Noble Warrior (31 page)

He exited the bus and entered into the station's large and open lobby. Linoleum floors, shined to the point of almost being too clean, reflected white lights bouncing off the ceiling. The
optics of it made the whole space looked like an indoor ice skating rink, where one false move might cause a person to slip on the glistening floor.

M.D. scanned the benches and saw his target. Dusty, six-foot two-inches, twenty-four years old, in weathered jeans and a shirt advertising a local bar named Shoobie's. Dusty eagerly eyed
all the passengers departing the bus, a look of hope and excitement beaming on his face.

McCutcheon approached.

“I'm Terry.”

“You're Terry?” Dusty said wrinkling his face. “I thought you was a girl.”

“You sellin' it to me or not?”

Dusty deliberated what to do.

“You already took my money,” M.D. added. “But I can easily cancel the transaction.” McCutcheon raised his cell phone. A few taps and the credit card payment M.D. had
charged to Krewls's Visa account would be reversed.

Disappointed, Dusty rose to his feet.

“Yeah. Come on.”

Through Jeffrey's phone M.D. found a guy on the Internet in Davenport who was selling what he wanted. Through Krewls's phone and a PayPal account M.D. paid for the item. But
McCutcheon needed a ride to go pick up the merchandise, so he made himself appear to be a buyer named Terry. A buyer named Terry who liked to party and might or might not have really large breasts.
Dusty, who also liked to party—and most certainly liked really large breasts—volunteered to come pick Terry up from the bus station to, as Dusty said in his e-mail,
Make it a right
bit more convenient for ya
.

So nice of you to offer
, Terry had replied.

Good ol' Dusty proved true to his word. Wore a Shoobie's shirt just like he said he would, too. The guy from Iowa paused before opening the door to his white pickup truck.

“You ain't one of them Internet homos, are ya?”

McCutcheon smiled. “Sex has nothing to do with why I'm here.”

Dubious, Dusty opened the door and climbed into the driver's seat.

“Well, just so you know, I ain't into that freaky-deaky stuff, and if you try some shit with me…” Dusty reached under the seat and flashed M.D. a set of black nunchucks.
“I took karate in high school.”

McCutcheon grinned and buckled his seat belt. “No freaky-deaky stuff, promise.”

Fifteen minutes later the white pickup pulled into the driveway of a one-story house that had dirt instead of grass for a front lawn. Dusty opened the garage.

“This thing move?”

“Partner, this thing hauls ass.”

“I prefer Harleys.”

“Me, too,” Dusty said. “But these rice rockets ride a lot quieter. I'm flipping it so I can get me an ATV.”

“Sell me that gear, too?” M.D. asked.

McCutcheon nodded at the black leather jacket, gloves and helmet sitting on the work bench.

“Well, I wasn't really planning on…”

McCutcheon pulled out a fan of hundred-dollar bills. Dusty stopped talking midsentence.

“A grand sound fair?”

“Partner, you are my kind of customer.”

M.D. set the money down on top of a red toolbox and used a wrench as a paperweight to make sure the bills didn't fly away.

“See, no freaky-deaky stuff.”

After slipping into the black leather outfit, which perfectly matched the black two-wheel rocket he'd just bought with Krewls's money, he fired up the bike's engine.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” M.D. said as he slapped down the tinted flap of the helmet's visor. McCutcheon screamed away. Behind him Dusty counted the stack of
hundred-dollar bills in his hand, delighted with the idea of how he'd be drinking some mighty fine whiskey later on that night.

The ride to Bellevue only took four and a quarter hours, but M.D. didn't want to show up at his house until after sunset. It was true that he preferred Harleys, but McCutcheon wanted a
Japanese engine because he knew it would allow him to cruise through the quiet neighborhoods of suburban Nebraska with more stealth. Hogs were great rides, but quietness wasn't one of their
top features.

At 8:05 p.m. M.D. rode past the front of his townhouse. Then again at 9:20 p.m, 10:10, and again at 11:15. Each time he checked for surveillance vehicles, suspicious work crews, and open windows
in neighbors' homes across the street that might have scopes or cameras looking out.

He discovered a good news–bad news scenario. The good news was that no surveillance existed. Perhaps he was wrong, but M.D. felt pretty confident he'd be able to identify any
outlying elements on his home turf, and after four different passes from four different angles he felt fairly confident that he would not be walking into an ambush.

Yet the bad news outweighed the good by miles. Each pass by the house caused McCutcheon to grip the bike's throttle tighter and tighter. There was no activity inside. No lights. No
silhouettes moving past windows. Nothing. From just after sunset to just before midnight not a soul stirred.

On a school night.

Finally, at 11:45 p.m., McCutcheon parked the bike three streets away, jumped over a series of backyard fences, and circled to the rear of his garage. Under a potted pot he'd hidden a key.
He used it to open the back door and discovered the thing he most dreaded finding.

Emptiness. There was no one home.

D
uring one of their many meals together Stanzer and M.D. once talked about what life would have been like for the two of them if they were lawmen
battling bad guys in the Wild West.

“No doubt,” Stanzer said. “I'd shoot my enemy's horse.”

The idea irked McCutcheon.

“Shooting the horse is out of bounds. You can't kill an innocent animal.”

“The horse is part of the theater of battle.”

“It didn't sign up for it,” McCutcheon argued. “The animal got dragged in. I'd never shoot the horse.”

