Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (8 page)

Jack was halfway there, passing the midpoint of Langley Oaks Park, when the blip slowed and took the Georgetown Pike loop off-ramp, where it paused.

“What’s over there?” Jack muttered to himself.

To the west lay one of the more expensive residential areas in McLean, where houses ran well into the millions. Jack used his right hand to pan and zoom the car’s nav screen. To the west of the 495 was an open expanse. A nature preserve, it looked like. Secluded—and on a day like this, probably empty. The location made sense—for an isolated meeting place or for a trap. Or for whatever Peter Hahn was taking him to see.

“Come on,” Jack told the blip. “Do something.”

Jack was now passing Parkview Hills and approaching the Georgetown Pike/495 interchange. Hahn’s car was less than a mile ahead and stopped.

The blip turned west onto the pike.

Jack sped up and reached the exit turnoff forty seconds later. Here, west of the 495, the pike was known as Cardinal Drive. On Jack’s nav screen Hahn’s car was a half-mile ahead and slowing at Swinks Mill Road. It turned right into what looked like an elongated, winding parking lot.

Jack took his foot off the gas pedal and coasted until he reached Swinks Mill. He stopped just short of the preserve
entrance and eased ahead until he could see through the trees.

Though the temperature was in the low sixties, the rain and wind made for miserable hiking weather, and it was still too early in the season for the die-hard mushroom collectors to be out.

He saw no cars before the road curved and disappeared around a bend.

This was a damned terrible idea, Jack thought. Tactically, there were many reasons why he shouldn’t be doing this, the biggest of which was exfiltration. Once inside this parking lot he would be boxed with a lone narrow road for an escape route. And he had no backup. On the other hand, if he took the time to find another entrance and Hahn left his car, Jack would never find him.

No choice. Nothing’s perfect; either you adapt or you fail.

He scanned the lot for surveillance cameras but saw none.

He turned in and drove to the lot’s rear section, a cul-de-sac roughly a hundred yards long. At the far end Hahn’s Nissan was pulling onto a single-lane dirt access road. Jack grabbed his binoculars from the rucksack and zoomed in. A wooden sign with yellow letters read
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. Lying on the ground beside the sign’s post was a pile of chain. After a few moments the car’s taillights disappeared through the trees.

“Shit.” He saw no other cars in the lot. Who was Hahn
meeting? And where? This access road didn’t appear on the car’s navigation screen. Out his side window was a small roofed kiosk. On its wall, behind plexiglass, were what looked like a collection of enlarged historical photos. The box that should have contained maps was empty.

He rolled down both windows a couple inches and pulled ahead, scanning the trees on either side until he reached the entrance access road.

Jack’s inner warning voice was talking to him:
Leave. Call Hendley.

Not yet. His gut was also talking to him: something about Hahn, about his demeanor, that told Jack the man could be trusted. No,
trusted
was the wrong word, but twice Hahn had passed up a chance to kill Jack. Whoever was pulling the man’s strings, he’d chosen a different path. What that was Jack didn’t know. And he was about to find out which of his two voices was right.

Jack drew his Glock and tucked it under his thigh.

He eased the nose of the Chrysler between the posts and drove
on.

ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA

T
he road wound its way north, generally following the course of a creek Jack could hear gurgling through his driver’s-side window. Occasionally through the trees he glimpsed the Nissan’s red taillights or the white of its trunk. Hahn was moving slowly, less than twenty miles an hour. The trees continued to thicken and soon the road veered slightly right, east, away from the river, and the grade steepened.

Ahead, Hahn’s brake lights flashed, then went out. Hahn had stopped with his passenger-side tires on the dirt shoulder. Beyond the car the access road curved right, following the contour of the Potomac’s banks, Jack guessed.

Jack coasted to a stop, then put the car in reverse and
backed down the road until he could barely see Hahn’s car through the trees.

