Guilty Minds (28 page)

T
he UPS truck pulled into the private road and came to a stop at the gate.

It was a tall black wrought-iron gate, simple and spare, devoid of any scrollwork or curlicues. All along its top were sharp spear points.

The driver noticed the stone pillar on the left side of the gate, on which were mounted a camera and an intercom. He advanced his truck a few feet more, leaned out his window, and pressed a button.

After fifteen seconds or so, a voice came over the intercom: “Yes?”

“UPS. Package for Thomas, uh, Vogel. I need a signature.”

Another pause. Less than ten seconds this time. “All right.”

Slowly the gate slid to the right, and when it was fully open, the brown truck proceeded down the unpaved tree-lined road, which wound through the woods for quite a while. Finally the road opened up into a clearing, and there was a house, large and rambling, handsome, but not at all imposing.

It had a low-pitched roof, with generously overhanging eaves. Exposed, scalloped rafter tails. Dormers both gabled and hipped. The windows had single-paned bottom sashes with multi-paned top sashes.

The casing around the front door was wide, as was the casing around the windows, with their detailed mullion work. The house was built in the Craftsman style, and it was clearly done with great pride and attention to detail.

I was impressed. If Vogel had really built this house with his own hands, he did excellent work.

Merlin, who was driving, shut off the engine and handed me the electronic clipboard. While he went to the back of the truck to retrieve one of the duffel bags, I came around the hood to the front door. I rang the doorbell.

If Vogel came to the door, I was ready. But I didn’t expect him to, and he didn’t. Someone else opened the front door, a bulky guy with short black hair and a steroid-poisoned look. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt and had overdeveloped pecs.

“Thomas Vogel?” I said through the screen door.

“I can sign,” the guy said. “Where’s the package?”

“It’s a big piece of exercise equipment. Before I take it down from the truck, can you eyeball it, make sure it looks right?”

The guy shrugged, looking a little uncertain, pushed open the screen door, and came out. I took a quick look at the small foyer inside, the living room next to it, and I froze the image in my mind.

I led the way to the back of the truck. There, I pulled open the roll-up door, and he saw the nearly empty cargo bay. All we had back there were the stingray and a pile of zip ties and one of the two duffel bags. Merlin had already placed the other duffel at the back of the house.

I saw Merlin approach but hang back, watching me.

The guy said, “What the hell—”

But my right arm was already swooping around his right shoulder and hooking his thick neck in the crook of my elbow. He flung his fists out and back at me, but it was useless. Grabbing my bicep with my left
hand, I drew my shoulders back, and it tightened up like a scissor. I squeezed, compressing the carotid arteries on either side of his neck.

Within ten seconds, he slumped. He’d be unconscious for only a few seconds, really, but when he came to he’d be swimming out of a daze and sluggish. It took Merlin and me about a minute and a half to zip-tie his hands and legs, hog-tying him. I ripped off a length of duct tape and taped his mouth closed.

I left him on the ground. With the truck in the way he couldn’t be seen from inside the house.

I picked up the electronic clipboard from the ground where I’d dropped it.

One down. The problem was that we didn’t know how many guys lived or worked in the compound, how much protection Vogel maintained. But I was sure this guy wasn’t the only one.

“Ready?” Merlin said.

“Just a second.” I jumped into the cargo bay and found the Ruger 22. “Okay,” I said.

Merlin punched a number into one of the cheap mobile phones.

He waited, looked at me. I could hear the distant ringing through his phone’s earpiece.

Then came the explosion.

It was louder than I anticipated, an immense cracking, echoing boom that rumbled and roared and shook the ground. From where we were standing, we couldn’t see it, but I knew the dynamite in the duffel bag had ignited the gasoline and created a vast fireball. The early-afternoon sky, already bright, blazed even brighter, tinged with red, and black smoke smudged the sky.

Whoever was inside the house would now turn their attention to the back of the house to see what the hell was going on. Probably most of the guards would race around to that side of the compound. It was a
diversion bomb, which usually worked when I was in the country. A classic and effective technique. It would buy us a few crucial seconds.

I looked at Merlin and nodded. “I’m going in,” I said. “If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, call the police.”

While he stayed back and made sure that the guard remained bound, I hoisted the second cheap duffel bag and started toward the house.

S
lowly, as if I belonged there, as if I owned the place, I walked around the back of the truck, to the front door, pulled open the screen door, and entered the house.

I was in the small foyer. There was a painting on the wall, something forgettable, an umbrella stand, a demilune table. All very ordinary and domestic. Nothing compoundlike about it at all.

Only then did I notice the closed-circuit TV camera mounted on the wall in the small foyer, pointed at the door.

If anyone was watching the monitors, I was in trouble. Especially if Vogel was watching. Because he knew my face. And although I was wearing a UPS uniform, I was not otherwise in disguise.

But maybe no one was watching the monitors. Maybe they were all investigating the bomb.

Or maybe not. In any case, I had to move quickly. I had a choice between going left and going right, and I arbitrarily chose left. Into a small living room that stank of old cigar smoke. The walls were raised-panel wainscoting, stained dark walnut. Mounted to one wall was a huge flat-
screen TV. There was no one here. I dropped the second duffel bag in front of a long black leather couch.

