap my hands around the bars. “You’re not going to leave me in here, are you? There’s no telling what they’re going to do to me.”

  Now she stepped right next to the bars. I noticed Jackson keeping a close eye on her from across the room. Vicki reached up and stroked my cheek with the back of her hand.

  She said, “Don’t worry. You’ll be home soon. Jackson told me they’re just going to ship you back. They don’t need another screw-up like you caused in New York. And I’ll have some extra cash.”

  I said, “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand enough.” And she held up the cash again and said, “Enough to know I’m going on a serious spending spree on Amazon. And you’re right where you should be. If it were up to me, people like you would have to serve real jail time.”

  She turned and nodded to Jackson and marched toward the front door. As she grabbed the door handle, she turned to me. “I hope one day you’ll understand what you did.”

  Then she was gone.

  CHAPTER 36

  I DOZED THAT afternoon. It was my only defense against a feeling of hopelessness. After Vicki left the building, I saw no way to escape.

  I awoke to a hood being slipped over my head. I was hurried out of the building and twenty minutes later found myself on a ten-passenger prop plane. Just Jackson, me, and the thin Afghan pilot.

  I couldn’t keep from looking around the airplane with an eye to escape. I had no idea how, but I knew I had to try.

  Jackson sat in the seat across the row from me. “Not so sure of your plan to capture me, are you?”

  “I still know where you are.”

  Jackson laughed and waved me off. “You don’t even know where you are. We could touch down anywhere. Even Pakistan. And you wouldn’t have a clue.”

  I decided it was best to keep my mouth shut. I also decided to keep my eyes open. I watched Jackson when he worked his way up to speak with the pilot. The tiny plane made him walk at a funny angle to get past every seat. The handle of his pistol caught on the seats over and over.

  I glanced out the window and noticed we were over wide-open areas. I guess I’d call it a desert, even though technically it wasn’t. Occasionally, I’d see a compound on the ground or maybe several vehicles parked together. But there wasn’t much else.

  Jackson came back toward me and plopped down in the seat across from me again. He turned to me and started to speak. “You know, we’re going …”

  Then an alarm started to beep throughout the whole cabin. I had never heard an alarm on a plane like that before.

  The pilot became frantic.

  I had to look at Jackson and finally ask, “What’s going on?”

  “Ground radar is lighting us up. Some ragheads with old surface-to-air shoulder missiles think they can get an easy kill.”

  Just then, the plane made a wild looping turn to the left. The pilot was good. He banked the plane so hard that I almost fell out of my seat. Then I saw the missile. It zipped past the window right next to the wing. I could hear it as it swooshed by. The pilot’s crazy maneuvers had worked. At least for now.

  Jackson ignored me and started screaming at the pilot. “Get us out of here! Don’t fool around! Just haul ass—now!”

  The pilot leveled the plane, but yelled over his shoulder, “They’re about to launch again.” This time the plane did the same maneuver in the opposite direction. The force of the turn threatened to drop me out of my seat again. Then I realized the position I was in and let go of my grip on the seat in front of me holding me in place.

  It was like I was in zero gravity when I slipped out of the seat, but barely moved. The pilot forced the plane into another turn and I landed on top of Jackson like I had planned.

  My hands were still cuffed in front of me, but my full weight had landed directly on the former Marine. It was satisfying to hear the noise that came out of him when my 230 pounds landed squarely on his stomach. It sounded like an exaggerated effect Al Pacino would make in a movie.

  It was hard to twist and use my elbows effectively with the handcuffs on my wrists. That didn’t mean I didn’t try. I enjoyed throwing my right elbow into his jaw. I expected some blows back my way, but between landing on him and catching him across the jaw, Jackson was completely dazed.

  The plane leveled out and I stood up. It took me a minute to get my legs under me and feel confident about walking up the aisle toward the pilot. I was going to have him turn around and land back at Bagram. I didn’t care what sort of security forces showed up when we landed.

  When I was about halfway to the cockpit, the pilot leaned out from his seat. He had a dark mustache that looked like something out of a fifties noir movie. His left incisor was capped in gold. It was clear when he smiled. And he was smiling as he pointed the small automatic pistol at me.

  Before I could think of another way get to the pilot, I felt the pain in my shoulder next to my neck. Suddenly the world started to spin. As I toppled to the rubber mat on the floor of the plane, I saw Jackson standing behind me.

  It wasn’t until I hit the floor and rolled onto my back that I saw he was holding an empty hypodermic needle. A trickle of blood was running from the corner of his mouth.