Hahn got out of his car. He opened a green-and-white golf umbrella. Without so much as a glance in Jack’s direction he walked across the road, down into the ditch, and disappeared from view.

—

J
ack gave him a thirty-second head start, then climbed out, pulled the brim of his cap lower over his eyes, and followed. The rain had picked up slightly and the drops pattered the loam alongside the road.

When he drew even with the spot where Hahn had left the road, Jack saw there was a narrow trail heading north and west as it skirted the base of a rocky hill. If there was high ground to be had, Jack was going to take it. And if someone was lying in wait for him, chances were good that was where they would be.

Jack continued down the road another fifty feet until he found a natural break in the trees, then hopped down into the ditch and started up the slope. The leaves were slick underfoot, but by using roots and exposed rock Jack was able to slowly pick his way upward, stopping occasionally to scan the terrain.

Another few minutes of hiking brought him to a shallow
cliff face. He picked his way up to a ledge where the rocks formed a natural stairway, then began climbing.

Jack paused.
Where is Hahn?
The trail he’d taken had to be somewhere to his left and below. He kept climbing until the stairs broadened into a rock shelf covered in scrub trees. He crept ahead until he was a few feet from the far edge, then crouched and peeked over. Below him lay a ravine bisected by the creek. To his left, at the mouth of the ravine, a waterfall plunged into a churning catch basin before emptying into a lagoon, itself spanned by a flagstone ford. Traversing the waterfall was a wooden footbridge.

Jack sensed movement to the left. He lay down on his belly and aimed the binoculars in that direction. It was Peter Hahn’s green-and-white umbrella, emerging from the trail. Hahn reached the bridge and started across. At the halfway point, he stopped. He placed his hand on the railing and leaned forward for a better view of the waterfall. Rain dribbled from the edge of his umbrella.

Five minutes passed.

A lone figure wearing a khaki trench coat and carrying a black umbrella mounted the bridge from the opposite side of the ravine and walked toward Hahn. Jack zoomed in, but at this angle he could see nothing above the man’s chest. His gait and build told Jack the man was younger than Hahn.

Hahn saw Trench Coat and turned toward him. He
extended his hand in greeting. Trench Coat motioned to do the same. His hand came out of his coat pocket holding a palm-size semiautomatic pistol.

“What the—” Jack muttered. He drew his Glock, but too late.

The pistol’s muzzle flashed orange. In the rush of the waterfall the shot was silent. Hahn took a step backward as though someone had punched him in the belly. Trench Coat fired again. Hahn’s right leg buckled and he fell sideways, back against the handrail, then slid down onto his butt. His umbrella slipped from his hand, bounced off the footbridge’s wooden treads, and rolled away. Trench Coat lifted the pistol and shot Hahn in the right eye. He shoved the gun into his jacket pocket, turned, and walked away. From the first shot to the coup de grâce, less than five seconds had elapsed.

Jack’s natural instinct was to run to Hahn, but he quashed it. The German was dead, without a doubt. Next, run down Hahn’s killer. This, too, he resisted. Had Hahn brought him here to witness this or to find the next link in the chain? Or both? Whatever the answer, it lay with the man walking back across the bridge.

Jack raised the binoculars and tracked him. Trench Coat’s pace was unhurried, as if he were out for a casual nature walk. At the foot of the bridge he turned right onto a trail and Jack lost sight of him behind the trees.

Jack stood up and crouch-walked to the far edge of the
rock shelf, then lay down again and started scanning with the binoculars. According to his car’s nav screen, this preserve’s border was marked by the creek below, which meant Trench Coat had parked somewhere within the preserve, farther down the access road, or somewhere in the residential areas to the west; this seemed less likely, he judged, given the exclusivity of this area of McLean. A nonnative vehicle in a well-to-do and tight-knit neighborhood would quickly attract attention.

How much time did he give Trench Coat? Jack wondered. Ninety seconds, he decided. He started counting and focused the binoculars on the lagoon’s flagstone pads.