Maybe the bomb had worked, and everyone inside the house was now focused on the fireball out back. Distracted, at least momentarily.

But not, as it turned out, everyone.

A tall and lanky guy appeared in the doorway. In a two-handed grip he was pointing a weapon at me, matte black, a semiautomatic. It looked like another Glock. Apparently Vogel had gotten a bulk price on Glocks.

“Freeze!” he shouted.

He was the smart one. He’d immediately connected the blast to the arrival of the UPS truck. He’d figured out where the danger was really coming from.

I froze.

“What the hell?” I said.

“Get
down
!”

I wasn’t holding the Ruger. That was in a pancake holster concealed by my brown UPS shirt. I was holding the electronic clipboard instead.

For a split-second I considered pulling out the Ruger.

But the clipboard, used correctly, was the better weapon at that moment.

“I need a signature, right here,” I said, thrusting the clipboard at him, as if trying to show him something.

All I needed was a moment of disruption. To disengage his brain from his trigger finger for a second or two. A break state, it was called. An interruption of thought, breaking the coordination between his mind and his weapon as he figured out whether I was for real. Because even though he’d deduced I wasn’t a UPS driver, he wasn’t entirely sure.

The lanky guy hesitated for a second. He glanced at my uniform, at my clipboard, in the space of maybe a second and a half.

I turned my left foot and flung the clipboard at his eyes. He jerked his head away. I thrust my left arm over his right, clamping down hard, while with my right hand I grabbed the barrel of his gun. I twisted it clockwise, up and away. He screamed as his trigger finger snapped.

Then I lunged at him, knocking him to the carpeted floor, my knee at his throat. I had his gun now and jabbed it into his forehead. He screamed again, said, “Jesus, no!”

“Where’s Vogel?” I said.

“His . . . his wing.”

“
Where?
”

He thrust his thumb to his right, my left. He indicated a set of double doors.

“Turn over. I said turn
over
.”

I shoved him, and he complied. I yanked out a couple of the heavy-duty cable ties, but apparently he wasn’t finished. He reared up, jerked his right hand back toward me, and I smashed the barrel of the Glock into his left temple.

He slumped immediately. He was dazed, semiconscious. I secured his wrists together, then his ankles. He didn’t fight me anymore.

These particular zip ties he wasn’t going to escape from.

Then I got up and went to find Vogel.

F
rom the Google image I had a good sense of the house from above. I knew that the house rambled, and that there was a lot more to the house than the few rooms I’d passed through.

If this guy were telling me the truth, these double doors led to Vogel’s own wing. His residence, maybe.

Maybe.

Holding in my right hand the Glock I’d taken off the lanky guy, I opened the double doors with my left. Ahead I saw a long, broad hallway, with more wood paneling, chair-rail height. Here the wood was painted off-white, to match the walls.

On the right was what appeared to be a bedroom. The door was open, the light off. The bed was unmade.

On the left was another room, a study or office. More fancy woodwork here, and a long desk, cherrywood with scrollwork on the legs. On top of it, piles of papers. Cables and cords everywhere. In the corner of the room, a printer on a smaller table. The window had a view of the front yard. I could see the nose of the UPS truck. Here the lights were on. As if Vogel had been working there and left abruptly.

And then I saw Vogel.

And he saw me.

He was about thirty feet down the hallway from me, wearing a blue button-down shirt and a pair of dress slacks. He looked like he was about to put on a tie and go out for a meeting with a client.

I spun the Glock toward him. Vogel’s right hand was moving behind him, to where he probably had a weapon holstered, and I said, “Don’t.”

Vogel smiled. His right hand stopped moving.

“What are you going to do, Nick?” he said. “Shoot me?” He smiled.

I came closer, the Glock pointed at his center mass.

He’d raised an interesting question. Was I really going to shoot Vogel? Or maybe shoot him in the leg, wound him?

“Release Mandy and you can walk away,” I said.

He laughed. “Don’t insult me.”

“I’ll throw you a phone. You call your guys, tell them to let her go. It’s your only play, Vogel.”

He smiled, shook his head, as if this was the stupidest idea he’d heard in ages.

“Put the gun down, Nick.”

“First make the call. Then I’ll put the gun down.”

“I’m afraid that’s not going to happen, brother.”

I took a step closer. “Don’t make me do it, Vogel.”

He smiled again, the cocky son of a bitch. “You gonna shoot me, Nick?”

“Yeah, I am,” I said, and I squeezed the trigger.

It was deafeningly loud in this enclosed space. Vogel bellowed. The bullet ripped through his shirt, tearing a small hole at the shoulder. A large bloom of blood stained the sleeve of his blue shirt. The round had creased his shoulder, inflicting a minor but intensely painful flesh wound.

“God
damn
you, you son of a bitch!” Vogel shouted. His right hand came up to grab his injured shoulder.

“What’s next?” I said. “Your kneecap?”

I lowered the Glock and pointed it at his knee.

“Okay!” he said. “Okay! Jesus!” He glanced over my shoulder for just an instant, and then something came from behind my right side. A sudden movement, a shift in the quality of the light.

