The American (42 page)

 

Vanderveen spun around when he heard what might have been, carrying high over the howling wind, a scream of agony and bottomless pain. The sound brought a smile to his face. Kealey was coming.

The path had ended in a wide clearing, several solitary fence posts standing guard on the perimeter. The mud was churning around his feet as though attempting to swallow him whole, but far more terrifying was the precipitous drop that ended the world just 10 feet in front of him. The sky above was in constant motion, twisting black clouds lit bright by sheets of lightning, the thunder pounding hard just seconds later with enough force to make the ground shake. The wind was icy cold and constant, bringing silver streaks of rain in from over the tortuous swells of the ocean.

He tried to think. Kealey had his gun, and he was without a weapon. He had to get out of the clearing immediately.

Directly behind him, where the path turned into the underbrush, Vanderveen heard the unmistakable sound of splashing feet.

 

Kealey turned the corner and stepped into the empty clearing. He was buffeted hard by the wind, which didn't seem to be going in any one direction, but the USP Compact was up and steady in front of him. He had dropped the magazine on the self-loading pistol on the way out of the house to see that it contained four bullets. That meant that Vanderveen had not reloaded after his bloody escape from F Street, as only three rounds had been fired inside the house. There was one in the chamber, though, so he actually had five Federal 155 grain Hydra-Shok rounds with which to kill the man, and he planned to use every last one of them.

He wasn't sure if that would be enough. In the recessed lighting of the kitchen, Vanderveen had seemed almost inhuman. Part of it was his appearance. It had been Ryan's first close look at the man in almost eight years, and he clearly hadn't lost a step in that period of time. If anything, he looked even stronger and leaner than he had during his time as one of the most capable soldiers in the U.S. Special Forces community.

More than that, though, was the fact that Vanderveen appeared to be driven by something far more powerful than his natural physical strength. It was the way his eyes burned with that strange light that others, not knowing better, might have mistaken for ambition, religious fervor, greed, or any other kind of overpowering emotion.

Kealey was under no such illusions. He knew that Will Vanderveen was driven by hate, and hate alone.

For Ryan, these were not specific thoughts, but vague considerations that drifted on the edge of his tortured mind. In the confusion of fact and fiction, however, he was able to grab hold of one thing that may or may not have helped him:
When it comes to that man's eyes, it all looks the same.

Listening to this strange epiphany in his head, everything else went quiet for a minute. The shrieking wind seemed to drop to a murmur, the storm fell blessedly silent, and he heard footsteps coming fast behind him.

He turned without looking, the gun coming up. As he fired, he felt a stinging in his face. Then he was falling, but still on solid ground. The muzzle flashes were lost in a sheet of lightning that briefly turned night into day.

Did I hit him?
Ryan didn't know, couldn't see as he stood and wiped what might have been water out of his eyes. He hadn't counted the number of rounds he had fired, wasn't sure if it was two or three. He didn't know how far he might be from the edge, and he was still trying to get his bearings when something slammed into his left side. He felt his ribs give way with a sickening crack.

The breath left his lungs in a rush as he crashed to the ground. Ryan tried to face the other man, but still couldn't see much more than a vague outline through the blood streaming down over his forehead and into his eyes.

He became aware then that Vanderveen was towering over him, but when he blinked, the man was gone. Ryan wondered why until he realized that the gun was no longer in his hand. Staggering to his feet, his vision cleared momentarily and he saw a dark figure scrambling across the clearing, the outstretched hand reaching for an object in the mud.

Ryan took two steps forward when the pain hit him like a hammer in the side. His ankle felt like it had been crushed in a vise, but somehow he was still running as Vanderveen turned with the gun, getting off one shot before Ryan hit him low and sent him tumbling out into space.

 

Vanderveen reached back for the ground, shocked to find that it wasn't there. He was caught by a sudden downdraft and carried away from the cliff wall, pelted the whole way by stinging beads of rain. Looking up, the clouds were getting very far away, and when he began to turn in midair, his eyes finally locked onto the churning waters below.

