“I’ll go with you, soon as I arrange for the watch on Kray. That’s where this is all likely to come together. I want to make sure everything up there is being done right.”
“No need for that. Can you call Army Records in St. Louis this time of night?” Horn asked.
“I know a way to get through.”
“Get any information they might have on Colonel Kray. It might help us string him along while he thinks he’s stringing us along.” Horn glanced at his watch. 11:35 P.M. “I’m leaving in five minutes. I’ve gotta make another phone call.”
“I’ll be on the road in ten minutes.”
Larkin was determined. Horn decided to give up trying to talk him out of it. “Okay. Meet me off the highway on the county road that leads to the cabin.”
“Take your cell phone,” Larkin said.
“Always.”
As Horn hurriedly got dressed, he wondered if Larkin really knew how much the NYPD leaked.
After leaving the brownstone, Horn’s first act was to call Bickerstaff and Paula on a public phone three blocks away.
At about the halfway point of the drive to the cabin, Larkin called Horn on his cell phone.
“Just got the word,” he said. “The detail sent to the hotel to observe Kray says he checked out only hours ago. Desk clerk said he was in a hurry.”
Horn felt his stomach go cold with apprehension. Things were moving ahead of them; they weren’t in control and might not possess the necessary knowledge. Losing at chess, and the stakes were unbelievably high.
“Something else,” Larkin said. “Army Records tells me
Colonel Victor Kray resigned his commission and left the service over two years ago.”
Horn was silent, trying to drive and comprehend all of this at the same time.
“Whaddya think, Horn?” asked Larkin’s voice from the cell phone. Horn could hear the constant snarl of Larkin’s car engine in the background. Larkin wasn’t worried about speeding tickets.
Horn said, “Drive faster.”
Harlington Sheriff’s Deputy Albert “Sass” Collier settled deeper where he sat in darkness among last year’s leaves. He was alongside the dry creek bed. Like the others guarding Anne Horn, Sass had strict instructions to hold his position and not go near the cabin unless ordered to do so. The NYPD guys were farther in toward the cabin, one of them inside with the blond Anne Horn. Sass had seen her photo in the New York papers. Nice looking lady from the big city. He wondered what she’d be like to talk to. He smiled.
Collier was on loan from the sheriff ‘s department because he was a local and a hunter. He knew the woods. If the wind was right, he could hear a deer move a hundred yards away. He could hear a squirrel chatter and know its direction almost well enough to fire at it blind and hit it with a shotgun blast. Rumor had it Sass was half Cherokee Indian. He wasn’t, but he should have been.
Nothing, nobody, was going to pass him in or on either side of the creek bed without him knowing.
He was called “Sass” because of some wildness in his younger days, and a stubbornness that had matured into genuine toughness. Sass was six-feet-two and two hundred pounds of solid cop. He knew the skills of his trade and beyond that held a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. If he did hear somebody moving through the woods toward the cabin, he’d know what to do. He’d be able to do it.
But he heard nothing other than the soft breeze playing through the leaves, even as dark forms above him moved through the forest canopy. If he’d glanced up, they would have been still, merely shadows among shadows.
One of the dark forms dropped straight down on a slender line to a point about three feet behind and above the seated Sass. The dark figure made a sudden, silent movement that tipped his body forward and down. In the same abrupt but smooth motion Sass’s hair was gripped, his head yanked back to expose his throat, and tempered sharp steel sliced through his neck deep enough to sever both carotid arteries.
It had all happened in a few seconds, and the only sound had been the gush and soft splatter of blood on the dry leaves-like a gentle summer rain that passed quickly.
Sass’s face barely had time to register surprise.
53
When Horn turned off the highway onto the narrow country road and killed his headlights, he saw by the faint moonlight that Rollie Larkin had already arrived.
Larkin was standing by a uniformed NYPD cop Horn didn’t know, a stocky young man who looked like a serious weight lifter. Horn wondered if some of these young guys were taking steroids. He wondered if he would have when he was young, to be a better cop. Only animals took steroids when Horn was the young cop’s age.
“This is Officer Wunderly,” Larkin said, when Horn had gotten out of the car and walked off the road and into the tall grass where Larkin’s car was parked.
Horn looked at Wunderly and gave him a nod.
“No sign of anything since we’ve been here, sir.” Wunderly had a narrow head, made pinched-looking by the sidelight-ing of the moon. It was a head that didn’t go with his muscular frame.
“Been in touch with the sentries?” Horn asked.
“Every hour,” Wunderly said.
“How long since the last time?”
Wunderly glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”
“You doing it on the hour?”
“Yes, sir. Easier to remember.”
And predict, Horn thought. “Contact the nearest.”
Wunderly went to the patrol car and got out a black, leather-cased walkie-talkie. “These are from the sheriff’s department. Regular two-ways don’t work worth a damn out here,” he explained. “Local yokels don’t have ‘em anyway.”
Horn and Larkin looked at each other while Wunderly tried to contact the sentry, keeping his voice low.
“Wunderly to Deputy Collier. . Deputy Collier. . Sass, you there?. .”
Wunderly’s brow furrowed. He looked at Horn and Larkin. “Can’t raise him.”
“Got a map?” Horn asked.
“Sure. Sheriff ‘s department gave us a dandy.”
“Sounds like the sheriff’s department is running the whole goddamn show,” Larkin said.
“You relay my order for the sentries to maintain position?” Horn asked Wunderly.
“Yes, sir. Made it plain so everybody understood.”
“Get the map and show me where Sass is,” Horn said.
In the blackness of the night, Vine and Kray silently moved from limb to limb, overhead in the forest canopy, then dropped straight down on lines and garroted or slit the throats of the police guarding the cabin where Anne was staying.
Vine spotted one sentry, a local, sitting halfway up a tree in a deer seat, a contraption hunters used to stake out spots during deer season so they could fire down on the unsuspecting animals when they approached. The seats were held fast to the trees by the tension of weight and leverage against metal frames or straps.
Vine dropped silently along the other side of the tree’s trunk, made a slight sound on the sentry’s left so he’d turn his head in that direction, then deftly reached around the trunk from the right and slit the man’s throat. He knew that Kray, watching, must approve.
This was the third man they’d killed. They wanted to be sure that when they finally did enter the cabin, they’d be alone with Anne.
Then Kray would be alone with Vine.
