by Ty Patterson
‘Good Lord, who did this to you?’
He cut her restraints with a flick of his tactical knife and ushered her inside the home, all the while keeping an eye on the street. Bound, assaulted, very likely meant there were people hunting the woman.
‘Men…looking for me…’ the woman confirmed his suspicions through her cracked lips.
‘You’ll be safe with me, ma’am. Till the cops come.’
Gunnery Sergeant Dwight Kalecki, US Marine Corps, Retired, had seen some bad stuff in his life. He had faced down crazies several times in his life and had come out on top each time.
His home was his fortress, he wasn’t worried about some thugs hunting a woman.
He got her a blanket, brewed a strong coffee for her and then grabbed his phone. ‘Anyone in the police I should ask for?’
He made his call when the woman shook his head.
Cali was in a room surrounded by doctors and nurses with medical machinery hooked to her. The Minters were at the foot of her bed; Jack Minter’s face impassive, Grace and Percy’s faces tear streaked.
Grace attempted a tremulous smile when the twins entered and Percy fingerwaved at them. ‘It’ll take time,’ Jack Minter said softly when Meghan approached him.
She knew what he meant; the psychological damage would take longer to heal than the physical. Chang had briefly read out the extent of her condition and she knew recovery would be slow and long. Like how it was with Beth, she thought.
She and Beth hung around unobtrusively for several moments before making their way outside. She spied Chang who raised his hands in mock defence when she made a beeline at him.
‘Hold right there. I don’t have anything for you. We haven’t questioned her. She’s in no condition, as you can see.’
‘You’re checking out the neighborhood?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Where she was found… the street?’
‘That too, ma’am. Anything else we cops should be looking at?’
‘You spoke to Kalecki?’
Chang gestured with his shoulder at a tall, broad shouldered man who was talking to Zeb. ‘Did. He too didn’t have much to say. Cali approached him and asked him to call us. That’s about it.’
‘Where’s Burke?’
‘Should be landing now. Maybe an hour to get here.’
Meghan studied Kalecki and noted his posture, the strong hands, steady eyes, and the neatly cut brown hair. She had looked him up on their drive, and even Zeb had been impressed when she had read out his service record. ‘Silver Star, Purple Heart, and several other awards. Three tours in Afghanistan, one to Iraq.’
‘Cali was downright lucky she came across him. Any other person.…’
Zeb liked what he saw in Dwight Kalecki; a quiet man who didn’t see the need to speak unnecessarily, a man who had presence.
‘You saw any of the men after her, Gunny?’
A look of surprise crossed Kalecki’s face and then warmth flooded his eyes. ‘No, sir.’ His eyes went up and down Zeb and a glimmer of recognition crossed his face, ‘Afghanistan?’
‘And Iraq, and many other places, Gunny. You did well taking that lady in. Most people would’ve spent time in endless questioning.’
‘Will she be okay, sir?’
‘Zeb. Yeah, looks like it, though it will be a long road.’
They talked about past campaigns, about friends in common and friends lost. Zeb’s eyes were ceaselessly moving, watching people come and go in the corridor, assessing attack and defense spots, as he spoke.
‘You expecting company, Zeb?’
‘Not really. The hospital’s flooded with cops, however, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.’
Zho was questioning the two men in the van in a side alley, forty minutes after the accident.
The accident wasn’t their fault, both men told their story fast, not liking the expression on Zho’s face. A drunk driver had slammed his car into the van, and when they’d tried to take evasive action, another vehicle had rammed them.
The men had managed to extricate themselves from the angry mob after accepting fault, even though it wasn’t, and after giving out their insurance details. They had driven the damaged van away to the alley and one of them had searched for the woman but hadn’t been successful.
To add to that, traffic was still slow and drivers were still angry. The thug didn’t want to draw attention to his search and that hampered his efforts.