The impact came, crushing the breath out of his lungs as the ocean sucked him down. He was instantly paralyzed by the cold, but it couldn't last; the pain followed a split second later, rippling through his body in an agonizing wave, pulling him back from the brink of conciousness. He struggled for the surface as the darkness closed in around him.

 

Ryan was still in the clearing, less than 2 feet from the edge. He lay motionless in the freezing mud, trying to take account of his injuries. He knew without looking that most of the ribs on his left side were broken. His ankle didn't feel right at all; he remembered that it had almost collapsed when he tried to run on it. Gingerly, he reached up to touch the jagged cut on his forehead when he was stopped by another sudden pain.

It didn't take long to locate the source. Vanderveen's last round had caught him in the right side. Pulling back his jacket and lifting his shirt to expose the neat hole, he saw that it was bleeding slowly but steadily. Carefully reaching back with his right hand, he felt for, but didn't find what would have been a much larger exit wound.

He wasn't sure how much damage the bullet had done, and after thinking about it for a while, decided that he really didn't care. Vanderveen was finally dead, but at what cost?

Katie.

He had been numb to this point, but the sense of loss he suddenly felt was far more painful than the injuries he had sustained.

Lying there in the damp, he idly wondered how long it would take for him to join her. His eyelids were already getting heavy, and the cold didn't seem as pronounced as it had been a few minutes earlier. The pain wasn't as bad either. Not nearly as bad.

His right hand moved up and away from the hole in his side, drifting over a lump in his jacket. He felt delirium coming on, so he double-checked to make sure he had not imagined it. No, there was definitely something there. He pulled it out to see: his cell phone.

Ryan put his head back in the mud and thought about it. If he called now, they might make it in time. They might not. He didn't know.

Was it important?

Why should he care?

A few minutes later, he returned the phone to his pocket and settled back to wait.

C
allie Palmer hunched over her steering wheel and tried to see through the rain streaking down her windshield. The storm had gotten progressively worse since her departure from Orono more than two hours earlier, but she was now down to the last few miles of the trip, much to her relief.

She was tired after a full day of classes, but she was also worried about her best friend. That was why she had decided to drive down for the weekend, bringing with her the few things that would be needed to lift Katie's spirits: two six-packs of Rolling Rock and a few good movies on DVD.

Usually that did the trick, but Callie wasn't so sure this time. Her closest friend was really upset over her latest spat with Ryan, and didn't seem inclined to stop brooding about it anytime soon.

She sighed as she turned onto Village Creek Road, the house coming up fast in front of her. As she drove up the muddy driveway—
Ryan really needs to pave that
—she saw something that made her frown. A black Mercedes, sitting on the grass in what had become their unofficial parking area. When she saw that it had government tags, she swore under her breath. Ryan must have returned from Washington early, and Callie knew they were probably way too wrapped up in each other at the moment to even think about answering the door.

She got out of the car anyway and ran through the rain to the shelter of the porch. She had come too far to just turn around and go right back, and she got more and more annoyed as she thought about her wasted trip.

She knocked on the front door. No answer.
Hmmm.
After a brief moment of hesitation, she turned the knob and stepped inside, shivering again, but with pleasure this time when the warm air hit her face.

Not that warm, though, and she could see why: directly in front of her, down the long hall, the back door to the kitchen was hanging open, swinging back and forth in the wind.

She saw shattered panes of glass.

She felt a cold ball of fear in her stomach, a wave of apprehension that turned into outright terror when her eyes moved down, and she saw what looked like thin crimson streams working their way across the wooden floor.

God, no.
She was carried forward against her will. Turning the corner, she found Katie carefully arranged on the kitchen floor, eyes closed, lips slightly parted. Her friend wasn't moving.

Then she saw why, and she started to scream uncontrollably.

 

Jonathan Harper was fast asleep when something roused him from the dark.

He sat up and reached out, fumbling for the nightstand without turning on the light, swearing under his breath when he heard a glass of water hit the carpet below. Then he had the receiver up and next to his ear. “Hello?”

He would have answered the telephone differently had it been the second set residing by his bedside, but this was his house phone, and not the secure unit that was checked every two weeks by DST personnel from Langley. Thus, he was surprised when he heard a young female voice: “Director Harper? Sir?”

