The Good Soldier (35 page)

The helicopter got us to our destination in under an hour. The three men across from me didn't move except when the helicopter pitched or rolled. The three of them swayed left, right, forward, and backward in unison, their eyes fixed on me, traveling between my face and the gun I held. One of the men had been sweating profusely, and I could tell he didn't like flying all that much. His eyes were wide and he tensed up every time the helicopter moved. I assumed he had to take a heavy sedative to make it to the U.S. from wherever the hell he was from. No such luck today, though.

We landed on an abandoned dirt airstrip covered with the iced over remains of a recent snowstorm. No plow had touched the soil, nor had a shovel scraped the ground in advance of our landing.

The pilot informed us that we were halfway between Cherry Hill and Lake Pine, neither of which was a place I had any familiarity with.

Sarah stood at the edge of the platform, prepared to hop down. I offered her my hand. She took it. I smiled. She did the same. Once on the ground, I pointed at the dark blue Chevy Suburban parked nearby and told her to wait at the front.

Frank was next. I didn't offer him my hand, nor did I smile at him. He hopped onto the ground and grimaced. Old feet or old knees it appeared, relatively speaking.

"My home territory," Frank said. He yelled to make himself heard over the thumping rotor.

I nodded, then looked away, then thought about the place I used to call home. My mind wandered for a second or two. The three angry faces waiting to exit the helicopter were blurs while I recalled a time and place that were now as alien to me as Mars. Or Portland.

As quickly as the interlude began, it ended. I gestured with the barrel of my MP7 for the three men to exit the helicopter, nice and easy. Frank helped each man down and told them to take ten steps, then get on their knees. Each man did as instructed, reluctantly. Frank twisted and turned at the waist and gave the pilot a thumbs up. Together, we yanked the men to their feet and guided them toward the Suburban. Behind us, the turbine whined, the rotors thumped, and the helicopter made a hell of a cyclone as it rose into the air. Any remaining loose snow whipped all around us. It felt like a thousand minuscule icicles embedded themselves into my cheek.

I glanced around at our surroundings and didn't see a single freestanding structure. We were in the middle of nowhere. I could discharge my weapon and the chance anyone would hear it over the sound of the helicopter's rotors was slim. By the looks on the faces of the men, they realized this as well. The whine of the turbine raised a few decibels. The rotors thumped faster. The helicopter lifted off the ground and began its ascent into the fading deep blue sky. I figured in a couple minutes the silence would be more deafening than the roar of the helicopter.

A weak wintry sun began to crest over the eastern horizon, peeking through sparse holes in the trees where foliage was missing or pine needles didn't mesh. It cast a dim pinkish light over us.

When the helicopter was far enough away that we no longer needed to shout to hear each other, Frank spoke.

"Turn around, assholes."

The men shuffled on their knees until they were facing the other way.

"Ready to go for a ride?" Frank said.

One man nodded. The others remained motionless.

"It's your lucky day," Frank said. "But know that we are going to be watching you after you leave us, and if you so much as fart in a crowded elevator we're gonna have an agent there to collect a gas sample, then plug your asshole and then arrest you for polluting the environment."

One man nodded, again, another remained motionless, and one cracked a smile. So did I. I turned my head and coughed into my hand in an effort to conceal the grin that spread across my face. I swung my head back around, avoiding the eyes of the men, settling on Sarah, instead. She had a bemused look on her face, presumably amused by my reaction to Frank's words.

"You got it?" Frank said. "We're gonna be watching every move you make." He droned on for another thirty seconds, but said nothing important. Mostly tried to make himself sound like a badass and instill the fear of the SIS into the men. All in all, it seemed to have the intended effect.

We lifted each man to his feet, then brought them over to the Suburban and shoved them into the back row of the vehicle, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, knee to knee. I sat in the middle row, passenger side, leaning against the door so that my legs were in between the two middle seats. I loosely aimed my MP7 at the man in the middle.

