Lethal Force (8 page)

“Maybe we should drive down to Missoula,” she suggested.

That was one possibility. He would be able to stop by his storage unit and pick up a few things there. Like a gun. Or two. He checked the internet on his cell phone and quickly found what he was looking for before shoving the phone back in his pocket. He threw cash for breakfast onto the table and got up.

“Let's go, Lori,” he said. “I gotta see a man about a horse.”

She got up and said, “This better be a euphemism. Because it's too cold to ride horses.”

Jake drove to the edge of town to a gun shop and bought a Glock semi-auto handgun in 9mm Luger with two extra magazines, along with a conceal holster for his right hip and three boxes of jacketed hollow points. In and out in an hour, including the background check.

Back in the Ford Explorer now, Lori said, “You've got to love America. A quick breakfast and buy a handgun all before noon.”

“That's right, Lori. And don't let those assholes in Washington try to change that.”

“Oh, I won't. You gonna let me shoot that?”

“I was hoping you'd ask,” he said and started up the rental. Then he drove out of town to find a place to shoot. With wilderness all around, it wouldn't be a long search.

The killer had brought Professor James Tramil from the police station directly to an isolated home a few miles north of Whitefish, Montana. Tramil had feared for his life the entire time, his whole precarious future streaking through his mind, wondering if this was how it would end for him. Who would care if he died? Would his obituary simply state the facts of his brief life? And what about a legacy? He had no wife, no children. He made a pact with himself, then and there, that if he somehow got out of this mess, he would try to work on a relationship. What were humans without the lineage of DNA, he wondered.

Now he sat on a small mattress on the cement floor of a dark, damp basement, his right leg shackled with a chain to a metal support post. He thought if he had a tool he could release the top part of the post from the wooden cross beam. No, the chain was attached to an immovable welded section. It wouldn't rise up or down.

The room wasn't entirely dark. A couple small windows were mostly covered with snow, but a sliver of light came through giving him a view of his surroundings. Someone liked to hoard. The room was stuffed with everything from lumber to old furniture, topped off with newspapers that probably dated back to the Nixon administration. Every now and then he would hear rustling in the junk, followed by a flash of movement. He guessed mice. Maybe rats. He wasn't fond of either. One of his female colleagues at Oregon State would be trying now to determine the species. She was single, Tramil thought. And highly intelligent. Also, considering she wore no make-up, she was not unpleasant to look at. Her only detractor was the fact that she would probably never consider reproducing. The planet, after all, ‘had far too many people for continued sustainability.' Her exact words.

Tramil shifted his position to keep his extremities from falling asleep. Realistically, he figured the more he moved the less likely the vermin would find him interesting. For that same reason, he would often talk to himself about perfectly inane subjects.

“I need to go on a long run,” he said aloud to himself. He looked at his running shoes on his feet and smiled. “Maybe I should find a nice open road and just keep running.”

●

The man with the buzz cut sat at the kitchen table, his gun in front of him, and his cell phone at his ear. He could hear the muffled voice again coming from the basement below.

“Hang on a second,” the man said. He got up and stamped on the floor until the man shut his mouth. He was afraid this scientist was unstable. No matter. Once they got what they wanted from him, his life wouldn't be worth the price of a bullet. “Go ahead.”

His contact continued, “Make sure you don't kill the man. We need his research.”

“You weren't able to get the research from his server in Denver?”

“No. It was scrubbed clean.”

“Then where did he hide it?”

Silence on the other end as the caller and another man in the background talked in their native tongue. Then he said, “We don't know. Are you sure you searched him? It's not on him?”

“Yes, I'm sure. I had him strip down naked. I checked his clothes and his backpack. Everything but a cavity search.”

“Maybe he dropped it somewhere on the train.”

“I don't think so. I had my eyes on him the entire time. Besides, he would never leave his work behind.”

“Well, then he could have left it somewhere in Oregon.”

“No way. This guy is a control freak. He would keep his baby close to him. I'll find it.”

More discussion on the other end. This time muffled by the man putting his hand over the phone. Finally he came back and said, “We're on our way there.”

“Why? I can handle this,” the man protested.

“We are not worried about a scientist,” the other one said, his accent really flowing now. “We are thinking about who else might want this scientist. We will be there by end of day.”

The man gazed outside into the back yard at the snowy scene. A couple of flying black devils, ravens from hell, kept sweeping around, too curious for their own good. He picked up his gun and rushed toward the back door, ending up on the stoop and waving his arms in the air. “Get the hell out of here.” He aimed his handgun at one on the ground, pecking its beak into an area exposed. His finger slid onto the trigger, but he hesitated and took it off and lowered the gun to his leg as the raven decided on its own to fly off into the wind.

“What's going on?” asked the voice on the phone.

“Nothing,” the man said. He adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses higher on his nose. “Just a few ravens too interested in some garbage. What time should I expect you?”

“Late this evening. We have the last flight into town. Where are you staying?”

The man gave him the address and then flipped his phone shut. The ravens were back, moving in closer and sitting on the branch of some leafless tree. How far away was the next neighbor? Would they hear shots? He shook his head and walked outside to the spot where the ravens had disturbed the snow.

Both faces were exposed, the old man and the old woman who had occupied this house until yesterday afternoon. The ravens had eaten their eyes. He guessed they would work on their stomachs next, taking the soft tissue first. The ravens would stay warm and get fat eating those two.

Off in the distance he could hear gunshots echoing through the cold air. Gazing at the ravens again, he simply shook his head and shuffled back into the warmth of the country house.

Jake and Lori spent an hour shooting the new gun, and making sure it was sighted in properly. He had one just like this Glock auto, also in 9mm, but it was stashed away in a storage unit on the outskirts of Missoula. He preferred the .40 cal to the 9mm for the extra knock-down power. But the 9mm version had higher capacity magazines, a nice trade-off for someone with decent shot placement and multiple targets.

