Vanished (31 page)

P  A  R  T   T  H  R  E  E

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves
.

—
GOETHE

86.

H
e looked as if he’d been drugged. He appeared even older and more haggard than in the picture they’d sent me. He was sweating profusely.

“Nick,” he said, his voice cracking.

“Stop right there,” the bullet-headed guy barked to Roger.

“Hey, Red Man,” I said softly.

“Hold up the card,” the guy said. “Take it out slowly.”

I pulled it from my pocket, held it up.

“You understand the deal,” he said.

I nodded. Roger was wearing some kind of vest, maybe a fly-fishing vest, that had been rigged up with blocks of M112 demolition charges wrapped in olive drab Mylar film. C4 explosive, army-manufacture. I could have recognized them a mile away. Wires came out of each block. The whole thing duct-taped to him. Sloppy, but professional.

He was a walking bomb.

A second guy got out of the Humvee on the left, the same one Roger had emerged from. He, too, was holding a garage-door opener in one hand and a pistol in the other. That guy was beefy, had a goatee. A real type. Like Neil Burris, like a hundred other guys I’d served with.

Both Humvees had been left idling. This was going to happen quickly. They wanted to make a speedy getaway.

“Here’s how it’s going to go down,” the first guy said. “Your brother’s going to get the card from you and hand it to me. I check it out. If it’s good, I take off his vest.”

“Sounds like you don’t want to get too close to me,” I said.

“Try anything stupid, one of us hits the detonator. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“In case you’re thinking maybe you grab your gun and try to take us both out, lemme tell you, you don’t want to do that. The detonators are on a dead man’s switch. So either of us lets go, the bomb goes off. Then there’s a pressure switch on the vest, and you don’t know where it is. You try to take off the vest, it’s gonna blow, and both of you get vaporized. You getting all this?”

“Seems sort of complicated.”

“It’s not. It’s real simple. Don’t play games, and you and your brother go home. All there is to it.”

I glanced at Roger. His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be trembling.

“No,” I said.

“Excuse me?” the first guy said.

“No,” I repeated. “I hand you the RaptorCard, what’s going to stop you from setting off the vest and killing us both anyway? Your sense of honor?”

The second guy said, “We don’t need this. Let’s get out of here.”

“
Here’s
how it’s going to go down,” I said. “I’ll hand my brother the card. Only you’re going to stand right next to him. Then you take off the vest, and he gives it to you. And we all go home.”

There was a beat of silence. The goateed guy looked at the bald guy.

They really wanted to keep their distance from me. I suppose I should have been flattered.

The bald guy nodded. “Go,” he said to Roger.

Roger walked toward me slowly, unsteady on his feet. By then, his eyes were open, and staring, and frightened. His face was ashen. As he approached, the two Paladin guys watched, gripping their detonators, thumbs at the ready.

Roger seemed to be trying to tell me something with his eyes. I looked at him as he came closer, step by step.

He was shaking his head ever so subtly.

Telling me
No
.

I gave him a puzzled look in return:
What do you mean?

He mouthed the word
No
.

He was just a few feet away. Slowly he reached out his left hand. Dad’s Patek Philippe was on his wrist.

I handed him the RaptorCard.

He whispered, “They’re going to kill us both.”

I shook my head.

He spoke a little louder: “I won’t let them kill you, Nick.”

His eyes were wide. “Run,” he said.

I whispered back: “
No
.”

The bald guy shouted, “Hey, let’s
move
it!”

“
Run
,” he whispered again.

“No,” I told him.

Suddenly he lurched to his right. He spun, raced toward the Hummer on the left. Collided with the goateed guy. Knocked him to the ground.

The detonator dropped to the ground.

But nothing happened. There was no dead man’s switch on the detonator. That had been a lie. What else were they lying about?

Then I saw Roger fling the car door wide open, ramming it into the goateed guy just as he was getting back to his feet, knocking him over again.

“
No!
” I shouted. “
Roger, don’t!
”

“Hey!” the bald guy shouted.

Roger leaped into the Hummer, and I propelled myself toward the bald man, slamming his body to the ground. His detonator went flying, and even as I had him down on the ground, I braced myself for a terrible explosion.

But nothing happened that time either.

The Hummer roared to life, speeded forward, raced to the end of the building. The bald guy wrenched himself free of me and jumped into the other vehicle. The goateed guy vaulted into the car as well, and it took off in pursuit of Roger.

One of the garage-door openers still lay on the ground, abandoned by the bald guy.

I picked up the Ruger and took off on foot, but both Hummers were gone. I could hear them squealing around a corner, then I heard the screech of brakes.

Shouted voices.

I kept running. They must have headed him off. Trapped him.

I ran.

