Джеймс Паттерсон - The Summer House

The sun is setting.

I check my watch.

I’ve been here nineteen minutes.

Where is Chief Cellucci? Where’s his Little Bird helicopter?

Twenty minutes.

Twenty-one minutes.

The Night Stalkers pride themselves in arriving on time at a mission, give or take thirty seconds. I have the information to free the Rangers back in Georgia—Kurtz’s statement combined with my eventual recovery of travel records and manifests to show Representative Conover and Sheriff Williams were here in Pendahar—and I’m stuck here on a rock in a mountain wilderness, with men out there trying to kill me.

Twenty-two minutes.

Is Cellucci still out there? Was he called to another mission? Is my watch wrong?

A louder, closer mortar explosion tosses up dust and rock fragments, and knocks me down.

Chapter 95

ALMOST A WEEK AGO, Staff Sergeant Caleb Jefferson’s chest hurt, his arms hurt, and his eyes were sore from the pepper spray used during his arrest at the roadhouse. He and his guys had been unwinding there two nights after tuning up that drug-dealing creep who nearly killed his stepdaughter.

Even his wrists bled from where the metal cuffs dug in.

Across from his cell in the Ralston jail, seated before him, was the county sheriff, whom he immediately recognized. The last time she had been in an Army uniform, outside Pendahar in Afghanistan, screaming and slapping a naked congressman in a ratty hovel with two Afghan businessmen in Western suits looking on in amusement.

“Well,” she said, “here’s the situation, Staff Sergeant.”

“Go on,” he said.

“You and your boys saw something you shouldn’t have seen, back in Afghanistan. You saw a good man falling to temptation. A man who will do great things for this nation. And a man who will become senator in under two weeks.”

“Some man,” he said.

She said, “All great men have their faults. FDR, JFK, Martin Luther King Jr.…yet they did great things for their nation. As the congressman will do when he gets back to Washington, as a senator this time.”

Jefferson stayed silent. He knew where this was going.

“But here’s the situation,” Williams said. “How do I keep you and your three boys quiet about what you thought you heard and saw back in Afghanistan?”

“I’m certain about what I saw and heard,” he said. “As are my men.”

A slight toss of the shoulders. “Not going to debate that. Which goes back to my original problem: keeping you quiet. Which is why you’re here. You see, we know what you and the other Rangers did at The Summer House, you beating up Stuart Pike. Maybe that could have been enough to keep you quiet, me holding that over your heads. But I doubted it. So later…well, bad things happen to bad people.”

Jefferson clenched his fists. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Bad things,” she said. “Gunmen later went in there and killed everybody in that home. There’s forensic evidence and witnesses placing you four Rangers at the scene. You’re all under arrest. You’re here until I say otherwise. And you’ll stay here until the Wednesday after the election, and then…oops! You’ll get released. Faulty evidence and all that. Then you’ll keep your mouths shut…forever. Because, Staff Sergeant, there’s no statute of limitations for murder. And it’s amazing what new evidence can pop up at the right time.”

Jefferson gave her one good hard stare, and she returned the favor. He said, “I get a phone call. I get a lawyer. I tell him or her everything you just told me here. How’s that for evidence?”

Then, like a sniper shot coming from nowhere, hitting him right in the center of his ballistic plating, taking his breath away, the sheriff said, “And how’s your lovely stepdaughter doing. Carol, right? Carol Crosby?”

Jefferson couldn’t talk.

“She’s at the Damon Harbor Rehabilitation Facility, isn’t she? Over in Hilton Head. Second floor. Her day nurse is Sonny Law, her night nurse is Kim Christo. Damn close thing it was, her nearly getting killed.”

The sheriff scooted her metal chair up closer to the bars. “You damn idiot, how do you think that Pike fella got that fentanyl to your stepdaughter? Huh? By accident?”

He closed his eyes. He wanted to break down this cell door and kill this smug sheriff sitting in front of him.

But that wasn’t possible.

“All right,” he said. “My mouth is shut. The same for my guys.”

“Then you get free that Wednesday morning, and your mouths stay shut.”

Jefferson said, “All right. Me and my three guys…that’s what we’ll do.”

The sheriff grinned, slapped her hands together in satisfaction, stood up. “Wonderful. Hey, no hard feelings, all right, Staff Sergeant? You and your Rangers were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

He said, “Sheriff, that’s our damn job description.”

Jefferson snaps to, keeping an eye on the judge, feeling the eyes of the sheriff nearly bore a hole into his unprotected back. So what? With Vinny Tyler dead, the deal has changed. It’s on him, and only him. His guys go free, and he’ll keep his mouth shut. And right now, he’s sure Major Frank Moore has kept his promise of working with his aunt Sophie to move his stepdaughter, Carol, to another, safer facility.

Jefferson will do anything and everything to protect his remaining guys and Carol.

A dark, deep memory, of his dying wife, Melissa, her whispering, You protect my girl, Caleb Jefferson. You do that.

“Staff Sergeant Jefferson?”

“Sir?” he asks.

The judge says, “Before we proceed, I just want to ensure that you are here of your own free will, that you have decided to waive counsel, and that you plan to represent yourself. Is that correct, Staff Sergeant Jefferson?”

He says the words with force and certainty. “Yes, Your Honor.”

“All right,” the judge says. “We will proceed.”

Chapter 96 Afghanistan

I GET UP, coughing, touch my forehead, pull away my hand, and see bloody fingers. My ears are ringing. The men are shouting. Smoke and clouds of dust are drifting away. Two more explosions— thump, thump —hit the other side of this peak, the ground shaking from the impacts.

I scramble up, cough some more, find my rucksack.

A heavy, thrumming noise bursts out, like a high-speed M134 Minigun, its rotating barrel shooting out thousands of rounds every minute, and I duck and scramble across the rocky surface, thinking, When in the hell did the Taliban get that weapon? as a black Little Bird helicopter roars up into view from a deep ravine, circles, and then flares down to a landing, its engine sounding just like a weapon.

I grab my rucksack, lower my bleeding head, and run as fast and as best as I can to the churning little aircraft that represents my way out of here, my way to get the Rangers free. Dust and gravel roar around me, and the passenger door opens up. Chief Cellucci is leaning across the empty seat. I can’t hear what he’s yelling, but I’m sure it’s Move, move, move!

Unlike before, I have no difficulty getting into the Little Bird. I toss my rucksack into the rear, get into the seat, grab the crash helmet. The next few seconds are a crazed blur as Cellucci lifts the helicopter before I can even get the seat belt and harness fastened. The Little Bird seems to fly up just a score of meters or so, Cellucci wrestling with the controls, before it dives fast and to the right, dipping into the ravine.

I clench my teeth, trying hard not to vomit. The helicopter bounces up and down as we skim over another wide peak, and I get my seat belt and harness fastened, cinching it as tight as possible.

It takes two good tries to get the helmet on, and I fumble with the communications gear before Cellucci’s voice comes through loud and clear.