  Jackson smiled. “Looks like someone’s going to take another nap.”

  CHAPTER 37

  I WAS AWAKE, but groggy as the plane landed. I had been unconscious for a while. My hands were secured behind my back this time. The bump of the small plane landing on the runway knocked me awake.

  I looked around the plane’s small cabin and the first thing I saw was Jackson’s smiling face. He was sitting directly across from me, just like before. He grabbed me by the arm and held me upright in the seat.

  He said, “We didn’t have much tranquilizer left. I didn’t even know if it would work. But you got a twenty-minute n
ap out of it. How do you feel?” He slapped me on the shoulder, like we were old drinking buddies.

  In truth, I felt like I had a hangover. But my curiosity overrode any of my instincts to close my eyes and put my head back down.

  I managed to croak, “Where are we?” I noticed the plane taxi toward a compact Honda sedan at the end of the runway instead of going to the small terminal. There was no sign on the terminal building and gray duct tape held two of the windows together.

  Jackson said, “We are in the lovely city of Jalalabad. Ever heard of it?”

  I just shrugged. I knew the name, but it hurt my head to talk.

  He continued. “Technically, we could’ve landed at the US Forward Operating Base Fenty a few miles away. We decided to use the municipal airport to get you to our special holding facility here in the city. I’m not sure the Air Force would be particularly happy about us transporting a US citizen in handcuffs. No matter how much of a dumbass he is.”

  A man with dark hair, dressed in civilian clothes, drove the Honda Civic I was thrown into. Jackson slid into the seat next to me and said, “You don’t need a hood here. No one in the city would recognize you. More importantly, no one in the city would care what was happening to you. They have their own problems. Less than twenty miles from the Pakistani border, everything comes through Jalalabad. Including terrorists and the Afghan army chasing them.”

  As we drove through the city and into a residential neighborhood, I thought the place looked like the bad areas of Phoenix, Arizona, or somewhere in New Mexico. Brownish sand with very few plants to break up the monochrome color. Mostly smaller, run-down houses with the occasional well-kept two-story. The climate felt about the same as well.

  Jackson said to me, “This is the center of the world as far as Afghanistan goes. Kabul may be the capital, but this is the crossroads. One of the few cities with daily bus service to both Kabul and Pakistan. And we’ve got a sweet house not too far away.”

  We rolled into the driveway of an ordinary-looking house. We pulled into a carport and entered through the side door, directly into what looked like the living room. Only now the room was crammed with desks, boxes, and other shit laid out in a loose arrangement.

  Jackson led me down a hallway and I looked in each room quickly, just getting a glimpse. In each room, three or four portable cages looked almost like a personsize kennel. That made each of the rooms crowded.

  We hesitated at the last bedroom. Jackson stepped inside and pulled me along. There were two empty cages in this room. A man sat on some blankets inside one of the cages. He wore a white shirt and baggy white pants. He had no shoes on. He just stared at me with dark eyes. Then a smile slid across his face.

  Jackson let out a laugh. “Probably not such a good idea to put you inside with these guys. I don’t have enough people to make sure you’re safe. We’ll have to set up a cage in the main room for you.”

  CHAPTER 38

  THEY STUCK ME inside of a cage in the first bedroom temporarily. There were three men already in the room. They all stared at me silently. I nodded because my hands were still cuffed behind my back.

  Two of the men started to speak in Pashto. The third man laughed at whatever they said. One man dragged his finger across his throat in a slashing motion. I didn’t take it to mean they were welcoming me to their home.

  I glanced around the room. The windows were blocked up with drywall, the only light a single fluorescent on the ceiling. My guess was from the outside the window looked natural. It was only from in here that you couldn’t get to it.

  I leaned against the bars of my cage and tried to think. My head had been clearing since we landed. The effects of the second dose of tranquilizer didn’t last nearly as long as the first. I didn’t know if that was from forming a tolerance to the drug or just that he didn’t have much left to inject me.

  As far as workers here at the jail, there was Jackson and the man who drove us. Every indication was that a third person worked in the house. There was no way I was going to overpower three men. Especially when one of them was Jackson. I doubted I could handle him by himself.

  As I started to think about all the possible ways someone might find out about me, I felt something on my shoulder, then my whole body jerked back to the bars of the cage. I couldn’t breathe. It took me a moment to realize there was an arm around my throat.

  The man in the cage next to me had reached between the bars and grabbed me, hard. I squirmed, but couldn’t get out of his grasp. The other two men were whispering encouragement to him. It was in Pashto, but I got the gist of their encouragement. They wanted to see a dead American.

