The ring of the very phone Tom was thinking about stunned him, and his shoulder began to pound, telling him his blood pressure had spiked at the sound. He stared at the phone for two more rings, then answered.
“Hello?”
“It’s me,” said a voice that made him sag against the truck’s door. “Are you okay?”
“I thought you were dead.” Tom craned his neck around to try to see if the hit man had woken up.
“I didn’t want to put you at risk by calling you. Even now we shouldn’t spend more than a minute on the phone.”
“Did you have any luck with Colonel Mackiever?”
“No. And don’t say his name again. He got delayed, but he’s on his way up here now.”
“Up here” meant Baton Rouge.
“FK has already moved against him,” Walt said.
Forrest Knox, Tom thought.
“I don’t know the details,” Walt continued, “but it sounds like they’re trying to discredit Mac and take his job.”
“So he can’t get the APB revoked?”
“Not with a phone call. He needs to hear our side of the story before he can move. That’s the next step. But that’s not why I called. The colonel just told me something you need to know. Brody Royal was killed tonight, in his house on Lake Concordia. That reporter died with him, Henry Sexton.”
“No.” Tom’s heart began to pound again.
“Yep. And there’s more bad news.”
The hammering in Tom’s chest began to solidify into angina. “Not Penn—”
“No—hell, no. But Penn was apparently there when it happened, and Caitlin, too. They’re alive, but that’s all I know right now. Mac just caught it over his radio. Royal’s son-in-law died there too, and a black fellow I never heard of. Nobody Mac trusts seems to know what really went down.”
“Where are Penn and Caitlin now?”
“In custody. Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Department. State police heard it from firemen on the scene. Alive and in squad cars, only minor injuries. I’ll try to learn more, but you don’t hear from me, they’re fine. If anything’s seriously wrong, I’ll call you. Don’t call me back except in an extreme emergency.”
“Okay.”
“How you doing? Melba still there?”
“No. I’m not either.”
“What?”
“FK sent two guys to the lake house, and they nearly got me. I’m lucky to be alive, to tell the truth.”
“What?”
“He sent them to kill me. I turned the tables. One’s KIA, the other tied up in the backseat.”
“Jesus. How the hell did you manage that, the shape you’re in?”
“A little luck and a lot of drugs. What the hell do we do now?”
Walt only paused for a few seconds. “You need to go to ground somewhere while I talk to the colonel. And don’t try to cover any distance—you’ll hit a roadblock. Can you think of anywhere close that’s safe?”
“Actually, yes. But your part’s done. You need to get back to Texas. You’ve got Carmelita to think about. Just get clear, buddy.”
“That’s enough of that. Look, we’ve been on the phone too long already. Let me ask you one more question.”
Walt’s voice sounded strange.
“What is it?”
“What do you plan to do with the survivor in the back?”
“I’m not sure. I figured I’d ditch him somewhere. Cotton field, probably.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Where, then?”
“Nowhere.” After a pause, Walt said. “He’s KIA. Just like the first one.”
It took a moment to absorb Walt’s meaning. “I can’t do that. Too much has . . .” Tom trailed off. “Too many people are dead already.”
“Listen to me,” Walt said in a voice that came all the way from their days in Korea. “Mercy is a virtue you can’t afford. We already made that mistake once this week.”
Tom thought of Sonny Thornfield and wondered if saving the old Klansman had really been a mistake, or whether he might yet play some positive role before events resolved themselves.
In the backseat, Grimsby stirred. Tom looked back but could see little in the darkness.
“Hey,” Walt said. “Did I lose you?”
“Now that I think about it,” Tom said, in case Grimsby had awakened, “going to Mobile was about the smartest thing you could have done.”
“What?” Walt said. “Oh. I get it.”
“I wish to God I was there with you,” Tom added, meaning it. He waited about ten seconds, then said, “Well, I don’t like it, but I guess it’s my best chance. Mobile it is.”
“That’s enough dinner theater,” Walt said in a quieter voice. “Listen to me now. Get yourself a new burn phone at a Walmart. Better yet, send someone you trust to get you a half dozen. Then call this number. I want you to use a code to tell me where you are—a basic code. Three steps. Number the letters in the alphabet from one to twenty-six. Then spell out your message, convert it to numbers, and multiply each letter-number by the number of men who died in the ambulance at Chosin. We clear on that number?”
Just the mention of that ambulance made Tom grimace. “Yeah.”
“Call and give me a string of numbers, nothing else. Like thirty-six, break, two-seventy-five, break, one-fifty, break. You got it?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember, if you don’t hear from me, Penn and Caitlin are fine.”
Tom nodded wearily in the dashboard light. “It’s good to hear your voice, Walt.”
“Same here, buddy. Time to go, though. Just remember, you’ve got one tough thing to do before you do anything else. Finish that son of a bitch. This is war, Corporal.”
“Walt—”
“He meant to kill you in cold blood, didn’t he?”
“I’ll see you soon.”
Tom broke the connection and put down the phone.
The revelation that Walt was alive had buoyed him in a way that nothing else could. With Walt still working to get the APB revoked, the most immediate threat to their lives might actually be removed. The news about the killings at Lake Concordia, on the other hand, had deeply unsettled Tom. He knew he bore some of the blame for those deaths, as he did for the earlier ones. Worse, Penn and Caitlin could only have turned up at Royal’s house because of their efforts to help him. But it was Henry Sexton’s death that most haunted him. To think that Henry Sexton had survived two earlier attacks only to die at Brody Royal’s house . . . it seemed almost incomprehensible.
Tom squinted down the twin headlight beams illuminating the narrow road between the empty cotton fields, watching for deer or stray cattle. He couldn’t afford an accident that might disable the truck. In his present state, he was incapable of walking to safety.
He tensed as a pair of headlights appeared in the distance, and his heart and shoulder began to pound in synchrony. Unless he stopped dead, turned around, and made a run for it, he had no choice but to continue toward the oncoming vehicle.
As the two vehicles closed the distance, a sharp pain stabbed him high in the back, and his breath went shallow. If whoever was in that car or truck was a cop, Tom knew, he was likely to die in the next minute. His photo—along with Walt’s—had been circulated across the state for the past few hours, saturating all media. Any cop who stopped him would recognize him. And what police officer was going to give a fugitive cop killer time to explain a corpse and captive in the backseat? Tom had treated plenty of cops over the years, and in this situation, eight out of ten would shoot first and take the glory.
The skin on his neck and arms crawled as he waited for the bright red flare of Louisiana police lights. His face was pouring sweat, and angina had locked his back muscles by the time the blinding lights flashed past him, and he saw that they belonged to a Louisiana Power and Light bucket truck.
“Christ,” he gasped, as his stolen truck rolled out of the sucking vacuum between the two vehicles and plowed back into the darkness.
As his heartbeat slowly decelerated, Tom realized that Grimsby had awakened in the backseat. Some ancient survival instinct had flickered to life and told him that the hit man was now staring at the back of his head, trying to work out a way to kill him. If Tom tried to turn, Grimsby would close his eyes and pretend to be asleep. But Tom knew different. Behind the lids, those eyes would be alive with lethal malice.