House Justice (38 page)

Tully grabbed Quinn’s arm and shrieked, “What’s happening?”

Quinn jerked his arm away from Tully’s grip. “A kidnapping, I think.”

“A kidnapping?”

The man with the Magnum tapped the window again, and again motioned for Jack to open it.

“Yes. So just stay calm,” Quinn said to Tully. “They’ll take you and ask your company for a ransom and the company will pay it. They’re not going to harm you.”

“Bullshit!” Tully screamed. “Do something! Get me out of here. That’s what I pay you for.”

Now the man pointed the revolver at Jack’s head, and Quinn yelled, “Jack! Open the door. The glass won’t stop that gun.”

Tully screamed “No!” but Jack unlocked the doors. The leader stepped back and both Jack and Quinn stepped out of the car, holding their hands up. Quinn knew he was doing the right thing—and the only thing he could do. All he could hope for was that these men were professional kidnappers. They had no reason to kill him and Jack and if they were pros they wouldn’t.

The leader told Jack and Quinn to remove their weapons, then opened Tully’s door and said, “Mr. Tully, please get out of the car.”

“No!” Tully said.

“Ivan,” the leader said, and one of his men, a huge brute, reached inside the Mercedes and dragged a screaming, kicking Tully out of the car. The man must have outweighed Tully by almost two hundred pounds, but Tully hit him in the face with one of his small fists, and when he did the big man grabbed him one-handed by the throat, the hand completely encircling Tully’s neck, and shook him. “Stop
it,” he said, and Tully instantly quit struggling. The big man then walked Tully over to the Range Rover, duct-taped his hands behind his back, placed a strip of tape over his mouth, and then shoved him onto the backseat of the Range Rover and closed the door.

“Is this a kidnapping?” Quinn asked calmly.

“No,” the leader said—then he nodded to one of his men, and the man pressed down on the trigger of his Uzi and shot Quinn and Jack.

At least two bullets hit Quinn in the chest and he crumpled to the ground. He wasn’t in pain but he knew he was dying. He watched helplessly as the man who had shot him walked over and aimed the barrel of the Uzi at his forehead to deliver the coup de grace. Quinn tried to speak but he couldn’t.

He wanted to say,
Please kill that little fucker Tully
.

The florist had once been a military man, and he could appreciate what he’d just seen. Tully’s abduction had been executed flawlessly— flawlessly but brutally. There had been no reason to kill the driver and Tully’s other bodyguard.

The man in charge took off his ski mask, and when he did his men followed. The florist knew from his own experience that ski masks were uncomfortable unless it was very cold. When they removed their masks, he confirmed the leader of the group was indeed the gray-haired man who had been watching Tully’s house the other day, and one of the other men present was the man with the tattooed arms.

He heard the leader tell a man called Ivan to put the bodies of the two dead men in the trunk of the Mercedes, and then directed his men to reposition the vehicles and hook the Mercedes up to the tow truck. He noticed the leader spoke English with a Russian accent; he had met a lot of Russians in Iran and he knew a Russian accent when he heard one. He didn’t understand why they were hooking Tully’s Mercedes up to the tow truck, but while they were doing so, he took advantage of the noise and activity and belly-crawled through the brush until he was lying in the drainage ditch
by the side of the road, only ten yards away from the Range Rover that contained Tully.

It took the Russians several minutes to reposition the three vehicles on the narrow access road. When they were finished, the tow truck was pointed toward Tully’s estate, Tully’s Mercedes was behind the tow truck, and the Range Rover was last in line, also pointed in the direction of the estate. Then the big man called Ivan and two others began to hook the Mercedes to the tow truck, getting in each other’s way, cursing, obviously not familiar with the tow truck’s controls. While his men worked, the leader took out a cell phone and started to make a call, but then stopped and said to one of his men, “Rudy, shut off the jammer.”

Ah, the florist thought: they had a cell phone transmission jammer. Clever.

The leader made his call and the florist heard him say, “Phase One is complete. I’ll call you again once we’re inside.”

