Liberty (34 page)
Authors: Stephen Coonts
They poured money and weapons and endless reams of worthless free advice on the lesser folk ⦠then they left when the going got rough and let their friends take the fall. Lose everything. Do the dying.
And they didn't care. Didn't care a good goddamn.
Today the spell of the road eased Nguyen past the black mood. And the thought of the weapons.
He and Sonny were going to make the bastards pay. Oh, were they going to pay!
The ragheads had shown them how. You had to hate them enough to be willing to die to make them pay. If you did, it was easy. Oh so easy.
His thoughts turned to Dutch Vandervelt. Did the raghead motherfuckers figure out they were being double-crossed? If they did, his bomb wasn't going to arrive where it should.
He thought about that. About what he would do.
You just have to play hardball. Anyone who thought he could play it tougher than Nguyen Duc Tran was kidding himself.
After the doctor smeared his feet with an antiseptic desensitizing cream and wrapped them in bandages, Tommy Carmellini carefully donned a set of oversized tennis shoes
and rode a wheelchair to the front door of the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. Rain was falling from a slate sky. A taxi was waiting. As a nurse stood watching, he gingerly tried out his new feet. Yep, if he walked slow and easy ⦠He eased himself into the backseat of the taxi and waved good-bye to the nurse.
and rode a wheelchair to the front door of the Naval Hospital in Bethesda. Rain was falling from a slate sky. A taxi was waiting. As a nurse stood watching, he gingerly tried out his new feet. Yep, if he walked slow and easy ⦠He eased himself into the backseat of the taxi and waved good-bye to the nurse.
Thirty minutes later he was back at his apartment building. His car was still in the parking lot. Fortunately the FBI had recovered his keys and wallet and returned them to him, although they never mentioned his pistol and he didn't ask. The pistol would have been no big deal in most of the United States, but owning and possessing one in the District of Columbia was illegal. Like every other law on the books, this one was also ignored by crooks, dope dealers, and gang-bangers who continued to use guns as they preyed on the unarmed and each other. Presumably the knowledge that most of their constituents were unarmed made the local politicians feel more secure.
As the rain dampened him down, Carmellini opened the trunk of his car and looked in. Yep, the Winchester was still there. Maybe the FBI didn't search the car.
The agents had carefully searched the apartment. Estep and his colleagues had found twelve bugs, he said, and removed them. He had been reasonably confident that they had gotten all of them, but one never knew.
The place felt stuffy; Carmellini opened several windows. Then he lowered himself into his favorite chair and reached for his remote. He flipped through the channels looking for a ball game. Nope. He clicked the television off.
His feet were still tender. He put them up on his coffee table to keep them from swelling and sat listening to the city noises coming through the window and savoring the cool damp air. Like most people, he rarely stopped to appreciate the moment, celebrate the sublime sensual pleasure of being alive. Just now he was acutely aware of how close he had come to losing it.
He looked up the Graftons' telephone number in a notebook
he had lying beside the telephone and dialed it. “Mrs. Grafton, this is Tommy Carmellini ⦠. Doing just fine, thanks. Is your houseguest, Anna, available?”
he had lying beside the telephone and dialed it. “Mrs. Grafton, this is Tommy Carmellini ⦠. Doing just fine, thanks. Is your houseguest, Anna, available?”
The Russian woman's voice had a delicate, delicious qualityâit was almost as if all the languages she spoke gave her a unique personal accent. Carmellini thought he could detect a note of warmth in her voice when she asked about him. Would she still like to go to dinner? He knew a place, he said. She agreed and he set the time, then said good-bye.
He made the effort to put the telephone on the floor beside his chair and stretched out. Actually the chair was quite comfortable and his feet on the table were at just the right height. With a breeze stirring the curtains and caressing his cheek, his mind wandered to his parents and his childhood days. Carmellini drifted off to sleep with the sound of gentle rain pattering on the window pane.
A noise in the hallway outside his apartment woke him. Or perhaps it had been outside. Some noise that shouldn't be there. He lay with his eyes closed, listening intently.
Rain hitting the window glass. Nothing else.
Now he opened his eyes, moved them around without moving his head, looking at everything in his field of viewâthe objects in the familiar room, the dancing curtains, rain smearing the window glass and dampening the sill.
