A second later Manson stepped out, the muzzle of the MP-5 searching for and finding her lying feet from him. Alex and the others had no line of fire because of the chunk of mountain lying between Manson and them.
Stone had no direct line of fire from where he was either. The first rule of the sniper was that any unintended movement of gun and shooter would spoil the shot. Steady hand, breath exhaled, heartbeat in the sixties and weapon locked in position against a stable surface—that’s how one killed successfully. And Stone had mostly followed those rules in his career as the best assassin the U.S. ever had.
Mostly, but not always. Because sometimes what looked good in planning went to shit in the field. When that happened the merely good and competent failed nine times out of ten.
The best cut those odds down to fifty-fifty.
The very best improvised and upped the percentage of success by twenty points.
And then there was John Carr.
John Carr, who had come back from the dead at least one more time, to save a good woman who did not deserve to die at the hands of a maniac wielding a weapon of mass destruction.
Stone leapt, his pistol arrayed out at the sharpest angle he could hold it and still get a shot off. Manson’s finger closed on the trigger.
Stone fired. Joe Knox would later claim that he had seen the damn bullet actually bend around the chunk of rock. No one argued with him.
Manson pulled the trigger and the MP-5 roared. But all the rounds went straight up into the air because there was a massive hole in the side of Manson’s neck. The shredded arteries released their rich blood supply high into the air and for several horrifying moments a red rain poured down on the dying Manson. Then he hit the dirt, his one eye open but now as unseeing as the other.
CHAPTER 79
STONE RACED TO ABBY and helped her up. She was scared, but okay.
Alex and Harry Finn were putting a tourniquet on Tyree’s leg using a stick and a piece of Finn’s jacket. The tall sheriff was sitting up now, grimacing with pain.
Stone and Abby came over to him and she knelt down next to him, took his hand.
“Tyree, are you okay?”
He tried hard not to show the pain. “Hell, take more than this to get me all worked up.”
The shout made them all turn toward the woods.
Caleb was running back to them. “Hurry. Hurry.”
They raced after him, Stone and Reuben in the lead. They plowed through the brush and vines.
When Stone saw what Caleb was pointing to, he felt like he had just died. He rushed to the fallen man’s side.
“Danny? Danny?”
Danny Riker was lying on his back, a scoped deer rifle in the brush next to him. Stone wasn’t focusing on the weapon, but rather on the large splotch of red on Danny’s chest.
Danny’s eyes focused on him. He managed a smile. “Don’t think I ducked in time,” he said weakly.
Stone looked back over his shoulder toward where Manson lay. That first blast from the MP-5 had hit right here. He turned back and counted no less than three bullet holes in Danny’s shirt. And they were placed at locations that Stone knew did not allow for survival, even if they could get him to a hospital in the next few minutes, which they couldn’t. He had brought Willie Coombs back from the dead using the juice from a spark plug wire. There would be no such miracle for Danny Riker.
Reuben squatted next to his friend and picked up the rifle. “He was the one who took out the warden.”
“Damn right,” Danny said, his voice growing stronger for an instant. “He killed Willie. Told the little son of a bitch what I’d do if he did that.” His hardened features softened. “Get my ma, will-ya, Ben?”
Stone felt rather than heard the presence behind him. He rose and stared at Abby, whose gaze was only on her son.
“I’m sorry, Abby,” Stone said. “I’m sorry.”
Blood was spilling out of Danny’s mouth. “Ma?”
She dropped to her knees next to him, taking his hand in hers. The sob burst from her with such force that all the others, who’d clustered somberly around mother and son, felt tears rise to their own eyes. Her features looked like those of a child fleeing a monster in a nightmare. Yet then Abby almost instantly calmed, perhaps sensing that her son needed her to be strong; that her boy’s last moments on earth would not be taken up with the sight of a hysterical mother.
“I’m sorry, Ma. For all the stuff.”
Stone knelt and held the young man’s other hand. He felt it growing cold.
She said, “I love you, Danny. I’ve always loved you more than I loved anything.”
“Shouldn’t got mixed up in all this drug stuff. But didn’t want to work the mines. And didn’t want to take the death money either. You know?”