Zho had enough of the whiny voices and snapped the neck of one of the men, just like that, when the man was in mid flow. He broke it as if it was a twig and tossed the body away. The other man started hyperventilating, protesting, his voice dying when Zho faced him.
Zho gestured at the hoods with him who grabbed the protesting man and took him away. He would never be seen again.
Zho stood in the dark alley figuring out his next actions when quiet had descended again.
She couldn’t have gone far, he thought. Her hands were tied and she wasn’t in good shape. Maybe someone helped her get away.
He went to the Ford and turned on the police scanner. Nothing there. He made a call to several snitches they had in the police. No record of an escaped woman.
He turned on a flashlight, not wanting to draw attention by using the dome light, and pulled out a map.
Forty-five minutes since her escape. He traced a finger in a circle around the accident spot and set off. He would search the perimeter and then come inside.
He wasn’t far from Baychester, his eyes looking left and right, when his phone rang. It was one of the snitches with an update; a Dwight Kalecki had just called in. He had the woman.
Zho accelerated as the informer recited Kalecki’s address, cursed as a stoplight turned red and waited impatiently. Another car pulled up beside him and its driver, a stocky man, glanced curiously at him, reading the rage on his face.
Zho schooled his face back to its normal impassive expression and surged ahead as soon as the light turned green. He flew through the nearly deserted neighborhood and slowed when he entered Kalecki’s street.
He lives alone, the snitch had said.
Zho read out the numbers on the houses and fingered the knife on his thigh. One man and a damaged woman. It would be easy. He would take out the man first, kill him fast, and drive away with the woman. She wouldn’t offer any resistance, and even if she did, Zho had ways of dealing with her.
A pair of headlamps turned on, ahead, and a white car nosed out of a driveway.
Was that Kalecki’s? Zho tapped the gas and got closer without being obvious.
It was. There were two heads in the car. Kalecki and the woman.
He followed them, searching for an opportunity to ram them and take them out, but no opening presented itself. He kept behind them at a discreet distance and his heart sank when they turned inside a hospital and he saw the flood of cops.
‘The woman has escaped,’ he called Peng Huang at his mistress’s house and briefed him.
The gang leader didn’t rage or shout. Zho knew his mind was working at lightning speed, figuring out the implications and the resultant impact on the gang.
‘She’s in the Bronx State Hospital,’ Zho answered Peng Huang’s question. ‘Surrounded by cops.’
Another vehicle pulled up at the hospital, a SUV, and a figure stepped out, a man who Zho could recognize even from the distance.
Carter.
‘No,’ he said in finality. ‘She can’t be recovered.’
Chapter Thirty-One
Peng Huang made the call to the Hong Kong man, who in turn briefed Beijing man.
No one bothered about time zones and inconveniencing the other, anymore. The plan was coming to a head, time and sleep were luxuries they couldn’t indulge in.
Beijing man was less understanding than Peng Huang. He raged and ranted at Hong Kong man, who listened with his heart in his mouth. There were stories of a secret basement in Beijing man’s house, that had body parts in glass jars. Legen
d was that they were all parts of people who had dared to go against Beijing man.
Hong Kong man didn’t know if the stories were true and he had no wish to find out. He listened without interruption, hoping that the tirade would end soon and a cooler head would return.
It did. Beijing man’s words slowed and then stopped. Hong Kong man heard him take deep breaths and when he spoke again, his voice was calm and measured.
‘When is the next shipment?’
‘It’s on its way.’
‘Do you expect any problems?’ Beijing man asked sharply.
The man in Hong Kong took the phone away from his ear and looked at for a few seconds. How could he be sure there wouldn’t be any issues? He couldn’t foretell the future, could he?
‘No,’ he replied and hoped that some part of him wouldn’t end up in that basement museum of Beijing man.
This semi was trundling along at a good pace on the I-80 E to New York, its driver blissfully unaware that he too was part of a larger plot. This driver too was an owner-operator, and he had driven this route, from Ansonia, Ohio, to New York, several times.
