Blown Away (23 page)

“It just pulled out of that gravel road,” Marwood said, gripping the wheel. “I saw one the same color on Jackson Avenue. What should I do?”

“Drive steady and straight, exactly like you're doing,” Annie ordered, pulling a satellite radio from a thigh pack. “No heroics unless combat driving was an elective at that shrink school of yours. Pull over at the next crossroad, and we'll let him pass.” Flea switched his submachine gun's fire selector to AUTO. Emily pulled her Glock, unbelted herself, turned toward the back. Marwood withdrew a small black pistol from his jacket. “Hey, Doc,” Emily kidded. “Only three Wyatt Earps per vehicle.”

He pulled the trigger, plunging a small finned dart into Emily's exposed tricep.

“Matter of fact, Annie,” she heard Marwood say as he whipped around to sink two darts each into her and Flea's unarmored butts. They flopped sideways, unconscious. “I'm an expert at combat driving. I learned it in the Green Berets.”

Emily lunged for Marwood's throat but didn't move an inch. Every muscle in her body was paralyzed. All she could do was breathe and blink. “Yooooou,” she gargled as she melted into her seat, steel bands tightening on her chest.

Marwood smiled till his eyes disappeared. “That's right, Princess,” he said. “It's time to play our final game.” He whipped the Town Car into a hard U-turn, darted her again. Emily's eyes leaked rain, and the world faded to black.

October 1990
Desert Shield, south of Baghdad, Iraq

Brady Kepp staked the feral dog to the desert floor, belly-up and spread-eagled, and turned to stare at the captured Iraqi missile commander. The Iraqi stared back. For two hours he'd refused to answer the American infidel's demands for the map coordinates of his Scud missile battery.

“All I want is the location,” Kepp said in the Iraqi's native dialect as he secured the dog's last paw. “Say it and I'll release you unharmed.”

The Iraqi remained silent.

“Oh, well,” Kepp said. “I guess you're just too tough for me.” He waved at his companions, dressed like their leader in the loose robes of desert nomads. “Hey, fellas, lunch?” They waved, spreading the coals they'd fired thirty minutes ago. Kepp pulled a knife and slid the tip into the dog's upper chest. It howled, eyes bulging.

“You can join us,” Kepp told his captive as he flayed the dog alive, one furry strip at a time. “You need strength to walk home.” Muscle, tendon, and sinew jerked and spasmed under the relentless blade. The animal barked itself hoarse trying to bite its tormentor. Kepp dismembered its jaw and vocal cords, turning it as silent as the Iraqi. He warmed his hands over the steam emanating from the cuts—the desert was cold this time of morning. “I admire your bravery,” Kepp said. “But the war will be here soon. Why die now when battle glory is so near?”

Still no reply.

Kepp dissected out the dog's internal organs, humming as it vomited a beery froth. He filleted steaks from its thighs and flanks. One of his companions plopped the fresh meat in the pot suspended over the glowing coals. Kepp smacked his lips at the gamy aroma, then cut out the dog's beating heart. “I need the coordinates of your missile battery,” Kepp said, wiping the spurting organ across the officer's bushy mustache. “Your precise orders, the structure of your unit, and whether you stock nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. If you do that, I swear to Allah, you will walk free from here.” He carved the dog's throat into a clown smile, then drew the gore-flecked knife over the Iraqi's bare left knee. A blood creek bloomed, and the Iraqi wet himself.

“Oops, sorry,” Kepp said. “Didn't mean to scare you that much.” A few more slits exposed the kneecap. The Iraqi howled, black eyes bouncing like pinballs. “Tell me what I want, and I'll set you free,” Kepp repeated. “With water, food, and directions to your front lines. You'll be with your woman by tonight.” He sighed. “If you keep refusing, however, we'll eat you for lunch. We're hungry from killing your countrymen, and this skinny dog won't fill our bellies. It's time to choose.” He pointed to the distant sand dunes, then the carcass of the dog. “Talk, or die.” The other CIA men snatched up their golden brown doggie steaks and stuffed them in their mouths, licking the spurting juice. The Iraqi was too shocked to answer. Kepp, whistling, put the point of the knife on the exposed bone and pushed.

“Yes!” the Iraqi screamed. “Yes! I will tell you!”

Kepp withdrew the knife, and the Iraqi spilled his guts. An agent translated responses for the Navy SEAL team on the other end of the radio.

“Excellent job, my friend,” Kepp said when he was done. “You're a man of your word. As am I. Here are the water, food, and map I promised for your journey home.”

The team medic untied him and bandaged his knee. The radioman helped him into fresh desert clothing and handed him a rucksack of provisions. Kepp gave explicit directions to the Iraqi front line, waving till the grateful man reached the crest of the first dune. Then he pulled a silenced 9-millimeter Beretta and put two holes in the Iraqi's skull.

