Текст книги "Gideon's War / Hard Target"

Автор книги: Howard Gordon

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Gideon's War and Hard Target

Mixon looked around furtively, then pulled a digital...

“Yeah.” The man’s voice was presumably Verhoven’s. “We have the target isolated and surveillance established . . . We’ll wait for your instructions.” The recording stopped, and Mixon looked up at Gideon expectantly.

Although he didn’t realize it at first, Gideon had felt that old excitement rising up inside him as he listened to the recording. But thiset ဆ was not his fight, and not his job anymore. His new career was waiting for him about four hundred yards away, and it wouldn’t wait forever. And Gideon knew he’d gotten from Mixon all that he was willing to share.

“I can make a call,” said Gideon. “Someone in the FBI I can trust.”

“One person. Any more, and I’m gone.”

Mixon handed Gideon a scrap of paper. “This is where I’m staying. There’s a shopping mall about a mile down the road. Meet me there at six.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Good,” said the tweaker. “Your country is counting on you.”

2

McLEAN, VIRGINIA

Ervin Mixon was terrified. As he steered his Impala out of the parking lot he couldn’t get his right foot to stop jiggling.

Ten years ago he had been a pretty normal guy. Married, three kids, decent job as partner in a gun store down in Tennessee. Then he’d met crystal meth and it all went into the shitter.

There had been several points where he could have turned it around. Say, for instance, the day he decided to steal $41,000 from Ronnie Revis Jr., his partner at AAA Gun ’n’ Pawn back in Tullahoma. If he’d just bit the bullet and cleaned up instead, everything would have been different. Or maybe the first time he sold a bootleg full-auto SKS to David Allen Kring, the grand dragon of the Idaho KKK. Or maybe the time he sold six cases of MP5s to the Baltimore chapter of the Pagans Motorcycle Club, one case of which was real, and five cases of which were Taiwanese airsoft guns with the Day-Glo orange caps cut off the end of the barrels. That, in particular, had been a major mistake, one that had in turn forced him make certain promises to Jim Verhoven that he was not going to be able to keep.

Mixon swung onto the Jeff Davis Parkway and headed south, paralleling the Potomac, checking constantly in his rearview. Every time he saw a Harley, he about had a fucking heart attack, thinking he was about to get iced by the Outlaws or some other biker gang.

Driving through McLean, he noticed that there was nothing but colored people on the streets. Never been so glad in his life to see spooks. At least if a guy was black, you knew he wasn’t some biker or some inbred militia asshole from West Virginia, ready to terminate your shit.

A 360-degree battlefield. That’s what he was living in. The threats could come from anywhere.

He checked his rearview for the millionth time. What about that van? Hadn’t he seen that before? A white van with a bunch of ladders on top. Christ, America was so jam-packed with vans full of Mexicans, you couldn’t tell one from the next. At least he’d never fucked over the Mexican mafia. Those sumbitches played for keeps.

If he could just do this thing with Gideon Davis, get paid, he would clean up and start living right again. He’d said that after he scammed the Outlaws for fifty K, too. But then the money had all disappeared into a pipe, and before he could do anything to stop himself he was jonesingiv> d‡ again.

This time things would be different, though. This time he’d get clean. Definitely, this time.

He looked at his watch. Davis had said he would meet him tonight. The bastard had better come through, Mixon thought as he steered into the parking lot of his motel, the transmission bottoming out as he bumped over a pothole and settled into a parking space between two Dumpsters.

As cautious as Mixon was, though, he failed to see the Dodge Ram pickup with heavily tinted windows parked on the shoulder of Dolley Madison Road.

Behind the wheel sat Colonel James C. Verhoven, self-appointed commanding officer of the Seventh West Virginia (True) Militia. Nestled in his lap, concealed beneath a camo-colored Snuggie given to him by his beloved wife, Lorene, was a Rock River Arms AR-15 with a collapsible stock, quad Pickatinny rail fore grip mounting a green laser, a 230 lumen flashlight, and an Aimpoint red-dot scope. On his hip he carried his pride and joy, a Les Baer 1911 with a hard chrome finish, Novak ramp sights, and mother of pearl grips, running 230 grain Hornady jacketed hollow-points. He also wore a backup gun on his ankle—the old standby, a compact titanium J-Frame Smith .38 with Crimson Trace laser grips, loaded with 129 grain + P Federal Hydra-Shoks. Plus, of course, a little CRKT neck knife hanging by a piece of paracord under his shirt.