My phone vibrated against my stomach from inside my coat pocket. I reached in and grabbed it, then checked the display, although I knew who it was. Unknown caller. Robot voice. I answered casually, betraying my feelings at that moment.

"I'm glad to see that punctuality is one of your strong suits, Mr. Noble." Still tinny, still robotic and annoying as ever.

"Ingrained," I said. "Growing up, if I wasn't at the dining room table by six, dinner was forfeited."

"How many dinners did it take for you to learn your lesson?"

"Plenty. I'm hardheaded."

"And you must have been quite the runt."

"I've filled out."

"So you have."

I looked at each man in turn. They sat hunched over. Their foreheads wrinkled, thin and bushy eyebrows alike furrowed over their narrowed eyes. They listened intently to every word I said, presumably trying to figure out what the man said in return. I figured I'd get to the point so we could move on. "What do you want from us now?"

"You will soon be approaching an abandoned gas station on your right. A place that looks like it operated in the fifties. You know, old time pumps, signs with smiling faces in-"

"Yeah, I got it."

"Good."

"Then what?"

"Leave my men."

"Then what?"

"Leave."

"Then what?" I asked again, growing impatient with the one word, two-word game.

"Go back to Cherry Hill and get some breakfast. There is a great little diner on Springdale Road. The name escapes me, though."

"What about the boy?"

There was a long pause and I grew concerned that something had happened to Christopher.

"What about him?" the man said.

"Leave him and then tell me where to find him. We'll be done with this."

The man chuckled. A voice spoke up in the background. Soft, sweet, innocent. At least it would have been if Christopher weren't screaming.
"Let go of me."

"Dammit," I said. "What do you want?"

"My men."

"Then what?"

"We're approaching thirty and a half hours, Mr. Noble. You'll find out soon enough."

The hum of static disappeared, indicating that the call had been cut short. I flipped the phone shut, then leaned back against the door, scanning the faces in the back seat. They all smiled, presumably at the site of me frustrated and angry.

"What did he say?" Frank said, glancing back from the driver's seat.

"He said look for an old abandoned gas station," I said. "Like something out of the fifties."

"And?"

"And we need drop the guys. Then he recommended that we head into Cherry Hill and get some breakfast." One of the men from the back seat laughed. I ignored him and continued. "Oh, and thirty and a half hours remain."

"Till?"

"No clue." I turned my head a bit to the left and looked at the men again. "Any of you know?"

They all shrugged. None of them spoke.

"Of course you don't," I said.

"There it is," Frank said, pointing across the dash.

I leaned forward and turned to my right. The building had seen better days. Panes of glass were broken or shattered or missing completely. The pavement in the parking lot was cracked and overgrown with weeds. Bushes encroached from the unkempt stretches of lawn that surrounded the lot. Vines wrapped around antique gas pumps. The old signpost that once signaled to passers-by that this was the place to stop now lay on the ground, barely visible among nature's chaos.

The Suburban stopped, and I opened my door and slid out. I flipped a lever on the seat, sending it forward and clearing a path for the men to step through. I pulled them down, one by one, and lined them up on the rear quarter panel of the Suburban. The bulk of the beastly SUV hid us from the road. Unfortunately, the big vehicle did not protect us from the wind.

"Aren't you going to uncuff us?" the man with the tracking device in his head said.

I swung my right arm hard and fast and my clenched fist connected with his jaw. He dropped to the ground, his body folding over itself.

"Anyone else want to be uncuffed?" I said.

The two remaining conscious men shook their heads.

"Your boss will be here soon." I turned and climbed into the Suburban, resuming my position in the same seat.

Frank turned the key in the ignition and the big V-8 engine roared to life. We idled for a minute, watching the men and watching the road and breathing heavily enough to fog up the windows. Frank shifted the transmission into drive and pulled out of the parking lot, heading east, toward Cherry Hill.

"What do you think?" Frank said.

"I think he's got us by the balls at the moment," I said.

"That's going to change, though," Frank said.

"I know."

"Any requests for breakfast?"

