Джеймс Паттерсон - Target - Alex Cross

The tech at Quantico came back on the line. I listened, thanked him, and hung up. “Morales was right about her gun being empty. In fact, the FBI lab says it’s never been fired.”

“That doesn’t absolve Romero of the murder,” Bree said.

“I agree,” Lieutenant Lee said.

“You’re both right,” I said. “Until we check with that motel, an empty gun doesn’t absolve anyone. But you should also know that the ballistics folks at Quantico say that none of the weapons recovered last night remotely match the bullets that killed Senator Walker. I think we have to consider the senator’s case open again.”

Marty Franks whistled an old Kansas tune, “Carry On Wayward Son,” as he drove east toward an oncoming winter storm. It was already getting late. The sun barely showed in a gunmetal sky. Less than an hour of daylight left.

Few people were on the highway in this mountainous part of West Virginia. Dead of winter. No reason to be out and about if you didn’t have to be, especially with a blizzard forecast.

Franks liked to whistle. He was good at it, and he kept whistling that Kansas song until the burn phone rang on the seat beside him.

He pressed Answer on the Bluetooth connection. “Talk.”

“Peter here. How you coming along, Conker?” said a man with a British accent.

“Five, maybe six hours out of DC, if I’m lucky,” Franks said.

“There’s a room for you at the Mandarin Oriental under Richard Conker. Everything else you’ll need is in the safe. Code 1958. Repeat, 1958.”

“Got it.”

“I’ll talk to you in the morning, then.”

The line went dead. Franks ate a carrot, took a gulp of water, and thought about a bed at the Mandarin. But that was hours away.

He took his mind off the long drive by focusing on the pleasant soreness in his shoulders and legs. A welterweight in his thirties with a smooth shaved head and a disarming smile, he kept his body in prime condition by pushing it hard, and often.

Earlier in the day, just west of Cleveland, he’d stopped at a park and in twenty-degree temperatures put himself through a brutal hour-long routine of gymnastics, calisthenics, and body-weight plyometric exercises, followed by his own meld of yoga and the various martial arts he’d studied over the years. He’d burned twenty-five hundred calories, easy.

Since then, Franks had been engaged in a near nonstop, slow-motion binge of various shakes, protein bars, and raw vegetables and fruits.

And yet, after his phone call with the Brit, after knowing he had a high-dollar job waiting, he felt a different kind of hunger. One that couldn’t be sated with food.

Franks saw a sign ahead: ROUTE 16, IVYDALE — MUDFORK.

Despite the storm coming, despite the long drive ahead, he ran his tongue along his lips, went with his gut, and got off at the exit.

West Virginia State Route 16 ran north and south. He took a left and headed toward Mudfork. The road was narrow, snow-covered, and potholed in places, but Franks drove fast in his white Chevy Tahoe. Wyoming plates. Radial studded snow tires. Heavy-duty shocks. Registered to Richard Conker.

Franks pressed on the gas, his head swiveling as he scanned the area. He didn’t have a lot of time to find what he was looking for. Once darkness fell, he’d be done.

North of the hamlet of Nebo, the land on both sides of the route turned hilly; it was forested in bare oaks and clad in four inches of fresh snow. Franks passed a short driveway and saw an opportunity that made him smile.

Beyond some pines, two hundred yards farther on, he came upon the relic of a farmhouse, windowless, siding peeled to bare board and rotten. The barn’s roof was caved in. No sign of life anywhere.

Even better.

Franks pulled into the overgrown lane and parked the white Tahoe behind a gnarled old spruce and crab-apple trees laden with snow. His wiser, more experienced self said to sit there a few moments, breathe, and consider other options.

But then, even with the window closed, he heard the buzz of a chain saw. It almost took his breath away. Throwing caution to the wind, he reached around beneath the seat behind him, grabbed a few things, and climbed out.

The snow came up over Franks’s ankles, running shoes, socks, and the bottom of his leggings. His feet felt cold and wet almost immediately, but he didn’t care.

He pulled up the hood of his black fleece jacket against the wind and broke into a jog, passing an old chicken coop in the overgrown farmyard as he headed toward a stand of mature pine trees and the revving, biting sounds of that saw.

Franks ducked into a pine break planted ages ago.

No doubt meant to block the view of nosy neighbors, he thought, ignoring the fluffy snow that sloughed off the boughs and clung to his hood, shoulders, and sleeves. He welcomed the snow and knew he had to have been almost invisible in those firs, frosted as he was, and moved toward the chain saw.

Creeping up to the edge of the muddy work yard he’d glimpsed from the road, he spotted a stack of long logs to his left and a steel shed to his right.

The chain saw and its operator worked by an idle log splitter set up near the base of a low hill of firewood. The logger had his back to Franks and was lopping fifteen-inch sections off a stripped tree trunk braced and strapped between two sawhorses.

He had on an orange helmet with a visor and ear protectors, and he wore thick leather chaps and gauntlet gloves over a quilted canvas coverall. By the ease with which the man wielded the twenty-four-inch Stihl saw, Franks understood that beneath all that heavy gear, there was someone of formidable strength and power.

That thrilled Franks. He forced himself to breathe deeply for a count of three before stepping from the pines, plucking up a short length of discarded tree limb about the thickness of his fist, and running right at the logger.

He slowed at ten yards, glanced toward the road, saw nothing, and then threw the piece of wood at the man’s back.

It smacked him. The logger started. The Stihl chain saw bucked and jumped, almost coming free of his grasp.

He released the throttle. The saw idled. The blade stopped cutting a quarter of the way through the log. Only then did the logger look over his shoulder.

Franks was in a fighting crouch not six yards away. He showed the sawyer the eight-inch blade of the Buck hunting knife in his right hand before lunging toward him.

Franks slashed at the logger’s left upper arm, felt the razor-sharp blade slice through the canvas jacket and several layers beneath. The sawyer screamed out in pain. Franks leaped back into that fighting crouch, the Buck knife weaving in the cold air, the blade showing a film of bright blood.

The logger let loose a bellow of rage then. He hit the gas on the chain saw and wrenched it free of the log. He swung it sideways and moved toward Franks, who jumped away nimbly, just out of reach of the chain saw’s ripping blade.

Franks grinned at the logger, who’d swung too hard with the heavy saw and staggered left in the mud before regaining his balance. Now he squared off as he faced him, the cutting machine growling in his hands.

Franks looked the sawyer in the eye then and saw no fear. That made Franks even happier. Somehow, somewhere in the past, in the military, perhaps, the logger had faced death, and with that two-foot chain saw in hand now, he had the confidence of a warrior who knows his enemy holds an inferior weapon.

“I’ll cut you in half, shit-brains,” the logger shouted from behind his helmet’s visor. “I’ll put you in two pieces.”

“Do it, then,” Franks said calmly. “You can claim self-defense.”