Chasing the Son (3 page)

It hadn’t been
that
bad and Harry had sensed he was being tested. Could he take it? Would he lash out?

Harry had taken it, kept his mouth shut except for a direct response and learned the cardinal rule of surviving as a rat: be a ghost. Don’t make waves, don’t stand out, don’t draw attention.

That seemed contrary to the concept of ‘man-building’ in Harry’s opinion, but he knew his opinion meant squat compared to that of the Institute and the upperclass.

But Harry now had a problem. Just after an evening meeting of the football team, upon which he was trying to gain a spot on the roster as a safety, he’d pinged back to his room, pinging being a nice way of saying marching at 120 steps per minute, eyes forward, neck braced back, squaring every corner, walking at the far wall of every corridor, taking only the single, furthest stairwell reserved for rats, up to his fifth floor room.

He’d made it inside just as Taps began to play, taking a moment to inhale deeply in the relative (no locks on door, subject to upperclass intrusion at any time) safety of his room, when he noticed his roommate was missing.

This was troublesome for two reasons. His roommate was technically on bed rest as mandated by the infirmary. So Cadet (rat) Wing should have been in bed. And even if not on bed rest, Wing was required by regulation to be in the room at Taps.

And, more to the point of the moment, Wing was Chinese-African American.

It might be the second decade of the 21
st
century to the rest of the world, but at the Institute, it might as well be Jim Crow combined with the fervor of ‘America for the Americans’, yada yada. In a way, things would have been easier for Wing if he’d been 100% black. The cadets would have known where he fit (on the bottom) and treated him accordingly, but the Asian was a wrinkle which they couldn’t iron out by turning to tradition. So they used the hazing hammer to slam at it, trying to see what the result would be.

Wing was on bed rest after being run ragged the past week (including Magical Mystery tours for three consecutive nights). Not the most impressive physical specimen to start with, he’d finally collapsed in the dining hall at breakfast. The norm was to suck it up. Get up, get to class, make it through the day. Instead, Wing had opted to go to the infirmary. If he’d been able, Harry would have talked him out of it, but he never had a chance, only finding out in between his second and third classes when it was too late. Going to the infirmary was a big step in the wrong direction among the Corps of Cadets; a sign of weakness. Worse, cadets were wondering if Wing had ‘ratted out’; told the officials what the cause of his physical condition was and named names. Not that anything would come of it, hazing being as much a part of rat life as breathing, but it showed a lack of fortitude and willingness to be part of the system. If he ratted out as a rat (redundant yes, but reality) then how could one trust him later in life?

Harry checked his roommate’s closet, trying to see what uniform was gone to get an idea where he might have gone. He didn’t miss it at first, but then he realized what was absent: Wing’s grey raincoat. And his M-14 rifle and parade bayonet.

It wasn’t raining outside; indeed it was a muggy, 95 degree Low Country August night. And there wasn’t a parade scheduled after Taps.

Harry faced that decision point every man faces in his life: do nothing, cover your ass, go to bed.

Or he could go searching for his roommate.

The correct Institute answer was obvious—hit the rack and ignore the issue.

At West Point plebes quickly adopted an unofficial motto: cooperate and graduate. At the Institute, it wasn’t the same. Sort of an
every man for himself,
rats on a sinking ship philosophy. Those who climbed to the top made it; those who were on the lower decks went under. It is a fact that when drowned sailors or fishermen are recovered from their wrecks, boot marks are often found on the shoulders and tops of heads of the dead bodies caught below decks.

Harry didn’t owe Wing any particular loyalty. He barely knew the guy. Harry was a rat in a sea of snakes called upperclassmen who relished nothing better to do than feast on a rat out of his quarters after Taps. There was an adult somewhere on campus, a tactical officer, but the unwritten rule was the Tac stayed out of the barracks, never passing through the sally ports into the inner sanctum, especially at night, allowing hundreds of young men free rein inside a class system that not only allowed, but fostered abuse.

Harry stripped off his ‘As For Class Grey’ and put on his athletic shorts and shirt, the name Brannigan emblazoned on the left chest, right above the Institute crest with its motto:
Duty, Loyalty, State
. Harry tied his running shoes. Took a deep breath. Then slipped out of his room.

