The Death Trust (29 page)

Masters said, “You’ve got a dentist appointment first thing in the morning, remember? I arranged that on your first day here.”

“You do care,” I replied.

Masters closed her eyes. We sat in silence for the remainder of the journey.

“Pick you up at oh-eight-hundred,” she said as the cab pulled in front of my pensione.

“Okay.” I opened the door and the wind nearly ripped it out of my hand. I noticed that the weather had swept the normally busy street clear of foot traffic. I stood on the sidewalk and motioned for her to wind down the window. “You did good over there,” I said.

She smiled and replied, “Thanks. You were average.”

The cab drove off before I could snap out a reply. Yeah, Masters was learning all right. I watched the taxi’s taillights disappear and felt the rain hammer into me. It was freezing but it felt good on my skin, which was still impregnated with the dust and the heat and the death of Iraq. I picked up my bag and turned toward the pensione. A man walking the other way bumped into me. I was about to apologize because maybe the collision was my fault, but then I realized it wasn’t.

Perhaps it was the ski mask he was wearing, or the way he swung the length of pipe in his hand—like a baseball bat. He was athletically built, lean but muscled, and under six feet. The pit bull type. The rain and the darkness made it impossible to see his face. The ski mask didn’t help, either. I thought I was about to get mugged, but the way he moved—carefully, keeping his balance with his center of gravity low and at a point between his feet, aware of each step—told me the pipe was a disguise. He was no street thug. Two other men, also wearing masks, detached themselves from the shadows and cut me off from the Pensione Freedom. They spread out, moving to encircle me. The rain came down harder and the pellets pounding onto the road made a roaring sound. A veil of shattered water and mist swirled above the ground. Waterfalls ran off my nose and chin. I rubbed my hand over my face to clear my eyes. The movement made me remember the bullet wound in the back of my arm.

There was nowhere to go but backward. Three against one. Not good odds. One of the men produced a knife with a long thin black blade—a dagger, a thrusting knife rather than a slasher, the sort Special Forces use for quick, silent killing, pushing the point up into the base of the skull from under the chin or at the back of the head where the brain stem meets the spinal cord, or sliding it between the fourth and fifth ribs into the heart muscle. I’d used one myself a couple of times. You had to know what you were doing to use it well. The dagger was intended for extremely close-quarter use, like when you were sneaking up behind an adversary who was thinking about Ms. July in the magazine tucked under his cot.

Number three had no weapon, which meant either he was confident without one or he’d dashed out of the house and forgotten that his knuckle-dusters were in his other pants.

My mind raced through the options, assessing the situation. I knew, for instance, that there would be some indecision between the assailants about who would strike first. Basically, they risked getting in each other’s way. They were maneuvering me back into the darkness of the alley. I turned slowly, keeping myself in the middle of the circle, waiting for the first strike.

The muscles of the guy with the pipe twitched. He was reacting to something behind me. My feet moved before I thought about it. I stepped to the side, split the angle. The knife jerked past the space occupied by my head an instant earlier. Light caught the length of the pipe as it swung through the air. I ducked and heard it bat a path through the rain, a low thrumming sound. They were feeling me out.

The plumber got cocky. He stepped forward, pipe raised high to bring down on my skull—a kendo strike. I went forward, down on one knee, prepared to wear the blow, raising the bag I was carrying above my head. The pipe whacked into the soft, rain-drenched leather, and hit Peyton’s Kevlar helmet inside. I struck back, burying my fist deep into his testicles, slamming them into the corner pockets. He collapsed as I rolled to the left and came up beside him, facing his two buddies.

