Missing Persons, page 15
Justine heard heavy footsteps on the stairs and the low indistinct sound of whispered instructions.
“They’re coming,” Roni said in a low voice. She ran to the front window. “I’m going to jump,” she said, looking down. “You need to throw the children down to me and then jump after them.”
Danny sniveled and Maria wept.
“We’ve got to do it, kids,” Beth whispered fiercely. “I bet it’s not even that high.”
Justine heard a door being kicked open further along the corridor. They were checking all the bedrooms.
“Come on,” she said, pulling Maria over to the window.
The girl resisted, but Justine was insistent. She knew they had no choice. If they didn’t get out in the next few seconds, all would be lost.
Jessie moved into position by the door and covered it using Taft’s Glock.
Roni holstered her pistol, opened the window, and climbed onto the sill. She looked down one last time and dropped. Justine heard a thud and a groan, but when she looked down, Roni was on her feet and had her arms held up to catch the children.
Justine helped Maria onto the sill. “Just don’t look down,” she said.
Maria whimpered and Justine said an inward prayer for forgiveness as she pushed the girl clear. Maria cried out as she fell, but Roni caught her.
Gunshots erupted behind Justine. She turned to see Jessie’s gun smoking and two bullet holes in the door. Jessie signaled there were people on the other side. Justine could hear movement.
“Come on,” she said, trying to control her rising panic.
Beth helped her lift Danny onto the sill.
“Don’t be scared, Dan,” Beth said. “Maria’s done it.”
He turned to face the opening, and Justine pushed him. He squealed as he fell, but hit Roni as intended and the two of them tumbled into the snow.
“Go,” Justine told Beth. She clambered onto the sill and jumped without hesitation.
Jessie fired another couple shots through the door.
“Let’s go, Jess,” Justine said, urging her colleague over.
Justine heard a gunshot then a scream. She looked down to see Roni clutching her chest and staggering before she fell to the ground. Three masked men were dragging Beth, Danny, and Maria away.
Jessie ran over, but there wasn’t a clear shot.
“We can’t go out that window,” she said. “We’ll be picked off as we hit the ground.”
She ran back to the door, stood to one side, flung it open, and peered around the frame.
“It’s clear,” she said.
She waved Justine forward and the two of them hurried through the house. They met no resistance. All the rooms were empty. They ran down the stairs, Justine feeling a renewed wave of nausea as they passed Taft’s body. They got outside just in time to see Beth being bundled into an unmarked white van at the end of the drive. Before the side door was closed, Justine caught a glimpse of Maria and Danny inside, both held by masked men. The door slid shut and the van sped away.
Justine ran to the Nissan.
“It’s no good,” Jessie said, indicating the wheels of the SUV and the adjacent Suburban.
All four tires on both cars had been slashed. They’d be next to useless in normal conditions, but completely out of action in the snow.
Justine fell to her knees. Jack was dead, and now Beth and the children had been taken. The crushing weight of defeat bore down on her and made her feel as though she couldn’t breathe. Her whole body shuddered and shook. When she was finally able to draw breath, she started to weep and felt as though she might never stop.
CHAPTER 59
DRIFTING THROUGH DARKNESS, I wondered if this was death. But where at first there was nothing, I suddenly saw her face: Justine. I came around to pain. I felt as though I’d been to hell and back. My ears were ringing, my head throbbing with pulsating waves of pressure. Acrid fumes had burned my sinuses and my lungs had been stripped raw. All I could taste was high explosive and smoke. Every muscle in my body ached as though pummeled by giant meat tenderizers. Even my bones felt sore. I had no idea whether I’d been blinded or if it was genuinely as dark as the grave.
