Patterson, James - Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

“All of these men had good service records. In the Arizona murder-case transcripts, there was a mention of ”two or three men“ seen near the victim's house before the homicide took place. There's a possibility that innocent men have been framed and then wrongfully put to death. Framed, then wrongfully executed. And I know something else,” I said.

“What's that?”

“These killers aren't brilliant like Gary Soneji or Kyle Craig. But they're every bit as deadly. They're expert at what they do, and what they do is kill and get away with it.”

Sampson frowned and shook his head. “Not anymore.”

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Forty-One

Thomas Starkey had been born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and he still loved the area passionately. So did most of his neighbors. He'd been away for long stretches while he was in the Army, but now he was back to stay, and to raise his family as best he possibly could. He knew that Rocky Mount was a great place to bring up kids. Hell, he'd been brought up here, hadn't he?

Starkey was devoted to his family, and he genuinely liked the families of his two best friends. He also needed to control everything around him.

Just about every Saturday night, Starkey got the three clans together and they barbecued. The exception was the football season, when the families usually had a tailgate party on Friday night. Starkey's son Shane played tailback for the high school. North Carolina, Wisconsin and Georgia Tech were after Shane, but Starkey wanted him to put in a tour with the Army before he attended college. That's what he had done, and it had worked out for the best. It would work for Shane, too.

The three men usually did all the shopping and cooking for the Saturday night barbecues and the tailgate parties. They bought steaks, ribs, hot and sweet sausages at the farmers' market. They selected corn on the cob, squash, tomatoes, asparagus. They even made the salads, usually German potato, coleslaw, macaroni and, occasionally, Caesars.

That Friday was no exception, and by seven-thirty the men were in their familiar positions beside two Weber grills, staying downwind from the wafting smoke, drinking beer, cooking every meal 'to order'. Hell, they even cleaned up and did the dishes. They were proud to deliver the food just right, and to get pretty much the same kind of applause given to their sons on football nights.

Starkey's number two, Brownley Harris, tended to intellectualize He'd attended Wake Forest and then gone to grad school at UNC. “The irony is pretty thick here, don't you think?” he asked as he gazed at the family scene.

“Fuck all, Brownie, you'd see irony in a turkey shoot, or a cluster fuck in a rice paddy. You think too goddamn much,” Warren Griffin said, and rolled his eyes. That's your problem in life."

“Maybe you just don't think enough,” Harris said, then winked at Starkey, who he considered a god. “We're going off to kill somebody this weekend, and here we are calmly barbecuing thick sirloin steaks for our families. You don't think that's a little strange?”

"I think you're fucking strange is what I think. We've got a job to do, so we do it. No different than the way it was for a dozen years in the Big Army. We did a job in

Vietnam, in the Persian Gulf, Panama, Rwanda. It's a job. Of course -I happen to love my job. Might be some irony in that. I'm a family man and a professional killer. So what of it? Shit happens, it surely does. Blame the US Army, not me."

Starkey nodded his head toward the house, a two-story with five bedrooms and two baths he'd built in 1999.“Girls are coming,” he said. "Put a lid on it.

“Hey, beautiful,” he called, then gave his wife, Judie, a big hug. Judie "Blue Eyes' was a tall, attractive brunette who still looked almost as good as she had on the day they were married. Like most of the women in town, she spoke with a pronounced Southern accent, and she liked to smile a lot. Judie even did volunteer work three days a week at the playhouse. She was funny appreciative, a good lover, and a good life partner. Starkey believed he was lucky to have found her, and she was lucky to have chosen him. All three of the men loved their wives, up to a point. Hell, that was another juicy irony for Brownley Harris to ponder late into the night.

“We must be doing something right,” Starkey said as he held Judie in his arms and toasted the other couples.

“You sure did,” Judie “Blue Eyes' said. ”You boys married well. Who else would let their husbands sneak off for a weekend every month or so, and trust that they were being good boys out there in the big, bad world?"

“We're always good. Nobody does it better,” Starkey said, and smiled good-naturedly at his closest friends in the world. “It doesn't get any better than this. It really doesn't. We're the best there is.”

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Forty-Two

On Saturday night the three killers made their way north to a small town in Virginia called Harpers Ferry. During the road trip, Brownley Harris's job was to study maps of the AT, as the Appalachian Trail was called by many of the people who hiked it regularly. The spot where they were headed was a particularly popular place for hikers to stop.

Harpers Ferry was tiny, actually. You could walk from one end of town to the other in less than fifteen minutes. There was a point of tourist interest nearby called Jefferson Rock, where you could see Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. Kind of neat.

Starkey drove for the entire trip, no need for any relief. He liked to be at the wheel and in control anyway. He was also in charge of entertainment, which consisted of his Best of Springsteen tape, a Janis Joplin, a Doors, a Jimi Hendrix anthology, and a Dale Brown audio book

Warren Griffin spent almost the entire trip checking the team's supplies and readying the rucksacks in back. When he was finished, the packs weighed around forty pounds, a little more than half of what they used to carry on their re-con missions in Vietnam and Cambodia.

He had prepared the packs for a 'hunt and kill', the kind of ambush Colonel Starkey had planned for the Appalachian Trail. Griffin had packed standard-issue canteens; LRPs meals which were pronounced 'lurps'; hot sauce to kill the taste of the LRPs; a tin can for coffee. Each of them would have a K-Bar, the standard military combat knife; cammo sticks, with two colors of greasepaint; boo ny hats; poncho liners that could do double duty as ground cover; night-vision goggles; Clocks as well as an M-16 rifle fitted with a sniper scope. When he was finished with the work, Griffin uttered one of his favorite lines, “If you want to get a good belly laugh out of God, just tell Him about your plans.”

Starkey was the TL, or Team Leader. He was in control of every aspect of the job.

Harris was the Point Man.

Griffin was Rear Security, still the junior guy after all these years.

They didn't have to do the 'hunt and kill' exactly like this. They could have made it a whole lot easier on themselves. But this was the way Starkey liked it, the way they had always committed their murders. It was 'the Army way7.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Forty-Three

They made camp about two clicks from the AT. It was dangerous for them to be seen by anybody so Starkey established an NDP, a Night Defense Position, for the camp. Then they each kept watch in two-hour shifts. Nostalgia rules.

When Starkey took his shift, he passed the time thinking not so much about the job looming ahead of them, but the job in general. He, Harris and Griffin were professional killers and had been for over twenty years. They'd been assassins in Vietnam, Panama, the Gulf War, and now they were assassins for hire. They were careful, discreet and expensive. The current job was their most lucrative and involved several murders over a period of two years. The curious thing about it was they didn't know the identity of their employer. They were given new targets only after the previous job was completed.