Now he and Lori sat at a coffee shop in downtown Whitefish, he sipping a straight cowboy coffee and she cradling a fancy cappuccino between the palms of her hands.

“What?” she asked. “It's cold out there.”

“That's not what I was thinking,” Jake said. “I was just wondering if you actually had some java in there somewhere under all the foam and toppings. What the hell is a triple skinny grande double latte extra hot with sugar free caramel, nutmeg and chocolate sprinkles?”

She pointed a finger at him. “Hey, don't judge me.”

“All right. I was going to question your Montana background until I saw you shoot today. You're a fair shot.”

“Just fair?”

“A good shot.”

“Not a Natty Bumppo like you, of course.”

“Look at you. Pulling out the James Fenimore Cooper.”

She set her coffee cup down and raised her right hand. “English major. Guilty as charged.”

A muffled buzzing and then a song came from somewhere inside Jake's jacket. The tune was
Don't Fear the Reaper
by Blue Oyster Cult. Jake pulled out one cell phone and set it on the table and then found the right phone, saw who was calling, and pressed the screen to answer.

“Yeah,” Jake said. He listened carefully, taking in what the caller was saying. In the end he simply said, “Got it. Thanks so much.” He hit End on the screen and shoved the phone back into his pocket.

“Everything all right?” Lori asked.

He wasn't sure how to answer that. It was more than all right. “Yeah, it's fine.”

“Two phones? And I thought I was important.”

Jake put his hand on hers, his warmth feeling the sudden cold of her skin. “You are, darling. And your hands are freezing.”

“Tell me about it.”

They sat and stared at each other for a while. She was gorgeous. How had she managed to stay single?

She asked again, “Is everything all right?”

Jake was so used to working alone, or with others in the intelligence community, that he wasn't used to opening up with information. But something was different with Congresswoman Lori Freeman. She had the clearance and she had the need to know.

“You have to be wondering why we haven't been looking for the scientist this morning,” he said.

She shrugged. “I guessed you had some method to your madness. Besides, where could we look?”

“Exactly. That would normally be the case. But when I was kidnapped, I wondered how easily I was able to escape. This phone. . .” He spun his second phone on the table. “They put a tracker on this phone.”

Lori looked concerned as she leaned across the table. She whispered, “You're kidding me. Are they tracking us here?” She hesitated. “Can they also hear us?”

“I'm sure they're tracking me. But they can only hear me when I talk on that phone.”

“Why didn't you just destroy the tracking device?”

That was a good question. “I want them to come after me.”

“But why?”

“I need to know who's after me. Who's behind this.”

“Won't they try to kill you again?”

“They didn't try to kill me. They had me cold and could have killed me at any time.”

That realization seemed to send a chill through her. Lori leaned back into the booth and crossed her arms over her chest. “I hadn't thought of that.” Then she leaned forward again and said, “Who was on the phone?”

Jake shook his head. “It's better you don't know that. Let's just say I still have a few friends in high places. These folks did a back-trace on the signal from my phone to those who were tracking me. Then they started monitoring calls into their lines. They just heard from a call that linked back to Montana. They'll have the location pinpointed soon.”

Her eyes widened. “Umm. That's not legal without a court order.”

“You see. . .I knew I shouldn't have told you. And how do you know we don't have a court order?”

“I'm sorry. You're right. Besides, I don't have a problem listening in on, or tracking, criminals and terrorists.” Lori thought again, her mind seeming to spin. “Where do we go from here?”

“We go nowhere,” Jake said. “I go back to the gun shop and pick up some more rounds. Some crazy congresswoman shot the crap out of some stumps this morning.”

“I had help. And then what?”

“I need to find someplace safe to stash you.”

“No way. This is my concern. I need to talk with this man. See what he knows.”

Jake protested with both hands. “I am not bringing you to a hostage extraction from a known murderer.”

She stared at him with determination. “I'll stay in the SUV.”

He was going to regret this. But he also knew if he wanted to get any information from either the kidnapper or the scientist he needed to do this without the local police or wait for the FBI to show up. Jake kept visualizing the images of Ruby Ridge and Waco standoffs.

They hung out at various places around town, getting frequent updates from the local police on how they still had not found the man who had killed one of their own and kidnapped the scientist. The best part, as far as Jake was concerned, was the fact that snow had continued to fall most of the day and now, with darkness coming fast, the white stuff was coming down like goose down at a pillow fight. The snow had grounded flights coming in or out of the Flathead Valley, including those by the FBI coming from Spokane and Billings. He didn't need a bunch of Feds mucking up the works.

Jake also changed his clothes from Patagonia Spring fishing wear to layered Montana Winter. Well, as much as he could with what he had in his backpack.

Just as the sun, such as it was hiding behind the clouds and heavy snow, sunk behind the mountains to the west, he got a call from his contact with the location of the killer and the scientist.

Now they sat in the Ford Explorer, the heater working to keep the snow from icing up the wipers.

Jake got off the phone with his friends in high places and viewed the GPS link they had sent him.

“Are you ready?” Lori asked him. She had been playing with her own phone for the past half hour, answering e-mails and listening to voice mails.

“Yeah,” Jake said. “We got a location.”

“How does this work? How do you know you can do this alone? What if there's more than just one guy?”

Good questions all, he thought. But he couldn't let her know that he had gotten satellite thermal images of the house outside town, indicating one hostile on the first floor and a second person in the basement of the home. He guessed that would be the professor. “You'll have to trust me,” he said. “Can you put your phone down for a second and take this?” He handed her his phone with the GPS enabled and ready for them to drive.