The guy armed only with his fists came next. Suddenly the heel of his boot swung through the air. It thudded into my bandaged arm and it fucking hurt. I dropped the bag, which instantly disappeared in the rain bouncing off the pavement. He drove a punch into my extremely tender sternum. Fortunately, I caught the edge of the blow on an elbow, deflecting it slightly. My stomach muscles weren’t quite what they used to be and the wind was driven out of me. I staggered backward and tripped over my bag. I rolled over several times on the pavement, half gasping, half drowning. I came up on a knee, still sucking in air. The two remaining assailants were looking around like I’d just vanished, Merlin the Magician–style. The darkness and the mist rising from the asphalt had hidden my withdrawal. I was congratulating myself on this when a man materialized out of the water in front of me. The guy with the pipe. I dove at him and knocked him into the pavement. Something cracked beneath my shoulder—a bone. It wasn’t one of mine, which was all that mattered. I scuttled away as the other two raced across toward their fallen pal. A vehicle turned into the narrow road five hundred feet away, its headlights illuminating all three of us. The man with the dagger lunged forward. I reacted, catching his wrist, deflecting the thrust. The speed of the move must have caught him unaware, because it unbalanced him. I helped him along by twisting his arm the wrong way, threatening to break it off at the shoulder ball joint. The headlights bounced nearer. For some reason, I looked at the man’s wrist. Was it possible? I hesitated. Bad mistake. From the edge of my peripheral vision I saw the pipe swinging toward me. I tried to bury my head in my shoulder. Too little too late. The pipe smashed into the side of my—

“Vin…Vin…”

It was Masters’s voice, gentle, soothing. I wasn’t ready to open my eyes. Her sympathetic tone told me that I was probably in a hospital. The hospital smell confirmed it, as did sheets with so much starch that they felt like photocopy paper against my skin. I remembered the fight. I remembered getting hit, and I remembered something else. I kept my eyes closed for another handful of seconds, just to see whether this kindly tone in Masters’s voice would condense into—if there really was a God—mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

“Could you call my pager when he wakes?” said Masters to some unidentified other person in the room.

“Sure,” a male voice said with an accent I couldn’t recognize.

“My number’s on the card.”

I received no kiss. My commitment to atheism would have to continue. I opened my eyes.

The white ceiling was framed by a stainless-steel curtain railing. Yep, no doubt about it, I was in a hospital.

“Special Agent? The patient is awake,” said the stranger’s voice. This time I pegged the accent as Italian. A young man appeared in front of my face, a stethoscope around his neck. Am I imagining it or are doctors getting younger? This guy had a bad case of acne and his nose was red and shiny. His hair was black, oily, and unwashed. He looked like he should still be in school, or maybe in a grunge rock band.

He flashed a pencil light in my left eye and then my right. He told me to look up, then down, left and right, and asked me how many fingers he was holding up. I must have guessed right because he moved on to check my ears and throat. Masters appeared beside him while he continued the examination. She was wearing her best smile. Everyone was smiling at me. I must be in a bad way, I thought.

“What happened?” I asked.

“You took a hit,” Masters said.

“How bad?”

The doctor, having concluded his cursory examination, said, “You’re lucky, Major.”

“Lucky” was a word I’d been hearing quite a bit, lately. It was the sort of word I grouped with winning the lottery, not with being mugged. “How lucky, exactly?”

“Severe concussion, heavy contusions, you’ve lost a tooth, but—”

“Lost a tooth?” I scanned my mouth with my tongue and, lo, the offending molar was gone. In its place was a space big enough to park a Winnebago.

“The root was infected and the tooth probably needed to come out anyway. I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s amazing what they can do with replacements these days.”

I could barely contain my excitement. The doctor was right. This was luck. I tried to sit up, but couldn’t. My arm was heavily bandaged and strapped against my chest and every muscle and joint protested loudly.

“You’ve suffered pretty extensive bruising, but nothing’s broken. As I said, you’re lucky.”

“You’re damn right, Doc,” I agreed. “Have you any idea how hard I’ve been trying to get that damn tooth taken out?”

All things considered, I actually felt terrific. And I was almost giddy with relief at the thought of being free of toothache. “What about the guys who attacked me? I’d like to buy them a drink,” I said. I remembered the fight, the rain, and that something else.

Masters said, “There were a couple of backpackers staying at your hotel, Vin. You owe them big-time. They were in a taxi, saw the fight, got the driver to flash his lights, honk the horn. Your attackers ran off.”

“A couple of Canadian backpackers? Two males? Drunk?”

“Yes to all three, as a matter of fact. How did you know?”

“Just a guess. How long have I been out?”

“Thirty-six hours, thereabouts.”

“What?”

Masters nodded.

“You were hit pretty hard,” said the doctor. “We had you sedated for a while, but, for the last fifteen hours or so, you’ve been sleeping. Your body must have needed it.”

