Echo of War (3 page)

Royal Oak,
Maryland's eastern shore,
Chesapeake Bay

The weather was cooperating, Risto was pleased to see. A good omen.

Given the target's secluded location, they hadn't dared risk surveilling it from the ground, having had to instead rely on copied maps, aerial photographs, and blueprints they'd obtained at the Wicomico County Courthouse. This would be their first true glimpse of the house. Now, as the boat glided toward shore, a fog began to settle over the water, obscuring all but the house's yellow porch light, which seemed to float in the mist.

“Stop here,” Risto whispered.

At the wheel, Grebo eased back on the throttle. The electric trolling motor went silent. The other men waited, watching their leader, who stood staring into the fog. After thirty seconds, one of them whispered, “Risto?”

Risto held up his hand for silence, then cocked his head. The eerie
bong
of a navigation buoy echoed over the water. In the distance, a dog barked. Then silence. Tendrils of mist swirled over the water.

“Anchor,” Risto ordered. “Quietly.”

One of the men crept to the bow and gently lowered the anchor over the side. As it took hold, the current swung the stern around. Risto grabbed the rail to steady himself, then raised his binoculars, waiting for a gap in the fog. After a few moments, a breeze swept over the water and the fog parted momentarily.

There
…

Surrounded by a low flagstone wall, the two-story Cape Cod was situated on five wooded acres at the tip of a peninsula fifteen miles from the center of the bay. The only access points were through the main gate on the landward side, and through a second gate at the head of a boat dock on the north side. On the south side were a swimming pool and a tennis court.

Risto could see light glowing through one of the second-floor dormer windows. As he watched, a man-shaped shadow passed before the curtains then disappeared from view.
There you are,
he thought.
Safe and snug.
Not for long.

“It must cost a million dollars,” whispered Boric, the youngest member of the team.

“One point nine,” Risto replied. He felt a fleeting pang of sadness for Boric.
The necessities of war,
Risto reminded himself. He laid a gentle hand on Boric's shoulder. “Now be quiet, boy.”

Risto continued scanning with his binoculars until he spotted a lone guard patrolling the eastern wall. There would be three more, he knew. He kept scanning, picking them out one by one, until each guard was accounted for. He watched for another ten minutes, until certain each one's route was unchanged.

He lowered his binoculars. He was surprised to feel his hands shaking.
Calm yourself
;
you've planned well.
He turned to the other men. “It's time.”

Raymond Crohn dearly loved his dog Pumpkin—more so than he'd ever admit to his wife—but the Welsh Corgi could be a true pain. Not only did Pumpkin have a bladder the size of a lima bean, but she was maddeningly fussy about where she did her business. Potty breaks were never a simple matter of opening the door and letting her roam the yard. No, Pumpkin had to be
walked.
Pumpkin needed to be
encouraged.

It was shortly before eleven P.M. when Crohn pulled on his coat, hooked the leash to Pumpkin's collar, and stepped outside. If he hurried, he might make it back in time to catch the start of the news.

“Come on, Pumpkin,” Crohn called as he started down the driveway. Fog swirled across the road, clinging to the trees and ditches. The treetops swayed and creaked in the wind.

After fifty yards, Pumpkin stopped beside a fern and lifted her leg. “Good girl,” Crohn cooed. “Are we done?”

Pumpkin snorted and kept walking. After another hundred yards Crohn reached the flagstone wall that separated his property from that of his neighbors. Beyond the wall he could see the vague outline of the Cape Cod. Light glowed through one of the upstairs windows.

That's odd,
Crohn thought. He'd never known them to be late-night folks, but rather early risers.
Must be catching a movie or something,
he reasoned.
I
wonder what
—

From over the wall Crohn heard a moan. Pumpkin stopped in mid-sniff, cocked her head, then let out a low growl and trotted behind Crohn's legs.

A leaf skittered across the gravel and disappeared into the darkness. There were a few seconds of silence, then another moan.
What in god's name
?
Crohn thought. Legs trembling, he bent down and picked up a stick off the ground. He crept toward the wall.

“Who's there?” he called. “Is someone there?”

