Safe and Sound (18 page)

“Kak,” he said softly. These odds were impossible. There were too many of them, and they’d be ready. Slowly an idea came to him. He didn’t like it at first. It would involve sharing some of the take. But he didn’t see any other way around it. He needed information. He needed more people. More professionals, like him. He took out his cell phone. No service. No surprises there. He’d have to get down, out of these mountains, and make some calls.

***

Shit,” Riggio whispered. They stood in the parking lot, looking stupidly at the place where the Jeep had been.

“Dude,” Powell cracked, “where’s my car?”

“Funny,” Riggio said. “Real funny.”

“My car looks okay,” Keller said. “We can take it.”

“Check it, Dave,” Riggio said. “We don’t want any more surprises.” Powell nodded and trotted over to the car. As he bent down to examine the undercarriage, Ben began to stir against Keller’s shoulder. “Let me take him now,” Marie said. She put the shotgun on the ground. Keller gently untangled Ben and handed him to Marie. The boy squirmed for a moment, then settled down as she stroked his hair and spoke soothingly to him.

Keller picked up the shotgun and dangled it by his side. “While your friend checks and makes sure that maniac hasn’t booby-trapped my car, suppose you tell me what the fuck this is all about.” Riggio hesitated for a moment, then held up his hands placatingly as he saw the look on Keller’s face. “Easy, now,” he said, “we’re all on the same side here.”

“I’ll decide that,” Keller snapped.

“I should talk this over with my partner…”

“Come on,” Keller told Marie. “Let’s go.” He started walking toward the car. “You’d better get going,” he said. “It’s a long walk home.”

“We need that car,” Riggio said. His voice held a dangerous edge.

Keller raised the shotgun and pointed it at him one-handed. “You think you can take it?” Riggio started to raise the assault rifle. Keller’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“Whoa, whoa, let’s chill out a minute here.” It was Powell, walking over from Keller’s Crown Victoria. “Let’s all get in the car and talk this over while we drive.”

“You two aren’t going anywhere until I find out what you’ve brought down on us.”

“Jack,” Marie began.

“I did just save the kid’s life,” Powell said. “That ought to earn us something.”

“Thanks,” Keller said. “Now tell me what’s going on.”

“Jesus,” Riggio said, his voice tight with frustration.

“I want to know who’s after us,” Keller insisted.

“Fine,” Powell said. “But while we stand here and argue, he could be in that tree line, laying a pair of crosshairs on your head. Or the kid’s.”

Keller was silent for a moment. Then he nodded.

“Okay,” he said. He jerked his chin at Powell. “You drive.”

He turned to Riggio. “Your rifle,” he said. “It goes in the trunk.”

“Now wait just a damn minute,” Riggio sputtered.

“If I don’t like your story,” Keller said, “you’re getting out. And I don’t want any arguments. Either the gun goes in the trunk or you do.”

“It’s not all that uncomfortable,” Marie said. “I’ve been there.”

“Tell you what,” Powell said to her, “Mikey’ll put the weapon in the trunk if you promise to tell us that story.”

Riggio glared for another brief moment, then his face split in a grin. “That’s a deal I can live with.”

“Done,” Marie said. “But you go first.”

“Deal,” Powell said. He looked at Keller. “Deal?”

Keller hesitated, then lowered the shotgun. “Deal.”

They walked over to the car, Keller bringing up the rear. Riggio turned to Marie and said in a whisper deliberately loud enough for Keller to hear, “He always this big of a hard-ass?”

“Yeah,” Marie said. “Pretty much.”

They loaded Riggio’s rifle into the trunk. “Jesus,” Powell said as he surveyed the trunk’s contents. “At least it won’t be lonely. You always drive around ready for a war?”

“Yeah,” Keller said. “Pretty much. Your pistol, too.”

“Yeah, yeah, right,” Powell said. He laid his gun in the trunk. He climbed into the driver’s seat. Keller got into the front passenger seat, the shotgun held on Powell.

“What happens if we hit a bump?” Powell said.