Arch Foster and Norv Lalouette wanted him dead because they had tried to recruit him for something, and he turned them down. Something they didn't want other people knowing about. He had nothing even lukewarm going in his office right now. They probably wanted him to spy on Jake Grafton. What else could it have been? Did he have that figured right?
He didn't know anything compromising about anyone. Or to be more precise, any live person. Even if someone thought he did, he had had two days to blab to the FBI and the Maryland State Police and anyone else on God's green earth he could telephone or write to.
Damage control for Arch and Norv's friends would certainly not involve silencing him: Would it?
“You're all assholes,” he said aloud to anyone who might be listening. “Arch and Norv were assholes, and so are you.”
Angry with himself for being in this mood, he levered himself erect and padded carefully into the bathroom to give himself a sponge bath and shave. The dressings on his feet were good until tomorrow, and in any event he didn't want to fool with them tonight.
An hour later he stood in front of the door to his apartment, listening carefully. He put his eye to the peephole. Then he unlocked the door and pulled it open.
In the lobby he stopped at the door to the building and surveyed the parking lot. Still an hour or so before dark. The rain had stopped but the clouds were low and the wind had picked up. No one in sight. Yet even as Carmellini stood there a car rolled into the lot and slid into a parking place. A fit man in his late twenties or early thirties got out and headed for the lobby.
Carmellini stared, trying to recognize him.
Suddenly anger flooded him. “Shit!” he muttered, pushed the door open, and stalked out as confidently as he could on sore feet. He ignored the man going into the buildingâdidn't even glance at him.
Tommy Carmellini took Anna Modin to a seafood restaurant on the northern shore of Inner Harbor in Baltimore. He wanted crowds, music, and a fine meal in the company of a beautiful woman. Anna Modin certainly qualified, he thought. She wasn't cover-girl perfect, but she had a presence.
The restaurant was a stand-alone building with a lawn between it and the water, one tastefully landscaped with trees and benches and sidewalks. Along the seawall were moored several magnificent small ships from the age of sail. On the western edge of the little point was a basin for powerboats. Despite the fact that it was a raw, windy evening with low clouds scudding swiftly across the sky, before they went inside Tommy Carmellini and Anna Modin strolled the walkway along the seawall, inspected the sailboats rocking in the swells and straining at their moorings, watched a water taxi swing into a small dock and deposit a load of chilly people from the complex at Inner Harbor. Another group boarded the boat and away it went with the wind behind it, headed eastward for the bars and restaurants at Sewell's Point.
In the growing darkness the lights of the city were illuminating. Carmellini pointed across the harbor at Federal Hill and the barely visible swell of headland where Fort McHenry stood, all the while talking about the War
of 1812 while Anna stood with her coat wrapped tightly around her and the tails whipping in the wind.
of 1812 while Anna stood with her coat wrapped tightly around her and the tails whipping in the wind.
His world felt normal again. He didn't even notice his tender feet. After dragging in several deep lungfuls of tangy sea air, he led Anna to the foyer of the restaurant to warm up. He asked for a table. They were lucky; the maitre d' seated them at a small table by the window overlooking the harbor and the moored ships. There weren't many empty tables remaining. The hum. of conversation, laughter, well-dressed people, subdued classical musicâTommy Carmellini felt good!
Over a glass of wine he decided that Anna Modin was the most interesting person he had met in many a year. She was calm, self-assured, quite at home in a new country, surrounded by people speaking a foreign language. She looked around curiously, then paid attention to him. After they ordered he noticed that she carefully scanned the crowd from time to time and the shadowy strollers on the seawall, barely visible through the trees and shrubs a hundred feet or so away from the restaurant windows.
She had worked in international banking for years, she said, so they discussed that. And places they had both been, movies, music, the arts. Carmellini's recent adventure never came up, nor did the reason Anna was in America. Carmellini would find out about it at the office, he knew, if and when Jake Grafton chose to tell him.
Eventually they discussed the Graftons, Jake, Callie, and Amy. Anna liked them and Carmellini did, too, so Tommy ended up telling her all he knew of the family history, including the recent adventure in Hong Kong.
Dinner was delicious, Alaskan king salmon and Atlantic halibut. They lingered over their meal, had more wine, scrutinized the desserts the waiter brought by on a cart, and ordered carefully. When the desserts came they shared, each sampling the other's, then ended the meal with coffee.