“Nice, boss!” the medic enthused as the others sped off to retrieve the precious supplies. “You hit the X ring at a hundred yards! Annie Oakley couldn't shoot better!” He smiled. “Sure you can't stick around for Desert Storm? Be a lot of cool things to blow up.”

“Nah,” Kepp said, making himself a sandwich of the “doggie fillets”—chicken strips the boys slipped in the pan when the Iraqi was distracted. So much of what Kepp did was theater, the boys teased he was a Hollywood action hero, not a CIA intelligence officer. “I blew up enough stuff in Afghanistan for a lifetime of fond memories. I've got a girl waiting at home, and it's time I paid her the attention she deserves.”

The medic repacked his kit as the boys returned with the gear. This “retired” Army Green Beret captain had proven himself a superb CIA field operator since taking over this team two years ago. He was a visionary leader who pitched in on the shit work just like the newest grunt. The medic would miss him. “How you gonna make a living back in the world, boss?” he asked. “Our skills aren't exactly transferable to the civilian workforce.”

“Au contraire,” Kepp said, sharpening his knife to restore its killing edge. “I've learned so much about human psychology over the years, I think I'll become a shrink. ‘Doctor' Kepp sounds so much classier than ‘Fuck you, American pig CIA eater of shit!'”

The boys laughed, then broke camp to hunt the next intelligence bonanza.

Thursday 5
A.M
.
One hour till Emily's birthday

Emily awoke naked but for bra and thong. Her mouth was taped, and something was snugged tight around her neck, over her hair. She was standing in her kitchen. Not on the floor, though, unless she'd grown several feet.

She looked down as much as the neck restraint allowed and saw the game table from her basement. She froze, knowing how easily it toppled. She and Daddy crafted it one night from rock maple, a hardwood as heavy as cement. She'd protested his suggestion that she make the legs twice as thick. “I measured right!” she'd pouted. “I know what I'm doing!” She finished her cuts on the table saw, glued and screwed the legs to the top, hauled the table upright…and discovered it wobbled like a drunk. “Daddy, fix this!” she'd wailed, flinging her arms. “No way, Princess,” he'd replied. “You insisted. You gotta live with it….”

She couldn't dip her head enough to see her feet. She moved them instead. She heard a metallic clink. She pulled on her wrists, which were secured behind her back. More clinks.

Handcuffs on my ankles and wrists.

“Good morning, Princess,” Ellis Marwood said from close behind. “Have a nice sleep?”

Emily looked up. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered, shocked beyond words. The thing around her neck was a rope! Tied to a ceiling beam! She felt an urge to urinate.

“It's Hangman,” Marwood said, walking around. “The last game you're ever going to play.”

“Up yours, Brady Kepp,” she mumbled into the tape.

“Eh? Can't hear ya, hon,” Marwood said, bending at his waist and cupping his ear like an old man. It brought him into kicking range. She tried. The table fell sideways, and she gagged from the flesh-rending choke of the noose. Marwood laughed, held her legs to ease the pressure as he reset the table. “Listen up,” he said, pulling her father's bayonet from the small of his back. It gleamed from fresh sharpening. “I'm going to remove the mouth tape. Behave and we'll play our game to the end. If you fight, shout, or even whisper too loud, I'll carve you up like that poor sap in Massachusetts.” He planted her feet on the table. “Will you play by my rules?” he asked. “Can I remove the tape?” Emily nodded. “You'd better,” he warned, flicking her kneecap several times with the needle tip. He smiled, then ripped the tape away.

“Uh, uh, uh, uh,” she panted, gulping fresh air.

“Breathe,” Marwood cooed, putting away the bayonet. “You need your strength to play.”

“You're Brady Kepp,” Emily gasped.

Marwood looked at her.

“The kid from my grade school in Chicago,” she pressed. “One of my classmates.”

“Yes, that was me,” he said. “Little Brady Kepp, everybody's classmate and nobody's friend. Especially not yours. Not after you butchered my family.”

Emily shifted, having no idea what he was talking about. “Where's Annie and Flea?” she demanded, realizing they weren't in the room. “And the officers guarding the house?”

“Neutralized.”

She recoiled.

“No, not that way,” he said. “They're tied up in your basement. I don't kill indiscriminately, so they're alive. Don't get your hopes up for a rescue, though. They'll be unconscious till long after you and I are done.”

Emily breathed deep, trying to quash her trembling. “You drugged us. What was it?”

“Animal tranquilizer. One dart paralyzes all voluntary body functions. Two put your lights out for hours.” He put a finger to his cheek, amused. “Gee, Princess, they sure are lucky to have you for a friend, aren't they?”