He’d picked up the load just outside the small town of Ansonia, in virtually similar circumstances to Quincy Steinke’s. He too had been asked to take his time and had been offered a bonus for safe delivery.
Hardly anyone offered bonuses in the transporting business these days, and the very thought made him go warm and think well of his fellow human beings.
His accident was less dramatic than Quincy Steinke’s. He didn’t know it was meant to be less dramatic.
His front tire burst, a rare but not uncommon occurrence, and when he’d finished bringing the vehicle to a halt, he hopped out and saw to his dismay, most of his rear ones, on the driver’s side, were shot to pieces too.
He gazed stupidly at the flats and at the pieces of synthetic rubber on the highway, droppings from his vehicle. Other vehicles were swerving around the larger pieces of debris, and a couple of eighteen wheelers sounded their horns in sympathy as they went past.
The driver crouched and inspected the rear tires but couldn’t work out why they had burst. He sighed and got back in the cab and started making calls; to the customer, to the receiving warehouse, to a towing company, to his carrier.
He took a swig of coffee and resigned himself to a long wait and a disrupted schedule.
He was mistaken.
The first vehicle arrived just half an hour later, but it wasn’t the one he was expecting. It was a police cruiser. Two more drove up, their light bars flashing, sirens sounding, even though there wasn’t much traffic on the I-80. The last vehicle to reach him was a police command vehicle.
Armed officers surrounded the driver and demanded he open the container. Carefully, they shouted, they had guns trained on him.
‘Why? What’s going on?’ the driver asked, bewildered, his arms raised to the sky.
Open it, he was told.
He opened the container and sagged in shock when he saw the bales had burst open and the container was flooded with hundreds of bills.
A police officer caught a bill, inspected it, and yelled in his mic, ‘Not drugs. Twenty dollar bills. Must be millions in here.’
The first tweet burst into the social media universe an hour after the discovery of the currency.
More millions on another highway. All fake! Are the bills in your wallet real? #counterfeitbillsinyourpocket.
A social media storm followed, as the same or similar messages were pumped out by hundreds and thousands of users, many of whom were from dummy accounts, spewing canned posts. The mainstream media picked up and ran articles and talk shows, demanding answers from the government. People lined up at their banks and demanded for their bills to be inspected.
The U.S. Treasury arranged another press conference and this time the official acknowledged that the Northlyn’s notes were of a high quality. The paper was the real deal, the combination of cotton and linen in it just right. The weight was perfect, as was the texture. As to the raised ink, the watermarking, the microprinting…there seemed to be a note of admiration in the official’s voice as he described the find in Northlyn.
The I-80 E haul seemed to be of similar quality. The Secret Service was investigating any connection. They were also checking out the Ohio plant. All law enforcement agencies were cooperating and they would have an update soon.
Don’t panic, was his message to the people of the country. The message came too late.
Meghan and Beth caught a lot of the press conference on their screens, but weren’t paying much attention to the hurricane forces of social media at work.
They were closeted in Cali’s hospital room, three days after Kalecki brought her in. They weren’t alone; along with them were Zeb, Burke, Kowalski, Chang, Pizaka, and a bunch of other FBI and NYPD officers.
Cali could talk and she had an eager audience. Burke had introduced the twins to Cali who’d gripped their hands hard, conveying all that she felt, in that simple gesture.
Cali started slowly, retraced her kidnapping and confirmed what Clem and Peters had suspected. The ambulance that had roared past her that night, had side doors which were open and from its dark interior, two pairs of hands had lifted her off the street.
She was bound, gagged, and hooded immediately and her captors drugged her. She was in a windowless room when she came to, maybe five or six hours later. She didn’t know where, didn’t even know if she was still in the city.
She didn’t know if it was day or night, the single bulb in her room remained lit throughout her stay in the room.
