Mental State, page 22
Royce slid the Taser out. When the SEAL got to the edge of the grass, he took aim and shot electrodes into the man’s chest. His expression turned from surprise to anguish, as the electric shock coursed through his heart. With a strangled cry, his eyes disappeared and teeth flashed, arms contorting. Royce wiggled the Taser, like he could send extra juice down its wires. Before the SEAL could catch his breath enough to shout, Royce dropped it, spun the Mossberg off his shoulder, leapt over the hedge, and flung the butt end at the man’s face. The shuddering body went down like a load of butcher’s meat.
Royce was on top of him in an instant, pinning his shoulders to the ground with his knees, as blood poured from the man’s nose and collected in his beard. He gurgled and wriggled like a fish gasping for air. Royce flipped him onto his stomach to keep him from choking to death. Then he grabbed the man’s hair and banged his head into the grass several times, the man’s earpiece flinging loose and swinging in a circle out of time with his head.
He was out. Cold. Royce pulled out the duct tape, wrestled the man’s limp arms behind his back, and secured them until the tape pinched into flesh. More duct tape went around the man’s head three times, making sure to cover his mouth, still gurgling with foamy blood and saliva.
Royce dismounted and lay in the grass for a moment, looking up at the stars. Then he got to his knees and dragged the man by his feet, as slowly and quietly as possible. When he reached the hedge, he rolled him into the bushes. Then he crept up the hill, moving toward the tree line that separated Gerhardt’s property from his neighbor to the east. Looking back, the SEAL was still lying against the bushes. He hadn’t moved a muscle.
Halfway up the hill toward the house, Royce knelt behind the trunk of a large sassafras tree. Its single trunk split in half about four feet off the ground, providing a narrow v-shaped gap for him to plan the next attack. He rearmed the Taser and slung the Mossberg back over his shoulder. The other guard was circling the far side of the yard, headed back toward the porch.
This one was smaller, wirier. His posture was intense, and he chewed gum aggressively as he stepped purposefully across the flagstone patio. He spoke into his collar and used his left hand to press his earpiece further into his ear. With every step the look on his face turned toward killing mode.
The first man was easy. A few weeks strolling in Gerhardt’s yard without any signs of action or even any idea of what they were up against had softened him. And he hadn’t seen anything coming. But this guy was going to be a different game. Royce suspected he was suspicious since his partner, bound and gagged in the bushes, wasn’t responding.
As he strode closer, the man reached down with his right hand and raised the MP5. He spit out his gum and grimaced angrily. Royce turned his shoulder against the trunk of the tree. He slowed his breath, keeping his mouth shut and using only his nose to move the night air in and out of his lungs. His pulse started to pound in his fingers. The SEAL reached the edge of the yard, scanning the trees with eyes. Royce held his breath, then when footsteps crunched the pine straw and passed right by, he exhaled quietly.
The SEAL took a few paces, then on sheer instinct turned and dropped to one knee, wheeling the MP5. Before he could squeeze off a shot, Royce kicked the weapon out his hand and crashed into him, both of them rolling down the hill. The Taser flew to the ground and bounced into the darkness. Both men were on their sides, weapons awkwardly pinned under them, their straps twisted tight from the falls.
Royce tried to free his shotgun, but before he could work it around to a firing position, the SEAL’s fist landed heavily on his right eye socket. Comets of pain flew through his darkened vision. He could feel the man about to pounce, so he reached behind into his waistband. The .45 was gone, dislodged in the ruckus. Royce got to his knees, his good eye scanning quickly for the pistol. The barrel of the MP5 was rising up toward him. He planted his hands into the pine straw and swung his leg around in a half circle as fast as he could. His shin connected painfully with the SEAL’s leg, knocking him to the ground. Royce jumped up and lunged. But the man was quick too. He avoided the blow, trying to bring his weapon back around to the front of his body.