“I know. I know, baby.” Tears were spilling from them both.
“Didn’t have nothing to do with any killing. ’Cept the bastard warden.” Danny’s pupils were losing their focus, receding into the white pools of the eyes, as Stone had seen on many a dying man.
“I love you, Danny.”
He looked over at Stone. When he spoke his voice was so weak Stone had to bend close to hear. “Me and Willie. State champs . . . Boy caught everything I threw at him. Shoulda played at Tech together. You know?”
“You two were the best, Danny,” Stone said, gripping the cold hand. “The best.”
“California dreaming, man.”
He turned back to his mother. “California dreaming . . .”
Danny’s eyes grew hard and flat, and the fingers that had gripped his mother’s now fell away. Abby bent down and kissed her son and then wrapped her arms around him. And just held him.
Just held him.
CHAPTER 80
THE CAMEL CLUB sat at Rita’s Restaurant. The place was not open for business today, but Abby had insisted that they use it and her home for as long as necessary. Sheriff Tyree was expected to make a full recovery. He had summoned the Virginia State Police, who were currently sorting out the mess in Divine. Since transport of drugs across interstate lines had occurred, the feds had also been called in. Knox and Alex had run interference with their government colleagues and Stone, Annabelle, Caleb, Reuben and Harry were not part of that questioning. Prison guards had been rounded up, bodies collected and other evidence secured. Judge Mosley had been stopped at a small airport in West Virginia trying to board a regional jet for Dulles International Airport with a travel itinerary that included several countries that had no extradition agreement with the United States.
Stone and the others watched the street through the front windows of Rita’s. Along with the cop cars and black sedans swooping up and down the road, they observed several citizens of Divine walking around as though in shock, some holding dividend checks that they now knew were nothing more than drug money.
Danny’s body had been taken to the morgue in Roanoke along with Howard Tyree’s. Only when the police had zipped him up in a black body bag did Abby relinquish her grip on her son’s hand. And even then she walked down the road after the slowly departing medical examiner’s wagon.
When everyone had had some food and coffee, Stone stood in the middle of the small circle of the best and perhaps only friends he had in the world.
“I would like to thank you for what you did,” he began, looking at each of them in turn.
Reuben immediately piped in, “Oliver, don’t go sappy on us. You would have done the same for any one of us.”
“You have done the same for every one of us,” said Annabelle.
Stone shook his head. “I know how much you risked. I know what you sacrificed to come here and do what you did.” His gaze settled on Alex Ford. “I especially know what you did, Alex. Even though it went against all your instincts as a Secret Service agent. And I appreciate it more than I can ever express.”
Alex could only meet Stone’s heartfelt gaze for a few moments before he looked down at his shoes.
When the door opened, they all
turned to see who it was.
Abby had changed her clothes and washed her face, though the imprint of the tears she had bled with Danny’s death seemed to linger. Apparently, no soap could reach that. When Stone rose and went to her, the others silently made their way out of the restaurant and out onto the street.
Abby and Stone sat at a back table. When Stone handed her some napkins she shook her head. “I’ve got no more left. No more tears.”
“Just in case then,” he said. “What will you do now?”
“You mean after I bury my son? Haven’t thought that far ahead.”
“He saved us, Abby. But for what he did, you and I would be dead. He was a brave man who tried to do the right thing. That’s how you have to remember him.”
“I told you I lost my husband. Danny was all I had left. Now he’s gone too.”
“I know it’s hard, Abby. It’s harder than anything else you’ll ever have to do.”
“You lost your wife, but you still have your daughter.”
“What?” Stone said, startled.
“That woman out there said she was your daughter.”
“Oh.” Stone looked embarrassed. “That was a cover story, I’m afraid. My daughter.” He stumbled over what he was about to say. “My daughter died, like I said.”
“How?”
“Abby, you don’t—”
“Please tell me. I want to know.”
Stone slowly looked up to see her gazing at him pleadingly. “She was shot right in front of me when she was an adult. And the thing was she didn’t even know I was her dad. The last time I’d seen her she was only two years old. I found her again after all those years and then I lost her. Forever.”
Abby reached out and took his hand. “I’m sorry . . . Oliver.”