Then there was sound and light. I turned my head to see Joshua Floyd holding up a windproof lighter. The flame seared my eyes and I looked away, turning toward a mass of tumbled rocks. Then it all came rushing back. We’d caught the edge of the first blast and it had flung us against the rockface at the base of the mountain. The explosion had dazed me, but Floyd was alert to the fact it had thrown us almost exactly to the place he’d been running for. He’d grabbed me and pushed me into a narrow opening in the rock I would never have noticed on my own. Together we had scrambled further into this cave a split second before the second explosion hit. The rocket blast had shaken the mountain and caved in the entrance to the tunnel, but the rock-fall had at least protected us from the flames. We’d felt their heat all around us. For a time the cave had become like an oven. The fierce temperature had done something odd to the air and, feeling suffocated, I’d blacked out. My last thought had been of Justine, and she was the first thought that had greeted me on waking.
I turned back to Floyd and we grinned at each other like a couple of idiots.
“I owe you,” I said.
“It was dumb luck,” he replied. “If I hadn’t found this place last night, we’d be a couple of briskets out there.”
“Dumb luck or design, I still owe you.”
“You OK?” he asked.
“I think so. You?”
“Probably about the same,” he replied. “That was intense.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Did Beth really send you?” he asked, groaning as he rolled onto his knees.
“Sort of,” I replied. “I was initially hired by a man claiming to be her father.”
“Her dad died years ago.”
“I didn’t know that. Turns out the guy posing as him was part of the group hunting you. So this is me making good.”
Floyd looked worried. “Are my family OK?”
“They’re fine. My colleagues have them somewhere safe. If we can get out of here, I intend to take you to them as soon as possible.”
Floyd nodded. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said. “The rescue mission didn’t start well.”
“We’re still alive, aren’t we?”
“Let’s keep it that way. Want to see if we can dig our way out?”
He nodded, put the lighter between two stones to keep it upright, and we crawled over to the tunnel mouth and started moving rocks.
“The intelligence reports suggested you were killed in the attack at the crash site,” I said. “There were believed to be no survivors.”
Floyd stopped digging and I saw him bow his head. Even though his face was lost in shadow, I could sense his pain.
“I lost a lot of friends. Brothers…” He trailed off.
“I’m sorry. I know that pain myself. Before I was a private investigator, I was in the Marines. I was a pilot too—I flew Sea Knights. I was shot down in Afghanistan. Most of the men I was carrying were killed.”
He lifted his head to look at me. “I keep playing things back. Could I have done anything differently?”
“I know that one too.” I had reached a heavy boulder. “Give me a hand, will you?”
Floyd shuffled over and the two of us strained to shift a piece of rock not much smaller than an oven. Our sinews stretched and our breathing grew labored as we dragged the obstacle clear of the tunnel and rolled it behind us onto the damp earth of the cave. We were rewarded with the appearance of a shaft of moonlight about the size of a human head.
“You did everything you could,” I said to Floyd. “If there had been another way, you would have taken it.”
“I guess,” he replied. “But it doesn’t ease the pain.”
“Time dulls that. It heals like a scar. It’s only on bad days that it feels like a fresh wound again.”
He nodded thoughtfully.
“Let me check if I can see anything out there,” I suggested.
I pressed my face into the gap as far as it would go.
“Just scorched earth,” I said. “I can’t hear any movement.”
I withdrew and we carried on shifting stone.
“Hopefully they think we’re dead,” Floyd remarked.
I nodded in agreement. “Do you know why they want you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been around. Done my fair share of things people might want revenge for, but since they didn’t kill me, I’m guessing they’re not going to all this trouble to settle an old score. They want something else, and it’s been playing on my mind because I don’t have the first idea what it is.”
I knew he’d be bound by oaths of secrecy, but I sensed genuine puzzlement and got the impression he was telling the truth.
We worked for another hour before we finally cleared the entrance enough for us to wriggle out. It was cold and dark. Steam and smoke rose off the burned forest.
“You got a map?” I asked.
Floyd shook his head. “It was in my pack. I ditched it to get into the cave.”