Royce got to his knees, as did the SEAL. They were face to face. Royce lowered his shoulder and exploded downhill like a linebacker firing into a tackling dummy. He planted his shoulder into the man’s chest, driving him to the ground with a thud. The man’s ribs cracked, as Royce let his entire weight fall into him. Royce grabbed him by the scruff of his beard, pushed his head back, and pounded him with his right fist. He landed blow after blow until his knuckles ached.
But the SEAL wasn’t done. Eyes full of fury, he kicked with his leg hard into Royce’s groin, and thrust and wiggled his hips until he threw him to the side. He got to his knees, and reached back for his weapon. Royce swung his around first, raising it a foot from the SEAL’s face before the MP5 was able to join the fight. He fixed on the SEAL’s eyes, the muscles in his right arm tensed and ready to pull the trigger.
“Shhh…don’t do anything stupid. Drop it…Don’t! Let me see your hands.”
The SEAL wrinkled his nose and brought his empty hands around to the front of his body, letting them fall into his lap. Blood trickled down from his left eye, which was rapidly swelling shut. He stared unblinking, as if to make an appointment for round two.
Royce stepped cautiously toward him, unsure what to do. No plan survives contact with the enemy, he heard the Captain say in his head.
“I’m not going to kill you,” Royce reassured him.
“Well, I’m going to kill you, motherfucker,” the SEAL spat.
Royce pumped the shotgun. The shell seated in the chamber, and he looked down the barrel into the man’s stony stare.
“You’d better shoot me, ’cause—”
The Mossberg struck the side of his head, crushing it flat as it deformed under the blow. He toppled over, blood streaming from eye and ear.
Royce prodded his ass with the barrel of the shotgun. No movement. He reached down and flipped him onto his back.
The man’s face was a pulp, foamy bubbles forming at his swelling lips. He was alive.
Royce set the shotgun in the pine straw and pulled the tape from his pocket. When the man’s hands were secured, he taped over his mouth. Then pulled it off again. The man’s nose was surely broken and taping his mouth shut might be a death sentence. And, at this point, even if the man woke up and managed a shout through his broken jaw, there would be no one to hear him scream. At least, not for long.
CHAPTER 44
“Granzow!” Gerhardt shouted into the night. “Granzow, where the fuck are you!” From his vantage in the shadows behind a large planter, Royce saw the big man step out into the center of the porch and raise a large flashlight, scanning the landscape in prison-yard sweeps. “Granzow!…Shit.”
A small smile crossed Royce’s lips. If there were any other security in the house, it wouldn’t be Gerhardt on the porch.
The barrel of the Mossberg scraped along the brass planter making a sequeeeee sound. Gerhardt cocked his head and listened. Royce did it again. Annoyed, the man thumped down the steps in his sock feet, walked over to the planter, and saw the shotgun leveled at his chest. In a flash, Royce saw what he must be seeing: a bald guy, soaking wet from head to toe, with pine straw stuck to his long johns. What he didn’t figure in was the look in his eye. It was the look that stopped Gerhardt in his tracks. He put his hands up halfway.
“If you’re looking for Granzow, he’s tied up down the hill. The other one’s rolled up in the bushes.”
Gerhardt grunted in surprise.
“If I were you, I’d be disappointed. They went down easy.”
“I doubt that, Agent Johnson,” he muttered.
“They’re down, that’s what matters. Now go sit in one of those lawn chairs.”
Gerhardt did as he was told. Royce lowered his shotgun and raised the Taser. He aimed it at Gerhardt’s face, then his torso. Squeezing the trigger filled him with euphoria, as he watched the electrodes sting the man’s chest and the dance of torment began. When Gerhardt sagged, semi-conscious in the chair, Royce went to work with the duct tape.
By the time Gerhardt woke up, Royce was also sitting, shotgun resting on his legs, and a bottle of Fiji water, procured from Gerhardt’s space-age refrigerator, rising and falling from his lips.
“I knew you were coming.”
Royce had to hand it to him. The old warhorse had balls.
“The guys who found my phone gave you a jingle?”