Verhoven’s eyes narrowed as Mixon’s Impala turned into the motel. He waited until Mixon had parked before easing into the far end of the Word Up Lodge parking lot. Unit two—Lorene and the Upshaw brothers—pulled up beside him in a white Ford Econoline van with CRUZ PAINTING & DRYWALL painted on the side and a bunch of ladders piled on top.

Verhoven gave the signal, then hopped out and strode across the parking lot, hands on the AR-15, followed by the Upshaw brothers. As Mixon climbed out of his car, Verhoven pointed his trigger finger at the yellow stripe peeking out from under one of the Impala’s half-bald tires and said, “So I guess you never graduated from parking school, huh?”

The subject looked blankly at the yellow stripe, blinked once, then looked up at Verhoven and said, “Oh, shit.”

Four seconds later, there were flex cuffs on his wrists and a sock in his mouth as he was dragged into the van, his feet kicking wildly. Verhoven saw the fear in Mixon’s eyes as he slammed the door shut, and the ruckus was over.

Two black men stood on the balustrade drinking out of paper bags and looking down curiously into the parking lot.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

Verhoven and his men were all wearing CamelBak load-bearing...

“Police business!” Verhoven shouted. “Get your black asses back inside your room.”

The men muttered angrily to each other but didn’t move.

Before Verhoven could say anything else, the driver erupted from the fake painting van. She was a very tall, fit-looking woman with bleached blond hair, wearing an AR on a single-point sling. She had a wide smile on her face as she poi boñ€†nted her AR at the young men on the balcony. “Please,” she shouted, “just give me an excuse to shoot.”

“I got it, Lorene,” Verhoven said softly to his wife. He had known her to go beyond what tactical necessity strictly dictated, sometimes leaving a bloody mess in her wake like a trail of chum.

His wife’s smile hardened as she continued to stare down the young men. She had one eye that was brown and another blue—a condition known as “heterochromia”—and it only added to the impression that she was a woman not playing with all her marbles. The two young men on the balcony saw the look in her eyes and quickly hustled back into their hotel room.

Lorene watched them go. The charge of the hunt left her twitchy and eager. She turned back to the van, her fingers itching, frustration giving way to anticipation of the violence she had planned for Ervin Mixon.

3

POCATELLO, IDAHO

Dale Wilmot heard a thump and a grunt of pain coming from the third floor. His heart began to race.

“Son of a bitch!” he muttered and sprinted up the flight of stairs to Evan’s room.

Without knocking, he burst into his son’s room, expecting the worst.

Looking through the bedroom, he saw the door to the bathroom was open. Evan lay on the tiled floor. He’d obviously been trying to maneuver himself into the shower and had fallen from his water-slick wheelchair. The shower continued to spray while water backed up on the floor. Wilmot hadn’t seen his son naked in a while, and the vision was horrifying. The network of scars covered much of what was left of his body. On top of that, he’d cut himself over the eye in the fall, and a steady stream of blood ran down the side of his face.

Evan Wilmot had been blown up by an IED in Mosul and then badly burned when the troop carrier in which he was riding had burst into flame. The medic at the scene said he wouldn’t be able to survive his wounds and had decided to stop pushing transfusions. But the company commander threatened to court-martial the corpsman and said, “As long as this kid’s still fighting, you’re putting blood into his arm.” They’d called for volunteers and kept pumping blood, going straight from the veins of other soldiers into Evan’s arm, a hundred boys lined up around the shed where the corpsman was treating him. It had taken fifty units before Evan’s blood had started coagulating enough to stabilize him.

He’d been unconscious for a week, waking up finally at Ramstein Air Base.

Wilmot was tempted to shout at the boy for being so bullheaded and foolish as to try taking a shower unattended. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

“It’s okay, son,” he said gently. “Here, let me help.”

Evan’s startling blue eyes rolled up toward his father. He didn’t answer, just grabbed hold of the wet seat of his wheelchair with his claw of a hand and attempted to pull himself up. Wilmot ran forward to grab him, splashing through the water on the floor.