The florist realized that this was the best chance he was going to get. The three men connecting the Mercedes to the tow truck had placed their weapons on the ground. Rudy—the man with the tattooed arms— was standing near the Range Rover holding his Uzi loosely with one hand while smoking a cigarette with the other. The gray-haired leader had put the heavy revolver he had been holding on the hood of the Range Rover and was now standing with his arms crossed waiting impatiently for the tow truck operation to be completed.

The florist rushed out of the darkness. He shot Rudy first because he was armed, then the leader, then fired two more shots at the men near the tow truck. He didn’t care if he hit the other men; he just wanted to keep them from going after the weapons lying on the ground. He then jumped into the Range Rover containing Rulon Tully, reversed the Rover at full speed up the access road, and disappeared into the night.

He figured it would take the Russians at least ten minutes to come after him. They couldn’t make a U-turn on the narrow access road with the Mercedes hooked to the tow truck, so they would have to
unhook the Mercedes. The fact that the access road was so narrow had made it ideal for an ambush, but the width of the road now worked completely to the florist’s advantage.

He kept the Range Rover in reverse until he reached his rental car, then pulled Tully out of the backseat of the Rover and carried him over to his car. Tully struggled in his arms like an oversized infant, his eyes popping out of his head with fear and rage, and he was attempting to talk even though he had to know he couldn’t be understood with the duct tape over his mouth.

The florist dumped Tully into the trunk of his car, and to further delay his pursuers he parked the Range Rover in the middle of the road and threw the keys for the vehicle into the brush.

He was home free—and Rulon Tully was his.

God was with him.

Yuri looked at his watch; it had been thirty minutes since Mikhail had called to tell him Phase One was complete—meaning that he had captured Tully and would soon be proceeding to invade the estate. He knew it would take some time for the men to connect Tully’s vehicle to the tow truck, but still, Mikhail should have been inside the estate by now. He wondered if he should drive over and see what was happening, but realized that would be foolish. The fact that he hadn’t seen any police cars driving in the direction of Tully’s estate with lights flashing and sirens screaming was comforting; if he had seen any, that would have meant Mikhail had failed. But still, why was it taking so long?

His cell phone rang.
Finally
, he thought.

“Yes,” he said. He listened for a moment, then screamed, “Son of a bitch!” and his fist slammed down on the table.

The pretty waitress jumped in fright.

The florist drove for two hours with Rulon Tully in the trunk of his car. He wanted to find an isolated spot in which to question Tully but he also wanted to put some distance between himself and Tully’s estate.

And maybe he also drove for so long because he was delaying what he knew he had to do next.

At two a.m., he stopped at a gas station on a rural road that was closed for the day. He picked the gas station because a single light had been left on at the back, over the restroom doorway. He needed the light because he wanted to see Tully’s face when he questioned him.

He pulled his car to the back of the gas station, shut off the headlights, lifted Tully out of the trunk, and propped him up against the restroom door. When he ripped the duct tape from Tully’s mouth, the first thing Tully said was, “Tell me how much you want.”

Rulon Tully was repugnant. The little man reminded the florist of an evil troll in some dark fairy tale—but not a brave troll. Unlike Jimmy Franco and Benny Mark, the florist didn’t have to torture Rulon Tully to get him to talk.

“I don’t want money,” the florist said. “I want the name of the person who told you about Conrad Diller’s trip to Iran.”

“What? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tully said.

“No. Don’t do that. I know a man named Dale Acosta gave the information about Diller to a reporter named Whitmore. I’ve already killed Whitmore.”

Tully’s eyes seemed to bug out even farther when he heard this.

“And I know a man named Benny Mark killed Acosta and the man who hired Mark was a man named Franco. I’ve killed Franco, too. But before he died, Franco told me your chief of security was the one who paid him to have Acosta killed. Which means
you
paid to have Acosta killed, and the reason you killed him was that after Mahata died—”

“Who?”

The florist backhanded Tully sharply across the face. He couldn’t believe the man didn’t even know her name.

“Mahata Javadi was the CIA agent who died because of Whitmore’s story. And you had Acosta killed because you were afraid the CIA would discover that you were behind leaking the information to the press. So don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve tortured and killed people to get to this point—to get to you. And now you’re going to tell me who gave you the information about Diller.”

