“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.
What had Walt said? Mercy is a virtue you can’t afford. . . .
As the truck rolled through the dark fields, Tom reached down and laid his hand on the cold checkered butt of the .357.
CHAPTER 3
THE MOMENT SONNY Thornfield saw Billy Knox standing beneath the lights on the floating dock outside his fishing camp on the Toledo Bend Reservoir, he knew something had gone wrong. Sonny and Snake had just carried out one of the most nerve-wracking missions he’d taken part in since the war, and he was elated simply to be alive. In the dead of night, Snake had secretly flown them via floatplane to a small lake near Ferriday. After being ferried by car to the lawn outside Mercy Hospital, Snake had assassinated Henry Sexton by shooting him through his hospital window. Then, because Forrest had given the order that everyone with direct knowledge of the Sexton attack had to die, they had drugged two boys in their twenties and drowned them in the Atchafalaya Swamp. No one could have seen that crime. Snake had set the plane down in the middle of a pitch-black pool, miles from human habitation.
That can’t be it, Sonny told himself, staring at Billy’s grim face as Snake taxied the Beechcraft up to the dock. As carefully as he could, Sonny climbed out onto the starboard pontoon and caught the mooring line that Billy tossed him.
Billy didn’t look much like his father had as a young man. Snake had always been wiry and hatchet-faced. Billy was stockier and blond, with the shoulder-length hair and beard of a 1970s rock singer. Normally his eyes glinted with an amused light, but tonight he looked as grim as Sonny had ever seen him.
“What’s the matter?” Sonny asked. “What’s happened?”
“Wait till Daddy gets out,” Billy said.
When the pontoon bumped the dock, Sonny stepped onto the floating square of wood. “Trouble?”
Billy nodded once. “Big-time.”
A chill raced up Sonny’s back.
Snake climbed down onto the pontoon and stepped lightly onto the dock, his inquisitive eyes on those of his son.