 

“Patrol Six,” Jodi the dispatcher radioed as she rubbed her eyes. Third straight shift. Even her hair was tired. She popped the lid of her triple espresso and gulped two Tylenols, hoping to ease the ache in her lower back. “Six, it's time to report.”

 

Marwood pressed the bayonet to Emily's spine and the police radio to his lips. “This is Patrol Six,” he replied, mimicking the older of the driveway cops. “All quiet.”

“Only place that is,” Jodi replied. “You all right, Six? You sound congested.”

“Ate a lot of smoke at Safety Town,” Marwood said. “But I'm all right.”

“Catch you at the next check-in then. Dispatch out.”

“Six out.” Marwood put the radio down. “I know you're dying to ask why I'm doing all this, Princess. Go ahead. Like the nuns always said, there's no such thing as a stupid question.”

 

“Marty!” a Secret Service agent hollered, waving a database printout. “It's not him! Brady Kepp died a month after leaving the army! Hit and run in Miami! Kepp isn't the Unsub!”

 

Emily sighed. “All right, Brady—”

“Ellis,” he corrected. “Brady died years ago. Good riddance to the weakling.”

“OK…Ellis,” she said, filing that nugget away. “Why?”

“That answer will take awhile, so let me get comfortable.” Marwood filled her Three Little Pigs mug with French roast, pulled the half-eaten carton of French vanilla from the freezer. “What's with you and France, anyway?” he said, returning to the table. “You don't like berets.”

“You know good and well the French saved my father's life on D-day,” she snapped. “If this is the best you can do, go ahead and hang me.”

“Touché,” Marwood said. “It wasn't worthy. I apologize.” He ate from the carton, held it out. “Shame I couldn't preserve one from 1985 to give you now. But it was full of Daddy's teeth.”

Emily gasped. “You…you killed…”

“Yeah, Princess, I did,” he said, sipping the coffee chaser. “Your folks were your twentieth birthday present. Jack was your thirtieth.”

 

“Where the hell am I?” Annie mumbled. She could barely move, her wrists and ankles hog-tied behind her. She used her tongue to probe the tape over her mouth. It wouldn't budge. She wiggled her nose and face. The tape over her eyes wasn't nearly as tight. She worked herself to her knees, then scraped the loose tape against the concrete wall she'd been smelling since she woke. The left end stuck, then popped off. She cursed and tried again.

 

“You killed Jack, too! You psycho!” Emily raged.

“Shut up,” Marwood warned, chopping a bruise with the bayonet handle. “I meant what I said about noise.”

She whimpered from the pain, fell silent.

He leaned against the refrigerator. “I used an air gun of my own design to launch the rocks. It adjusts for windage and angle, so hitting Jack's Jeep was no challenge.”

Emily's lips curled off her teeth. Not being able to kill this man hurt worse than the bayonet.

“I wanted the cops to think they were thrown by kids,” he continued. “They did. Stupidity isn't confined to state troopers, either. The Chicago cops who investigated your folks' hit and run in 1985 had no clue what they were up against.” He sat and ate more ice cream. “Now it's your fortieth, and I'm fresh out of family. I guess I'll have to kill you.” He pointed at the noose.

“You tried at the forest preserve,” she spat. “See how well that worked out.”

Marwood flipped his spoon in the sink. “It worked out fine. I knew from the spy cameras in your bedroom that you always wear your bulletproof vest. So I directed my bullets between your boobs and hips, to make sure they stayed on your vest. I wanted you immobile, not deceased.”

 

“Kepp isn't dead,” Benedetti snapped. “Keep looking.”

“Waste of time,” the Secret Service agent argued. “We've traced his entire life—”

“Born in Chicago. Raised on the Southwest Side. Attended Catholic schools. Parents killed in 1979,” Benedetti recited from memory. “Lived in a state home in East St. Louis till 1982. Joined the army. Honorably discharged in 1990—”

“And killed in Miami by a drunk driver,” the agent said. “The Dade County coroner confirmed Kepp's identity through records provided by the army. Kepp appears on the Social Security death index. His driver's license renewals stopped after 1990.”

Benedetti raised an eyebrow, grabbed the army list from his briefcase.

“His obituary appeared in the St. Louis papers. And so forth.” The agent shook his head. “Chasing this further is a waste of time, Marty.”

Benedetti plucked a page and waved it like a flag. “He's alive. This proves it.”

 

Bliiiiiiiink.

“See how long it takes now, Ken?” Dr. Winslow warned. “He's right at the edge of spasm.”

“I know. But the sun's about to rise.” Back to Branch. “Do you want to stay awake? Take some sort of drug?”

“Ken!” Winslow said. “He can't handle that!”