“And if I tell you, then what?” Tully asked.

“Then I won’t torture you.”

“Look, I’ll give you a hundred million dollars to let me go. Did you hear what I said? A
hundred
million. Can you even imagine what you could do with that kind of money?”

The florist smiled at that. “No, the fact is, I can’t imagine. I’m a man who was happy selling flowers.”

“What?”

The florist took out the .32—Benny Mark’s little weapon had served him well—and placed the barrel against Tully’s right knee. “Mr. Tully, I’m going to start torturing you now. I’m going to blow out your right kneecap, then your left. It will be extremely painful.”

“It was Ray Rudman. Congressman Ray Rudman. He told me about Diller going to Iran and I had Acosta leak the information to a reporter so that traitor Marty Taylor would go to jail. I’m a patriot. I was trying to make sure that Taylor paid for what he was trying to do and that Iran didn’t get the technology. I had no idea a spy would get killed.”

“Her name was Mahata,” the florist said, and he raised the pistol.

“Wait! Why are you doing this?”

“Revenge, Mr. Tully. We’re both here because of revenge. You tried to hurt Martin Taylor because you wanted vengeance, not because you’re a patriot. And I’m avenging Mahata.”

“Two hundred million!” Tully screamed. “I’ll give you two hundred million!”

The florist shot Rulon Tully between the eyes.

There was a large stack of old tires at the rear of the gas station and the florist covered Tully’s body with some of the tires. He didn’t want the body found right away but he was too tired to dig a grave. He figured in a couple of days the body would begin to decay and Tully would be found but, God willing, before then he would have finished with Congressman Rudman.

Before he did anything about Rudman, though, he had to sleep. He hadn’t slept in days, not since he started his surveillance of Tully’s estate. So he drove to Interstate 5, pulled off at the first exit he saw that advertised lodging, and checked into a Holiday Inn. As soon as he entered his room, and without removing his clothes, he collapsed onto the bed—and then discovered, even as exhausted as he was, that he couldn’t sleep.

He should have been a man at peace with himself. He had no reason to feel guilty. He had done only what he had to do, and he should have been content. But the dead—Whitmore and Franco and Tully— and the long dead—his brother and his family—wouldn’t allow him to sleep. The dead called out to him, some from hell, some from paradise.

Maybe after he killed Rudman, God would grant him peace.

Angela was sleeping on her stomach, her face turned away from him, her dark hair fanned out across her bare back. The sheets were pulled down to just past her waist, and at the bottom of the bed, one small, perfect foot was exposed. If DeMarco had been a painter, he would have painted her that way. Since he wasn’t one, all he could do was hope his memory would never blur the image. He wanted to remember forever the way she looked at that moment.

He wasn’t quite sure how this had happened—but he thanked God it had.

Once he convinced Angela there was no point sitting around and doing nothing while waiting for something to happen with Tully and Yuri, it took a couple of hours for her to stop thinking like a CIA agent and start thinking like a tourist—and when she did, she was a delight to be with. And since neither of them had been to San Diego before, they did the things that tourists do. After Sea World they went to Balboa Park, the Gaslamp Quarter, and the glitzy galleries in La Jolla. They had drinks at the Hotel del Coronado and dinner at a restaurant where they could see the bridge.

He found out that she was a toucher. She’d clutch his forearm to get his attention, tap his chest to make a point, grab his hand as they hurried across a street—and every time she touched him, he felt a little
zing
go through him. She laughed easily and had a sharp, ironic sense
of humor, and before long she was teasing DeMarco as if she’d known him for years. She talked about her family—her nagging mother; her depressed, alcoholic father; her perfect, aggravating sister—and the impression DeMarco got was: typical Italian family that fought like cats and dogs, got on each other’s nerves, and would do anything for each other. As for her nieces, who were also her godchildren, when she spoke of them she got this look in her eye that said she believed that motherhood would never happen for her and it would be the one thing in her life that she would ultimately regret. He felt achingly sad for her at that moment.