JACK KILBORN ~ AFRAID (26 page)

The camera used night vision technology, so everything glowed green. But even though it cost a fortune, it wasn’t high-definition like the monitor, and the figures were blurry. Wiley used the remote to zoom in and, from the dirty clothing, recognized Olen Porrell as the dead man.

The two others moved quickly and efficiently. Soldiers. No. Special Forces. Their black uniforms were somewhat stiff. Body armor, probably that new liquid kind he’d read about on the Net. One of them used some sort of device to call for backup, then stared at the No Trespassing sign for so long that Wiley was sure he spotted the hidden camera. But the moment passed, and they climbed back into the truck and continued up the road.

They found me,
Wiley thought.
After more than thirty years, they finally found me.

He pulled himself out of the chair and began to prepare for the attack.

• • •

I
t happened so fast Fran didn’t have time to react. Woof barked, and then the car doors were open and men were climbing into the Roadmaster. One of them was tall and thin, and the other was enormous. The giant got into the back seat, tossed Woof out of the vehicle, and placed a huge hand on Fran’s scalp, his fingers draping down over her face.

“If you move, he’ll twist your head off,” said the thin man, his accent foreign and heavy. Fran guessed him to be Santiago, and the large one, Ajax. “Then we’ll do the same to your boy.”

Fran stayed stock-still. Santiago started the car and fishtailed on the lawn, heading back up Duck Bill Lane. Duncan opened his eyes, looking confused, then terrified. He hugged Fran, and she hugged him back.

“You took your time.” Stubin removed something small and black from his pocket. “I’ve had this thing on for ten minutes.”

Santiago frowned. “You might have helped us by saying the address.”

“I didn’t know the address.”

Fran watched Santiago check the rearview mirror. He touched his ear, which was crusted with dried blood. “That firefighter
cabrón,
I have to settle something with him.”

“It can wait.” Stubin squinted at the communicator. “Taylor and Logan have almost located Warren. They’re on Deer Tick Road. Take the next left you see.”

It was tough for Fran to find her voice with her skull being palmed like a basketball, but Duncan reached over and grabbed her hand, giving her strength.

“You found Warren. You can let us go.”

Stubin scrutinized her as if she were something he’d stepped in. “I suppose people only see what they want to see and ignore everything else. That’s why you trusted me. That’s why the U.S. military trusted me.”

Fran let the implications of that last line run through her head.

“The Red-ops team isn’t from Canada,” she stated.

“Of course not. They’re ours.”

The roadblock made a lot more sense now.

“They’re U.S., but the military didn’t order this,” Fran guessed. “They’re going to be angry with you.”

“They think I died in that helicopter explosion. Besides, they’re so busy making sure that no stories leak out that they aren’t even looking for us. Wouldn’t CNN just eat this up
?
U.S. terrorist cell destroys Wisconsin town. They’ll nuke Safe Haven before they let the word get out.”

“Let Duncan go.” Fran pursed her lips, keeping her tears at bay. “Please.”

Stubin gave an exaggerated sigh. “You don’t get it. You’re still useful to us.”

“Why?”

Santiago laughed. “Doesn’t this dumb
puta
know Warren is her father?”

Fran didn’t know what to say, how to react. She’d grown up the only child of a single mother who told Fran that her dad died in Vietnam. Mom got married when Fran was seven, and her stepfather adopted her. She hadn’t thought about her birth father in over two decades.

“It gets even better.” Stubin smiled, obviously enjoying this. “I’ve been looking for Warren for a long time. You couldn’t imagine the amount of research it took. The paper trail led me to Safe Haven. When we ran your car off the road a few years ago, we were hoping Warren would come out of hiding to visit you at the hospital or attend the funeral. He didn’t. Not exactly father-of-the-year material. Maybe he’ll show a bit more affection when we’re cutting off his grandson’s fingers outside his front door.”

Fran felt a panic attack coming on. The increased heartbeat. The sweaty palms. The hyperventilating. She thought back to the crash, to being trapped in the car, and flinched at the knowledge that it wasn’t an accident at all, that it was intentional. Her life, and Duncan’s, and Charles’s, shattered because some madman used her family as a tool to find a father she didn’t even know she had.