“Jesus,” I said. “What have I missed?”

“Plenty,” said Masters.

“Could you help me sit up?”

The doctor touched a button and the bed changed shape, bending in the middle, lifting my shoulders and head higher. The change in altitude made my brain throb.

A nurse popped her head in, requiring the doctor’s assistance elsewhere. He told Masters he’d look in later and departed.

I looked past the nurse and recognized an NCMP armed with an HK in the hallway—the bearded French refrigerator guy.

“What’s with the guard?”

“Guards—two men, round the clock.” Masters pulled a plastic bag from her briefcase and put it on the sheet over me. “Recognize this?”

“Yeah.”

“We found it at the scene. As the man said, you are lucky, Cooper. That’s a Special Forces dagger. It wasn’t a random attack, and they weren’t after your wallet.”

“I know. I also know who they were.”

Masters raised her eyebrows. I had her attention.

“They were the same men who attacked us in Iraq.”

“What?”

“One of them had a large white watch mark on his wrist. He’d lost his Rolex. Maybe someone told him I’d sold it on the black market in Baghdad and he was out for revenge.”

“Did you?”

“Sell it? No, of course not. But it did cross my mind.”

Masters lit up the room with another smile, and then a thought occurred to her. “Could you identify them?”

I tried to picture what they looked like—even just one of them—but couldn’t. I shook my head. “Be on the lookout for guys wearing ski masks.”

“Is there any other way we could trace them? To get back here so quick—there are only so many flights in and out of Iraq…”

“Yeah, but there are a lot of them and they’re full of soldiers, DoD contractors, private security personnel, diplomats.” That road led to nowhere. “It’s a dead end. What have you been up to?”

“Lots,” she said. “Mrs. Scott’s back from the funeral. I’ve been trying to get her permission to have another look at the general’s records, but she’s not cooperating. She’s packing the house up for a permanent move back to the States. Also, I’ve been tracking down the people in Peyton’s squad. Ambrose was right. So far, they’ve all turned up dead.”

We would catch up with the widow Scott later. “Tell me about Peyton’s men.”

“You’ve never seen so many accidents. And because they’re scattered around the country, no connection has been made between them all. And Ambrose hadn’t made any noise about it.”

“Who could blame him?”

“Oh, and another thing. Abraham Scott’s first wife. Her name was Helen Wakeley. Died in a car crash.”

“I was guessing house fire.”

“Peyton was three years old at the time. He survived the crash.”

“What? He was in the car?”

“A bystander pulled him out as it caught fire.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Any investigation into the crash?”

“No, but an eyewitness account suggested brake failure. The car went through an intersection, hit a truck, and caught on fire.”

“This isn’t looking very good, is it?” I said.

“For whom?”

“Well, it could look as though Harmony Scott is involved in some kind of conspiracy involving the U.S. military that has been bubbling along for a very long time.”

“And General Scott?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he was about to let the cat out of the bag.” I pulled the covers off my legs with my good arm.

“Where are you going?” asked Masters.

“Back to work. Do you know where my clothes are?”

“Yeah.” She opened up a cupboard and placed a clean, pressed ACU on the bed.

“Anything gone from the minibar? What’s the checking-out procedure?”

“Already signed you out, Special Agent.”

“Am I that predictable?”

“Yes.”

The door swung open and the doctor came in. “Where are you going?”

“I have a game of tennis.”

He looked at me for a moment and decided against a protest. “Then I’d better get a nurse to cut away some of those bandages.”

“I’d appreciate it, Doc.”

The phone rang.

Masters picked up. From the intensity of her expression, I gathered someone was telling her something exciting. She put the phone down.

“What?” I demanded.

“That was Bishop. He’s cracked into General Scott’s hard drive.”

THIRTY

T
he extended sleep had done me a world of good. I was sore in places I never knew I had places, but the exhaustion was gone. My brain was sharp and I was keen to kick some investigative butt. Whoever these assholes were, they’d had two cracks at us—me, in particular. It was clear that someone out there wanted me removed from the picture. In a way, that was reassuring. If Masters and I were heading down a blind alley on this investigation, no one would bother with us. But now we were on the clock, and it was ticking. Maybe next time there’d be no drunken Canadian backpackers wandering past to save my ass.