After another hour of her coming to consciousness, a peep window slid open on the door and a face peered at her. It slid back and minutes later the door opened and a tray of food was thrust at her.
The man carrying it was Chinese, behind him was another man, and he too was Chinese.
‘Who are you? Why am I here?’ Cali yelled at them.
The second man came from behind and backhanded her; a heavy slap that knocked her back against the wall and split her lips.
‘Eat,’ he pointed at the food and left along with the other man.
Cali drank deeply from a glass of water that Meghan held to her lips and settled back in her bed.
‘Have I really been away for three years?’ she asked. She hadn’t believed her eyes when they fell on a calendar in the hospital. She had badgered the medical staff, who had confirmed the length of her absence, but didn’t have anything more for her. Treating her was their priority, as was the commencement of counseling.
‘Yeah,’ Sarah Burke replied and gripped Cali’s hand tightly when she flinched. ‘We thought Cain had gotten you.’
Cali fluffed the pillows behind her and gripped the railing beside her to sit upright. ‘There were days I wished he had.’
She resumed her story in a strong voice and told of the beatings and torture that started that night.
‘They fed me and then beat me; the beatings were nothing compared to the other stuff. At first it was the two men, later on, it was just the one man. The second one. I’ll never forget him. He was short haired, dark eyed–’
‘Was he tall?’
Heads swung around and stared at Zeb at his interruption.
‘No, why?’
Zeb’s keen look faded and he asked her to continue. Why didn’t matter anymore.
Cali spoke of the waterboarding, the nail extraction, the breaking of fingers and nails, the sleep denial and the lack of light. ‘They wanted to know who I was. Who I really was. What I knew and what I was after.’
‘I resisted.’ She looked shamefacedly at Burke, ‘I think I lasted three days and then I gave in. I couldn’t hold back.’ A tear slid down her cheek and fell on her shoulder. ‘I tried my best to keep holding back–’
‘Cali,’ it was Burke who stopped her this time. ‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of. No one can stand up to sustained torture. Not a single person.’
‘She’s right. Three day
s is more than most trained operatives can last.’ Heads turned again in Zeb’s direction and waited for more. ‘I lasted just two days, once,’ he added quietly.
He never mentioned that. I’ll have to ask him, not that he’ll speak more about it. Meghan looked at her friend for long moments and then focused her attention on Cali when her low voice carried on.
The interrogator was interested in the undercover FBI agents, their locations, identities. They wanted to know Cali’s reporting pattern, how she had infiltrated the research group. Which Chinese agents she knew of.
‘I asked them if they were from some Chinese agency. He laughed. He was a criminal. All his men were gangsters.’
‘He asked what I knew of Lian Cheng Vaughn. How we suspected her. Why I’d befriended her and visited her in California.’
‘She wasn’t a spy, was she?’ Burke. Her face narrow, pinched, leaning towards the bed.
‘She was,’ Cali bobbed her head. ‘What happened?’ she asked when something flitted on Burke’s face.
‘We monitored her emails, recorded her calls, and had her under surveillance. You didn’t know of all this. She was clean,’ Kowalski answered for Burke when the Special Agent remained silent.
‘They knew you would be doing all that. They were one step ahead. Several steps ahead.’
‘None of our other agents were compromised. You knew most of them. You’d have revealed their identities.’ Kowalski protested.
‘I did.’ She saw the dawning light in the FBI agents’ faces and nodded.
‘They played us.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sarah Burke called for a break to attend to several missed calls and messages that had piled up while they were with Cali. She and Kowalski huddled near a watercooler, their phones pressed to their ears, their body language giving out a keep away message.
Meghan observed them for some time and made her way to Beth who was with the Minters. Cali’s folks were calmer, more settled, now that their daughter was recovering. They had briefly heard about the torture inflicted on Cali before Burke had ushered them out of the room. ‘You don’t have clearances,’ she’d said, though they all knew she meant, ‘you can’t stomach hearing her story.’