“But you do survive it, Abby. You never get over it, but you can keep on living. Because you really don’t have a choice.”
“I’m scared. I’m alone and I’m scared.”
“You’re not alone.”
She laughed halfheartedly. “What? Tyree? The wonderful town of Divine?”
“Me.”
She sat back and looked at him. “You? How?”
“I’m here. Now.”
“But for how long?”
Stone hesitated. He could not lie to the woman. “I have to go away.”
“Sure, of course you do. I understand,” she said offhandedly.
“I have some things that I have to take care of. Some wrongs finally need to be righted.”
“Okay, whatever you have to do.”
“Abby, I mean it. I will be there for you. Even if I’m not physically here.”
He caught her gaze and held it with a pleading one of his own.
“I want to believe that.”
“You can believe it.”
“When do you have to go?”
“Soon. Sooner than later.”
“Are you sure things will work out for you?”
“I won’t lie to you, there are no guarantees.”
“The trouble you might be in?”
“Yes.”
“Will they put you in prison?”
“It’s certainly possible,” Stone admitted.
A quiet sob escaped her lips and she rested her face on the back of his hand.
“Will you promise me one thing?”
“I’ll try my best.”
“If you can’t come back here, will you never forget me?”
“Abby—”
She sat up and put a hand against his lips. “Will you never forget me?”
“I will never forget you,” he said truthfully.
She leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek. “Because I’ll never forget you.”
A few minutes later Joe Knox came in. Stone looked over at him.
“You ready?” he asked Stone. “We need to get this done.”
Stone gave Abby’s hand one final squeeze and rose.
“I’m ready.”
CHAPTER 81
THE FRONT DOOR to Macklin Hayes’ stately brownstone in Georgetown was thrown open so hard it smacked the wall hard enough to make a dent in the plaster.
“What the hell?” began the man as he half rose from his chair, the book he’d been holding falling to the floor. When he saw who it was he sat back down, stunned.
“Hey, sir, how goes it?” Knox said as he strode in.
“Knox?” Hayes began nervously. “How did you get past the guards outside?”
“Oh, that. One of them is a buddy. I said I’d only be a few minutes. So they went down the street for a cup of coffee.”
A panicked look came to the general’s face. “Knox, let me explain—”
When Hayes saw Stone walk into the room, he could only gape in astonishment. When he observed that Stone’s hands were manacled together, he started to breathe again.
“Mack,” Stone said. “Nice place you have here. A lot nicer than the one Joe and I were in. But then you know that, don’t you?”
Hayes finally wrenched his gaze from Stone.
“Knox, this will earn you that retirement you’ve been after, plus anything else in my power. Anything! I swear it.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Obviously encouraged by this, Hayes rose and put a bony arm around Knox’s burly shoulders, drawing him aside.
“You really shouldn’t have brought him here, though. Particularly since you sent my guards off. He is a dangerous man, handcuffed or not.”
“There was really no other place to take him. And after you left my ass in that hellhole, well, there weren’t a whole lot of options once we broke out.”
“So you . . . broke out? The police are looking for you?” he said nervously.
“I would think they are. I mean, we killed five or six guards along the way.” He turned to Stone. “Was it six?”
Stone said with an impassive expression, “Eight. I got two more while you were strangling the warden.”
Knox turned back to a stunned Hayes. “Okay, so it was eight. I gotta tell you, we weren’t in there all that long, but that place just drives you insane. Frigging out of your mind. I would’ve killed my own mother.”
Hayes took his arm away, his hands visibly shaking. When he spoke, his voice shook as much as his hands. “Listen, Knox, I know what happened was unfortunate. But it was necessary until I could get a handle on what to do with Carr. As you can imagine, it was a highly delicate situation. In fact, I was about to send my men up there to do an extraction. Rest assured, I was not going to let one of my best men rot in that place one second longer than necessary. I swear to God.”
Knox shook his head sadly. “I appreciate that, sir. I really do. But it would have helped to know that before I killed all those people to get out of the place.”
Hayes’ face was paper white now. “I’ll talk to someone for you. We’ll figure something out. This is a national security issue.”