The spell was broken when he noticed she was looking
around again, scrutinizing the other diners, staring at the lights beyond the huge dark windows.
around again, scrutinizing the other diners, staring at the lights beyond the huge dark windows.
She was obviously worried.
“Is someone looking for you?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Husband or boyfriend?”
“No.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
She glanced at him. “Who are you?” she asked.
“Just a civil servant.”
“Whom people try to kill.”
“Sometimes life gets complicated.”
“What branch of the government do you work for?”
“I'm working for Jake Grafton just now,” Carmellini answered, wondering if she would pick up on the subtlety of that answer. People who worked for the CIA were not supposed to advertise the fact since everything involving their employment was classified.
“Did he ask you to take me out tonight?”
“Nope,” he said, slightly relieved that she had moved off the subject of his employer. “Thought it up my very own self.”
“Would Jake Grafton have us followed?”
“Were we followed?”
“I'm not sure. There was a car behind us as we drove to Baltimore.”
“Why didn't you mention it before now?”
“I thought it might be your police.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Protecting me.”
“I see.” He didn't see, but if Grafton thought she needed protection, he was certainly capable of providing some. But not, Carmellini thought, without telling me beforehand. Not in light of my recent adventure. Grafton would not have overlooked that courtesy.
Unless there was some reason that Carmellini didn't know about. Come to think of it, there was little he did know. He considered the situation while the waiter refilled
their coffee cups. Frankly, everything he knew wouldn't fill a coffee cup.
their coffee cups. Frankly, everything he knew wouldn't fill a coffee cup.
When the waiter moved out of earshot, Carmellini asked Anna, “Is there anyone here now that you think might be keeping tabs on us?”
“Tabs?”
“Watching us.”
“Several couples are possibilities.”
“Any single men? Or pairs of men?”
“No.”
For the first time the vulnerability of their position in front of the windows struck him forcefully. If someone wanted to kill her, they were outside watching through the glass, not inside.
Cursing silently to himself, he laid a credit card on the table, then fished in his jacket pocket for his cell phone. His stomach felt queasy, his skin clammy.
“The waiter will bring our bill in a moment or two,” he said with more confidence than he felt. God, what a fool he was! A normal evening! “It will take several minutes to process the credit card, I'll sign the invoice, then we will leave. Tell me if they are also preparing to leave.”
Staring through the window beside their table at the shadows and dark areas of the lawn and the just-visible spidery masts of the sailing vessels, he toyed with the cell phone. He could call Jake Grafton, of course. But what would he say?
I'm scaredâsend someone to save us?
I'm scaredâsend someone to save us?
Get a grip, Carmellini!
For the love of Christâwhy didn't I ask Grafton for a weapon?
The waiter drifted over, presented the bill. Carmellini didn't even glance at it. He nodded, still fingering the cell phone.
“Please, sir,” the waiter murmured. “We ask our patrons not to use telephones in the restaurant. They disturb the other diners.”
“Do the credit card,” Carmellini said sharply, and pushed the plastic at the man.
When the waiter departed Carmellini asked Anna, “Who is after you?”
“I was in Egypt. They tried to kill me there.” She wanted to tell him more, but she refrained.
He felt a surge of anger. Why didn't she tell him that earlier? He had accepted a table by the window and she didn't even peep!
The manager came over, smiled, laid a hand on the back of his chair. “How was everything tonight?”
“Terrific.”
“Please come visit us again.”
“You bet.”
The waiter brought the bill and credit card invoice, all tastefully hidden in a leather folder. Carmellini bent over to figure the tip. Anna Modin reached for her purse, which was on the empty chair to her right. The strap had slipped over the back of the chair.
“Let me help you with that,” the waiter said and walked behind them. As he bent over the chair with the purse Carmellini heard a whap. And the tinkling of glass.
He looked up. The waiter was staring uncomprehendingly at his shirt ⦠at a spreading bloodstain. Carmellini's eyes went to the window, to a small hole in the glass.
As the waiter fell Tommy grabbed Modin's wrist and dragged her from her chair.