The bushes rustled. Crohn froze. Pumpkin growled.

“
Quiet,
Pumpkin.
”

Crohn's heart pounded. He gulped air, took another step. Pumpkin tugged at her leash. Crohn pulled her back, took another step. He drew even with the wall and raised the stick. He peeked over.

“Oh, good God …”

A man lay sprawled beside the hedge. As though sensing Crohn's presence, the man swiveled his head toward Crohn and rasped, “Help … get help.”

Crohn's panicked call to 911 was routed to the nearest Wicomico County sheriff's deputy, who was performing DWI stops outside Catchpenny twelve miles away. Eight minutes after receiving the call, Deputy Jay Meriweather pulled onto the gravel road bordering the flagstone wall. Headlights picked out a man frantically waving one arm as he tried to rein in a dog with the other. Meriweather stopped the car, radioed “on scene” to his dispatcher, then got out. “Sir, did you—”

“He's there … on the other side of the wall.”

Meriweather glanced at the wall. His hand instinctively went to the butt of his gun. “Calm down, sir, and tell me what the problem is.”

“There's a man there. He's hurt. I didn't … I couldn't …”

“All right, sir, just stay put.”

Flashlight held before him, Meriweather stepped up to the wall and shined his light on the ground. As Crohn had described, the man lay on his left side in the grass. His face was covered in blood. An embroidered patch on the shoulder of his windbreaker read, “Rhodes Point Security.” Though Meriweather had seen only one gunshot wound before, the ragged hole over the man's eye was unmistakable.

He grabbed his radio. “Dispatch, Victor Two-nine. I need backup and rescue at my location. Ten thirty-three!”

Meriweather's call of “Officer needs emergency help” drew every available police unit, from fellow sheriff's deputies, to nearby local cops, to a Maryland State Trooper on patrol nineteen miles away in Salem. Accidental discharges notwithstanding, gunshot victims were a rarity in this wealthy part of Maryland's eastern shore.

Once the property was cordoned off and the security guard was bundled into an ambulance, Meriweather and five other cops divided into pairs, then climbed over the wall and began a search of the grounds.

Meriweather was approaching the pool patio when his radio crackled to life: “We've got a body—north side by the dock.”

Another call: “Here, too. Main gate.”

“Make it four,” came another. “Sidewalk, by the front door.”

Jesus Christ,
Meriweather thought.
If there's four out here,
how many inside
?
“All units, find an entry point and stand by. Break: Dispatch, Victor Two-nine. Get me a supervisor out here. Break: All units, enter house.”

The interior search went smoothly. The Cape Cod's lower levels were cleared. There were no signs of forced entry, nothing out of place, no signs of struggle—and no more bodies. Meriweather led the other officers up the stairs.

On the second floor he found a bathroom and two bedrooms. Using hand signals, he directed the other teams to take the bedrooms as he searched the bathroom. He was approaching the threshold when one of the officers called out.

“Meriweather! End of the hall!”

Meriweather rushed down the hall and into the bedroom. Lying on the bed under the glare of four flashlights was a man in his late sixties or early seventies. He was bound hand and foot with plastic flexi-cuffs. His mouth was stuffed with a red ball-gag. Wide-eyed, he stared at them and mumbled into the gag.

Meriweather stepped through the circle of cops, loosened the ball-gag, and removed it.

The old man let out an explosive
whoosh,
then gulped for air.

“Sir, are you injured?” Meriweather said. “Can we—”

“My wife,” he panted. “They took my wife!”

Seventy-five miles away in Gloucester point, Joe McBride was enjoying one of his favorite hobbies: late-night vintage horror movies. Tonight he'd lucked out and found the 1960 Vincent Price version of
The Fall of the House of Usher.
As far as McBride was concerned Price was the king of what he liked to call “creepy campy.” Humor and terror all in one.

The phone jangled on the end table. McBride started, nearly spilling his popcorn. He glanced at the clock: three A.M.
Who the hell
…
“Yeah, hello.”

“Hey, Joe, it's Charlie Latham. Sorry to call so late.”

“Charlie … Jesus. You scared the hell out of me.”