There was no point looking for it; the remnants would be among the ash and cinders that surrounded us. I cursed myself for leaving the map Chris and John had given me in the chopper.
“My feel is the pass is over there,” I said, pointing at two peaks on the other side of the valley. “The border is just beyond it.”
“That’s my read, too,” he replied. “Looks pretty simple. If two pilots can’t plot a course there, I don’t know who can.”
I smiled, and we started walking.
CHAPTER 60
A SQUAD CAR had arrived at the house within minutes of Jessie calling the police. Now the place was a major crime scene with detectives and FBI trawling over every inch of the property, looking for evidence and examining everything they found. Justine sat in an FBI incident-response truck and watched Jessie through the window. The head of Private New York knew some of the agents on the scene and was talking to a couple of them who’d sat in on Justine’s interview. The detective in charge, Charlie Nightwell, had led the interview and she crossed the driveway now to join Jessie’s conversation with the special agents. Charlie Nightwell was the kind of tough New York cop who looked as though she’d stare into the face of evil without blinking. She exuded strength, and, in that moment, Justine longed to be like her. Justine used to think she was tough, but she certainly didn’t feel that way now. She was far more vulnerable than she’d ever realized.
Beyond Jessie, Nightwell, and the two special agents, forensic investigators were working the scene alongside uniform cops and FBI agents. A photographer was taking pictures of Roni’s body. Taft’s was hidden by a screen, but Justine couldn’t shake the memory of the gruesome head shot he took. These two brave people had been cut down before their time. They’d been murdered while trying to protect others. There had to be justice, or if not that, vengeance.
Justine had given her statements and was glad to be alone. Jack’s death had created a gaping wound in her soul, and this professional failure only deepened it. She hadn’t felt so low in years. Guilt gnawed at her, alongside the grief she felt for Jack. The deaths of those two agents were on her. If she hadn’t been so caught up in her own loss, would she have noticed a tail? Would she have suggested they sweep the car for bugs before leaving the New York office? Justine would never know for certain if they had been followed or what she could have done differently, but she found it hard to shake the feeling that if she’d been at her sharpest, those two people would still be alive.
The trailer door opened and Justine steeled herself to put on the brave face she reserved for strangers. It faded away the moment she saw Mo-bot and Sci climb the steps.
“Oh, Jus,” Mo-bot said, crossing the truck to embrace her. “I’m so sorry. Jessie told us what happened.”
“We lost them,” Justine responded tearfully. “They killed two of our own and they took Beth and the children.”
“They’ll pay for this,” Sci said. “We’ll make sure of it.”
“Have you told the feds about Andreyev?” Mo-bot asked.
Justine nodded.
“That might explain why he’s gone to ground,” Mo-bot replied. “The billfold showed up on a flight to Moscow.”
“You think he’s left the country?” Justine asked.
Mo-bot shook her head. “I checked immigration photos of everyone on the flight. No record of him on the plane. My guess is he gave it to someone else to make it look like he’d flown. We sent a couple of operatives to his apartment. It’s empty. He has what he wanted. He can burn his cover.”
“What do we do now?” Justine asked, wishing Jack was there to guide them.
“We’re going to find Beth and her children,” Mo-bot replied. “Whatever it takes. We will find them and we will bring them back. And then Andreyev will pay for what he’s done.”
CHAPTER 61
THE COLD BURNED, scalding my extremities, causing tingling pain in my hands and feet. Floyd and I were dressed for the conditions, but even these clothes weren’t designed for nights on a mountain. Any normal expedition would now be in a tent, tucked in sleeping bags, but we weren’t a normal expedition; we were fighting for our lives.