"Doesn't matter to me." My stomach felt empty and my head like lead. I needed food and coffee, and not necessarily in that order. "Stay off Springdale Road," I added.

"Why's that?" Frank said.

"He recommended we go to a place on Springdale."

"You think he was hinting at something maybe? Like you'd find something there?"

"Yeah," I said. "A bullet to the back of the head."

Frank chuckled the way that only a man who'd done the things we'd done, and seen the things we'd seen, could.

We drove for twenty minutes and found a place on the northern outskirts of the city. I leaned over and got a look at the clock in the dash. Almost six a.m. Almost thirty hours remaining. I laughed at the fact that I'd threatened myself. Only I didn't know why.

We took a booth in the back corner of the diner. I sat so that I had a view of the restaurant, the front door, and the parking lot. The only thing missing was the entrance to the kitchen. Sarah sat across from me and had that covered. When Frank returned from washing up in the restroom, he sat next to me.

We had a laptop computer set up in the middle of the table, facing the window so that all three of us could see it. The computer ran a special program that linked up with the tracking device installed in the man's neck. I had no idea how it worked, and when Frank tried to explain something about GPS tracking, I waved him off. All I cared about was whether it would track the man with any measure of accuracy. And based on experiences, I knew it could.

We picked them up as they hit I-295, northbound. They stayed on the interstate for twenty minutes or so, then exited onto a major road. They stuck to main roads for another ten miles. A few more turns and they were driving through a stretch of map that didn't have a road that registered with our program.

Frank leaned over the table, his eyebrows hunched over squinting eyes. He reached for the laptop and pulled it close to get a better look at where they were heading, I assumed. This was his home territory, after all.

"What do you think?" I said.

He shrugged. "No idea where they're going."

"Maybe they have a house out there?" Sarah said, half statement, half question. This wasn't her specialty, so I figured she felt a little out of place or a little intimidated.

"Possibly," I said. "Let's give it a bit and see."

They drove until they were deep in the country. North of a place called Hopewell and west of Princeton. Then the dot on the screen stopped. It remained still for five minutes, then ten. Ten turned into thirty.

"I think we got them," Frank said.

I pulled out my phone and dialed Harris. He answered on the second ring.

"When's the last time you checked up on Tammy Nockowitz?" I asked.

"About fifteen minutes ago," he said.

"And?"

"I went myself, Jack. She's fine. Doing well. Healing up. We got two guys there and there'll be a shift change at ten a.m."

"OK."

"How are things up there?"

"OK. I think we have their location."

"Great," he said. "Say the word and we're there."

"OK, will do." I ended the call and placed the phone on the table in front of the computer.

"Everything OK with the woman?" Sarah asked.

"Yeah," I said. "She's fine."

The waitress came by and refilled our coffee. For the first time in twenty minutes, I looked away from the computer screen and noticed that the crowd in the diner had thickened. The breakfast crowd, consisting of people in too much of a rush to enjoy the bacon and eggs and pancakes they scarfed down. A crowd could be beneficial at times. This wasn't one of those times, though, and I found myself not wanting to be inside the diner much longer.

Frank must have felt the same way, because he said we needed to get ready to move and he tried to flag down our waitress. The woman noticed him and nodded. She was busy with a half dozen new tables. I wondered how long it would take her to bring our check.

My phone lit up with a new call. The vibrations caused it to dance across the surface of the table, away from me. I grabbed it, flipped it over, and looked at the display.
Unknown caller
, my new best friend.

"Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

Two things struck me at that moment. First, the voice wasn't disguised. I recognized it, somehow, from somewhere. I couldn't place it though. Of course, it could have been my mind working against me. With six billion people in the world, there's bound to be some crossover in things such as looks and the way a voice sounds. I recalled the blip during an earlier call when the machine momentarily allowed his real voice to filter through the phone line. I decided I couldn't dwell on it, at least, not yet. The second thing that struck me was that the man had likely discovered our tracking device, and that was the real reason it stopped moving.