He heard a clicking noise echoing down the empty corridor, the steel taps on the heels of the shoes worn by the Charge of Quarters, CQ, making his rounds, turning off the hall lights. Harry cut into the rat staircase and descended. Down six stories, below ground level, to the Sinks, as the basement level of the barracks was called. There were indeed sinks there, along with communal showers, lockers, weight rooms, and storage areas for the upperclassmen to put their civilian clothes for their weekend jaunts into Charleston and beyond.

Why he went down, Harry couldn’t explain, but it was instinctual. Even with only three weeks under his belt at the Institute, Harry was getting a feel for the place. While the Institute proudly displayed cadets on parade on the large field in front of the barracks every Saturday morning, it had a dark, morbid side to it, hidden deep inside the battlements, so Harry went deep.

Reaching the level of the Sinks, Harry paused. There was a smell to this level, one no cadet would ever forget: musty locker room with a tinge of fear and desperation. Harry cocked his head and listened.

There was the muted echo of several voices raised, threatening, humiliating, taunting. A familiar sound to every rat. But there was an edge to this cacophony, a threat. A darkness that caused Harry to reconsider his plan. There was something else and it took Harry a few moments to recognize it: drunkenness.

He was at a second decision point, where the stakes were higher. Harry sensed if he went down the corridor into the Sinks, he was never coming back the same. Not to the life he’d had planned out in conjunction with his benefactor, Doc Cleary. It didn’t occur to him that the stakes might be even higher than that.

But then he thought of what Doc would say, what Doc would do, and to hell with the plan, he pushed open the stairwell door and headed down the corridor toward the hazing.

And for the first time he heard his roommate scream.

Chapter One

The Present—Wednesday Evening

“You broke my heart, Horace,” Erin Brannigan said. “You broke it when I was seventeen, and then you broke it again when you came back. You put your life on the line, searching for a boy that didn’t exist. I couldn’t believe it. But I saw it. It was like you were going out of your way to slap me in the face with your every action.”

A cool breeze swept over the pool near them, blown in off the Caribbean Sea onto this isolated side of the island. Chase’s friends waited offshore for him to finish what they all believed was one last mission to close this clusterfuck out.

Chase did what would have been unthinkable just five minutes earlier, turning to Sarah Briggs for amplification. “All this over a teenage fling?”

Sarah sighed, and Chase could clearly see it in her eyes now, something he’d seen in a handful of men in combat. She was one of those who had no real fear outside of them. A psychopath, through and through. One to whom everyone was like the large chess pieces outside Erin’s office back on Hilton Head. Pieces to be moved and played. She was topless, reclined in her chaise, sporting only a bikini bottom, but there was no allure to her nudity and she wasn’t pretending any more. She’d fooled Chase, fooled him bad, drawn him into a battle with the Russian Mafia and she’d gotten away clean, with all the money. She’d faked her death somehow and disappeared.

Until now.

But Erin Brannigan was a wild card; Chase had been stunned when she walked out of the mansion and joined them.

“Horace,” Sarah said, with a hint of exasperation, “Erin is upset because you walked away when she got pregnant.”

Chase blinked in stunned disbelief and Sarah leaned forward, her first surprise of the unexpected meeting. “You never knew?”

Chase could only shake his head.

Sarah glanced over at Erin, who was perfectly still. She wore a simple sundress and was the last person Chase had expected to run into when he’d infiltrated this island to deliver the economic coup de grace to Sarah for her deceptions and lies.

“Don’t act like you didn’t know,” Erin said, her voice cold.

“Of course he didn’t,” Sarah said, nodding in understanding. “He nearly got killed trying to find my kid, who didn’t even exist. You don’t think he’d have given a shit about his own?”

“I called you,” Erin said to Chase. “I wrote you.”

Chase’s mind was racing, thoughts tumbling over one another in a confusing cascade: what had happened to the child? Did she have an abortion? Adopt it out? Raise it? “I didn’t know. I was in Beast Barracks at West Point. We couldn’t get calls. Or even letters, for those two months. Nothing.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Sarah said to Erin. Backing from a psycho wasn’t exactly what Chase was looking for at the moment, but he was too rattled to care.