Fran began to shake. She felt a scream welling up, and she was ready to completely lose her grip on reality when Duncan whispered to her, “I’m afraid, Mom.”

And Fran knew she couldn’t afford to lose control. She had to remain calm, to look for escape opportunities, to be ready to act. For Duncan’s sake. So she stared the panic attack square in the eye and ordered it to go away.

Not this time. Not ever again.

The tremors left, and her heartbeat slowed, and her breathing became steady.

“Don’t be afraid of these assholes,” she told her son. “I’m not.”

Then she held Duncan tight to her chest and tried to be strong enough for both of them.

• • •

S
heriff Streng stopped the Jeep before turning onto Deer Tick Road. He opened the fuse box and used the little plastic pair of tweezers inside to pull out fuses for the brake lights, parking lights, headlights, and interior lights. When he got behind the wheel again he drove completely dark, navigating by feel and by the orange hunter’s moon.

En route, the communicator vibrated again, and Streng read a rambling message that he figured out was a live transcript of a conversation. A roadblock was mentioned, along with taking Fran and Duncan to see a doctor. It had to be Josh talking. Streng knew Josh took one of these communicators off of Ajax and wondered if he’d learned how it worked. If so, he needed to be careful; he was giving away his position.

Deer Tick was less a road and more a trail. It wound around the southernmost tip of Little Lake McDonald, but rather than hug the shoreline where the prime real estate was, it went the opposite way into the woods. Streng knew of only a few residences on Deer Tick: displaced trailers and shacks made of corrugated steel, long rusted out. Homes for the poor, the hopeless, and the crazy.

Wiley was one of the crazies.

He’d been that way since they were children. If there was a thimbleful of trouble to be found in all of Ashburn County, Wiley found it, and usually compounded it. He started young, breaking windows with slingshots, skipping school, stealing candy bars and comics from local businesses. That led to teen years marked by hot-wiring cars and boats for joy rides, running away from home for weeks at a time, selling drugs.

Streng had done his share of stupid things as a youngster, but he was more of a casual participant. Wiley was an instigator. Nowadays people like him were known as adrenaline junkies, and they BASE jumped and rode their bikes down mountainsides and went snorkeling with sharks. Back then he was simply known as a juvenile delinquent and probably would have spent his life behind bars if it hadn’t been for the draft lottery.

It wasn’t Wiley that had been drafted. It was Streng. He had his number called in July of 1972. Wiley enlisted to keep an eye on his little brother.

That plan didn’t work out for either of them—right after basic training they were sent to different locations. Streng went to the Second Platoon, Company B, First Battalion, Fourteenth Infantry, in the Chu Pa Region. Wiley went to the Kontum Province and the Fifty-second Aviation Battalion, where he became a helicopter door gunner and one of the most successful black-market traders of the region.

Streng scowled. He hadn’t spoken to Wiley in over thirty years and felt it was still too soon. But this had to be done, and there was no one else to do it.

The sand road was in such a state of disuse that grass and weeds grew in the center section between the tire treads. Streng heard them scrape against his undercarriage, a soft sound punctuated by an occasional
thump
when he ran over a fallen tree branch. He hit the brakes when he saw a familiar shape lying in the brush.

The sheriff kept the Jeep running and stepped out to investigate, holding one of Bernie’s lighters. Olen Porrell, on his back, a gas mask on his face caked with vomit. Streng had no idea why his friend wore the gas mask, but it apparently wasn’t enough to protect him. He didn’t want to get too close, so he watched to see if Olen moved or breathed. Olen did neither. Streng took a shallow sniff of air, trying to sense any off odors. He smelled the woods and nothing else.

Wiley liked booby traps. He’d liked them as a kid and really learned to like them in Vietnam, picking up many ideas from the Cong. But gas in an open area dissipated too quickly. Streng decided that this wasn’t one of his brother’s devices. Olen must have been exposed elsewhere, which also accounted for the missing Honey Wagon.

