Patriots Betrayed (7 page)

The next part of his testament covered the events of that afternoon and night; when he was attacked by the men in his shop, and then went on to cover the hourly events up to when Carla ran from her apartment and the sniper just missed him as he slid over the wall. He ended the account there, but added a complete denial of all charges against him and Carla. He also reiterated that he had no idea why killers were sent to his scuba shop and the barge destroyed. He added: I do believe it is of the upmost importance to the security of our nation that this crime be investigated thoroughly. There is more to this than someone in the CIA deciding I needed to die.

His last sentence stated:

I have never failed to fulfill my oath to protect the Constitution of the United States of America from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I never will. There is no expiration date on that oath. On this day, for the first time, I violate my nondisclosure oath only because I must, as it is in conflict with my higher oath to protect the Constitution and the American people. They can lie about Carla and I; they can hunt us down and kill us, but they can never deter us from our duty to protect the American people. This isn’t over and it won’t be as long as we live.

Carla read his words with sober interest. There was no laughter or glee in her eyes. She looked up, her face solemn. “This will cause fireworks from the White House to the streets of Cairo.” She sat down at the laptop. “I think I’ll add to my list. I should have at least included the Colombia Massacre.”

Raylan had only a vague idea what she was talking about; he didn’t work that part of the world. He opened his money belt and pulled out some cash in preparation to go shopping. “Washington and Langley both are overflowing toilets that need to be flushed. That’s just what I could put down fast. If I had the time, I’d write a thousand pages and send it to every news agency around the world.”

She swallowed grimly. “Now that would be hilarious.”

He pulled a chair from the table to the middle of the tiny dining area. “I need you to do your thing, so I can go buy a few dozen flash drives and some other supplies.”

She headed for the bedroom. “I’ll get my kit.”

Forty-five minutes later, she was finished. “Check it out.”

He went into the bathroom to look in the mirror.

She stood behind him. “What do you think?”

He had a graying beard, crowfeet around his eyes, longer, grayer, hair, and appeared to be around sixty. “Beautiful,” he said.

He left her in the trailer and told her to try and get more sleep while he was gone, because he would need her to drive when they headed north. “I want to be near Langley ASAP.”

She seemed to have something on her mind but just nodded. “Play it safe and get back here in one piece. You wouldn’t want to miss the fun once the fireworks start.”

Chapter 4

Raylan parked in a small parking lot in front of a hardware store, backing into the parking space, so checking the tag number would require a cop to get out of his patrol car. Most cops were not going to do that, considering the chances of this particular Crown Vic being the one they were looking for – if they were looking for it yet – were slim. He had a little walking to do, but it was worth it to avoid parking in front of the discount store he planned to clean out of flash drives. He would probably have to go to another store to buy more, since they seldom had more than a dozen on display.

Forty minutes later, most of it spent walking, he slid behind the wheel and headed for another place to buy more flash drives.
That went okay.

The nearest large discount store that would likely have more than a few flash drives on display – he didn’t want to ask an employee if they had more in the back and give cause to be remembered or his disguise closely scrutinized – was on a dangerous side of town, where gangs often shot it out. He had no idea of the crime problem, but it was obviously not the most affluent part of this small community. He found a place to park. It was a fast food restaurant.

He would have to walk several miles, but it was a major artery with plenty of traffic and witnesses to discourage any muggings, at least in open daylight. Several small groups of young thugs loitered on street corners, wearing different colored shirts to signify their particular gang and to warn other gangs away, all sporting baggy pants that hung down six or more inches lower than modesty would dictate. They eyed him and glared with hatred in their eyes, but must have considered him unlikely to have anything worth taking. He went on to the store unmolested.

Raylan came out of the store with bags containing seventeen more flash drives of various capacities and other items he had purchased with one hundred dollar bills from the money belt he left in the trailer with Carla. He headed back to the car. At the second intersection, he observed that the thug convention had doubled in size from three to six. Several had heavy pants that hung down more on one side than the other that they kept pulling halfway up their buttocks but never up to where normal men wore their pants. He stood there seventy-five yards down the sidewalk and waited for a break in the traffic while they conversed and glared at him. When a break presented itself, he darted across the street.