“Emily's living on borrowed time,” Cross shot back. “Branch knows that. So do you.” Back to Branch. “Your call, Captain. Do you want to sleep?”

Bliiiiiiiink…bliiiiiiiiink.”

“Or do you want that stimulant?”

Bliiiiiiiink.

“It's too dangerous,” Winslow insisted.

“He said yes, Doctor,” Cross said. “He's mentally and emotionally qualified to make that decision. Let's get cracking.”

“Branch is held together by spit and nylon,” Winslow argued. “There's no way to predict what a stimulant will do—help, kill—it's a coin flip.” She pushed Cross into the hall to prevent any undue influence from his presence, then brought her face to Branch's, searching his eyes for any sign of equivocation. “You're gambling with your life, Hercules,” she whispered. “Do you want this injection, knowing it might injure you further? Or kill you?”

Bliiiiiiink.

“Are you lying to please the chief? To prove how macho you are?”

Bliiiiiiiink…bliiiiiiiink.

“This is important enough to make Lydia a widow?” she pressed. “Deprive your kids of a father? Because that's what we're talking about here. Not just your life. Theirs, too.”

Bliiiiiiink.

“OK,” Winslow said.

 

“Why did you shoot us?” Emily asked, eyes roaming the kitchen for a means of escape. “I couldn't find that scenario in any of my games.”

“Think of it as a special edition,” Marwood said. “After our first conversation, I knew Branch would be trouble. He's far more intelligent than I expected for a suburban flatfoot. Could have posed a threat to my timetable, given enough time. I had to remove him from the game.”

“Jerk,” Emily seethed.

“He certainly is,” Marwood said, twisting her condemnation to his own purpose. “The big lug takes all those bullets and lives? What are the odds?” He drummed his fingers on his chest. “As for shooting you, I had no choice. You were trying to kill me. So I immobilized you, allowing me to kill you properly now.”

“Or vice versa.”

“Highly doubtful,” Marwood said. “But theoretically possible, I suppose. I did leave that darling little knife in your bra to give you a shred of hope.” He blew her a kiss. “Though I did remove the spare handcuff key from your ankle. I may be crazy, Princess, but I ain't stupid.”

“Quit calling me Princess!” Emily snapped.

“Mmm…nope,” Marwood said. “But ask nicely and I'll tell you why your family's dead.”

“Don't bother. I don't care.”

Marwood laughed. “Bluffs don't become you.”

She blew out her breath. “All right,” she whispered, her naked shivers increasing. “Why did you kill my family, Ellis? Why?”

He retrieved the spoon from the sink, humming a tune she vaguely recognized from oldies radio. “Banana Nana Fo Ferley,” something like that. He ate a few more bites, put the carton back in the freezer, washed the spoon, put it in the strainer.

“Because you killed mine,” he said.

 

Benedetti slid the list into the projector. “Brady Kepp's personnel summary says he was ‘honorably separated' from service,” he said. “Everyone else on this page was ‘honorably discharged.' Why the discrepancy?”

A dozen cops frowned, trying to recall their own military discharge papers.

Benedetti scratched his chest, which itched from caked sweat. “Because only the name is dead,” he said. “The body is alive and under new identity. I believe Kepp was transferred from the Green Berets to another, unnamed, federal agency. The transfer was hush-hush, and the appropriate records doctored, but you know what happens in big bureaucracies—not everybody gets the word. In this case, some associate deputy assistant clerk typed ‘separated' instead of the cover designation of ‘discharged.'”

“And the error wasn't caught because higher-ups don't proofread clerical work. Especially work to which outsiders have no access,” Secret Service agreed. “Meaning you obtained this information by, uh, stealth.”

Benedetti's grin was brief but telling. “Next step is finding Kepp's new agency.”

“CIA,” said Judy Stephens, the BATFE chief. “Has to be.”

“Explain,” Benedetti said.

“My husband was an Air Force major,” Stephens said, adjusting the scarf on her burned-shiny head. “When he was killed in Desert Storm, he wasn't wearing a uniform. He was a CIA spook, recruiting Kurds to rebel against Saddam Hussein.”

“Shit,” the cops groaned in unison.

“He'd officially retired from the Air Force six months earlier,” she said. “The certificate on our bedroom wall says ‘honorable discharge.' But a letter from Pentagon accounting, the one in our safe-deposit box, certifies that since he was ‘honorably separated' to work for ‘another agency within the federal retirement system,' pension credits would accrue per usual.”

“Then Marty's right. Brady Kepp went into the CIA,” said Secret Service. “Now he's in Naperville, with a new identity. Presumably, a new appearance. How do we find out what it is? Call the CIA?” He glanced at the FBI liaison.