“In is in,” Stanzer replied. “War is chess and if you are going to survive, if you're gonna win, you have to manipulate every piece on the board to your best advantage.
No compassion, no sympathy, no mercy.”

“That go for civilians, too?” M.D. asked.

“Depends,” Stanzer said. “In war, the overriding question is, ‘What's my best play?' If I am battling a bunch of bank robbers in a Wild West shootout, taking
down their horses makes good strategic sense. My enemy is demobilized. ll. At the very least I disconcert and destabilize them, creating new opportunities for me as well as new hardships for them.
After you take out the horse your odds are improved significantly. Most definitely,” Stanzer reiterated. “I shoot the bastard's horse.”

“What about morals?”

“In fact,” Stanzer continued disregarding M.D.'s question. “I probably shoot it first before I even bother to aim for the guy riding it, now that I think about it.
It's a much fatter target.”

“You are a cold man,” M.D. said.

“Don't worry,” Stanzer replied. “One day you will be, too.”

McCutcheon didn't like Stanzer's answer. Not at all. But it told him a lot about the colonel's character. He was a man who'd shoot the horse.

Which meant he was a man who would go after Gemma.

Fuck!
M.D. thought to himself.
I went for food and rest when I should have pushed the pace. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

McCutcheon knew the colonel's best strategic play was to go after his sister. It made the most sense because it was a move that, as Stanzer would put it, would disconcert and destabilize
his opponent. Gemma, Stanzer knew, was McCutcheon's greatest weakness, and taking her to God-knows-where completely threw M.D. into a tailspin.

McCutcheon had no idea of her location. Had no idea if she was safe. Had no idea the lengths to which Stanzer would go to use her as a pawn to get McCutcheon to come to him.

On Stanzer's own terms and in Stanzer's own way.

Just like that, the situation had flipped. The predator was once again the prey.

Fuck!
McCutcheon thought again.

M.D. took a deep breath and tried to clear his head before rage and fear consumed his mind and stole his ability to reason.

Okay, what does the evidence prove? Don't sulk, don't get emotional or distraught. Find out what the evidence proves.

M.D. crossed to the refrigerator. Milk still fresh, three days more until the expiration date. He opened the bottom drawer of the crisper. Lettuce still firm, nothing wilted or soggy.

He felt the fruit. All still edible.

He closed the refrigerator and searched around for signs of a hasty departure. Nothing in the town house seemed ransacked. No signs of struggle.

He surveyed the entirety of the room. Nothing seemed even the slightest bit out of place.

He checked the bedrooms. Looked through clothes and closets. Gemma's purple travel bag was gone. He went into the bathroom. Her toothbrush was missing, too.

Evidence proved they went somewhere. Evidence proved they packed. Evidence also proved that the home wasn't invaded. The whole atmosphere was too serene and organized.

This wasn't a kidnapping; this was voluntary departure. But to where? And with whom?

McCutcheon pulled out Jeffrey's phone and dialed Sarah's number. It went straight to voice mail without even ringing, which told M.D. that her cell had been powered off.

Not a good sign.

Then again, it was late. Maybe she'd already gone to sleep?

There was only one way to ascertain the final piece of evidence, the proof that would either confirm or deny M.D.'s greatest fear. McCutcheon didn't want to tip his hand and play
this card unless he absolutely had to. But he truly had no choice. He'd made the calculated decision to stay in northern Michigan and complete his business with Krewls before zipping home to
shore up the safety of his sister. He knew it was a risk, but the odds seemed exceptionally low that he'd be able to have a clean go at Krewls if he'd gone back to Bellevue first.
Krewls, he knew, would show up at work, discover M.D.'s absence, and then alert Puwolsky and Stanzer to the situation, thus eliminating the best weapon M.D. had at his disposal.

The element of surprise.

McCutcheon felt that if he exacted his revenge on Krewls swiftly and efficiently, he'd be able to get home in time to lock down Gemma before anyone yet discovered he'd broken free
from the D.T.

He was wrong. He'd gambled and lost.

How could I be so stupid?

Rage began to burn. Self-loathing. Every time love factored into his decision making, Stanzer had taken advantage of McCutcheon. With Kaitlyn. With Gemma. Even with the affection he felt for the
colonel. M.D. practically looked to Stanzer like the positive father figure he never had. Loyal. Honorable. Righteous. Worthy. For months they'd trained together side by side, and now it was
all a lie. A scheme and a betrayal. All proof that the student had not yet become the master.

McCutcheon logged into TOR. He and Stanzer always communicated through the DarkNet to relay messages to each other. That's how they'd remained in contact while hunting Al-Shabaab
soldiers in New Jersey, it's how Stanzer had trained all his field agents to transmit confidential data, and it would also be how Stanzer would relay any message to M.D. should he now be
seeking to communicate with him.

The upside to logging into TOR would be that McCutcheon would soon know the answer as to whether the colonel had taken his sister. The downside would be that by pinging in, the colonel would
know M.D. had access to the Internet, which meant that if Stanzer did not already know that M.D. had escaped from the D.T. he would now. In a best-case scenario, Gemma and Sarah had simply gone to
a friend's house and M.D. would merely be tipping his hand. In a worst case scenario…

McCutcheon didn't want to think about that.

It took a moment for Jeffrey's phone to pick up the satellite relays. Once it did, M.D. stared at the screen and found his answer waiting in his secret inbox. It arrived in the form of two
words.

RENDEZVOUS POINT
.

McCutcheon's heart dropped. He'd just received an encrypted message from the guy who shot horses.