He continued on, catching them out of the corner of his right eye, as they darted across the road behind him. Horns blared, because they didn’t wait for a real break in the traffic. He kept moving and showed no sign he had noticed. He walked at the normal pace of a man of the age he appeared to be – Carla’s makeup and gray beard taken into account – but they rushed at him like a pack of wolves on the hunt.

He barely had time to swerve into a wooded vacant lot and screw the suppressor on his pistol before they were on him. He stepped behind a cluster of heavy brush and turned to wait for the trouble he knew was coming.

“Give it up whitey,” one taunted, brandishing a pistol. “We see you hidin’ back there, pissin’ your pants.” Like true wolves, they split into two groups, one heading around the left side of the brush, the other the right. He didn’t like the odds of waiting until they came at him from opposite sides, so he rushed the three on his right and killed them so fast the other group hadn’t processed what happened until he had already turned to come at them, his pistol in both hands. Their eyes rounded. In an instant, they flushed like a covey of quail, flying through the woods.

Yep, the old man’s got a gun.
Raylan calmly unscrewed the suppressor and put it in the inside pocket of his vest, then picked up the bags.
I’m not going to play with street thugs.
He emerged from the woods and continued on. A heavy black woman with a small boy sitting next to her at a bus stop had seen the thugs rush into the woods after him. “I see you still got your stuff and your life,” she said. “I expect those boys got what was comin’ to them.”

Raylan tipped his hat to her. “Nice day, but a little warm.”

The woman laughed.

~~~

When Raylan drove up to the trailer, the door was open, letting the July heat and humidity in. He backed out of the lot and parked down the little dirt road behind a vacant trailer. He got out and locked the car. Approaching their trailer from the side, he made his way to the door and peered in. Someone had ransacked the place. His pistol came out on its own volition.

Carla yelled out from the edge of the woods, “Over here!”

He darted across the twenty yards of poorly maintained yard, stopping behind a tree.

From ten feet away, Carla said, “We had visitors. I took a stroll and happened to see them drive up to the office. Four of them. Looked more like Mob thugs than company personnel to me. Anyway, I had time to get back and hide our stuff out here in the woods before they were through in the office. I checked after the goons left. The old couple running this low-rent place are dead.”

Raylan kept his eyes busy looking for trouble. “So they went through the place and left?”

“I could hear a little of what they said. They thought we had already skipped out, since there was nothing in the trailer.”

“When did this happen?”

“They left only about ten minutes ago.”

Raylan moved to where she hid in some brush. “We need to get our stuff in the car and hit the road.”

Five minutes later, Carla sat behind the wheel of the Crown Vic, racing down the dirt drive, throwing sand as the car fishtailed.

Sitting in the passenger seat, Raylan had the M4 in his hands and his window down.

Carla hit the paved road doing thirty, executing an impossible turn, tires smoking. In seconds, they were barreling down the road at one hundred. She looked in the rearview mirror. “We have a tail, coming up on us fast. Looks like the thugs I saw before.”

“I want them,” Raylan said. “Leaving their bodies behind will make it less likely we get blamed for the murder of that couple.”

She stared down the road and pushed her right foot to the floor. The engine roared. “Sharp curve ahead. Be ready to bail.”

He grabbed the door latch. “When you slow, keep the car on the edge of the road, so I can roll onto the shoulder and not hard asphalt.”

She nodded, “Right. How fast do you want it?”

“Better slow to ten. I’m getting too old to bail out of a car moving much faster than that.”

She smiled. “You got it.” After another glance in the mirror she said, “They’re far enough back, you can run across to the inside of the curve if you’re quick about it.”

“Good. That assumes I don’t break a leg when I roll out.”

“Yeah, don’t do that. You’re going to be alone back there.”

“I want them,” he repeated.

“Hold your temper, Raylan. That old couple’s not worth dying for.”

Raylan’s muscles tensed. She slammed on the brakes, leaving black marks and billowing smoke behind. He allowed the momentum of the car traversing the curve to swing the door open as he rolled out of his seat and held the carbine close to his chest. The world spun at high velocity. Dirt flew. He was as worried about damaging the carbine as breaking an arm or leg. He didn’t want to face a carload of killers with just a pistol if he could help it. Coming up with dirt in his mouth and eyes, he ran across the road to a position he thought best. The Buick appeared, racing around the curve, tires screaming. Raylan brought the carbine up and clicked the selector to full auto. Concentrating on the driver, he dumped ten rounds into the left window as the car flew by. They saw him standing beside the road, but there was no time to react, and the driver had his hands full keeping the car from skidding off into the trees. The window shattered and Raylan saw several bullets connect with flesh. The car now driverless, he allowed physics to do the rest. The Buick veered off the road and slammed into trees.

When the noise and smoke cleared, it looked as if a bomb had gone off. Raylan approached the wreck with his carbine shouldered. The back half had been sheared off by a stout pine, and two men riding in the back seat had spilled out, their bodies dashed against an old windfall. One coughed up blood as Raylan walked over to him, hoping he could talk. “Who sent you?”

The man just lay there, breathing with difficulty. One of his legs had suffered a compound fracture, splintered bone stuck out two inches. Rayland stepped on it. The man was too weak to do more than moan. Realizing he would not get any information from him, Rayland put a bullet in his head. He searched the pockets of two of the men, finding nothing to identify them.

Carla raced up and spun the car around. He jumped in. She hit the gas and looked him over for injuries. Seeing none, she said, “Feel better?”

He looked out his window. “Much.”