“Drive carefully,” Keller said. Marie got into the back, holding Ben on her lap. Riggio was last. He was holding something in his hands.

“This was lying in the parking lot,” he said. “It must have been Alyssa’s. You think your kid might like it?”

“Yeah,” Marie said. “Thanks.”

Riggio put the stuffed frog on the flat deck beneath the back window. “For when he wakes up.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The valleys were still in shadow, but the sunlight was creeping slowly but perceptibly down the mountainsides as DeGroot steered the stolen Toyota truck down one of the steep off-ramps and exited the Parkway. He retraced the path he had taken to the meeting place, searching for one of the tiny villages he had passed through.

Like most of the towns in the area, it made its living from providing the comforts of home and civilization to the tourists who told everyone they’d come to the mountains to get away from all that. After a short time, he located a place he had noticed and marked. The building had apparently started as a diner, but some subsequent owner had decided to try to dress the place up in a Swiss chalet motif with carved gingerbread trim around the edges of the roofline. A neon sign in the window advertised ESPRESSO, LATTE. SMOOTHIES in curlicued red letters, while another hand-lettered sign in the other side of the window promised INTERNET CAFÉ.

An electronic chime gave out with a grating electronic bing-bong as DeGroot entered. There was a plump teenage girl busy at the espresso machine. She and DeGroot were the only people in the café. She looked up and smiled at him through a mouthful of braces. “Be with you in a minute, hon,” she said. DeGroot took a seat at the counter.

After a moment, she finished what ever intricate operation the machine required and turned to DeGroot. “Welcome to Chez Espresso,” she said in a cheerful mountain twang. “What kin I gitcha?”

“Coffee. Black,” DeGroot said. “And I need to check my e-mail.”

“Ain’t even turned the computers on yet,” the girl said. “But it’ll be two shakes.”

DeGroot was baffled. “What?”

“It’ll be a just a couple minutes, hon,” the girl said. She bustled off toward a back room.

“Dankie,” he said absently.

In a moment, she was back. “Okay,” she said. “They’s bootin’ up. Don’t get much call for the Innernet this early in the mornin’. Most people just want the coffee. You want a granday or a molto granday?”

Degroot rubbed his hand over his face. What the devil was the bitch saying? “Just the coffee, dank…ah, thanks.”

“Yeah, but what size? Granday or molto granday?”

“Ahh…small.”

“That’d be the granday. Just a sec.” As she busied herself behind the counter, she chattered merrily. “I love your accent,” she said. “Are you from Germany?”

“Ah, sure,” DeGroot said. “Germany.”

She nodded sagely. “I knew it. That’s why you’re up so early. You musta just got here. Jet lag, huh? I went to Los Angeles once to visit my cousin. I had jet lag somethin’ awful.” She handed a steaming Styrofoam cup across the counter. “That’s
three fifty,” she said, “And five bucks for the Innernet.” He handed the money to her across the counter. “Computer’s in the back, hon,” she said. “Enjoy your granday.” She winked. “Hope you get good news.”

“Thanks,” DeGroot said. He shook his head as he walked to the back room. The computers were lined up on a counter that ran along three walls of the room. DeGroot glanced back over his shoulder. He hated sitting with his back to the door. He especially hated having the screen visible from the door. But the girl was busy setting up for the day. He would take the chance. He sat down and logged on. With another glance over his shoulder, he typed an address into the browser’s location bar.

The site had no name, just a series of numbers separated by periods. In a moment, he was looking at an online bulletin board only he and a very few men like him knew of. He scrolled through a few of the most recent messages for a few moments and found nothing of interest. Then he began to type. The message was brief and cryptic, containing few particulars. He ended the message with a cell phone number. It wasn’t his real number.

Anyone reading the message who knew the code would know to subtract one from the first digit of the number, two from the next, and so on, to get the real number. It was a simple enough cipher and wouldn’t stop a professional, but it would discourage anyone who had stumbled across the site by accident. He finished the message and logged off.