And in that same moment something long and cylindrical—I could just make out its shape—cracked into my right arm, causing me to drop the gun. My arm exploded with pain. I stumbled.

It was a baseball bat, wielded by someone who’d stolen up behind me.

The bat came up again, and I threw myself at my attacker, grabbed at the baseball bat. It cracked against my hands, a hot stinging, immensely painful, as I tried to wrench it from his grasp.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Vogel moving away. But I was too preoccupied to stop him. The attacker roared, like a battle cry, as we struggled over the bat. Both of our hands were on it. He pushed it at me, and it cracked against my skull, causing a starburst of pain. With one great lunge, I shoved the side of the bat into his throat. I could hear the crunch of cartilage. He dropped to the floor, both of his hands grasping his throat, gagging, his eyes rolling up in his head.

I knew he was down, permanently.

I turned, saw the spatter of blood in the carpet where I’d shot Vogel. He’d left a trail of blood, which I followed down the hall and then to the right, along another hall, and then the spatters got denser and more profuse.

Right in front of a white-painted windowless steel door.

The safe room.

He was inside.

V
ogel’s voice rasped over a loudspeaker mounted high on the wall. “Backup’s on the way, Heller. It’s over. Go home.”

“It’s over when Mandy’s released. Make the call, Vogel.”

“Was I not clear about the terms of the deal? Go back to Boston, and Mandy walks free. Not till then. Enough of your games.”

I saw a CCTV camera mounted next to the loudspeaker and realized that, though I couldn’t see him, he could see me. I thumbed the magazine release on the lanky guy’s Glock and saw that the magazine was empty. It was a Glock 17, the standard MPD service weapon, and its standard magazine had a capacity of seventeen rounds. With only one round in the magazine. And I had just fired it. At Vogel’s shoulder.

Vogel must not have seen that the gun was empty, because he said, “Don’t waste the ammo, brother. The walls are ballistic fiberglass and steel. You’re going to need a howitzer.”

He was telling the truth, of course. He was safe from bullets in there.

“Are you really going to hide in your steel box?” I said.

“You’re locked out.”

“Yeah? I think you’ve locked yourself in.”

“You’re wasting your time.”

“Make the call,” I said again. “Here’s how it’s going to work. Your guys bring Mandy to whatever intersection you want, in DC or wherever you say. I have a guy who’ll pick her up and confirm she’s okay.” Balakian, a.k.a. Kombucha, was standing by, waiting for my call.

He gave a dry chuckle. “Or what?”

“Make the call.”

“See, Heller, that’s where your plan falls apart. You have no leverage and you never did. In about ten minutes, five of my most capable employees will be here. They’re going to see an armed and dangerous intruder who’s obviously just wounded several men and set off a firebomb on my property, and they’re going to do what the law permits them to do: take you down. At that point, Mandy Seeger will be irrelevant.”

I shoved the Glock into the waistband of my UPS uniform pants, as if it were loaded and could come in handy at any moment. Then I folded my arms. “Beautiful house,” I said. “You build it yourself?”

“Most of it.”

“The woodwork is extraordinary. It must have taken you years. It’s a real shame.”

He said nothing.

I took out my cell phone and held it up for the camera. “There’s a phone number programmed into this phone,” I said. “As soon as I hit the speed-dial, it will detonate the second gas bomb. Which is sitting in your living room. It’s gonna turn your house into a fireball. The house that you built so lovingly. Within an hour all that beautiful woodwork is going to be charcoal.”

Another long pause. I was about to resume speaking when he said, “I make one phone call and Mandy Seeger is dead.”

“And here’s the thing,” I said, ignoring him. “Here’s the best part. You’re sitting in a ten-by-twelve-foot steel box. In the middle of a roaring
house fire. Now, the average house fire burns at eleven, twelve hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And steel’s a great conductor of heat. Your steel coffin will rapidly reach around two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. And you know what’s going to happen to you?”

Silence.

“Well, first you’ll start sweating. It’ll be really uncomfortable. Then blisters will start breaking out all over your skin. By then you’ll be in excruciating pain. If you’re lucky you’ll go into shock. It’s probably the worst way to die.”

Silence.

“Ever roast a pig in a box? That’s what’s going to happen to you. You’re going to roast like a pig. Only you’ll be roasting alive. Vogel—that’s a German name, right?”

Silence.

“What does Vogel mean in German?”

Silence.

“It’s been a while since high school German, but I’m pretty sure that Vogel means bird. So maybe it’s more accurate to say you’ll roast like a bird. Like a barbecued chicken. Human cremation takes place at between fourteen hundred and eighteen hundred degrees, so you’re probably going to end up as just ashes. They probably won’t be able to identify you by your dental records.”

“You’re full of shit, Heller. You’re not going to do it.”

“How’s your shoulder?” I said, and I smiled. “You know about the blood on my hands. You know what I’m capable of.”

“You’re not going to do it, Heller. Because Mandy Seeger is being held in the basement. Right below me. And I don’t think you’re going to want to burn your friend alive, too.”

I have a knack for recognizing lies. And I knew he was telling the truth.