“No. Sean Flanagan told me.” Gerhardt smiled devilishly. “Before he died.”
Words froze in Royce’s throat.
“So, you didn’t know.” Gerhardt smiled the most evil smile Royce had seen in all his years looking into the eyes of assholes. “Mysterious causes. Last night. Days after a man who looks just like you was recorded on surveillance holding a gun on him at his house.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“Duty calls.”
“Why’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Don’t be coy with me, you prick!” Royce smacked the side of his head with the barrel of the shotgun.
Gerhardt grimaced, then refocused on Royce with a steely glare.
“I follow my chain of command. Unlike you. Where’s all this going rogue going to get you?”
“Justice.”
“Justice? For your brother? Are you fucking kidding me? Come on, Agent Johnson. I thought you were smarter than that. Your brother was a casualty of war. You need to think of it like that. And as for justice—”
“I’ll never think of it like that, asshole. I follow the law.”
“Ha! We are all way beyond the law, my friend.”
Royce shook his head. “No, no, we’re not.”
“You have no badge, no right to be here. You’ve violated more laws than I can count. Get off your high horse. Please! You have your code and your sense of right and wrong. I’ve mine. Grow up, Agent Johnson. This isn’t going to go down like you think. There will be no heroes.”
“I don’t want to be a hero. I just want—”
“What do we do now? Why are you here? Why am I taped to this fucking chair?!” Gerhardt convulsed against the restraint.
“I want a trade. Your life for somebody’s else’s.”
Gerhardt narrowed his eyes. “Who?”
“Marcus Jones.”
“The black kid we got in jail? Are you fucking serious?”
“Yes, him. The black kid, you prick. I want him freed. I can’t get your pedophile off the Supreme Court, and it’s too late to impeach that bitch in the Oval Office. But I can set an innocent man free.”
“Why the hell do you care about him?” Gerhardt scanned the yard with his eyes.
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.” Royce raised the gun. “Now tell me who did it.”
Gerhardt shook his head in disbelief.
“You get to live, Bob. I go back to my life, as much as I can salvage of it. It’s a good deal.”
Gerhardt blinked. Once. Twice.
Royce pumped the shotgun. He aimed center mass.
“Granzow!” Gerhardt sputtered to life. “It was…Granzow.”
“The flat head out there in the yard?”
“Yes, him.”
Royce lowered the gun. “Prove it.”
“There’s footage of him entering your brother’s house. It’s your reasonable doubt.”
“Show me.” Royce cut the duct tape.
Gerhardt stood and squiggled to work out the kinks from being stuck in an iron chair for an hour. Royce kept the Mossberg ready, and followed him back into the kitchen. Instead of going to an office or study, Gerhardt led to a room off the kitchen that was supposed to be a pantry but had been made into a bare bones office. A laptop and printer were sitting on stacked cartons of canned goods and toilet paper. Gerhardt booted up the computer and spent a few minutes staring at the screen. Royce took note of every move to be sure he wasn’t sending a distress call.
A video screen flickered up. A time stamp showed the day Alex died, 10:50 a.m. Grainy, dashcam footage showed the unmistakable wiry build and intense posture of Granzow come into frame, as a black man in a Rockefeller-green sweatshirt, stood on Alex’s porch ringing the bell. He bore a passing resemblance to Marcus Jones in that outfit. But it wasn’t Marcus. The man in the video was lying in the bushes outside. Onscreen, the man shoved his way inside, Granzow bounding in after him. Royce felt sick. Minutes later, the ex-SEAL in the sweatshirt exited the front door, paused briefly, then walked slowly down the sidewalk. He raised his right hand to his ear. The footage flickered to black.
Gerhardt picked a flash drive out of a drawer and stuck it into the laptop’s USB port. “What will you do with this?”
“Make copies for Reverend Lincoln of Operation LIFT, my guys at the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.”
“And where did you get it?”
Royce thought for a moment. “How about Sean Flanagan?”
