Don't Order Dog (45 page)

“How much longer?” Alex asked impatiently as he leaned into the open cockpit
of the jet.

“About two more hours, sir,” the pilot replied matter-of-factly. “Maybe a little less. We’ll be over Kansas in a few minutes.”

“Can we go any faster?”

The pilot shook his head.
“No sir. We’re already at maximum cruising speed.”

Alex grunted in response and sat back down in the soft leather seat at the front of the passenger cabin. He reached into his thin briefcase and pulled out the case file given to him by the Deputy Secretary. Once again the growing sense of apprehension that had haunted him since their meeting that morning gripped him. He quickly thumbed through the pages he’d already read, pausing briefly on the photograph of the box with the
Joe’s Last Stand Saloon
t-shirt and the note addressed to him.

For Agent Alex Murstead –
Sorry we missed each other in Amsterdam.

Alex shook his head and slapped the file closed before angrily tossing it on the seat next to him. The reason for his uneasiness was obvious. His career now depended on solving this case, and yet nothing about it seemed to make any sense.
Just who were these terrorists? What was their reason for the Petronus killings? And what did a goddamn bartender in Flagstaff have to do with any of this?

Alex grabbed the small MP3 player containing the recording of Preston’s conversation with their terrorist from his briefcase and put on his headphones before hitting the play button. He listened carefully to the low, calm voice of his target as he deftly picked away at the director’s composure. Sergeant Kearney’s slow, slurred description of Agent Martin’s death only further worsened matters. Two minutes into the recording, it was clear that Preston was painfully outmatched. The certainty of it brought a fleeting smile to Alex’s face – until the thought of his failed operation in Amsterdam led him to wonder if the same was true for him. He shook the thought from his mind as the audio recording continued.

“Why are you doing this?”

“You see, Director, therein lies the problem. You ask me why I’m doing this, and you don’t even know what I’m doing.”

“Then what exactly are you doing?”

“Exposing weaknesses.”

“In what?”

“In you.”   

Alex suddenly yanked
out the earbud and tossed the MP3 player back into his briefcase. Across from him, his two SOG team members sat patiently, both men staring out at the monotonous, snow-covered landscape beneath them. One of the men reached down and pulled his .40 caliber Glock from his belt holster, quickly inspecting it before glancing up at Alex.

“Think we’ll bag some terrorists today, sir?”   

Alex stared absently at the lethal weapon in his colleague’s hand and shrugged. “We’ll know soon enough.”

He pulled a
nother folder from his briefcase and opened it. After reading the brief summary on deceased former NSA Agent Robert Shafer, Alex turned to the accident report. He absently flipped through a series of black and white photos, all of them gruesomely depicting the charred remains of two men sitting in the front seats of a burned out sedan. He then turned to the coroner’s report. As expected, the cause of death listed on the official autopsy report for Robert Shafer read ‘thermal burns due to fire’. Alex was about to close the report when he noticed something strange. In the box under ‘Identified by’, the coroner had
simply typed ‘n/a’.

Not available.

The small jet banked gently south towards the mountains as Alex sighed and closed the file. He stared out at the thin, crystalline air, his uneasiness steadily growing. 

∞

Tom Coleman sat up from the floor and gingerly felt his head.

What had just happened?

The pounding in his head was almost unbearable, causing even the slight noise of the voices around him to echo painfully inside his skull. A strange metallic taste fil
led his mouth, and his throat was dry to the point of burning. He opened his eyes and, as if his wish had instantly been granted, noticed a tall glass of water sitting next to him on the floor. He picked it up and quickly drank back the cool liquid, ignoring the pain in his throat as he greedily emptied the glass. Feeling better, Tom slowly raised his head and blinked the blurriness from his vision. For some unknown reason, he was sitting in the middle of the saloon. He looked over at the bar and, to his surprise, noticed four men sitting with Chip. Tom could hear Chip talking with the man next to him in a low tone, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

He needed to get closer. 

Tom leaned forward and rose shakily to his feet. He was nearly standing when a sudden wave of dizziness struck him. Losing his balance, he staggered and fell heavily onto his back. Chip and the other men turned at the sound of the commotion to find him sprawled across the old wooden floor.

“Glad you could jo
in us again, Tom,” Chip said cheerfully, his blue eyes staring down at him. The other men watched silently with an undisguised look of pity.

Tom propped himself up on one arm and rubbed his head.
“What the fuck happened to me?

“You were subjected to a form of compressive asphyxia that, pathologically speaking, brought on a state of generalized hypoxia,” the dark-haired man sitting next to Chip replied. “Said a simpler way, you were just strangled.”

Tom gazed up at the man with a puzzled expression.
What the hell did he just say? And why did he look so familiar?
He looked over at the man named Max sitting at the far end of the bar and suddenly remembered what had happened.

“You motherfucker… you tried to kill me!”
He rose from the floor again before clumsily hurling himself towards Max. As he did, the blonde-haired man sitting next to Max quickly stood and intercepted him, pinning Tom’s arms behind his back.

“Alright, alright… settle down,” the man said calmly
in an Australian accent. He spun Tom around and gently dropped him back onto the floor. “Just settle down now,” he continued, pointing towards something behind Tom. “Or else you’re going to end up like that.”

Tom shook his arms free and glared at the man angrily before turning to see what was
behind him. His expression instantly turned to shock. A few yards away, Jeri’s lifeless body was stretched across the floor.

“Is she dead?” he asked, his voice a low whisper.

“Don’t worry about Jeri, Tom,” Chip replied as he swung around on his bar stool and faced him. “I’d rather talk about you.”

