Death of Secrets (4 page)

"Yeah, he told me to take it somewhere. It was… like a
country name. I think… it rang a bell when I heard it, but I can’t remember
now. I’m sorry, geography isn’t my strong suit. You know how the papers are
always saying we modern students don’t know squat about geography? Well,
they’re right."

Michael frowned and harrumphed. "Kathy, that’s about all
we have to go on, so you’re going to have to remember it."

"I’m sorry, Mike, I just can’t get it. But I’m sure it was
the name of a country. It can’t be that hard to just find a list of all the
countries in the world and read through it, right? Maybe I’d remember it if I
heard it."

"OK, that’s a start. Let me get my computer."

As the Congressman went off to find his laptop, John stood up
and helped himself to another cup of coffee. "This is about the weirdest
stuff I ever seen. Glad I mixed myself up in it. Hate to miss out on something
like this. Gives me something to tell the guys about, y’know?"

"Just try not to tell the guys about the Congressman, OK
John?"

He laughed. "You kiddin' me? By the time I get done
telling it, he'll be the President."

Mike returned with a computer and fresh cups of coffee for himself
and Kathy. "OK, then, let’s just do this. We need to remember what that
guy told you before he died."

The Internet yielded a list of countries and their major cities
and Mike began reading through it, with Kathy following each name by saying
"Nope. Nah-ah. Not it. Nope," and so forth. The list was beginning to
seem interminable when he had only gone about a third of the way through it. At
about that point, though, Michael read, "Indonesia, capital city
Jakarta."

"Jakarta! That’s it!"

"You’re sure?"

"Positive! But no way am I going to randomly fly off to
Indonesia! And what am I supposed to do with it once I get there?"

Mike came out of his chair and hugged her. "I knew you
could remember it. And as for going to Indonesia, let’s not buy any airline tickets
yet. This is just a starting place – something to go on. Any chance you
remember anything else he said?"

"There was nothing else. Just ‘Please, get it to Jakarta,
please.’ Then he died. What I want to know is where his body went between my
leaving to get help and coming back."

John spoke up here. "Well, it fits with everything else
that’s going on, doesn’t it? These guys seem like cloak and dagger types,
hiding a body sounds right up their alley."

Michael agreed. "Yeah, and the thing that’s scary about
that is that they can’t have been far off when you first found him."

***

 Sam Franken cruised the streets of the nation’s capitol,
head tracking left to right. Patrolling was long, often boring work. But it was
also a vital part of his job. He wasn’t technically patrolling, of course. He
was returning from a call. But Franken had only been promoted to detective a
few months ago, and he still thought in the terms of a young cop patrolling a
beat. Far better to scare a crook out of his crime than to catch him
afterwards. And often a visible police presence was all it took to deter a
criminal.

Or, he admitted in his more cynical moments, at least make him
go somewhere else to do it. And Georgetown had some of the wealthiest, most powerful
taxpayers in the DC area. Making the crooks move to another, less influential
area of the city was an important government goal.

He grunted. "Save the sermons for Sunday," he
muttered out loud, and went back to scanning for anything that looked like
trouble. Turning a corner, he went on with his patrol.

Georgetown was a boring area. Complaints were far more often
over-loud college parties than drug busts. And those came mostly on weekends.
Franken’s eyes kept moving, but his mind was moving too. Questions about his
unpleasant interview with Lieutenant Washington took the place of gripes about
the boredom.

Admittedly, a homicide was a serious matter. Misreporting one
did, indeed, deserve attention. But what made the commander so sure this was
misreported? Bodies disappeared from time to time. It wasn’t every day, but it
certainly did happen. A murderer wanting to conceal evidence of his crime might
very easily come back to the scene after the witness left to call 911, and take
the body away. So why was Washington so set on the idea that the body last
night at this time couldn’t have ever been there?

***

Kathy, Mike and John were way too wired to sleep. They sat
around Michael's kitchen table mulling over the flash drive and what could
possibly be on it.

"This is futile," Mike said. "We don't have the
first clue about what's on it, so it's useless to speculate."

