King's Ransom Read online

  He counted off forty seconds before he saw it again, and then again forty seconds later. It was a curious sight here in the middle of the woods, but the image of a bruised and bleeding Colton forced him to resist the temptation.

  He kept walking.

  Around the next curve he laid eyes on Lee’s house. It was a cabin built alongside the stream. As he drew closer, he could see it was more like a rustic mansion. It rose three stories and had full-length covered porches on each floor.

  Must have found some contracting work, thought Carson.

  Carson climbed onto the porch landing and knocked on the door. He felt for the gun at his waist. Lee hadn’t seen him in almost a decade, and considering the lateness of the hour, he thought it likely Lee would be quite pissed off…and armed.

  He heard nothing from inside. He knocked again. Nothing.

  His hand still on his pistol, Carson moved to the window and looked inside. The only light came from an antler chandelier hanging above the kitchen table. He could see something on the table but couldn’t make out what it was. The rest of the house was dark.

  He was just about to knock again when he froze. He pressed himself against the window, peering into the darkness just outside the kitchen light. The closer he looked, the harder his heart pounded.

  He pulled the pick-kit back out and unlocked the front door.

  He drew his pistol as it slowly creaked open.

  His Springfield .45 was fitted with a military grade suppressor. The view from behind his weapon was a familiar one.

  Carson advanced slowly down the hallway, engaging all his senses. He listened but all he heard was the storm; there were no visual signs of forced entry or foul play of any kind, nor were there any telltale scents: gun powder, smoke, or decaying flesh.

  From the pictures on the walls to the lamps on the hallway table, everything seemed to be perfectly in its place.

  As Carson came into the kitchen, he allowed his eyes to drift, without turning his head, to the table. The light from the chandelier still burned brightly in the dark cabin and he could finally make out what he had seen from the porch.

  There were four items. Three were bullets. They were situated in a triangle surrounding a piece of notebook paper.

  His gun at chest level and pointed into the unexplored darkness of the living room, Carson read the short note written in red ink.

  As he did, he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

  We will never forget.

  Before his mind attempted to decipher the enigmatic message, he realized something. The bullets weren’t bullets.

  They were bullet casings.

  They had already been fired.

  He swung his gun to the left. And it was then that he saw them.

  Sitting there on the couch. His fears confirmed.

  Lee, his wife, and their teenage son, all three sitting with very proper posture, all three staring off into the blackness of the night.

  All three dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Carson took several deep breaths and felt his heartbeat fall back into rhythm.

  Moving without sound, he clicked on the Maglite and cleared the room, checking behind every piece of furniture, in the closets, and inside the fireplace.

  Finding nothing, he moved back to the bodies. Each had been killed by a single gunshot. Lee’s son and his wife had both been shot through the chest, while Lee himself had been shot in the head. Looking more closely, it was clear that Lee had been shot from behind, as the size of the wound in his forehead was evidence of an exit wound, not an entry.

  Being shot from behind typically suggested a surprise attack or an ambush, but Carson brushed that theory aside. Men like Lee Jacobs were rarely caught off guard. Unfortunately, that left only one viable explanation: Lee and his family had been overwhelmed by sheer force.

  Carson studied the floor and the couch. No blood. Not even a speck.

  Anywhere.

  When he leaned down and felt Lee’s skin, his heart nearly lurched out of his chest.

  Lee’s body was still warm.

  Carson took a step backward, his mind racing. He was no medical examiner but he estimated the Jacobs had been dead less than an hour.

  That told him two things: one, the people who had done this had to be very skilled to execute the hit and clean everything up so quickly; and two, it was likely they were still somewhere nearby.

  He felt the vibration before he heard the noise.

  It was subtle, but the floor shook ever so slightly beneath his feet. Without lowering his gun, he killed the Maglite, closed his eyes, and listened closer.

  What he first heard was a clatter, as if something had been thrown against a wall. But what he heard now was different. It was a low groan, almost like a snore. It started, then stopped, then started up again.

  Something was in the basement.

  He slowly made his way to the door. A fall wreath made of real sunflowers hung from it; he could smell their sweet scent as he waited, listening. The noise was gone.

  Carson turned the brass handle and pulled the door open, sure to lead with the barrel of his pistol.

  Complete darkness greeted him. The light from the entryway spilled into the corridor, but only enough to illuminate the first few steps.

  He took a steadying breath as he moved into the darkness. He descended nearly halfway down when one of the steps creaked, piercing the silence.

  At first there was nothing. He listened but heard only his own breath.

  But then, the groaning. The shattering of glass.

  In that instant, Carson knew it was kill or be killed. So he made a quick decision.

  He transferred his pistol into his right hand, taking the Maglite in his left. He held them both at chest height, clicked the light on, and charged down the remaining steps, taking them three at a time. He rounded the corner and prepared to kill whoever had murdered the Jacobs.

  And when he saw what lay before him, he nearly fired out of pure surprise.

  Lying on the carpeted floor with his mouth duct taped was Lee’s golden retriever. A rope had been tied around the dog’s midsection and attached to a large wooden hutch. The hutch had toppled over behind the dog’s efforts to get free.