“Shut up!” Erin finally cracked, screaming at Sarah. “How the hell can you know?”

“Because if he’d have known, he’d have crawled over broken glass to help you,” Sarah said. Her head was swiveling back and forth between the two of them, as if sorting out a Gordian Knot from so many years ago, and looking for her own angle to play. “You gave up,” Sarah suddenly realized, staring at Erin. “You made a feeble attempt to contact him, just to cover yourself, and then you just gave up. Because you
did
know he’d come back. He’d give up West Point, everything. He’d have come back for you and for the child. You did understand him. Even if you don’t know you did. You didn’t want him to do that, and, ultimately, you didn’t want him.”

Chase felt stupid, listening to them talk about him as if he weren’t even part of this, when he most definitely was, but Sarah’s words sent a chill through him on another level.

“No,” Erin said. She seemed confused. “My father. He wouldn’t have it. When we didn’t hear back from Horace right away, he said I had to leave. I had to go to my mother’s in Oklahoma. That she’d take care of me. My father got rid of me. Just like you did, Horace,” she hissed at the end, drawing her hatred back to the present.

Chase took a step toward Erin. “I’m so sorry. I
would
have come. I’m sorry you had to go through it alone. I’d have held your hand.”

Sarah laughed, sending Chase’s thoughts tumbling into freefall.

“Horace! Erin knew you so much more than you ever knew her. She didn’t want you there holding her hand while she got an abortion. Because she didn’t get one. She didn’t want you there holding her hand while she gave birth to your son.”

Chase’s knees buckled, and he almost fell. “My son?”

Sarah got to her feet, finally putting the pieces together. She was focused on Erin. “That’s what this has all been about to you, isn’t it, you bitch?” There was real anger in her voice. The betrayer, betrayed. “This has been a game to get Chase here, right now, because you knew he’d show up. You want to hurt him. All you’ve ever wanted to do is hurt him. It was never about the money. Why? Why, Erin? Why was that so important to the point you’d get us both killed to do it?”

“Because he left me,” Erin said.

“I didn’t leave you,” Chase protested weakly. “I had to report to West Point.”

“You left me,” Erin said. “Everyone left me.”

“You never asked me to stay,” Chase said. “We have a son?”

“You left me,” Erin said, and then her right hand snaked behind her back and she brought the gun out.

Chase didn’t even attempt to lift the MP-5 as she brought it to bear at his head.

She was the mother of his son, two intertwined facts so staggering he was incapable of even protecting himself.

The shot startled him.

Erin looked down at the small black hole in her upper chest, just over the top of her sundress. From hard experience Chase knew the exit wound wasn’t as pretty. Erin gave the slightest of smiles. “His name is Horace, too.”

And then she crumpled, in the inelegant way the dead do, to the tiled deck, blood pooling underneath her body.

At least Gator hadn’t used the Barrett, was the bizarre thought that went through Chase’s brain as he looked down at Erin’s body. The massive .50 caliber round would have blown Erin in half.

Chase turned to Sarah.

Her face was white. “I didn’t know she was crazy like
that
, Horace. You have to believe me.”

Chase stared at her, the weight on his heart gone. “The money—whatever’s left—will switch accounts in”—he looked at his watch—“twelve minutes.”

Sarah stiffened. “What?”

“Sarah.” Chase shook his head. Clearing it. Feeling a warm glow growing deep inside. “I might have my faults, but stupid isn’t one of them.” He reached into his waterproof bag, tied to his waist, and pulled out the USB key. “My acquaintance in black ops programmed this. He did what I should have done. As soon as I called him on my way down to see Karralkov, he checked on you. He learned
you
didn’t have a son. Or a husband. He knew who you were, and what you were. But he let it play out for his own reasons. And it worked for him. You might be good, Sarah, but he’s in a world you can’t even imagine.

“Before I left the
Fina
, I sent a retrieval code so that it automatically moves your money to several pre-programmed destinations. There’s nothing you can do to stop it.” He checked his watch. “Eleven minutes.” He turned and headed back toward the cliff and ocean.

“Horace?” Her voice had lost all its allure.