When Jack’s count reached forty, Trench Coat emerged from the screen of trees and stepped onto the bank of the lagoon. He started across the ford. Jack zoomed in. Still the man’s face was blocked by the umbrella.

Jack backed away from the edge, turned around, and retraced his path, moving as fast and as quietly as possible. When he reached the ditch bordering the road, he stopped and looked left to where he guessed Trench Coat would emerge.
Clear.
He sprinted across it and into the trees beyond.

He needed to get ahead of Hahn’s killer.

After fifty feet, he veered left toward the access road, slowing his pace as he drew closer. When he could see the road’s berm through the trees, he stopped and crouched. He raised the binoculars and panned back along the road.

Where are you . . . ?

There.

Trench Coat was coming down the road, still strolling without a care in the world. Jack had a lead, but not much of one. He recalled his rough mental map of the preserve: Eventually this access road would have to curve south before reaching Highway 495 and heading back toward Cardinal Drive.

He stood up, backed through the trees until he lost sight of the road, then turned and started moving again, keeping the road on his left. Jack adjusted course to the south, ran for another sixty seconds, then again veered left until the road came back into view.

Ahead through the trees he glimpsed a flash of metallic-blue car paint. He crouched beside a stump and lifted the binoculars to his eyes. It was the hood of a midsize sedan. He’d found a second parking lot, this one smaller than the first, a horseshoe-shaped clearing with enough spaces for ten to fifteen cars. All but one of them was empty. The access road entered on the left and exited on the right.

He zoomed in on the car. It was a Chevy Malibu. On the upper right side of the windshield was a Hertz sticker. Jack panned down and focused on the Maryland license plate. He memorized the number.

Jack lowered the binoculars and looked left through the trees, waiting for a glimpse of Trench Coat. He had two
options: intercept the man and snatch him up or try to gather more information and track him. The former was impractical for a number of reasons, the biggest of which was what to do with the man. Chain him up in the condo’s pantry and torture him? No, if he wanted to get to the heart of what was happening and find a way to make it stop, he needed to know who was giving the orders.

Still, the idea of watching a murderer get in his car and drive away rankled Jack’s conscience. Whatever Hahn’s reasons, it seemed he’d come to this meeting knowing it would probably cost him his life. Moreover, he’d spared Jack’s life twice. While Jack felt no particular affection for Hahn, the least he could do was make that sacrifice count.

From Jack’s right he heard the crunch of tires on gravel. He looked that way and saw a red compact SUV pull into the clearing and turn into one of the stalls opposite the Malibu. After a few moments the SUV’s taillights went dark and exhaust stopped flowing from the muffler pipe. The driver’s-side door opened.

Jack scanned left, looking for Trench Coat. He was a hundred feet from the parking lot.

Jack felt a shiver of panic. What happened next depended on Trench Coat’s attitude toward witnesses. Would it be worth a second murder to get away from the scene cleanly?

The SUV’s driver got out, walked around the rear of the
vehicle, stopped. He looked left and right, then walked across the lot toward Trench Coat’s Malibu. When he reached the rear bumper he pulled out a cell phone and snapped a picture of the license plate, then walked to the driver’s-side window and peered inside.

“What’re you doing?” Jack muttered to himself. Who was this? A cop, a thief? The man struck Jack as neither. He was in his mid-twenties, with shaggy blond hair and a prominent chin, and he moved tentatively, without the confidence of a cop.

This wasn’t going to end well.

The man straightened up and started back toward his SUV.

The Malibu’s headlights flashed once, accompanied by a muted beep and the clunk of the door locks disengaging.

Jack looked left, felt his heart lurch into his throat. Trench Coat was entering the parking lot, umbrella still covering half his face. His pistol was up and pointed at the SUV’s driver. The muzzle flashed; the report was no louder than that of a wet towel being snapped. The SUV’s driver crumpled to the ground.