  Carson cleared the room, then found a light switch on the wall by the stairs. He didn’t lower his weapon until he had searched the entire space. Again, just like upstairs, there was nothing to find. It was as though no one had been there at all.

  A pang of sadness hit him as the scene played out in his mind. The embers in the fireplace were glowing orange, some of their heat still spilling into the room; there was an Xbox beside a flat screen TV, a controller strung across the floor; two mugs sat half-empty on the coffee table.

  To put it plainly, the Jacobs had been spending an ordinary evening in their home and someone had walked in and killed them in cold blood.

  Carson’s brow furrowed.

  Why kill them here then drag them upstairs? He looked around, searching for some kind of answer and found none. Across the room the dog was still watching him with sad eyes. He walked over and knelt down beside him.

  “Hey there, Ammo,” he said, surprised he still remembered the dog’s name after almost seven years. “Been kind of a rough night huh, buddy?”

  He patted him on the head and started working on the tape around his mouth, using his knife to cut it free. Ammo licked his hand vigorously as a thank you.

  He was scratching behind Ammo’s ears when another thought occurred to him. Why leave the dog?

  He ran his hand along Ammo’s back and froze.

  The answer to his question was fastened to the rope tied around Ammo’s body.

  A black box, no larger than a credit card, had been clamped to the underside of it. The box was almost completely covered by the dog’s auburn hair, which explained why Carson hadn’t seen it until now.

  He turned and saw the very thing he had hoped not to: a string lying on the floor near the stair
s, thinner than fishing line. He had tripped it in his rush down the steps and the damage was done.

  Growing frantic, he hurried back to Ammo and spun the rope around.

  His heart sank when he saw the display. 43 seconds.

  He yanked his knife back out and began cutting at the rope. The outer nylon strands severed with ease, but then the knife blade met something hard. The assassins had used a modified bike lock to tether Ammo to the hutch. Beneath the nylon threading was heavy gauge steel wire. There would be no cutting through it. He thought of trying to shoot through it, but the risk of agitating the explosives was too high.

  Moving quickly, Carson hugged the dog around the neck. “I’m sorry, buddy. I’ll find the bastards that did this. I promise.”

  Ammo whined, his brown eyes filled with fear.

  Carson turned for the stairs and was in a full sprint by the time he reached the top. He slammed the door against the wall, knocking the wreath to the floor.

  He didn’t turn back to give his former comrade a final farewell.

  And it was a good thing.

  Because the moment Carson’s boots stepped off the porch, the explosion lifted the cabin off its foundation.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Washington D.C.

  To say the meeting had been a success would have been an understatement.

  As the Town Car coiled through the labyrinth of D.C. streets, McManus had yet another snifter of bourbon. He rotated the glass and watched the street lights refract through it, casting colorful prisms on the seat beside him.

  He checked his watch and chuckled. A success of this magnitude deserved a suitable celebration. Well, he had something in mind.

  It had been nearly two weeks since he had been to the place they were going, and that was too long. He pulled out his phone and sent a message to his wife, telling her he hoped she was having a good evening and that he had excellent news to share upon her return.

  Of course, he wouldn’t tell her everything. He never did.

  Ruth Fitzgerald McManus lived in a plush non-reality where people were wealthy, happy, and kind. He, on the other hand, knew the truth about the world, about people. He knew that life was a war to be fought. And when you live every day in that world, you have to relish your victories.

  The Town Car pulled to the curb as McManus finished his drink. He gave the driver instructions and climbed out.

  The night air had gotten colder; he could nearly see his breath. He was in north D.C., thirty minutes from the White House. As he walked up the sidewalk, he thought back to the first time he had come here. It was hard to believe it had been three years.

  McManus stepped onto the small stoop and straightened his uniform before knocking on the door. He heard footsteps inside and waited patiently.

  When the door opened, he clinched his jaw in appreciation of what he saw.

  He had called as he was leaving dinner and told her he was coming. It was obvious she had prepared for his arrival. She had on a black satin robe, lightly tied at the waist, and nothing else.

  Slowly retreating into the house, the robe slipping from her shoulders, she whispered, “Please, Warren, do come in.”

  • • •

  Teresa Ferrell lit a cigarette and looked out over the neighborhood.

  It was the middle of the night and she couldn’t sleep, so she had come to the balcony for some fresh air. She winced at what she had just done; it didn’t matter how many times it happened, she would never get used to it. It would never be okay.

  But it was necessary.

  She looked through the sliding glass door behind her. He was asleep in her bed, his disgusting face lying on her pillow.

  It would be inaccurate to say she had no feelings for Warren McManus—she did. She hated him. And not just because she had been forced into having an affair with him. Her hatred had far deeper roots; the sex had merely strengthened them.

  She took a long draw and the wind carried the smoke out over the street.

  The affair had started off as a business transaction, for them both. With time, he had grown to desire her, to see her as something he wanted and needed, not as a potential threat to be neutralized.

