One more, he thought. One more ghost to haunt me.
There were already too many, and it did not matter one bit that it was not his finger on the trigger. Would it ever get to the point where there were so many that they morphed into so large a crowd that no individual accusing voice could be heard above the others? Would their faces blur together over time? Did it ever happen that way?
Across the narrow gap, rising like a ghostly wail from within the submarine, a chorus of voices cried out together.
“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!” rose the cry. “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
All along the rails hardened soldiers blanched at the sound, which was strained and raw as if it rose from throats torn to ruin by screaming. Wet and ugly. Each voice cried out in perfect harmony to create an imperfect alien shriek. Not a prayer. Not as such, but there was a red and terrible reverence in it nonetheless.
“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
The green glow emanating from within the sub was not a steady light. It flickered as if something inside were capering and writhing, its movements casting goblin shapes.
Valen took the compact satellite phone from his pocket. His fingers trembled so violently that he nearly dropped the device, and even when he got a firm grip he misdialed three times before finally getting the correct number. It rang only once.
“Gadyuka,” he said in a tremulous voice, “I found it.”
PART ONE
PATRIOT GAMES
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
CHAPTER ONE
“Joe Ledger.”
I looked up from the gravestone to see three big guys in the kind of dark suits Feds wear when they want to be intimidating.
I wasn’t intimidated.
They weren’t wearing topcoats because it was a chilly damn day in Baltimore. There was frost sparkling on the grass around Helen’s grave. Winter birds huddled together in the bare trees and the sun was a white nothing behind a sheet of tinfoil-gray clouds.
“Who’s asking?” I said.
“We need you to come with us,” said the point man. He looked like Lurch from the Addams Family movies. Too tall, too pale, and with a ghoulish face. The other guys might as well have been wearing signs that said “Goon #1” and “Goon #2.” I almost smiled. I’d been fronted like this before. Hell, I’d even been fronted here before. Didn’t scare me then, didn’t scare me now. Didn’t like it either time, though.
“I didn’t ask what you needed, chief,” I said, giving Lurch a bright smile. “I asked who you are.”
“Doesn’t matter who we are,” he said, and he smiled, too.
“Yeah, pretty sure it does,” I said, keeping it neutral.
“You need to come with us,” Lurch repeated as he took a step toward me. He looked reasonably fit, but his weight was on his lead foot and he tended to gesticulate while he spoke. Whoever trained him to do this kind of stuff wasn’t very good at it, or Lurch was simply dumb. He should have had his goons surround me in a wide three-point approach, with none of them directly in the others’ lines of fire, and none of them close enough for me to hit or to use as a shield against the others. It always pissed me off when professionals acted like amateurs.
“Badge me or blow me,” I suggested.
Goon #2 pulled back the flap of his jacket to expose the Glock he wore on his belt. The holster looked new; the gun looked like he’d never used it for anything except trying to overcompensate.
I ignored him. “Here’s the thing, sparky,” I said to Lurch in my best I’m-still-being-reasonable voice, “you either don’t know who I am or you’re operating with limited intelligence. And I mean that in every sense of the word.”
“You’re Joe Ledger,” he said.
“ Captain Joe Ledger,” I corrected.
His sneer increased. “Not anymore, Mister Ledger.”
“Says who?”
“Says the president of the United goddamn States.”
They were standing in a kind of inverted vee, with Lurch at the point and the goons on either side. Goon #2 had his jacket open; Goon #1 did not. Nor did Lurch. If they were actually experienced agents, they could unbutton and draw in a little over one second. Goon #2 would beat them to the draw by maybe a quarter second.
That wasn’t going to be enough time for them.
“Going to ask one more time,” I said quietly, still smiling. “Show me your identification. Do it now and do it smart.”
Lurch gave me a ninja death stare for three full seconds but then he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a leather identification wallet, flipped it open, and held it four inches from my nose. Secret Service.
“Someone could have made a phone call and gotten me in,” I said.
“No,” he said, without explaining. “Now, here’s how it’s going to play out. You’re going to put your hands on your head, fingers laced, while we pat you down. If you behave, we won’t have to cuff you. If you act out, we’ll do a lot more than cuff you, understand, smart guy?”
“‘Act out’?” I echoed. “That’s adorable. Not sure I’ve ever heard a professional use that phrasing before.”
“They said he’d be an asshole, Tony,” said Goon #1.
Tony — Lurch — nodded and contrived to look sad. “Okay, then we do it the hard way.”
All three of them went for their guns.
Like I said, they didn’t have enough time for that.
CHAPTER TWO
I was close enough to kill him, but that wasn’t my play.
So, instead I stepped fast into Lurch and hit him in the chest with a palm-heel shot, using all of my mass and sudden acceleration to put some real juice into it. He wasn’t set for it at all and fell backward, hard and fast, into Goon #2. They both went down in a tangle. I kept moving forward and kicked Goon #1 in what my old jujitsu instructor used to call the “entertainment center.” I wasn’t trying to do permanent damage — and there are a lot of creative ways to do that — but I wanted to make a point. I made it with the reinforced rubber tip of my New Balance running shoe. He folded like a badly erected tent. I pivoted and chop-kicked Lurch across the mouth as he tried to simultaneously rise and draw his gun. The running shoes were new and the tread deep and hard. Ah well.
Lurch spun away, spitting blood and a tooth onto the grass. I stamped down on his hand while I took his gun away and tossed it behind me. Then I reached down and gave Goon #2 a double-tap of knuckle punches on either side of his nose. If he had sinus issues he would have a mother of a migraine for days. If he didn’t, he’d only have the migraine for the rest of today. I took his gun away, too.
Then I pivoted back to Goon #1, who was wandering feebly on his hands and knees, drool hanging from slack lips, eyes goggling. I gave him a nasty little Thai-boxing knee kick to flip him onto his back, drilled a corkscrew punch to his solar plexus, and took his gun for my collection.
In the movies, fight scenes take several minutes. There’s a lot of flash and drama, and when either the good guy or bad guy knocks the other guy down, he lets him get up. As if fights are ever supposed to be fair. For me, fairness began and ended with me not killing them. Every other consideration centered on winning right here, right now, with zero seconds wasted. That’s how real fights work.