“Hey, Gunny,” the Sergeant greeted him.
“The guy in the doorway?”
“He’s been there since a little after four. He don’t live here.” Cummings paused for a moment. He was, after all, only a “buck” sergeant with no rockers under his stripes, talking to a man whom generals addressed with respect. “It just feels funny.”
“Well, let’s give him a few minutes,” Breckenridge thought aloud.
“God, I hate grading quizzes.”
“So go easy on the boys and girls,” Robby chuckled.
“Like you do?” Ryan asked.
“I teach a difficult, technical subject. I have to give quizzes.”
“Engineers! Shame you can’t read and write as well as you multiply.”
“You must have taken a tough-pill this afternoon. Jack.”
“Yeah, well –” The phone rang. Jack picked it up. “Doctor Ryan. Yes — who?” His face changed, his voice became guarded.
“Yes, that’s right.” Robby saw his friend go stiff in the chair. “Are you sure? Where are they now? Okay — ah, okay, thank you . . . I, uh, thank you.” Jack stared at the phone for a second or two before hanging it up.
“What’s the matter, Jack?” Robby asked.
It took him a moment to answer. “That was the police. There’s been an accident.”
“Where are they?” Robby said immediately.
“They flew them — they flew them to Baltimore.” Jack stood shakily. “I have to get there.” He looked down at his friend. “God, Robby . . . ”
Jackson was on his feet in an instant. “Come on, I’ll take you up there.”
“No, I’ll –”
“Stuff it, Jack. I’m driving.” Robby got his coat and tossed Jack’s over the desk. “Move it, boy!”
“They took them by helicopter . . . ”
“Where? Where to, Jack?”
“University,” he said.
“Get it together, Jack.” Robby grabbed his arm. “Settle down some.” The flyer led his friend down the stairs and out of the building. His red Corvette was parked a hundred yards away.
“Still there,” the civilian guard reported when he came back in.
“Okay,” Breckenridge said, standing. He looked at the pistol holster hanging in the corner, but decided against that. “This is what we’re going to do.”
Ned Clark hadn’t liked the mission from the first moment. Sean was too eager on this one. But he hadn’t said so. Sean had masterminded the prison break that had made him a free man. If nothing else, Ned Clark was loyal to the Cause. He was exposed here and didn’t like that either. His briefing had told him that the guards at the Academy gate were lax, and he could see that they were unarmed. They had no authority at all off the grounds of the school.
But it was taking too long. His target was thirty minutes late. He didn’t smoke, didn’t do anything to make himself conspicuous, and he knew that he’d be hard to spot. The doorway of the tired old apartment building had no light — one of Alex’s people had taken care of that with a pellet gun the previous night.
Ought to call this one off, Clark told himself. But he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to fail Sean. He saw a pair of men leave the Academy. Bootnecks, bloody Marines in their Sunday clothes. They looked so pretty without their guns, so vulnerable.
“So the Captain, he says,” the big one was saying loudly, “get that goddamned gook off my chopper!” And the other one started laughing.
“I love it!”
“How about a couple of beers?” the big one said next. They crossed the street, heading his way.
“Okay by me, Gunny. You buyin’?”
“My turn, isn’t it? I have to get some money first.” The big one reached in his pocket for some keys and turned toward Clark. “Excuse me, sir, can I help you?” His hand came out of his pocket without any keys.
Clark reacted quickly, but not quickly enough. The right hand inside his overcoat started moving up, but Breckenridge’s own right grabbed it like a vise.
“I asked if I could help you, sir,” the Sergeant Major said pleasantly. “What do you have in that hand?” Clark tried to move, but the big man pushed him against the brick wall.
“Careful, Tom,” Breckenridge warned.
Cummings’ hand searched downward and found the metallic shape of a pistol. “Gun,” he said sharply.
“It better not go off,” the Gunny announced, his left arm across Clark’s throat. “Let the man have it, sonny, real careful, like.”
Clark was amazed at his stupidity, letting them get so close to him. His head tried to turn to look up the street, but the man waiting for him in the car was around the corner. Before he could think of anything to do, the black man had disarmed him and was searching his pockets. Cummings removed the knife next.
“Talk to me,” Breckenridge said. Clark didn’t say anything, and the forearm slid roughly across his throat. “Please talk to me, sir.”
“Get your bloody hands off of me! Who do you think you are?”
“Where you from, boy?” Breckenridge didn’t need an answer to that one. The Sergeant wrenched Clark’s arm out of the pocket and twisted it behind his back. “Okay, sonny, we’re going to walk through that gate over yonder, and you’re gonna sit down and be a good boy while we call the police. If you make any trouble, I’m going to tear this arm off and shove it right up your ass. Let’s go, boy.”
The driver who’d been waiting for Clark was standing at the far corner. He took one look at what had happened and walked to his car. Two minutes later he was blocks away.
Cummings handcuffed the man to a chair while Breckenridge established that he carried no identification — aside from an automatic pistol, which was ID enough. First he called his captain, then the Annapolis City police. It started there, but, though the Gunny didn’t know, it wouldn’t stop there.
Chapter 15
Shock and Trauma
If Jack had ever doubted that Robby Jackson really was a fighter pilot, this would have cured him. Jackson’s personal toy was a two-year-old Chevrolet Corvette, painted candy-apple red, and he drove it with a sense of personal invincibility. The flyer raced out the Academy’s west gate, turned left, and found his way to Rowe Boulevard. The traffic problems on Route 50 west were immediately apparent, and he changed lanes to head east. In a minute he was streaking across the Severn River bridge. Jack was too engrossed in his thoughts to see much of anything, but Robby saw what looked like the remains of a Porsche on the other side of the roadway. Jackson’s blood went cold as he turned away. He cast the thoughts aside and concentrated on his driving, pushing the Corvette past eighty. There were too many cops on the other side of the road for him to worry about a ticket. He took the Ritchie Highway exit a minute later and curved around north toward Baltimore. Rush-hour traffic was heavy, though most of it was heading in the other direction. This gave him gaps to exploit, and the pilot used every one. He worked up and down through the gears, rarely touching the brakes.
To his right, Jack simply stared straight ahead, not seeing much of anything. He managed to wince when Robby paused behind two tractor-trailers running side by side — then shot up right between them with scant inches of clearance on either side. The outraged screams of the two diesel horns faded irrelevantly behind the racing ‘Vette, and Jack returned to the emptiness of his thoughts.
Breckenridge allowed his captain, Mike Peters, to handle the situation. He was a pretty good officer, the Sergeant Major thought, who had the common sense to let his NCOs run things. He’d managed to get to the guard shack about two minutes ahead of the Annapolis City police, long enough for Breckenridge and Cummings to fill him in.
“So what gives, gentlemen?” the responding officer asked. Captain Peters nodded for Breckenridge to speak.
“Sir, Sergeant Cummings here observed this individual to be standing over at the corner across the street. He did not look like a local resident, so we kept an eye on him. Finally Cummings and I walked over and asked if we might be of assistance to him. He tried to pull this on us” — the Gunny lifted the pistol carefully, so as not to disturb the fingerprints — “and he had this knife in his pocket. Carrying a concealed weapon is a violation of local law, so Cummings and I made a citizen’s arrest and called you. This character does not have any identification on him, and he declined to speak with us.”
“What kind of gun is that?” the cop asked.
“It’s an FN nine-millimeter,” Breckenridge answered. “It’s the same as the Browning Hi-Power, but a different trademark, with a thirteen-round magazine. The weapon was loaded, with a live round in the chamber. The hammer was down. The knife is a cheap piece of shit. Punk knife.”