Evan waved him away, but Wilmot couldn’t watch the boy do this to himself.

Wilmot had spared no expense on the bathroom. It cost over $120,000. Remote control on/off and temp controls for the huge wheelchair-accessible shower. A motorized harness hanging from tracks on the ceiling so he could be hoisted into the shower or onto the toilet. A wall-size forced-air blow-dryer so he didn’t have to wrestle with a towel. Wheelchair-accessible toilet with built-in bidet, wheelchair-accessible sink, special faucets custom made at the Kohler plant in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

And that wasn’t all. There was an attendant in the house fourteen hours a day. A nurse practitioner came every morning and stayed for the day. Then in the evenings John Collier came for a few hours, helping him wash and go to the toilet, reading to him or just hanging out.

But Evan had to do it the hard way, trying to drag himself to the shower using the wheelchair for support.

Wilmot lowered his voice. “Evan. I’m here. Let me help.”

Evan’s jaw clamped shut and his eyes flashed at Wilmot. But he didn’t say anything. The doctors said Evan hadn’t lost any of his cognitive abilities. But sometimes it was hard to tell. Wilmot grabbed him under the armpits.

By the time he got his son back in the chair, he was sopping wet, and Evan’s blood had spattered onto his pants. He reached over, grabbed the towel that had fallen into the bath and blocked the drain, and pulled it free. Then he found a fresh towel and dried Evan off.

“’S fine, Dad. ’S fine.” Most people wouldn’t have been able to make out the slurred sibilance of Evan’s words. But Wilmot had gotten used to his son’s speech by now.

“Let me get you something for that cut,” Wilmot said, dabbing at the wound with another towel. “You really don’t want another infection.”

“Can I just. . . .” A helpless rage twisted the melted features of the boy’s face. Moisture and blood streamed down his cheeks. He might have been crying—though it was hard for Wilmot to tell.

“I’m sorry, son,” Wilmot said. “I’m so sorry.”

Then the anger seemed to drain out of Evan’s body. His muscles softened and the contorted expression dissolved. He relaxed into the chair and looked away from his father in resignation.

Wilmot set his phone and his watch on the sink, then pushed his son back into the spray of the shower. There was something pleasurable about stepping into the stream of water fully clothed, a little transgression against normalcy. As Wilmot poured a dollop of antibacterial soap on the washrag and began running it across his son’s body—the folds of calloused skin around his amputations, the scarred mask of his face, even the crack of his ass—his mind drifted back to the first time he’d held his son. Wilmot’s wife, Claire, had been very sick during the pregnancy—a sickness they didn’t realize until later was the beginning of the progressive disease that eventually killed her—and Evan was born premature. But when Wilmot held the tiny red body of his only son, it had been as though the entire world had telescoped away. All that mattered to him was right there in his arms. At the time the helplessness of the boy had made ble�€†Wilmot feel more hopeful and serene than anything he’d ever experienced.

By then, Wilmot was already a wealthy man, and there was nothing he didn’t give to Evan. Good genes, wealth, a big house, a healthy rural environment, an endless supply of baseballs, all the food he could eat, all the books he could read. And love—the one thing Wilmot’s own son of a bitch of a father had never once provided. Wilmot had given that to his son, too.

But he hadn’t spoiled him either. A couple of luxuries here and there, sure. What was the point of being worth several hundred million dollars if you couldn’t give your kid a horse on his eighteenth birthday? But he’d never let the boy think he rated anything just because of who his father was. If Evan wanted his three-dollar-a-week allowance, he had to do his chores, keep his bed made, pick up his room, fill the dishwasher, do his homework. You proved yourself every day. That was what Wilmot believed, and he lived by that code.

And Evan had never disappointed. Captain of the baseball team, president of the senior class, raised money for poor families at Christmas, valedictorian. Tall, handsome—Christ, what a boy he’d been!

There had been a time after Evan returned when Wilmot blamed his son for his own misfortunes. He had gone to Iraq against Wilmot’s express wishes, joining the military a year before he should have graduated from Harvard. Wilmot had been so angry that they had not talked for nearly a year. He had been against the war from the beginning, seeing it as more overreaching by a government that couldn’t even handle its problems at home. But Wilmot had come to realize it wasn’t his son’s fault. It was those bastards, those parasites, those pieces of shit in Washington, grinding up American boys—barely more than children—for some misguided principle or thinly masked greed. But soon the bastards would pay.

