A Soldier's Revenge: A Will Cochrane Novel (30 page)

I took out Zhukov’s cell phone and only weapon—a handgun. Zhukov was going nowhere. I went to the other four bodies on the floor and removed their guns and phones. I placed all of them on top of a cupboard in the kitchen. No way would Zhukov be able to get there and reach them.

The Russian was screaming as I stepped over him and made the descent into the basement. I tucked my gun into my waistband and rushed to the boy in the center of the room.

Ripping off his hood, I cried, “Tom, Tom!” and hugged him. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Tom was in shock and confused, his eyes wide, red face dripping with tears. “Uncle Will? What . . . what . . . ?”

I was moving fast behind his back. “I just need to untie these knots. Hold still.”

“What’s happening?”

“Just hold still, little man,” I said soothingly. I managed to get Tom out of his shackles and crouched before him while gently holding his arms. “You’re safe now.”

Anguish, rather than relief, was evident in Tom’s expression. “Why did you do the bad things?”

“I didn’t. I’ll explain everything. First I have to get you out of here. But there are some unpleasant things upstairs I don’t want you to see.”

I went to lift Tom.

The boy recoiled.

I knew why. Tom thought I’d gone on a murder spree instead of adopting the twins. In Tom’s eyes, Uncle Will was a bad man who’d let him down. But here and now, resolving that had to wait. I lifted Tom onto my chest and buried his face in my jacket so that he wouldn’t see the dead bodies and what I’d done to Zhukov. After I carried him up the stairs, Tom flinched again as he heard the Russian’s scream.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I said in Tom’s ear.

Zhukov was leaving a trail of blood behind him as he attempted to crawl on his belly to the front door. I stamped on his head.

Outside, I placed Tom down and said, “Wait here. None of the people who kept you here can hurt you now.”

“Not true!”

“It is true. I promise.” I bent over at face level with the child, my hand on his shoulder. “I need to get some things from inside. Just wait here, by the cars.”

I went back inside and collected the five cell phones from the kitchen. Then I searched the three dead men upstairs and took their phones as well. Downstairs I watched Zhukov still using his arms to move himself inch by inch toward freedom.

I kicked him onto his back and placed a boot on his chest. “Stay still.”

The pain in Zhukov’s knees was making his eye involuntarily twitch.

I crouched beside him and tapped the barrel of my SIG Sauer on the Russian’s forehead. “Who’s your boss?”

Zhukov spat in my face. “I’m my own boss.”

There was no mistaking his lisping accent. He was the man who’d grabbed Tom.

I replied, “I’ve never met you before. And your name’s not known to me. Bit odd for you to go to all this trouble to frame a complete stranger. I want to know who gave you the idea to set me up.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

I moved my gun. “You’re a foot soldier. One of many. I bet it wasn’t even you who killed my sister.”

Zhukov laughed, though his face was screwed up and blood was coming out of his mouth. “You mean the woman I held down in the bathtub? The one I shot twice in the brain?”

“Yes.” I stood up and shot him in the ankle.

Zhukov writhed on the floor.

“What matters most to you right now? Protecting your boss or your life?”

Gasping for air, the Russian replied, “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

“I want to keep you alive. For now.”

“I don’t believe you!”

I smiled as I circled the prone man. “Work it out. I want you alive because you can tell the police what really happened. If I kill you, I kill my ticket out of here.”

“Go to hell.”

“I am in hell. You put me here.” I pointed my gun at Zhukov’s thigh. “If you tell me who set everything up, I’ll walk out of here. The alternative is I keep shooting until your body goes into massive shock and kills you.”

Zhukov gritted his teeth, sweat pouring out of his face. “How did you find me?”

“A recording device in Tom’s teddy bear. It was very clever of him to activate it just before you took him.” My eyes were unblinking. “Soon, you’ll be begging me to put a bullet in your head. Who is he?”

I could see that Zhukov’s pain was becoming intolerable.

“He paid you to do all this, yes?”

Zhukov nodded.

“In which case, don’t let me kill you for the sake of money you can’t spend.”

Resignation was in Zhukov’s eyes. “Edward . . .”

“Edward who?”

“You won’t kill me?”

“All I want is his name and my freedom!”

Zhukov wiped blood from his lips. “Edward Carley. You know who he is.”

I did. He was the brother of Jack Carley—three years ago I’d exposed him as a high-ranking CIA traitor working for Russia. Six months after beginning his life sentence in a maximum-security American prison, Jack Carley had killed himself. His brother was a powerful businessman and former surgeon. He’d testified at the inquest, saying that he held the intelligence officer who’d exposed Jack as responsible for his death.

Edward Carley had somehow identified me as that person.

He’d waited three years for his revenge.

And this was his dish served cold.

“Where is he?” I asked.

Zhukov didn’t answer.

I shot him in the leg. “Where is he?”

Zhukov was sobbing. “Stop. Please . . . stop.”

I stared at him.

“He’s . . .” Zhukov had blood all around him.

“Yes?”

“Montauk Yacht Club, Long Island. Luxury cruiser. He will leave in two weeks. Don’t know where he’s headed, but it will be away from the States.”

There was one last thing I needed to know. “With your help, Carley made my life miserable. Worse than that, you kidnapped Tom Koenig. When were you going to kill him? Tonight? Tomorrow? Dump his body in a prominent place in D.C.? The final nail in my coffin?”

Zhukov shook his head. “No. You got that wrong.”

“I doubt that.”

The Russian’s body was shaking. “My orders were to take him into the heart of the city tonight, and let him go unharmed.”