~~~

The freezing Moscow wind sent a flurry of snow to pelt the careworn pedestrians as they slogged down the sidewalks on their way to their individual destinations. The stink of exhaust soured the air, belched out by the decrepit Soviet-era sedans that rattled along next to late-model luxury cars. The disparity between rich and poor was evident on the clogged streets of this grimy city, where the ruling elite that included the Russian Mafia were transported in warm luxury while the rank and file trudged through the sleet or drove worn-out vehicles.

Mikhail Janowski stood looking out over the city he ruled with an iron hand, or at least the underworld part. His ostentatious villa in the high-income neighborhood was better guarded than any other home in the country, its windows bulletproof, its walled grounds patrolled by his private security. Infrared cameras, motion detectors, and all the latest technological innovations protected him from a world filled with rivals, enemies, and common street thugs.

Exhaling noisily, Janowski moved from the window to the mahogany bar, where a bottle of Jack Daniels – one of the few American products he liked – stood next to crystal tumblers and a full ashtray. After ripping into a pack of Marlboro Menthols – another American product he enjoyed – he shook out a cigarette and put it between his lips, then poured a stiff shot of whiskey into one of the glasses, lit the Marlboro with a 14-karat gold lighter, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs before blowing a gray stream into the room’s atmosphere. He raised the glass to his lips and sipped the whiskey. Nobody would dare question his preferences in anything, so he didn’t really care that it wasn’t a product of Russia. Hell, he wasn’t Russian, either. Born in a hellhole of a little farming community in a hellhole of a little country under the thumb of Russia. Far from Moscow and the concerns of those ruling the former Soviet Union, he endured grinding poverty as his parents worked him close to death in the fields. Only by chance did he escape the world he was born into. Two government suits, straight from Moscow, appeared one day at his two-room school and had every child take an extensive examination, a series of tests that measured not only mental abilities, but physical. The two strangers, who might as well have been from outer space as far as the wide-eyed children were concerned, seemed to be interested in him above the others for some reason and had him perform such feats as jumping over pits with sharp stakes in the bottom, pointing up to kill any child who fell in. The memory of those days had never left him, though he was only eleven at the time.