"Might as well do something," Kathy replied.
"None of us ca…" She stopped in mid-sentence when the lights went
out.

Mike stood up. "Power’s out?" he asked, and walked up
to the picture window in his living room. "That's odd. My neighbors' porch
light is still on."

Michael caught sight of a bright flash in his front yard, and
then his window shattered. Something landed on the floor behind him, and a
hissing noise started. At first Michael just looked at the little canister in
confusion, but when his eyes started watering painfully he knew what it was,
and he shouted a warning to his friends.

"It’s gas!"

He ran for the kitchen table to get to Kathy. Already he knew
that this was no ordinary power outage. If someone was shooting tear gas at
him, they would have cut the wires leading to his house as well. That meant his
burglar alarm would do him no good at all.

Kathy was in the grip of a coughing fit when he pulled her out
of her seat. Mike didn't have time to ask himself how they had been followed.
He only accepted the obvious truth that they were under attack, and that his
front yard was clearly occupied. He heard the front door burst open and a voice
yell, "Everybody freeze!"

Michael ignored it. Eyes squeezed shut, he dragged Kathy in the
general direction of his back door.

John had the same thought. Blindly he staggered toward the
place he remembered seeing the back door. Unable to see, he ran headlong into a
man who burst in the door at the same time.

Both of them fell to the floor and John heard a clatter. He
groped blindly around himself and hit pay dirt. He didn't need his vision to
recognize the feel of a gun in his hand. Bigger than a pistol, it felt like a
rifle or submachine gun.

He risked opening his eyes and immediately the burning pain
intensified. But even through the streaming tears he could see Mike and Kathy,
trying to make it to the back door. He also recognized the weapon in his hand.
It was a carbine with a built in silencer. Judging by the size of the magazine,
it was in a pistol caliber like 9mm or .45. In other words, serious hardware.

He saw two other people in the house, one of them training a
gun on his friends. John tried to keep his eyes open as he jerked his gun
around toward the threat, but the pain was too much. He had to squeeze them
shut. He never talked to people about his years between football and being a
bouncer, but he'd learned then how to pull a trigger. It was something he'd
never wanted to do again.

But the intruder was pointing a gun at Kathy. John forced his
right eye open, aimed and squeezed. He was a bit taken aback when multiple
shots went off with a single pull of the trigger. A fully automatic weapon was
serious hardware indeed.

He was rewarded with a shout of pain. When he risked another
peek, he saw the man lying on the floor, writhing in agony.

John spun around and loosed another burst in the direction he
thought he’d seen the other intruder in. Then the man from whom he'd taken the
gun grabbed his ankles and pulled John down to the ground.

The bouncer lashed out blindly and skinned his knuckles against
Michael's floor. He cried out in pain just as his opponent threw a punch. The
fist landed between his teeth. Anguish exploded in John's head, but his
opponent cried out in pain as well.

John's eyes flew open from the blow to his mouth, despite his
efforts to keep them squeezed shut. This was just in time to see a foot flash
into his field of vision and kick his opponent in the head.

It was Kathy. "Come on, John!" she yelled. Then she
and Mike threw themselves out the back door. John got to his feet and followed
them out.

The clearer air outside allowed the three to open their eyes.
The first thing they saw, though, was the barrel of a gun. Again, John
identified it – either an M-4 carbine or else the civilian equivalent, an
AR-15. Given the other firearm he’d seen that night, the military M-4 seemed
more likely.

"You people are annoyingly hard to kill."

John stared. "Us? I watched you drive off a cliff!"
The facial stubble was enough to mark this as the same man, but John also
recognized the cold, hard eyes he’d seen at the club.

"Seatbelts save lives," the man quipped, his short whiskers
rippling oddly as his lips moved. "Now," he said, "hand over the
flash drive."

"We don't have it," replied Kathy.

Like lightning, the man's hand flew out and slapped her across
the face. "Don't even try to lie to me," he snarled.

Michael angrily started forward, but the man rammed the butt of
his rifle into his gut. The Congressman doubled over in pain. He collapsed on
the ground, as Kathy screamed "No don’t hurt him. It's true, we don't have
it!"