About five seconds later the explosion came, deafeningly loud, a blast as loud as anything I’d ever heard in wartime, echoing off the buildings. And I knew what had happened. They’d set off the C-4.

But I kept running.

I reached the end of the building, looped around, saw nothing.

I ran until there was a stitch in my side so painful it almost brought me to a halt, but I ran through it.

A yellow-orange blaze illuminated the sky on the far side of the next building over.

As I raced, I did something I’d never done before: I prayed.

Then I reached the second building and saw the conflagration. A bonfire twenty feet high. The wreck of a Hummer, its carcass barely visible behind the veil of flame.

“No!”
I shouted.

Only one car. The other was gone.

I got to within twenty feet of the fiery wreck before the wall of heat hit me. I stopped, tried to get closer. The Hummer’s windows had blown out. Shattered glass was strewn for dozens of feet.

I shouted, moved in closer, saw the shape inside.

A hand clutching the pillar between where the driver’s window had been and the window behind it. A human hand, yes, but blackened. Burned almost to a husk.

Roger’s wedding ring on one of its fingers.

On its charred wrist was my father’s Patek Philippe.

87.

A
fterward, I wandered the streets of West Baltimore for a long while. I don’t know how long. I lost track of time. I felt my cell phone vibrate several times but ignored it.

Eventually I answered the phone and heard Garvin’s voice.

He came by in a Maryland cab and took me to the Union Station parking garage. A long, silent ride. Expensive, too. My jeans and sweatshirt were ripped and soiled and reeked of smoke, and pretty soon the entire cab smelled of it, too.

I retrieved the Defender, drove over to Lauren’s house, and let myself in.

I’D FACED
all sorts of danger back in the day, in Bosnia and Iraq. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell Lauren what had just happened. I couldn’t bear to tell her—and Gabe—that I’d failed them after all.

I’d made a promise to Gabe, and I’d broken it.

As devastating as my brother’s death had been, the thought of telling Lauren and Gabe about it was worse.

I needed to make things right before I could face them. So I quickly and quietly gathered up some of my things from the guest room, intending to slip out of the house while they both slept and head over to my apartment.

Gabe was in the hallway when I emerged.

“What are you doing awake?” I whispered.

“You smell like smoke.”

“Yeah,” I said, my hand on the doorknob. “It’s late. You should be asleep.”

I had to get away from him because I was afraid I couldn’t hold things in anymore. I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about his father. That was his mother’s responsibility.

“Something wrong?” he said.

I pulled him into me and gave him a hug, long and hard.

When he let go, he said, “What was that for?”

“I need to leave,” I said. “I just wanted to say good-bye, and I wanted you to know I love you. And that I’ll always be there for you. No matter what happens. Okay? You can’t get rid of me so easy.”

Gabe looked even more confused at my words. “Did something happen?”

I ignored the question. “Oh, and you know how you’re always asking me to teach you how to use a gun?”

“You serious?” he said, excited.

“No, nothing like that. Next best thing. I left you a Taser. It’s in the TV room.”

“Awesome,” he said.

“It’s not a toy.”

“Dude, I know that.”

“It’s only for emergencies.”

“Sure. Of course. Cool!”

“You’ll figure it out. You don’t need me for that.”

“Okay, Uncle Nick.”

“But Gabe? Read the manual, okay?”

“Okay.” He paused. “Uncle Nick, where are you going?”

“I just have another job to do,” I said.

88.

W
hen I got back to my loft, I fell fast asleep on the couch, still wearing my ripped and filthy jeans and sweatshirt and boots. At around eight in the morning my cell phone woke me up. My head was pounding, and my clothes gave off the stench of an ashtray, and for a moment I forgot where I was and what had happened.

And then I remembered.

“Nick.” It was Dorothy Duval. “Did I wake you?”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I had to get up to answer the phone anyway.”

“Sorry about that. But you left me a voice mail last night?”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“You okay? You sound lousy.”

I told her about how the swap had gone bad, and we talked for a while. I’d never heard her sound so gentle. “You know, I did get into your brother’s e-mail after all. And I found that woman’s cell phone number.”

“Woman?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

“She called herself Candi Dupont, but her real name is Margaret Desmond. But I guess this is a little late, huh? I’m sorry, Nick.”

I SPENT
a fair amount of time examining the Defender for any tracking devices until I was satisfied there weren’t any. Then I left my cell phone and BlackBerry in my loft, just to make sure the GPS locator chips inside them couldn’t be used against me, and I gave Garvin and Dorothy the number of one of the disposable cell phones I’d bought.

I was about to make a long drive, and I didn’t want Paladin knowing where I was or where I was heading.

At least, not until I got there.

