He was a professional soldier, not a cop. There were no smartass remarks when being given straight orders that could remind him how to do his job.
“Why don’t I take the garage and around the outside?” asked Top, and off he went.
I stood alone in the living room and waited for the crime scene to tell me its story. If, indeed, it was a crime scene.
The doors and windows were properly closed and locked from inside. I’d had to kick the door, and a quick examination showed that the deadbolt had been engaged. Same went for the side and back doors. I went upstairs and checked those windows. Locked. Cellar door was locked and the windows were block glass.
Back in the living room I saw a laptop case by the couch, and one of those padded lap tables. The case was empty. The power cable and mouse were there, but the machine itself was gone.
Significant.
The question was…was Simon Burke crazy enough to actually write his novel about the unstoppable terrorist plot?
I hadn’t met him, but I had read his psych evaluations. He had that dangerous blend of overblown ego and deep insecurity that creates a person who feels that any idea he has is of world-shaking importance and must therefore be shared with the whole world. They typically lack perspective, and everything I’d read in Burke’s case file told me that he was one of those. Probably not a bad person, but not the kind you’d want to be caught in a stalled elevator with. Only one of you would walk out alive.
So…where was he?
My cell rang, and I flipped it open. The screen read UNKNOWN CALLER.
That’s…pretty unsettling. Our phone system is run through MindReader, which is wired in everywhere. There are no callers unknown to MindReader.
It kept ringing. Before I answered it I pulled a little doohickey the size of a matchbox from a pocket, unspooled its wire, plugged the lead into the phone and pressed the CONNECT button. MindReader would race down the phone lines in a millisecond and begin reading the computer and sim card in the other phone. One of Mr. Sin’s toys. He did not like surprises.
It rang a third time and I punched the button.
“Hello?”
“Joe?”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“Joe? Is this Joe Ledger?”
“Sir, please identify yourself.”
“It’s me, Joe.”
“Who?” Though I thought I already knew.
“Simon Burke.” He paused and gave a nervous little laugh. “Guess you’ve been looking for me.”
“Where are you, Mr. Burke?”
“C’mon, Joe, cut the ‘Mister’ stuff. Mr. Burke was my dad, and he was kind of a dick.”
I looked through the window at the white fog swirling from the cornfields. It was so thick you couldn’t see the dirt. Between the black storm clouds and the ground fog, visibility was dropping pretty fast. That wasn’t good. I said, “You told me that same joke the first time I met you.”
“Did I?”
“Can you verify where we first met?”
“Sure,” he said. “Central District police station on East Baltimore Street.”
“Okay,” I said, “good to hear your voice, Simon. You want to tell me where the hell you are?”
He laughed. “Too far away for you to come get me. At least right now.”
I turned away from the window just as tendrils of fog began caressing the glass. “We need to get you back into protective custody, Simon.”
“Joe,” he said, “listen…I’m sorry for doing this to you.”
“Doing what?” When he didn’t answer I said, “We know about the cell phones, Simon.”
“Yeah…I guessed you’d figure it out. I just thought Church would send more people. I…I didn’t know it would be just three of you.”
My mouth went dry.
“Jesus Christ, Simon, what did you do?”
There was a sound. It might have been a sob, though it sounded strangely like bubbles escaping through mud. “Look…I was getting tired of waiting…and I knew that you’d be able to handle just about anything. So…I started reaching out to….”
“To who?”
“Potential buyers.”
“Oh…Christ….why?”
“I wanted to draw them in, just like the FBI said they were going to do. Only the Feds were taking way too much time. I was wasting my life away in this crappy little town.”
“Simon….”
“I offered to sell my plot. I…reached out to several buyers and told them that I had it all written down, and that they had to bring two million in unmarked bills. Don’t worry, I’d have turned over the cash. I just needed it to look and feel real to them. And they bought it, too. They thought I was selling out.”
“Who’s bringing the money, Simon?”
“All of them.”
“What do you mean? Damn it, Simon, how many buyers did you contact?”
“A lot.”
“Simon….”
“Six,” he said in a small and broken voice. “There are six teams of buyers. I told them to meet me at the house. I figured they’d get there and start shooting each other. It would be like a movie. I could sell that scenario. I could make a bestseller out of it…I could make a movie out of it…”
“Simon, when are the shooters expected here?”
“When? Joe…that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That’s why I was sorry it was just the three of you. They’re already here. I…I didn’t mean to kill you.”
And the windows exploded in under a hail of high-caliber bullets.
Chap. 6
I dove for cover behind the couch. It wasn’t a good dive and it wasn’t pretty, but it got me low and out of the line of fire. Then I tried to melt right into the carpet. High-caliber rounds were chewing the couch to splinters and threads. The air above me was filled with thunder. Plaster and chunks of wall lath rained down on me.
The shots seemed continuous, so there had to be multiple shooters. They were firing full auto, and even with a high-capacity magazine it only takes a couple of seconds to burn through the entire clip.
I shimmied sideways, trying to put the edge of the stone fireplace between me and the shooters. I had my Beretta out, but the barrage was so intense that I couldn’t risk a shot.
Then the sound changed. There were new sounds. The hollow pok-pok-pok of small-arms fire and the rhythmic boom of a shotgun. Those sounds were farther away.
Top and Bunny returning fire.
The automatic gunfire swept away from me and split as the shooters focused on these two new targets. That gave me my moment, and I was up and running, pistol out. There was nothing left of the door except splintered wood and glass through which the fog rolled like a slow-motion tide. I went through it fast, feeling the splinters claw at my sleeves and thighs. I was firing before I set foot outside.
In combat you see more, process more, and all of it happens fast. That’s a skill set you learn quick or you get killed. As I came out of the house I saw five men standing in a loose shooting line in the turnaround. The fog was thick enough to cover them to midthigh. They were dark-skinned. Middle Eastern for sure, though from that distance I couldn’t tell from where. All four of them carried AK47s with banana-clips. Three were facing the garage, firing steadily at it; the other two were standing wide-legged as they leaned back to fire at the second floor.
I emptied my magazine into them. I saw blood puff out in little clouds of red mist as two of them staggered backward and fell, vanishing into the fog. Another one took a round through the cheek. Because he was shouting, the bullet went through both cheeks and left the teeth untouched. He was screaming louder as he wheeled around toward me.