“Lemme guess: Horror movie?”

“Yep—
House of Usher.
”

“Good one. Listen, we need your help.”

This caught McBride off guard. He knew Charlie from having worked with the FBI on several cases, but they'd never worked together. Latham's bailiwick was counter-espionage; McBride's, kidnapping. “Who does? You?”

“No, the higher-ups. They know we're friends, so—”

“They thought you'd have more luck getting me to say yes.”

“That and lure you out this late at night.”

“I'm retired, Charlie.”

“Consultants don't retire—they just take longer vacations.”

McBride chuckled. “What's going on?”

“A big one, something up your alley. We've got an agent on the scene who'll explain everything.” McBride hesitated. There was some truth to Latham's jibe: Being freelance, he could slip into and out of retirement as he chose, and he'd done so several times in the past few years. That was the problem with doing what you loved for a living: What was the point in retiring?

“Okay. I'll take a look,” McBride said. “No promises.”

“Fair enough.”

“Where am I going?”

“A little town called Royal Oak on Maryland's eastern shore. A helicopter will be waiting for you at Fleeton.”

McBride hurriedly got dressed and drove the thirty miles up the coast to the Fleeton airstrip. As advertised, a Maryland State Police helicopter was waiting, its rotors spinning at idle. The pilot stuck his hand out the window and waved him aboard. Five minutes later they were airborne and heading east across the bay to Whitehaven, where they landed in a farmer's field. From there a Wicomico County sheriff's deputy drove him three miles to the scene.

Through the wrought-iron gate McBride could see a dozen unmarked and marked police cars lining the driveway to the two-story Cape Cod. Figures milled about the open front door. McBride could hear the overlapping crackle of radios and murmured voices. Yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze along the stone wall.

McBride felt that old familiar swell of excitement in his chest. He took a deep breath to quash it.
Big case,
big stakes.
Retirement be damned.
Still, there was part of him that wanted to turn around and go home. Exciting as they were, kidnapping cases took their toll on him, dominating his every thought and emotion until the case was resolved—and sometimes beyond that when things finished badly.

McBride had come to the “hostage talker” business largely by accident, having stumbled into it during his junior year at Notre Dame as he watched a police negotiator secure the release of three bank tellers taken during a robbery gone awry. This one man, standing in the midst of a dozen armed cops, a coked-out and twice-convicted felon with nothing to lose, and three hostages who didn't know if they would live to see their families again, had turned an impossible situation into a miracle. The robber went to jail and the hostages went home to their loved ones.

The next day McBride changed his major to criminal justice.

To fund his undergraduate degree in psychology, after Notre Dame he joined the army reserves and trained as an armored intelligence scout. On those weekends he wasn't bouncing around inside a Bradley fighting vehicle, he made pocket money by giving golf lessons at nearby courses and flipping steak at a local diner.

Time flies,
Joe thought.
From short-order cook to free-lancer for the FBI and the CIA.
Time had also brought him some unexpected gifts, including a wonderful wife and a pair of sons—Joe Jr., a radiologist in Oklahoma, and Scott, an attorney in Ohio. Life was good—for him at least, watching the cops milling around the driveway. Something bad had happened here tonight. The question was, could he do anything to make it right?
One way to find out.

The deputy escorted him to the front door, where he was met by a man wearing a blue blazer. An FBI badge dangled from his front pocket. The agent extended his hand to McBride. “Collin Oliver.”

“Joe McBride. You've got every cop within fifty miles here. What the hell happened?”

“Three dead security guards, one who's probably on the way out, a bypassed alarm system, and a missing woman. A neighbor walking his dog found one of the guards and called it in.”

“The husband?”

“He's inside. Shaken up but unhurt.”

“Any calls yet? Anything left behind?”

“Nothing.”

McBride frowned. “Agent Oliver, I'm not sure why I'm—”

“You'll see. Come on.”

Oliver led him inside, through the living room, and into the kitchen. An elderly man with disheveled gray hair sat at the dining table. He stared into space, his hands curled around a steaming mug. Standing a few feet away a pair of State Troopers nervously shuffled their feet.