"Then what happened to it in between Harrison giving it to
you and me asking for it?"

Kathy's mind was on overdrive, looking for a way out of this.
She played for a bit more time. "Harrison?"

"Eric Harrison, the messy, bleeding corpse who handed it
to you. Nosy little punk, if he died as promptly as he should have, I wouldn't
have this problem."

Kathy's hand went to her mouth, and she gasped.

"Stop stalling!" he yelled, and slapped her again.
Mike growled and stumbled up from the ground, trying to lurch at the bearded
man, but all he got for his trouble was another blow in the gut, this one from
their attacker’s boot. It dropped him back to the ground.

With his weapon pointed straight at John, the bearded man
walked up to Kathy, standing so close she could smell his breath. She backed up
a step. His wolfish grin seemed to fill her entire field of vision. "I’ve
had a lot of anguish out of you people," he said. His physical nearness
communicated a threat that didn’t need words.

Kathy felt frozen, like the blood was draining out of her.

Without warning, the bearded man shifted topics when he saw
John over Kathy’s shoulder. He raised the gun.

"If I were you I’d stop thinking that," he growled.

John’s facial muscles contorted in a mask of rage, unable to
bear watching this man threaten Kathy. His biceps rippled under his shirt and
his right hand curled into a fist. John took another step forward, and the
bearded man’s finger tensed around the trigger.

"Stop!" Kathy screamed. "Stop it! OK, OK, my
roommate has it!"

"That's better." The bearded man turned back to her.
"But we've noticed she's not in your room tonight. So you're going to help
us find her."

He threw her a cell phone. "I’m quite sure you know where
to reach her. So you dial the number, then hand me the phone."

"Come on," Mike said. "It's four in the morning!
She'll be asleep, let it wait 'til morning."

Two things happened at once. Kathy said, "Mike, don't!
He'll…" and the bearded man drove his fist into Michael's gut.

But this time, Mike was ready for it. In his pocket was his key
chain, but to reach it he needed an excuse to put his hands there. Collapsing
to the ground, he managed to land with one hand under his leg.

One year ago, Congressman Vincent had celebrated his first
election with a brand new Lincoln. Right now, Mike thought it'd make a pretty
good diversion.

He hit the ground with his hand under his leg. In the moment it
was hidden, he shoved the hand into his pocket and pushed the panic button on
his keychain.

It wasn't much, but it was all he had. From the garage, the
horn of his Lincoln blared and the whoop of the alarm echoed through the yard.
It would wake the neighbors up, certainly. One of them might even call the
cops. But that wasn't the plan.

For just a moment, the bearded man's head swiveled reflexively
toward the source of the noise, and away from his prisoners.

On the floor, Michael lunged for the man's ankles and pulled
him to the ground. His gun clattered across the floor.

Like the bearded man, John and Kathy had both turned
involuntarily to look toward the garage. When they looked back, they saw
Michael grappling on the floor with their captor.

John threw himself into the tangle and landed a punishing blow
to the bearded man's jaw. He followed it up with a punch to the gut.

Kathy leaped on the gun. Mike and John were too closely intertwined
with the bearded man to shoot even if she thought she could, so she stood a few
feet back, holding the gun, not sure what to do.

The bearded man flexed his legs and broke them free of Mike's
grip. He didn't have enough maneuvering room to put much power behind it, but
he fired a kick at the Congressman, connecting hard enough to send Mike
sprawling out of the fight.

It was too late. John's fist hit the side of his head like a pile
driver and the bearded man went limp, unconscious. Gasping for breath, John
rolled off the man and sprawled on the ground. He just laid there panting. Mike
rose unsteadily to his feet, reached into his pocket, and pushed the off button
for his car alarm. "Let’s have a look at that gun, Kathy," he said.

She handed it over to him and Mike fingered the barrel.
"Well, no wonder no one called the cops when he shot at us. This big fat
thing on the end looks like a silencer. Anybody know what kind of gun it is?"