He swore again and fumbled again for the lamp. “Yes, this is Jonathan Harper.”

“Sir, this is Sarah Bernstein, the night-duty officer at Langley. I tried to reach you on the secure line, but it didn't go through…”

Harper glanced over and spun the unit around with his left hand. The cord had been pulled out from the back. He scowled and looked over at Julie's stirring form.

He'd give her an earful in the morning. “What do you have for me, Bernstein?”

She hesitated. “Sir, perhaps you'd like to call me back through the switchboard.”

Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, he silently reprimanded himself for thinking so slowly. “You're right. Give me a minute.”

He slammed down the phone hard enough to wake his wife. She sat up and copied his sleepy gestures, running her palms over her face and back through her sleep-tossed hair. “Who is it?”

“I've told you a thousand times, Julie. I need to be able to take calls here immediately.”

“Sorry. I just thought you deserved a break…”

There was no use in arguing with her. He plugged the STU-III back in and dialed a number from memory. “This is Deputy Director Harper.” He recited his authorization code. “Give me the duty officer, please.”

A series of clicks and whirs, then: “Bernstein.”

“Yeah, this is Harper…What's going on?”

Her voice was clipped and efficient. “Sir, I have a call here you probably want to take. Benjamin Tynes from the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office. He says it's important.”

“Cumberland County…?”

“It's in Maine, sir.”

He sat straight up in bed. At the look on his face, Julie's eyes grew wide. “What is it?”

“You have him on hold?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Patch him through.”

More clicks, then a grizzled old voice cutting over the line: “Mr. Harper?”

“You've got him.”

“My name is Ben Tynes, sir,” the man said unnecessarily. “I'm the sheriff for Cumberland County, and I got something here you might want to know about.”

Harper was already losing patience; he wanted to know how the man had gotten his name and number, but he wanted answers first. There was only one person he knew in Maine.
Jesus, Ryan…
“What do you have, Sheriff?”

“I'm at 1334 Village Creek Road. We got here twenty minutes ago in response to an emergency call. What we found was a young woman, DOA, and a man in critical condition. The woman has been identified as Katherine Leah Donovan, twenty-four years of age. She was a student at Orono. The injured man's wallet has him as Ryan Thomas Kealey…Is this making sense to you?”

Harper squeezed his eyes shut. After a long pause, he let out a strangled, “Yes.”

The sheriff seemed confused, expecting the other man to elaborate. Finally, he said, “We're still trying to figure out what happened here. From what it looks like, we're missing a third person—”

Jonathan had a pretty good idea who the third person was. “What about Kealey, Sheriff? What's his condition?”

“Not good, sir.” Another long hesitation. “Not good at all. He was outside for a long time. He's got a badly broken ankle and a gunshot wound to the right side, in addition to a few broken ribs on the left. The bullet's still in him, but there doesn't appear to be any major damage. That's the good news. On the other hand, his core temperature was 91 degrees Fahrenheit when they brought him in. That's severe hypothermia…They think he'll pull through, but it'll be close.”

“What about the girl? Are you sure that she's…?”

“She was pronounced twenty minutes ago, Mr. Harper. She's gone.”

“Give me a second, okay?” Harper lowered the receiver and, ignoring Julie's panicked inquiries, took a moment to collect himself. Finally holding up a hand to quiet her, he got back on with Tynes. “What's it look like to you, Sheriff? Any ideas?”

“Me and my deputies haven't been here all that long, sir, but…I think that your third person got the drop on one or both of them. He did the woman in the kitchen, and we found your man in a clearing 200 feet behind the house. There were signs of a struggle.”

“How did you know he's my man?” Harper asked.

“One of Donovan's friends found the body and called 911. They had to take the friend to the hospital with Kealey—she's in shock—but she was still reasonably coherent when we got here. Somehow, she knew your name, and there's a car outside with government plates, so I thought it made sense to at least try and get hold of you.”

“You did the right thing, Sheriff. Uh…any sign of the third person?”

“Nothing. They warmed Kealey up with heat packs and blankets, trying to get some information out of him. What he gave us wasn't much, but from what I gathered, the other guy went over the side—”

“What do you mean, over the side?”