“Let's go!”
he hissed, and ran for the door, pulling her behind him as people in the restaurant screamed and several people jumped up and tried to flee. Carmellini bowled over one woman and pushed another man aside, all the while dragging Modin behind him with a death grip on her wrist.
he hissed, and ran for the door, pulling her behind him as people in the restaurant screamed and several people jumped up and tried to flee. Carmellini bowled over one woman and pushed another man aside, all the while dragging Modin behind him with a death grip on her wrist.
The killers could be waiting for them outside!
That thought ran through his head and competed with an overwhelming urge to flee this palace of windows; the urge to flee won. He charged down the hallway toward the foyer, still holding Modin firmly by the wrist.
“My purse,” she pleaded.
“Fuck it!” Tommy Carmellini roared, and charged through the crowd waiting for a table and blasted out the door into the night.
“Can you run?”
“Yes,” she said, so he released her wrist. Dodging and weaving, he led the way toward the parking lot as fast as he could go, oblivious of his sore feet. He never felt a thing.
Approaching the car he scanned the area ⦠and saw no one. The rifle in the trunkâhe wanted it in his hand, wanted it desperately.
There couldn't be more than one or two of them, he thought as he savagely ripped his car keys from his trouser pocket. He pushed the button to unlock the thing as he approached and the fucking lights flashed! A 1987 model, the car hadn't come with that featureâhe had paid extra to have it installed when he purchased the car two years ago!
Oh, shit!
He jabbed the key into the trunk. It opened.
At least he was still ahead of them.
“Get down, get down,” he hissed, and Anna dropped to a crouch.
He grabbed the rifle, felt for the box of shells.
He hadn't fired the Winchester since that day in West Virginia. Hadn't even loaded the friggin' thing. Now he ripped open the box of shells, poured four into his hand, and jammed more into his right jacket pocket. He rammed the brass cylinders into the loading gate on the side of the action. One, two, three, four, all the while scanning for people.
“Get in the car!”
She obeyed instantly.
He worked the lever, jacked a shell into the chamber.
The interior light popped on.
He sidled around the car, opened the driver's door, and
slid into the seat. The interior lights went out when he pulled the door closed.
slid into the seat. The interior lights went out when he pulled the door closed.
He fumbled to get the key into the ignition. The rifle was awkward, too long. Belatedly he realized that the hammer was cocked and the rifle had no safety. He took time from the key struggle to ease the hammer down, then jammed the key in and twisted hard. The engine caught.
He looked aft as he pulled the transmission into reverse. As he did he saw a car roaring down the lane behind them. He heard its brakes lock up and the tires squall.
“Get down,” he shouted, slammed the transmission into park, and bailed out.
The rifle barrel hit something, then he had it and swung it as the sedan behind screeched to a halt and the man in the driver's seat leveled a weapon through his open window.
Tommy Carmellini already had the rifle up. He aimed just in front of the driver's door handle and pulled the trigger. From fifteen feet he couldn't miss.
The rifle boomed and bucked.
Carmellini worked the lever and aimed and fired again, as fast as he could.
After the third shot, the car began moving, crawling away at idle. Carmellini stood, aimed carefully at the shadowy figure of the passenger and fired his last shot through the rear side window, shattering it. The car crept along at an angle and lightly impacted a parked car.
He fed another shell into the loading gate of the Winchester, worked the lever to eject the spent shell and chamber the new round. Walking toward the car he shot the passenger again. Shoved another shell into the rifle, worked the lever.
The driver was lying over on the passenger's lap. Tommy fired another shot into the passenger, rammed another shell into the gun, worked the action, and stuck the rifle barrel through the driver's window. That bullet exploded the driver's head.
Standing there slightly deafened by the gunshots,
Tommy Carmellini carefully loaded the rifle as he scanned the parked cars. Suddenly he realized that he could hear screaming, an ongoing scream that started some seconds ago.
Tommy Carmellini carefully loaded the rifle as he scanned the parked cars. Suddenly he realized that he could hear screaming, an ongoing scream that started some seconds ago.
He swung toward the sound with the rifle up. A woman stood frozen, staring with wide eyes, her hand over her mouth as her companion tugged at her arm.
He looked again into the sedan. The carnage created by the soft-nosed .30-30 slugs at close range was awesome. The interior was spattered with blood and brains.
Tommy Carmellini reached in and twisted the ignition key, killing the engine.
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