Streng hopped back into his vehicle and motored up the road even more slowly, checking the sides and behind him as well as ahead. He spotted Olen’s truck around the next bend, where the road dead-ended, its headlights on. Streng took his Jeep off-road, burying it in the thicket. The brush was so dense Streng had to crawl over the back seat and exit through the rear hatch. He closed it softly, unholstered his Colt, and crept toward the Honey Wagon.

The truck was empty. Streng imagined the scenario. One of the commandos had gotten to Olen, who knew Wiley’s address because he cleaned out his septic tank. They poisoned him to get him to talk, and now they were creeping through the woods, looking for Wiley’s house.

Good luck finding it,
Streng thought.

When Wiley moved back to Safe Haven, flush with ill-gotten gains, he spared no expense building his dream house. And Wiley’s idea of a dream house was very close to Batman’s. Hidden underground, with secret entrances and exits, away from the searching eyes of the law, the military, and the enemies he’d made in Vietnam.

The last time Streng visited had been during the day, and even then he hadn’t been able to find Wiley’s place. At night, with eyes that were thirty years older, he didn’t even know where to begin looking. A smarter tactic would be to hunt the people who were after Wiley. He could hunker down, cover himself with foliage, and wait for one of them to—

The blade appeared at Streng’s throat with incredible stealth and speed.

“Drop the gun and put those hands up, Sheriff. Don’t make me ask twice.”

J
osh was grateful for the heavy rains this fall, which kept the lake level high and made it possible to navigate the tributaries leading from Little Lake McDonald to the Chippewa River.

He drove a bass boat that he borrowed from Doc Wainwright—a seventeen-foot Nitro with a top speed of forty-five miles per hour. Josh figured he could straighten out the grand larceny charges later. He was worried as hell about Fran and Duncan, and he had to get to Safe Haven and find Sheriff Streng.

Josh adjusted the trim when he entered the shallows so the prop didn’t hit bottom, shining the Maglite ahead to avoid the dead trees. The wind bit at his cheeks, making his face tingle. Woof stood beside him, his jowls flapping in the wind, obviously not minding the cold at all. The firefighter turned two wide circles in the murky waters until he found the inlet, and then he buzzed through that and into the Chippewa, heading downstream.

That’s when the motor died. A quick survey of the dash controls showed the boat had no gas. Doc Wainwright was probably getting ready to store the boat for the winter and hadn’t bothered to fill it.

Rather than waste time cursing his luck, Josh hurried to the front of the boat and swung out the electric trolling motor, locking it into place. He sat in the bow chair and used the foot pedal, navigating south at a speed that wasn’t much faster than the current.

Five excruciating minutes later Josh beached the boat along the riverbank, two blocks from the Water Department building. He picked up the pillowcase full of medical supplies and scooped up Woof. Then he climbed over the short decorative iron fence that lined the river’s edge and set the dog down on the street. Woof sniffed around, peed, and then fell into step alongside the jogging firefighter.

Town was dead. Dark and dead. Josh checked his watch, noted it was past two a.m. Even so, there should have been some kind of activity, someone driving somewhere. It was eerie. He tried his cell, got the recorded message about no service, and resisted the urge to throw it at the ground.

He got to the Water Department breathing heavy and coated with sweat. Josh noticed the parking lot was empty. The sheriff wasn’t in. He decided to head to the junior high and borrow Olen’s truck, but before he got three steps away he heard a scream coming from the building.

Bernie,
Josh thought. Probably not happy about being locked up. Josh’s first impulse was to ignore him and press on. But maybe Bernie knew something. He sounded upset. Maybe that would make him more susceptible to talking.

Josh checked the front door, established that it was open, and followed the wailing inside.

Woof wanted to run on ahead and check it out, but Josh ordered the dog to heel. He set the pillowcase down by the door, adjusted the flashlight focus to the widest beam setting, and walked down the familiar hallway to the drunk tank. Bernie sat on the floor of the cell, hugging himself and whimpering. Bleeding and broken, the killer looked like someone had dropped him from a building.

Woof growled at Bernie, his hackles rising and his tail pointing straight up.

“Charge,” Bernie mumbled. “I need Charge.”

Josh dug into his pocket, removing the container of pills and the electronic gizmo he took from Ajax. At the sight of this, Bernie hopped onto one foot and stretched his hand through the bars.