“Liar!”

Zhukov said, “I’ll tell the police everything. I swear.”

“If you do, cops will arrest Carley. I don’t want that to happen. More likely you won’t tell them the truth.” Zukhov moaned in agony. “That said, I did promise you that if you gave me your boss’s name, I’d walk out of here. I don’t break promises. But that is all I promised you.”

I shot Zhukov twice in the brain and walked out of the house.

CHAPTER 28

T
om was nowhere to be seen.

Urgently, I sprinted around the house, scouring its surroundings for the boy in his red pajamas. Nothing. No doubt the sound of gunfire in the house had scared him away.

Where would he have gone?

The road leading away from the house.

I ran as fast as my exhausted legs could move, covering half a mile before I saw Tom in the center of the road. The ten-year-old’s arms were flapping as he ran over gravel and stone that must be punishing the bare soles of his feet. The poor boy had simply had enough. And in his eyes, Uncle Will was a murderer.

I caught up with him and lifted him by the waist.

“Let me go! Let me go!”

I held firm, fixing him into a fireman’s carry and brushing debris off his feet. “We’re going to the police now. You can tell them what the Russian man did to you.” I walked quickly to my car. “And I’m going to tell them what he did to me.”

Though I’d make no mention of Carley.

Placing Tom in the front passenger seat of his car, I said, “You’re a witness to the fact that I didn’t kidnap you. That doesn’t automatically prove I’m innocent of the other crimes they think I committed. But it will give the police a huge starting point and motivation to look at things differently. They’ll investigate the house you were kept in.” I drove the car onto the road. “But meeting the police isn’t going to be straightforward. We’ve got to do this carefully.”

Tom was silent, hugging himself. No doubt he was desperate to be reunited with his brother and for the nightmare to end.

We were soon back on the main road. I was driving south toward D.C., searching for a place in the surrounding countryside that suited my purposes. I turned the car off the road and stopped. I looked at the number stored in the communications intercept device Tap had been carrying.

Using one of the cell phones I’d taken from the house, I called the number.

A woman answered.

I said, “Detective Painter. My name is Will Cochrane. I’m innocent of the crimes you believe I’ve committed. I have Tom Koenig. I want to give him to you and hand myself in. But I know that emotions are running high. I don’t expect you to come completely alone, but I also don’t want to meet you backed up by half of D.C. law enforcement. One of them might put a bullet in my head. We have Tom’s safety to consider if bullets start flying. Only you and Joe Kopa
ń
ski must come. I mean you no harm. I just want this matter dealt with calmly. Drive north on route 124. I’ll call you from another cell with further instructions.”

She asked, “How did you get my number?”

I hung up. I removed the battery from the cell so that any attempts to trace its location would fail, and tossed it out of the car window. I looked at the intercept device and waited.

P
ainter and Kopa
ń
ski were rushing to their car in the basement of police headquarters in Washington.

Painter was on the phone to the city’s chief of police. “Maybe Cochrane’s finally had enough. But this could also be a trap. I need a SWAT team, a hostage negotiator, a medical unit, and an undercover firearms unit.”

Within ten minutes, the basement parking lot was a hive of activity, SWAT officers climbing into two black trucks and thirty plainclothes detectives and three paramedics entering their vehicles.

Painter fixed her police radio in place and spoke into her throat mic. “Okay. Joe and I will take point. Everyone stay right on our asses.”

She called the chief of police, updated him about their status, and concluded, “We’re ready to go. I’ll keep you posted.”

The convoy exited the parking lot.

I
heard the calls Painter had made. I waited fifteen minutes and used another cell to call her. “Detective Painter. I wanted to do this calmly. No drama. You’d do well to assume I’m watching you. Lose the SWAT, detectives, and medical units. Only you and Kopa
ń
ski. Otherwise we don’t have a deal.”

A
s they were driving at speed through the northern zone of D.C., Painter looked around urgently. At her side Joe expertly navigated his way through heavy traffic.

In her radio mic, she said, “Cochrane says he’s watching us. He must be on our tail. I want three unmarked cars to drop back by five hundred yards. He must be between that point and us. Work that gap.”

Three police cars at the rear of the convoy did as they were instructed, slowing down until they were five hundred yards behind. They took turns driving closer to the convoy, scrutinizing each car in the gap, before dropping back again.

I
called Painter. “Whatever you think I’ve done, I’m not a cop killer. I won’t lay a finger on you or Kopa
ń
ski. But you need to make a decision—do this my way, or maintain the heavy-handed approach. If it’s the latter, you won’t see me.”

P
ainter felt utterly conflicted as she asked Kopa
ń
ski, “What do you think?”

Like his colleague, Kopa
ń
ski wasn’t sure. “He could be playing with us. He’s assumed we’ll bring backup. Or he’s not playing with us. Maybe let the undercover boys behind us see if they can flush him out.”

“And if they can’t?”

Kopa
ń
ski glanced at Painter. “If we meet him alone, there’s a strong possibility he’ll shoot us simply because he’s worked out that we’re the lead investigators in his case. It’s his payback.”

I
said to Tom, “I’m going to fix everything and make things up to you and Billy. I know this must be scary for you right now. Soon, this will all be a distant memory.”

I stroked his cheek.

He winced.

It deeply saddened me to see the boy like this. But I knew he was traumatized. Specialists would help him overcome the trauma. Right now, nothing I could say to him would help.

I picked up another cell and called Painter. “Have you made a decision?”

Painter responded, “That’s not how these things are done.”