“Into the ocean, sir.”

Harper pushed his left palm hard against his temple, thinking about it. Ryan had moved to the house only a year earlier, and Jonathan had never been there. He had no picture in his mind to refer to. “What does that mean, Sheriff?”

“It means that he's gone.” The deputy director heard Tynes clear his throat over the line. “Dead.”

“How can you be sure?”

“It's about 180 feet to the water, sir. From that height, it's like hitting cement.”

A long pause. “I hope you're right about that,” Harper finally said. “I
really
hope you're right about that.”

Ben Tynes could tell that he wasn't convinced. “Sir, unless you hit at just the right angle, whatever's left of your rib cage will tear your insides to shreds. And even if you
do
make it through the initial impact, you'll either go so far down that you drown before you can get back up, or you'll be too badly bruised to get out of the water. They usually get dragged out by the current, but I've seen what was left of the few jumpers we recovered. Trust me, it's not a pretty sight.”

He took a deep breath and let it out slow. “Okay, Sheriff. That's good enough for me. I have to make a lot of calls, but I'll get back to you as soon as I get transportation lined up. Call in forty-five minutes.”

“There's one other thing, Mr. Harper…”

Jonathan detected a new note in the man's voice, a reluctance that instantly caught his attention. “Go ahead.”

“This man, Kealey…How well do you know him?”

“Pretty well. He's been a good friend of mine for a long time. Why?”

“What was it between him and this Donovan woman?”

It was the last thing Harper wanted to think about. He was about to snap at the man, but Tynes seemed to be going somewhere with this. “They were engaged. Just a few weeks ago.” He wasn't sure what the sheriff was looking for. “Apart from the usual couple stuff, things were good between them. Really good.”

Tynes carried on, more sure now of what he was about to say: “The reason I ask, sir…I think he saw what happened to her. When we found him, he was turned over on his stomach. The bullet went in about four-and-a-half inches right of his navel, and the wound was…”

“Was what?” Jonathan didn't feel good about this particular line of inquiry.

“…leaking a lot faster than it would have been if he'd been lying on his back.” Another long pause. “And he had a cell phone, sir, but he didn't call anyone. Do you see what I'm saying?”

Harper felt cold, despite the relative warmth of his bedroom. “Oh, no…Jesus.”

The longest pause yet, what seemed like minutes on end. Tynes maintained a respectful silence, waiting for the deputy director to continue.

“I'll be there in three hours,” he finally said.

Harper put the phone down and looked at his wife.

“What?”
she asked.

 

The storm lingered over Cape Elizabeth for a very long time, raging from Portsmouth to Bangor, although those two cities did not define the outer limits of its wrath. The perimeter of this particular hell was not marked by geographic features or the opinions of overpaid meteorologists.

When it was done, many hours later, there were estimates of more than 130 million dollars in total damages, although some of those figures were padded in anticipation of the forthcoming inquiries from the insurance companies.

As always, it was the oceanfront properties that sustained the worst damage.

There were exceptions, of course. Some structures managed to remain largely unscathed due to the quality of their building materials, or to their particular placement on the erratic coastal landscape. One such home belonged to Richard and Brenda Cregan, a retired couple who had moved north after selling their modestly successful landscaping company in the Boston area four years earlier.

The house was everything they had been looking for: quiet, secluded, comfortable but not lavish at four bedrooms and two-and-a-half baths. It was smaller than most of the other homes in the area, but the vast quantity of land that came with the property more than made up for the lack of square footage. The Cregans were avid outdoorsmen, and the trails leading back through the heavily wooded lot behind their home had factored heavily into their decision to purchase the property.

An argument could be made that the trees were more important than the trails, as they served as a natural buffer between the house and the destructive power of the ocean.

The Cregans loved the trails, though, as they made for an easy quarter-mile walk through the heavy woods that came to an abrupt halt just 15 feet over the lapping surface of the Atlantic. In a mild squall, the waves sometimes made it more than two-thirds of the way up the rocky precipice. The cliffs were considerably closer to sea level than those of Cape Elizabeth, which could be found less than a half mile to the north.