A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel (23 page)

I had no plan of what to do other than get out of the city and somehow get to Washington. But I had no money. Everyone knew what I looked like. I was labeled a child kidnapper and murderer of three citizens and four cops. And the distance between Lynchburg and D.C. was approximately 180 miles.

How far would I go to do what was necessary? Rob a liquor store or bank to get cash? Break into another person’s home and steal essential items and a car? Kill a civilian if he got in my way? A few days ago these questions wouldn’t have occurred to me. And even when I’d been in desperate situations while in the service, I’d always retained a strong sense of right and wrong. Because I operated in a morally ambiguous zone, that wasn’t always easy. Nevertheless, there was a line I wouldn’t cross. Now, I wasn’t so sure. I was in survival mode, and Tom Koenig was in severe danger.

I entered the northern tip of Rivermont Avenue. The police sirens were now distant. Why on earth they’d moved position still confused me, but I kept moving.

I
n the back of his vehicle, Simon Tap trained his camera lens on a solitary figure who was wearing a jacket, jeans, boots, and a backpack.

The man was tall and was running along Rivermont toward him, his hood up. He couldn’t yet see his face, because the man was avoiding streetlamps. But what he was doing was all wrong—if he were a journalist, he’d be running toward the action, not away from it; his attire was not that of a jogger; and Tap couldn’t imagine there was anything remotely urgent to rush to in this sleepy northern part of the city. He kept his camera trained on the man.

For one second, his face came into view when he couldn’t avoid a small area bathed in artificial light.

It was Cochrane.

Urgently, Tap grabbed his sniper rifle.

K
opa
ń
ski ran up Rivermont. The place was now deserted, all cops having repositioned to the zone one mile behind him. He moved into side streets, his handgun in both hands, not knowing where to look, but every sense telling him that Cochrane had tricked the police into thinking he’d fled south.

J
ust get out of Lynchburg, I kept telling myself. Focus on that and don’t even think now about what needs to happen next, because in all probability there’ll be no
next
.

I stopped running and bent over to catch my breath, and as I did so a high-velocity silenced round tore a chunk out of a tree right behind me.

I dived to the ground just before a second round raced through the air where my head had been a split second earlier. Rolling to one side, I leopard-crawled to the cover of a low stone wall.

What was happening? The police rarely used suppressed weapons and would have no need for them to take me down in Lynchburg. They were brazenly using a sledgehammer approach and wanted to be visible to flush me out.

The marksman was ahead of me somewhere, but I couldn’t risk looking. The shooter was an expert shot, and it was only by chance that I wasn’t dead. And he’d been going for head shots—no attempts to wound and incapacitate me. Everything suggested the gunman wasn’t a cop.

I crawled alongside the wall for one hundred yards until I was off Rivermont and in a deserted side street.

Certain that I was out of the sniper’s line of fire, I got to my feet and bolted.

T
ap leapt into the driver’s seat, started the engine, turned the car around, and sped toward the place where he’d last seen Cochrane. By his side, he had a handgun, ready to point through the windshield and take out the Englishman. After that, he’d get out of the car, put two more shots into his head, and drive off.

He drove to the end of the side street where Cochrane had run, urgently looking left and right. Reaching a T-junction, he glanced in one direction, saw nothing, and looked in the other direction.

Cochrane was there, standing next to a small copse, looking right at him before running between the trees.

Tap put his foot to the floor, his tires screeching as they tried to get traction, his car hurtling to the spot where Cochrane had vanished. He squealed to a stop, threw open the door, and raced into the woods, his handgun held high, ignoring Knox’s advice not to get close to Cochrane, because he was ex-Delta and this was precisely the thing men like him were trained to do.

The blow to the back of Tap’s head made him double over but not fall. He spun around, staying low and ready to shoot. The punches and knees to his face, throat, groin, and ribs were delivered so fast that Tap could do nothing but simply crumple to the ground. Cochrane’s heel smashed onto his breastbone so hard that Tap thought his heart was going to explode. All he could do was lie there, desperately trying to breathe, his handgun discarded during the assault.

I
dropped to the ground and wrapped both arms around his throat, positioning my body so that he couldn’t move his arms.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.

“Are you part of this? Part of the setup to frame me?” I squeezed tight.

The man tried to kick his legs and move his arms, but he wasn’t going anywhere.

“Who sent you?”

“Fuck . . . fuck you!”

“Wrong thing to say.” My face was inches from his. “Talk, or you know how this will end. Was it you who framed me for murder?”

He tried to shake his head, but the action caused him to choke. “Not . . . not talking.”

“Where’s the boy?”

“No idea. I’ve had nothing to do with any of that.”

“Liar!”

“You can . . . torture me all you like. Kill me. But I can’t tell you something I don’t know.”

“I’ll let you live if you tell me who you’re working for.”

Silence.

“You’d die for your employer?”

He looked hesitant.

“Fair enough. Let’s get this over with.”

“Wait! Wait.”

“I’m listening.”

“Philip . . . Philip Knox. CIA.”

I frowned. “The CIA framed me for murder?”

“No. It just wants your mouth permanently shut. Doesn’t want you arrested and revealing any embarrassing secrets you know, in exchange for a plea bargain.”

“The Agency wouldn’t authorize my death on U.S. soil.”

“This was Knox’s idea. No one else knows about my work for him. That’s everything, I swear.”