His mounting rage was interrupted by Collier. “Mr. Wilmot.” He was standing in the doorway, looking at him with a curious expression on his face as he took in his boss’s soaked clothing.

“John,” Wilmot said, with every ounce of self-control he could muster, “can’t you see that we have a situation here?”

“So do we,” Collier said.

“And it can’t wait until my son finishes his shower?”

Collier met Wilmot’s eyes but said nothing.

“Hang on, son,” Wilmot said, buckling Evan into his chair. “Will you be okay by yourself for a minute?”

Evan nodded.

Wilmot grabbed a towel and walked out of Evan’s room, drying himself as he walked.

“What is it, John?” he said.

Collier frowned. “Our guy Verhoven in West Virginia. One of his people is trying to sell information to the Feds.”

Wilmot swore. “How would one of his people know anything? Verhoven wasn’t supposed to say shit to any of those morons of his.”

“It’s not one of his militia kids. It’s a gun dealer who hangs out with them. I’ve met him a couple times. Shifty little prick. He’s a me>

“Tell Verhoven to pick the son of a bitch up and find out what he knows.”

“He’s already doing that.”

“He better find out every goddamn scrap of information this guy’s got. He needs to find out exactly what he said and who he said it to.”

Collier nodded. “I’ll make sure he’s doing the right thing.”

“We’re at a point where we can’t afford any loose ends. Tell Verhoven once he finds out what this guy knows, he needs to get rid of him. Make it look like an overdose.”

“Understood.”

After Evan finished showering, his cheerless nurse, Margie Clete, toweled him off as he lay on his bed. She was a large woman, nearly six feet, with no waist, thick forearms, and large breasts, which she controlled with a brassiere that showed through her overly tight uniform like the girders of a postmodern building. Evan’s father had once said of her that she had a face like a canned ham. Margie scolded him for not calling for help in the shower. Even after nearly two years of being tended to in his most intimate bodily functions, Evan still felt a wave of shame at being forced to rely on a middle-aged woman just to get dried off.

But finally it was over and Evan was left alone in his room. He lay in his bed in his clean dry clothes and reached under the mattress for his secret bottle of pills. He popped the cap off and dumped a couple of oxycodone on the blanket next to him.

What the hell had his father been talking to John about in the hallway? They’d been having these secretive, whispered conversations for months now. Evan had turned off the shower in hopes of eavesdropping on them—but hadn’t been able to pick up anything.

Gideon's War and Hard Target

What few words he could hear seemed to come out of a...

It surprised him the first time he’d heard John Collier’s voice in his home. Evan was sure at some level John hated him. They had known each other since they were kids, and had a complicated history to say the least. Now John was back in Idaho, working part-time as Evan’s caretaker and spending a lot of time with his father. Something odd was going on, but Evan was damned if he knew what it was.

He stared sourly at the pills on the bedspread. Screw it, he thought. Maybe he’d skip the pills, see how he felt. Slowly, pain-stakingly, he picked up each pill with his two working fingers and dropped them back in the pill bottle. For the first time in a long time he actually felt curious about something. Curious and a little concerned. But if he was going to give the matter some thought, he’d need to be clearer in his head.

When he finally got the pills into the bottle, he lay back and watched the television on the far wall. He could feel the pain coming toward him, slowly, sinuously, like a big hungry snake. Evan smiled. Come on, motherfucker, he thought. Let’s see what you’ve got.

4

McLEAN, VIRGINIA

He’s late,” said FBI agent Nancy Clement, looking at her watch.

“He’ll be here.”

They were waiting in Nancy’s car, a government-issued black GMC Tahoe, at a shopping mall about a mile from Mixon’s hotel. Mixon had chosen such a public place because, he said, it would make an ambush more difficult. Given Mixon’s competence tailing his car, Gideon questioned his countersurveillance abilities, but the mall was anonymous enough and would be just a short ride home in time for dinner.

Washington’s horrific rush hour had crept up on them, and drivers used the parking lot as a shortcut to avoid the lights. As a result, Gideon’s and Nancy’s heads kept swiveling to keep watch on the passing traffic.