  She had carried out her mission with excellence. How many powerful men, she wondered, had been betrayed by the blinding urges of their penis?

  For her, nothing had changed. If anything, maintaining their repulsing tryst was more important now than ever before. She had endured him for far too long to lose it all now. It was nearly time for things to come together. Their goals were in sight.

  Her affair with McManus assured the preservation of certain key alliances. Without those alliances, the whole plan would fall apart.

  She was desperate to hear about the meeting in Damascus but refused to risk contact while McManus was in the other room. Plus, the Arab had been clear he would make the call. He had promised to contact her promptly regardless of the outcome.

  Unless he was dead. But Ferrell couldn’t bring herself to think such a thought.

  The man had a calculated reason for everything he did. His current silence was surely no different.

  The cigarette burnt to a nub, she tossed it off the balcony and went back inside.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Zabadani District, 30 miles west of Damascus

  The Syrian Uprising, more commonly known as the Syrian Civil War, started as most conflicts of its kind typically do: at the feet of an oppressive regime.

  Syria’s Ba’ath Party government, headed up by President Bashar al-Assad, had been volatilizing the country’s social landscape for years. Routine torture, murder, rape, and violent, unwarranted interrogations had been filling the air with gaseous fumes for nearly a decade.

  In March 2011, a group of teenagers in Deraa finally lit a match.

  It started with a can of spray paint. The kids used it to paint anti-Assad symbols and phrases on the outside of their school building. When word of the supposed treason reached Damascus, Assad’s response was swift and heavy-handed. He ordered his security forces in Deraa to arrest, torture, and kill the teens, to make an example of them.

  What he didn’t intend to do, however, was turn them into martyrs.

  The protests began in March as garden-variety, local unrest. It had happened thousands of times before, a natural response to unjust rule. It had happened before, but not like this.

  When forces loyal to Assad opened fire on the protesters in Deraa, killing dozens, hundreds more rose from the shadows to take their place. Soon, the rioting spread throughout southern Syria and quickly shifted north. When Assad tried to suppress the rebellion with force, the results were tantamount with tossing kerosene on a bonfire.

  By late April the civilian rebels were no longer protesting—they were fighting, taking up arms to defend themselves and their families. The violence reached the streets of Damascus by early 2012 and rebels marched into Aleppo a few weeks later. What had started with a handful of rebellious teenagers had morphed into a national conflict pitting hundreds of thousands of civilians against the Syrian establishment.

  The unrest was now anything but garden-variety.

  The opposition was gaining strength, but even more dangerous to Assad was the fact that they were gaining structure. With the formation of the Syrian National Council (SNC) in August 2011, the rebels had made it official: they were seeking the removal of Assad as president and a complete upheaval of Ba’ath party government in Syria.

  Feeding off the rebel momentum, a handful of officers defected from the Syrian Armed Forces and formed the Free Syrian Army, an organization that would collaborate with the SNC and soon impact the overall complexion of the war.

  By summer 2012, the impossible happened: things got worse. As the world and neighboring nations finally smelled the blood in the water, the Syrian conflict became a borderless fight. Jihadist groups flooded in from the north and east, headlined by Iraqi al-Qaeda offshoot, ISIS.

  As one might expect, the violence exploded.<
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  The formation of the National Syrian Coalition (NSC) in November 2012 established the rebels as a legitimate threat to overthrow Assad. By the turn of the year, he was backpedaling. But despite his throne and his nation quickly crumbling beneath his feet, he refused to go quietly. Rockets containing the potent chemical weapons agent, sarin, were fired into the fields outside Damascus, brutally killing thousands.

  The US and the global community were outraged and quick to denounce the barbarism, but Assad and his Russian allies coolly deflected the blame onto the rebels. No one was buying it. But then again, no one did anything about it either.

  In 2012, between January and October, nearly fifty thousand people were killed in the Syrian Civil War. Thousands of innocent civilians were dying in the streets every day. Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled, pouring into Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and anywhere else that would shield them from the violence. Millions more were driven from their homes with nowhere to run.

  Their options were simple: join the fight or die.

  And in this way, the opposition continued to grow and the battle raged on.

  • • •

  The ramshackle Toyota 4Runner beat along the Dimashq Beirut.

  The Arab sat in the passenger seat, hands folded in his lap, patiently enduring the turbulence. He had changed drivers on the outskirts of Damascus and the new guy was anxious.

  The Arab saw the tension in his features: white knuckles on the steering wheel, creases at his eyes, clenched jaws. He could hardly blame him. They were traveling through one of the most dangerous swaths of land on the planet.

  Fighting had been heavy in the region, not only because of the proximity to Damascus but also because of al-Zabadani, less than ten miles to the north along the mountain range. Some of the war’s earliest fighting had taken place there, and now Hezbollah had a base of operations in the area.

  It was just after four in the morning and traffic was light. In a few hours, that would no longer be the case.

  The Dimashq Beirut served as a principal channel for Syrian refugees fleeing into Lebanon. Though traveling at night was more dangerous, it was quicker.