“But…Flanagan is…was on my team.” Gerhardt fingered the flash drive. “I think I’ll take the Mossberg.”
“He went rogue, Bob. It happens.”
“I don’t know if they’ll buy it.”
“They might, though.” Royce eased the Mossberg around.
Gerhardt gulped. “Yeah, they might.” He handed the flash drive over. “Is this really how it ends?”
“Yeah, Bob, this is how it ends.”
Royce started to back out toward the patio.
“One more thing.” Gerhardt stopped him in his tracks. “I think this is yours,” he said, holding out a clear plastic evidence bag sealed with red tape at the top. Royce reached out for it reluctantly, and when he held it in his hands, he saw that the seal was broken and that his iPhone was inside.
Royce was unsure whether it was an act of chivalry or one last insult. He pulled the phone out and flipped it over. He pressed the home key hoping to see Alex’s face. But the phone was dead, the screen was shattered into thousands of glass shards. A distinct hammer mark perfectly centered. The phone fell to his side. He glared up at Gerhardt and moved his lips as if he were going to speak. Nothing came out.
What Royce didn’t say was that once Father Case didn’t hear from Sean for a few days, he was sure a dead-man’s switch would activate. Team Gerhardt was going down.
A smile formed on Royce’s face, and Gerhardt squinted back at him, his head cocking to one side. They held each other’s stare, then Royce turned heel and headed out into the night.
CHAPTER 45
The priest checked his phone one last time on the night of the sixth day. He had battery and four bars. But there was no message from Mr. F., just as there had been none for the past five days. The priest had already broken his promise about sending the package. It should have already been in the mail. But he doubted that a day more would matter and wanted to be sure. He’d packaged up the envelopes, put an abundance of stamps on the package, and identified a reporter at the Times he thought would be eager to read and write about their contents. On the assigned day, he’d even gone to the post office and opened the door to the metal box of outgoing mail. But he thought he would give it one more day, just to be sure.
The next day, the priest put on his black coat over his black frock and walked out of the church. A light drizzle was falling, so he opened an umbrella and put the large package containing the envelopes under his coat. He turned south and started to walk the ten blocks to the Fairfax post office. The rain started to fall harder, and the priest raised the collar of his coat up against the wind. He lowered the umbrella and angled it into the wind, but it was futile. Rain swirled and pounded him from all sides. He cursed his decision to walk and started to worry that the package he was holding would end up damaged as the rain penetrated his thin overcoat.
Just then, he heard the polite beep of a car horn and noticed a car pulled over next to him. The driver rolled down his window.
“Kind of a heavy rain to be taking a walk in, Father,” the man said.
The priest eyed him. He was a big man, dressed in a suit, and looked very fit, with a touch of grey at the temples. He was probably a lawyer or a lobbyist headed to work.
“Proper Scottish weather,” the priest said in a fake accent. “I just wish I had me clubs,” he went on.
The man and the priest shared a laugh.
“Where are you headed, Father?”
“Just down the road to the post office. I have a package to deliver and it is quite urgent. That’s why I’m out in this weather.”
The man snorted a laugh that made him rock back in his seat.
“That’s quite a coincidence. I’m headed to the post office too.”
“Oh, it is.”
“I decide to make up for missing mass for the past few weeks, so I pull over to help a priest, and lo and behold, his errand is my errand. Let me take the package, Father. As penance for my sins and my lack of commitment, I’d be happy to deliver it for you.”
The man moved to get out of the vehicle, but the priest shook his head no. He reached with his free hand to grasp the package, which he held under his armpit of the arm that was holding the umbrella.
“No thank you, my son. I don’t want to inconvenience you. I have to be sure the package is delivered. I need to pay for it, get the insurance, and sign the appropriate return receipt documents. You know? It isn’t just a matter of dropping this package off.”
“Wow. Sounds important. If it is that important, you probably shouldn’t be out in this weather with it. At least let me give you a lift. Help a poor sinner feel better about himself. What do you say?”