I’d met Knox twice while working for the Agency. He was a piece of shit. What I was hearing now was precisely the type of thing Knox was capable of.

“That’s everything,” the man said. “You can take my gun. My car, even. I’m not going to come after you.”

“I
will
take your gun and car. And no, you most certainly
won’t
be coming after me again.”

A moment ago this man wanted me dead. Well, good things come to those who wait. I clutched his throat and squeezed hard until his legs stopped thrashing.

K
opa
ń
ski was walking, feeling stupid for following his hunch to search the northern area of the perimeter and beyond. Captain Richards was right—Cochrane was so desperate that he’d gone in the only direction available to him. He’d be caught or killed very shortly, and Kopa
ń
ski would have no satisfaction in that because he’d gone off on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction. He reached a T-junction on a quiet side street in a residential suburb. All was quiet, streetlamps the only source of light in an otherwise black night.

Three hundred yards to his left, he saw a car’s reverse lights and heard the sound of its engine being gunned. The reverse lights turned off. It was impossible to make out the license plate or the car model, but as it sped off, he knew in his heart that it was Cochrane.

T
wo hours later I was by the side of a pond in the center of Monongahela National Forest. Everywhere around me was deserted. I took off the dead assassin’s clothes and set to work. It wasn’t pleasant. Removing the dental work, eyes, and fingerprints never is. And getting the air and buoyancy out of a corpse requires a strong stomach to inflict massive puncture wounds. The hunting knife I’d found in the car enabled me to cut open the chest, throat, and gut. I hated doing so. My only solace was that he’d have done the same to me. I placed rocks in his chest cavity, mouth, and stomach. After stripping, I swam, towing the corpse, to the center of the pond. I let it sink, then returned to the shore.

It wasn’t a perfect removal of a body. That would have involved a furnace or hungry pigs. But I doubted he’d be found for days. By then, I would be in Washington.

I was certain that was where everything was going to end.

PART THREE
The Justice

CHAPTER 22

T
hyme Painter was on her cell, receiving updates from Kopa
ń
ski. She ended the call with “I’ll be leaving here in about an hour. Meet you in D.C.”

She walked into one of the central Manhattan precinct’s interview rooms. The room was warm, but the man was wearing a Royal Navy woolen overcoat over his immaculate suit. She sat opposite him and apologized for being late.

“Apologies are for quitters. Are you a quitter, missy?” the man said in his precise but gruff English voice.

“No, and I’m not a
missy
.”

“Missus, then.”

“I’m not one of those, either, Mr. Mountjoy—you can call me
Detective
Painter.”

“And you can call me
major
. What you limping for?”

“People don’t usually come straight out with that question.”

Dickie shrugged. “Life’s too short to pussyfoot around.”

Painter resisted a smile. “I got blown up in Afghanistan. I have an artificial leg as a result.”

“You were out there being some charity do-gooder?”

“No, I was in the army on active combat service.”

Dickie huffed. “Women in the army. What is the world coming to?” Though secretly, he now had respect for Painter. “What unit were you in?”

“I flew helicopters.”

“Heaven forbid—one of
those
types.”

“Yes, and I also held the rank of major.” She placed a pen and paper in front of her. “You said you had important evidence relating to my manhunt for Will Cochrane. It’s taken me hours to get here just to hear what comes out of your mouth. I’m hoping I haven’t wasted my time.”

“And I flew all the way from London just to be here.” He straightened his tie. “While I was waiting, your colleagues told me something was happening in Lynchburg. Have you arrested him?”

“He hid until it was dark in a woman’s house while holding her at gunpoint. She said she’d called us right after he left her house, but we know she’s lying. She waited several minutes, probably longer, before making the call.”

“How do you know she was lying?”

“Because by the time she called, he was a mile south of her house and had killed two police officers.”

“Killed?” Dickie was shocked. “You’re sure?”

Painter nodded. “He left the murder weapon at the scene. Probably it was of no further use to him because it was out of ammunition. As we speak, more tests are being done on it, but we already know for a fact it’s the same gun he used in New York and in the massacre outside Roanoke. He’ll get the death sentence.”

“You’ve got him, then?”

“No. He escaped.”

“And what are you doing about it?”

“Every inch of Lynchburg is being searched. We had a solid perimeter around the area where he was spotted, and we can’t figure out how he got out. But we’ll find him.”

“And if you don’t?”

Painter didn’t tell the old man what Cochrane’s hostage had said about Tom Koenig probably being in Washington D.C. “Tell me about the information you have.”

Dickie cleared his throat and averted his gaze. “Probably it might all sound a bit daft.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look—I can’t
prove
to you Cochrane didn’t kill all these people. I can’t say he was in a different place at the time. In fact, I’ve got no evidence that he’s innocent.”

Painter rolled her eyes. “My time is valuable. I’ve come all this way just—”

“Steady, missy.” He raised a hand and said in a soothing tone, “It’s all right. I’m not wasting your time.”

She was silent.

“Mr. Cochrane lives three floors above me in London. He moved in four years ago and I’ve known him ever since. For a while, I didn’t know what he did for a living. But then there were events that brought that information to light.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ve seen no mention of it in the press, but do you know his background?”

“Yes. I’m keeping his profile out of the media. He was a covert operative, joint with the UK and U.S.”