Tom glanced at the faces along the bar before fixing his stare on Chip.
“What the fuck’s going on Chip? Who are these guys?”

“Who do you think?” Chip said, looking over and giving the men a brief nod. At his cue, Max, the Australian, and a short,
pudgy man sitting next to them stood and walked over to Jeri’s body. Max gently lifted her off the floor as the other two men opened the door that led to the back alley and quietly escorted him out.

“Where are they taking her?” Tom demanded.

“That’s not your concern now,” the dark-haired man replied.

Tom l
ooked at the man more closely. “Wait– you’re… you’re
him
.”

“Him who?” the man asked.

“The man in the photos,” Tom whispered, looking over at the shrine of letters on the wall. “You wrote those letters, didn’t you?”

“Indeed I did.”

Tom eyes darted to Chip. “Jesus… I was right. It
was
you, wasn’t it?” he asked, shaking his head in disbelief. “All those messages within the letters. They weren’t meant for Jeri, they were meant for
you
.”

From his seat at the bar, Chip smiled and nodded his head.

“That’s right, Tom. I have to say, when you first walked up to the bar that night and started asking me about the letters, I thought you were just some local idiot passing time. You can imagine my surprise when you suddenly started connecting the dots.” He paused and shook his head. “You impressed me,
Agent Coleman
. Of course, you also forced me to find out just what the hell you were up to. When I discovered you were an agent for the Department of Homeland Security, I knew I could relax a bit. But when I realized your real motivation for solving the case was to get the attention of your brother-in-law in the CIA, I knew we could use you to our advantage.”

“Use me?” Tom replied. “How so?”

“Amsterdam,” Chip said flatly, nodding to his colleague. “The operation on Chilly’s hotel.”

Tom glance
d over at the dark-haired man. “
Chilly
? That’s your name?”

Chilly grimaced. “More of a nickname.”

“So tell me Chilly, how in the fuck did you survive that raid in Amsterdam, anyhow?”

“
You already know the answer to that, Tom,” Chilly replied. He dragged his index finger across his neck like a knife and smiled. “I killed myself.”

Tom looked at Chip. “What do you mean, you
used
me in Amsterdam? Are you saying you actually wanted that raid to happen?”

“Absolutely.”

“But why?”

“For two reasons
,” Chip replied. “First of all, we wanted to know how many agencies were after us. As expected, your brother-in-law’s CIA team had the hotel covered, but we were somewhat surprised to find Agent Martin from your own Department of Homeland Security waiting for us at the bar where Jeri’s package was sent. The second re–”

“Wait a minute,” Tom interrupted, “Rick Martin was in Amsterdam?”

Chip nodded. “Agent Martin tried intercepting the package when we went in to pick it up,” he answered matter-of-factly. “He followed Tall Tommy – oh, that’s the Australian gentleman by the way – followed him all the way to Beijing before Tommy cut him loose. He’d probably still be looking for us there if Chilly’s last letter hadn’t tipped you off to Dongying.”

Tom shook his head. Hi
s suspicion was right – the agent Director Preston had sent into the field was none other than his own idiotic colleague. He still couldn’t understand why Preston had chosen Rick Martin. “Where is he now?” he asked.

Chip raised his eyebrows in surprise. “He’s dead, Tom.”

Tom glanced at Chilly, who nodded solemnly. The two men stared each other down for a long moment before Tom returned his attention to Chip.
“What was the second reason?” he asked.

“Andr
ás Vida,” Chip replied.

Tom looked at him quizzically for a moment until he recalled the name.
“Wait… you mean the first man killed at the hotel? The Bulgarian?”

“He was Hungarian, actually
,” Chilly replied.

“I don’t care if he was fucking French Canadian. What did he have to do with any of this?”

Chilly narrowed his stare on him. “András Vida was a major trafficker of young Eastern European women in the region’s sex trade. I was fortunate enough to have seen the consequences of his work first hand. He was a bad man… and he needed to die.”

Tom leaned forward and pointed his finger at Chilly. “You knew he was staying at that hotel, didn’t you?
That’s why you picked it. Then you used yourself as bait and got the CIA to run in and carry out your personal vendetta, is that it?”

“That about sums it up
,” Chip interjected from his seat at the bar.

Tom looked over at the older man with disgust.
“And you authorized that?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re as much of a goddamn terrorist as he is.”

Chip shrugged. “Well Tom, I suppose that depends on your definition of a terrorist.”

“How about someone who terrorizes or kills for their own political or personal gain. That’s my definition of a terrorist, you old fuck.” Tom paused and glared at Chip, his face red with anger. “And you’re guilty of both.”

“Or neither
,” Chilly replied flatly. He stood up and walked over to Tom, kneeling down beside him on the floor.

“What? Are you going to kill
me
now, asshole?” Tom growled. “I’d love to see you try to–” He didn’t have time to react before Chilly’s left hand swung out and connected with his jaw. Tom immediately fell back, his head once again slamming hard into the floor. In an instant Chilly was on top of him, his right hand holding Tom’s neck. In his left hand was a small syringe, its needle pressed gently against Tom’s jugular vein.

“Do you have any idea how predictable you are
, Tom? Do any of you people? No, of course you don’t. Despite all the evidence against it, you’re still operating under the delusion that you guys – you
governmental
agency
guys – are somehow more competent than anyone else. Even now, you’re failing to realize that we could have destroyed you, or your brother-in-law Alex, or that smug idiot Jack Preston at any time during this assignment. Hell, killing any one of you would have been a vacation next to the work we do.”