_____

THE DRIVE
took me twelve hours, but I didn’t mind it. I finally got to spend some quality time in the Defender. Alone behind the wheel, in my own head. Listening to music. Burning tank after tank of petroleum. Thinking about my brother, mostly. I still didn’t know what to believe about him, what had happened to him. Whether he’d been taken hostage or had arranged an intricate disappearance, abandoning his wife and son. Why Lauren had been attacked. How much of her husband’s plan she’d known about—or had even been involved in planning.

There were so many questions, and there was one person, I was convinced, who’d have the answers. At least, if my analysis of the network traffic was correct.

Though I knew he wouldn’t exactly volunteer them.

Most of the drive was straight down 95, through Virginia and North Carolina, through South Carolina and finally into Georgia. The Defender is a great vehicle, but it’s really meant for desert maneuvers, not the interstate. It doesn’t like to go much faster than seventy miles an hour.

While I drove, I played a lot of Johnny Cash CDs—I was down South, after all. I listened to “All I Do Is Drive” a bunch of times, and when my mood turned darker, I put on his cover of a Nine Inch Nails song, “Hurt.” That one could always wrench the heart out of me. Johnny—or is it Trent Reznor?—sings about how everyone he knows goes away in the end. How “I will let you down” and “I will make you hurt.”

Outside of Savannah, I stopped at a hunting outfitter and a hardware store. When I got back on 95, I took the exit for Waycross. Route 187 meandered south and then west for a while until it hit 129, at which point I drove south, on a road so straight it must have been drawn with a ruler.

I was in Echols County, in southernmost Georgia, on the Florida border. It’s the least populous county in the state: just over four thousand people. Almost all of it is privately owned. A few unincorporated towns and a lot of pine forest. The county seat, Statenville, used to be called Troublesome. No joke.

Twelve years ago the family that owned most of the county sold ten thousand acres to Allen Granger. It had been advertised as “perfect for a hunt club,” but it became the training facility and headquarters of Paladin Worldwide.

An unmarked road came off of Route 129, cut through the dense pine forest: newly built, freshly paved. According to the handheld GPS receiver I’d picked up in Savannah, it led directly to the Paladin facility. Half a mile down the road, the forest ended abruptly, and a clearing began, as far as the eye could see. The road ended in a large asphalt-paved circular drive.

There were a gatehouse and a barrier arm and a road-spike barrier and a large sign that said
PALADIN WORLDWIDE TRAINING CENTER
with the Paladin logo, that stylized blue globe.

On either side of the gate was a high chain-link fence, topped with coils of razor wire, cutting through the woods. How far into the woods, I had no idea. Various articles and Internet reports about Paladin had mentioned the chain-link fence and the razor wire, but I had no idea how far the fence extended. A chain-link fence enclosing ten thousand acres? That seemed excessive. Hugely expensive.

It was amazing, actually, how much I did know about the Paladin training center, all of it from the public record, mostly the Internet. The most useful information came from Google Earth, which had overhead satellite reconnaissance photos of the place, even precise geographical coordinates.

But nothing can take the place of what you can see in person. “Route reconnaissance,” as they called it in the Special Forces.

So I turned around and headed back down the freshly paved road until I found a gap in the trees, a natural path, and drove into the woods as far as I could. Finally, some true off-road driving, and here the Defender performed like a champ. I stowed the car in a thicket that was far enough from the road that it wouldn’t be spotted by anyone driving past, but just to be safe, I hauled some downed limbs and branches and managed to camouflage it reasonably well.

Before I set off, I switched my cell phone on and found four voice mails, all from Arthur Garvin.

He picked up right away.

“Nick,” he said. “I reached out to the Baltimore Homicide guys. To get your brother’s remains.”

“You know what?” I said softly. “I don’t really care about that. No offense—”

“Listen to me. Did your brother have a hip replacement?”

“A
what
?”

“The Maryland ME’s Office found something interesting in the wreckage. A piece of a high-grade stainless-steel alloy called Orthinox. It’s a stem used in a total hip replacement.”

“No,” I said. “He never had a hip replacement.”

“I didn’t think so. Also, Washington Hospital Center reported a body missing from their morgue. A sixty-nine-year-old white male.”

I said nothing for a long time.

“Nick?” he said. “You there?”

“Yeah,” I finally said. “I’m here.”

“Oh, and listen. We got a warrant for the guy in the Marjorie Ogonowski murder,” he said. “Nice work on that. The photo match thing.”

“Not me,” I said. “Friend of mine. Like I said, we have some fancy databases at my high-priced firm.”

“Still,” he said. “Good going, there.”

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Keep an eye on Lauren Heller and her son, please?”

I disconnected the call and set off through the woods to do my reconnaissance.