We’d lost our gear and were trying to make it to the Pakistani border before we died of exposure. We were high up the mountain, maybe ten or twelve thousand feet, close to the pass that I remembered being marked on the map Chris and John had given me. I’d been climbing a few times in the past with buddies who were addicted to the adventure of scaling mountains. Here, high up in the peaks of the Hindu Kush, with the stars so close it felt as though I could reach out and touch them, with air so thin and cold each breath was an intoxication and the majesty of the Earth stretched out far below, I finally understood why the mountains caught and held my climbing friends in their addictive grip. I was on the very edge of survival. Maybe it was only by coming so close to death that I could fully appreciate the beauty of life.
We were following the winter trail up to the pass. From memory, I estimated it was a short distance from the pass to the border, located on the other side of this mountain, in the next valley. The summit loomed above us, glinting in the moonlight. Every crystalline sparkle reminded me how cold it was, but I couldn’t look away because it was a wondrous sight. The sides were steep and snow clung to them in patches, on top of ice that was diamond blue. The peak itself rose into the sky like a jagged tooth, reaching for stars and galaxies that were rich in depth and color. There weren’t many more beautiful places to die.
Floyd trudged beside me, but we didn’t talk. Our boots crunched ice and snow, and our breathing was fast and labored, made worse by regular sections that required us to scramble up steep runs of sheer rock. All around us the world was still. No sane creatures would travel here, particularly at night.
Down there in the valley where air and energy were cheap, we’d chatted about our respective military experiences, discussed the merits of different aircraft we’d flown, traded war stories and anecdotes about those we’d served with. He’d told me about the men who’d been killed when the Osprey had been shot down, and I had shared my similar experience. It wasn’t something I often discussed, but it was cathartic to share with someone who truly understood.
He had spoken about Beth and the children, and asked me questions about them, how they were and whether they were safe. I told him what we knew about the man posing as Beth’s father, and assured him his family was safe with my team.
Then I spoke about Justine. I told Floyd how much she meant to me and spoke about her in terms that would have made a love-struck teenager ashamed, but there was no one to hear me except the mountains and Floyd, who was expressing similar emotions about those close to him. I didn’t give voice to my darker worry. I had no doubt Feo and Dinara thought we were dead. If they’d managed to escape, I expected they would have informed Justine by now, and I couldn’t stand the thought of her suffering. I didn’t share that concern with Floyd because if Justine had been told we were dead, it was likely Beth had too.
The mountain had silenced our easy chatter halfway up. We saved our breath for the arduous climb. When I looked at Floyd now, I saw the familiar, grim struggle of a man determined to push his body beyond its natural limits. I probably wore the same bleak expression. It was hard going, and a small part of me just wanted to lie down in the snow and rest until all the pain was gone.
“Nearly there,” I grunted, and Floyd nodded in reply.
We pushed on the last few steps and then saw the pass open up as we turned a bend that marked the shoulder of the mountain. There was a relatively flat gap between the peak of this mountain and its neighbor, and we could see clear sky and distant ranges.
I looked at Floyd and forced a smile, and he offered one in reply.
We pressed on, trudging through deep snow for another quarter of a mile until we earned the reward our exhaustion deserved. The pass ended abruptly, and beneath us was a sheer cliff that dropped a few hundred feet before going into a gentler slope. Far below, on the valley floor, beyond an expanse of forest that covered the bottom of the mountain, I could see lights and the faint outlines of small buildings. They stood beside a single-track road, which would have been lost to darkness had it not been for the headlights of a truck approaching the buildings. We had reached civilization, and the sight sent my spirits soaring.
I could see it had the same effect on Floyd because he grinned at me, relief in his expression.
“This way,” I said, gesturing toward a trail that was almost lost to snow. It would take us east, leading, if I remembered the map correctly, to the border and to safety.
CHAPTER 62
THE VALLEY WAS a few blissful degrees warmer than the pass. It had taken us three hours to stagger and stumble our way down the mountain. We were breathless and exhausted by the time we reached the snow-covered forest that spread across the lower slopes. We picked our way between tall cedars and pines, and soon the ground started to level out. We were on the gentle slope that led to a group of buildings we assumed were the border station.