  There wasn’t a whole lot I could do right now. My hands were cuffed behind my back. I wiggled my head, hoping to be able to bite the arm around my throat. But I got nowhere.

  Then the man with his arm around my throat pulled harder and whacked my head against the bars. I saw stars for a moment. I still wasn’t getting any air. I felt his grip get tighter.

  I had to do something, and it had to be quick. I squirmed, hoping to break his hold. No luck. All I could think to do was stand up. I pushed up with my legs, but the man just rose with me. Oddly, so did the other two men in the other cages. They all stood up at about the same pace I did. They were following the action like they were watching a cricket match.

  When I was upright, I bent as hard as I could. I jerked forward with all of my abdominal strength. My butt braced me against the bars. When it didn’t work, I did it again. I jerked down savagely, hoping to break this guy’s grip and hurt him in the process.

  This time his arm came from around my neck. With nothing holding me upright, I fell facefirst onto the floor of the cage. It was the first time I noticed the cages were sitting on nice hardwood floors. This had been someone’s home once.

  I rolled onto my side, panting, trying to take in as much air as possible. I got a glimpse of the man who choked me. He had a satisfied smile as he stared at me from his cage.

  Jackson’s bulky body filled the doorway. “Are you boys roughhousing?” He laughed out loud when he looked down at me.

  He opened the lock on my cage, then he roughly pulled me out. As we walked down the hallway, he whispered in my ear, “You’re not in Kansas anymore, sport.”

  CHAPTER 39

  JACKSON ESCORTED ME back into the front room. Now I noticed a new cage erected in the corner. It wasn’t like the others with actual bars. This one looked truly portable. It had a grate instead of bars. I had to crouch to fit through the door. There was a square, about the size of a book, in the door that someone could slide food or something else to me. An actual army cot sat inside the cage. It made me feel like I was at the Four Seasons.

  Jackson pushed me in and slammed the door. I turned around to see him locking it. He said, “Back up to the little slot. I’ll uncuff you from out here.”

  It was the first thing he had told me to do that I didn’t mind doing. It felt great to have my arms free. I tried to wave them to get my blood flowing, but hit the top of the cage. I went down to my knees and did it. Then flopped onto the cot. After the floor, it felt like a king-size bed with a memory-foam topper.

  I almost immediately started to drift off. Then I had a hitch in my breathing and sprang awake. It was just a quick dream as I drifted off. But my throat still hurt from where the prisoner in the other room tried to choke me. After that experience, the momentary hitch in my breathing terrified me.

  Jackson worked at a computer on a proper desk directly across the room from me. His work area and cot next to his desk were clean and orderly. I assumed that was the Marine training in him.

  The other two cots were empty, but clearly belonged to someone. The desk closest to my cage had the most files stacked on it. The other desk looked like it was barely used.

  Jackson noticed me sitting up and said, “How’s the throat?”

  I just shrugged.

  “These fellas would love to claim they killed an American. I hope you appreciate m
e looking out for you. You’ll be safe up here with us.”

  “Yeah, I’ve felt protected since you first kidnapped me.”

  “What are you getting so self-righteous about? Didn’t you come to Afghanistan to hunt me down like a dog? The only thing you can bitch about is being unprepared and underestimating us. I’d say that’s an intelligence thing.”

  “Like tactical intelligence on my enemy or my own mental intelligence?”

  He spun all the way in his padded desk chair so he was looking directly at me. “That’s a deep question, Mitchum. I could give you a flip answer, but I respect the question enough to think about it.” He was quiet for almost a full minute.

  I spent the time really exploring the room and Jackson. I noticed we came through the side door. I now realized that if they parked in the carport, no one could see them walk up to the door on the side of the house. This was still the main entry room whether someone walked in through the front door or the side door.

  They were trying to keep this place a complete secret. Despite Jackson’s assertion that nobody cared, obviously someone did. They didn’t want their little holding facility made public.

  Jackson said, “Both.”

  “What? Both what?”

  “Your tactical intelligence was suspect and I think your common sense is poor. You’re easily goaded into things. I’d never want to work with you.”

  “You’ll get your wish.”

  I heard a car door slam. Jackson checked a security camera on a bank of monitors. Then the side door opened and a man stepped through the door. He was about Jackson’s age. Or in good enough shape that it was hard to tell exactly how old he was. He had short brown hair, cut like he’d been in the military. He wore a dark-blue Wayne State University Warriors T-shirt.