He took a long drink from the coffee cup. It was awful, but he’d had worse. He ran his hands roughly over his face again. He needed rest. There’d be a few hours before he began getting responses to his bulletin board message.

Who knew how much time after that before he assembled his team? No, the smart thing to do was find a cheap and anonymous hotel and park off for a bit. No use staggering around in a dwaal. He swigged down the last of the coffee in one gulp and headed for the door.

“Good news?” the girl asked as he was walking out.

He flashed her grin. “Don’t know yet,” he said. “Fingers crossed, hey?”

***

“Where are we going?” Powell said. “And do you mind not pointing that thing at me while I’m trying to drive?”

“Just drive,” Keller said. “I’ll decide where we’re going after we talk. I’ll also decide whether to stop pointing the gun at you.”

“All right, all right,” Powell said. “Mikey, you tell him.”

“What do you want to know?” Riggio said.

“First off,” Keller said, “who the fuck is that guy?”

“His name’s DeGroot,” Riggio said. “He’s South African.”

“And how do you know him?” Keller persisted.

“We met in Afghanistan,” Riggio answered. He didn’t go on.

“Tell you what,” Keller said, “I’m really not in the mood for Twenty Questions right now. So why don’t you two get out of my car and walk home.”

Riggio sighed. “First thing you need to know,” he said. “He wasn’t one of us.”

“He wasn’t Army,” Keller said. “So who does he work for?”

“Now?” Riggio said. “He works for himself, looks like.”

“And what about then?”

Riggio shrugged. “It was kind of a weird time,” he said. “There were all sorts of people crawling all over those fucking mountains. Army. Agency. And a buttload of these contractor guys.”

“Mercenaries,” Keller said.

Riggio nodded. “Some of them…like DeGroot…were really in demand. They had, ah, special skills.”

“I think I know what DeGroot’s was.”

Riggio made a face. “A couple of Agency guys told us he was a ‘HUMINT specialist’. Supposedly he was contracting for ISI—Pakistani Interservice Intelligence. But the Agency guys told us if we found someone we thought might have some intel we needed, we should bring him to DeGroot.”

“And he’d start cutting pieces off until whoever you caught gave up what you wanted to know,” Keller said.

“Hey,” Powell spoke up. His voice was low and filled with venom. “You remember the World Trade Center, Keller? You remember the Pentagon? Some of those cocksuckers were behind it. Or they knew where we could find the ones that were. You want apologies, you’ve come to the wrong fucking place.”

“And before you get too goddamn high and mighty,” Riggio added, “you were the one who was threatening to gouge a guy’s eye out to get some intel.”

There was a long silence. When Keller spoke again, his voice was quiet. “You said some,” he said.

“What?”

“You said some of them were behind it.”

“Yeah,” Riggio said. “Well, there were all kinds of assholes roaming around. Warlords. Drug lords. Plain old everyday bandits. Sometimes it was hard to figure out who was on whose side. And sometimes it changed from day to day.”

“We should have just nuked the whole fucking place and been done with it,” Powell snarled.

“Roger that,” Riggio said fervently. “If they give the world an enema, they’ll stick in Afghanistan.” He took a moment to gather his thoughts. “Anyway,” he said, “we were out on patrol. Me, Dave, and Bobby. We had a couple of locals along as translators. We caught this guy coming through one of the passes. He was dressed a little bit better than you’d expect for that part of the hills. The local guys swore up and down he was a bad guy. ‘Osama, Osama,’ they kept pointing at him. We knew he wasn’t OBL, but they seemed to be telling us the guy knew where he was.”

“But he didn’t,” Keller said.

Riggio shrugged. “Like I say,” he went on, “there was more than one flavor of asshole roaming those hills. It was hard to tell who was who. For all we know, our guys may have owed the guy money and that was a good way to get rid of him.”

“But you took him to DeGroot anyway.”

Riggio looked glum, but nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “We did. He was working out of this old house up in the hills. He’d set up with a couple of his merc buddies. They were running their own private prison camp up there.”