They had met three years earlier at a national security conference in Colorado and dated briefly for six months. Nancy was a good agent whose beauty turned out to be more of a career liability than an asset in the FBI’s male-dominated culture. She navigated her way through it by cultivating a tough self-reliance that alienated her from many of her colleagues. As much as Gideon admired her independence, the sharp edges of her personality had quickly chipped away at his initial affection. Yet sitting with her in close confines in the front of her car, he couldn’t help admiring her athletic legs and honey-blond hair.

“I appreciate you coming out here,” he said.

“I appreciate the call.”

“It’s probably nothing, but I thought it was worth checking out.”

“You always had good instincts.”

“Did you tell Ray you were coming to meet me?” Ray Dahlgren was Nancy’s boss, the deputy director of the Bureau’s Counterterrorism Group. Gideon met him at the same conference where he’d met Nancy, and his impression was that the man had earned his reputation as an ambitious and arrogant bully who was smart, but not nearly as smart as he thought he was.

Nancy smiled. “What do you think?”

She was wearing a familiar perfume, something light and flowery, and its scent reminded Gideon of lying next to her in her loftlike apartment. Nancy collected medieval brass rubbings, and the apartment was decorated with expensive framed canvases. Late at night the black-and-white renderings of monks and dignitaries took on an eerie three-dimensional glow in the reflected light from the street. He had spent a good number of hours tracing their outlines in pursuit of a sleep that never came.

“Dahlgren doesn’t like me,” Gideon stated.

“He’s got nothing against you, personally,” said Nam">>>>div hncy. “He’s just loyal to President Wade.”

Dahlgren was a political animal who specialized in managing up, and he had risen on the same tide that had swept Wade into the nation’s highest office. Because Gideon was no friend of the new administration, Dahlgren would do him no favors.

“If this guy Mixon turns out to be the real deal, it’s all his. Dahlgren can run with it.”

“What makes you think he might be?”

“I told you. He knew his stuff, and the tape sounded authentic. If he turns out to be a phony, no harm done.”

“Except the wasted time.”

“Gives us a chance to catch up.”

Nancy smiled. Her teeth were as white as Chiclets. “So you’re really getting married?” Gideon had avoided the subject, but leave it to Nancy to be direct.

“Yep. Three weeks.”

“Wow. Lucky girl.”

“Lucky me.”

Nancy nodded slowly. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. When they broke up she hadn’t protested, but she was eager to take his call and quickly agreed to meet Mixon. Maybe it was just her national security concerns, but Gideon suspected there might be something else there.

Nancy looked at her watch again. It was almost seven o’clock, an hour after Mixon had agreed to meet them. “Do you have any way to reach him?”

“No, but I know where he’s staying.”

Gideon called the Word Up Lodge, but not surprisingly they had no record of anyone named Ervin Mixon staying there, and Gideon didn’t want to raise suspicions by asking further questions.

“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” he said.

“We could drive over there,” Nancy suggested.

“Let’s do it.”

They left Gideon’s car at the mall and drove the short distance to Mixon’s hotel. The Word Up Lodge was about as inhospitable as a hovel or a prison. The parking lot was rutted and potholed. The paint peeled off vinyl siding (never a good idea to paint vinyl, Gideon thought). Half the lights were out in the motel’s neon sign. The balcony that ran the length of the second floor looked dangerously unstable and pitched so steeply at one point it looked like the top of a wheelchair ramp.

“There’s his car.” Gideon pointed to the green Impala, which was still parked between the two Dumpsters.

They got out and examined the car, which was unlocked and cold to the touch. “Been here a while,” Nancy noted. She opened the door and poked around inside.

On the ground about six feet from the rear tire Gideon discovered a snap shackle that looked like it had popped off a piece of rubber or canvas, but he recognized it immediately as coming from a sling meant to hold a rifle, probably an AR-15. He fingered it and showed it to Nancy.

“I don’t like this,” he said. “Looks like somebody yanked it off.”

“Let’s check at the front desk,” Nancy suggested.

The motel clerk was a stringy-haired kid with a bad case of acne. When Nancy flashed her ID he immediately stiffened. Gideon described Mixon, and the kid said he had checked in yesterday but he hadn’t seen Mixon since. He gave Nancy the key for Mixon’s room, and she and Gideon went upstairs to inspect it.