Bodyguard Lockdown(29)

Jim waved his gun toward the cave entrance. “We’re done here—”

“Did you know that the man you killed at the bar was there with a friend?”

“Yes,” Jim said abruptly, his features slanted with the uncomfortable memory. “The friend testified against me. Gerald Ivers. He was the prosecution’s main witness.”

“All arranged by Trygg.”

Jim snorted. “Trygg wasn’t interested in me. Hell, at the time I’d only been in his outfit for a month.”

“Don’t fool yourself. Trygg requested you.” Booker glanced back at Sandra. “Just like he did with the doc here. You’d only been military for a few short years, yet you were catching the eye of the upper brass.”

“I was a damn kid,” Jim argued, but doubt clouded his blue eyes.

Booker pressed his advantage. “Do you remember any of it? That night at the bar?”

“I remember all of it,” he answered, his voice hollow now, his pain unconcealed.



“Gerald Ivers picked the fight. Got you so heated up, you drew your knife. When you swung at him, he caught your hand holding the knife, brought it down, sidestepped, then drove it into his buddy’s stomach. With your help, of course. Then he testified later that you’d intentionally stabbed his friend.”

“You’re wrong,” Jim snapped. “You weren’t there.”

“No, but one of the waitresses witnessed the attack,” Booker explained. “She was too afraid to say anything to the authorities, but had no problem telling me. Especially after she heard about Gerald Ivers.”

“What happened to Ivers?”

“He died a week after you were sent to prison.”

“It doesn’t matter. I stabbed Ivers’s friend,” Jim argued. “I was drunk. They were standing so close. I didn’t realize the knife was in my hand until...”

“You were drugged,” Booker stated. “Pretty much the same way you drugged Sergeant Tom Levi the night before you liberated Trygg from that military prison truck.”

Jim stiffened. “How the hell did you know that?”

“It’s typical Trygg style. Set the victim up with a friend. In Tom’s case, it was Sergeant Harold Coffey. Then Trygg kills the friend, too.”

“Coffey was a disgrace to the uniform. A lowlife—”

“They usually are,” Booker interrupted. “Gerald Ivers, a few weeks after he testified against you, ended up dead in the Potomac. He went swimming drunk one night and drowned.”

“Ivers’s death doesn’t change the fact that I killed his friend.” Jim shook his head. “I’d just lost my wife in a car accident. She’d taken a curve too quickly. I was grieving. Angry. Out of my mind.”

“Jim,” Booker said softly. “Your wife had a perfect driving record. She had driven that same route to work a thousand times. Why do you think, on that particular night, she took that curve too quickly?”

“She was a nurse. She’d worked a double shift—”

“How many times had she worked a double shift in her career? A hundred times? A thousand?”

Anger festered with the doubt. “You’re lying. The coroner’s report said it was accidental—no toxic substances were found in her blood—”

“Do you remember who performed the autopsy?”

He tried, but the memory was fuzzy. He’d read it at the bar, after he’d started drinking. “No.”

“It was the same doctor who performed my wife’s autopsy,” Booker stated flatly. “And we both know Emily didn’t die of a miscarriage.”

* * *

LEWIS STEPPED UP ONTO the ridge and unclipped his harness, disgusted. Enough with the walk down memory lane.

Another reason Jim Rayo did not deserve the respect General Trygg bestowed on him.

Lewis had his own plans. And they didn’t include General Trygg or Jim Rayo.

“You and you.” He pointed at two of the men standing guard by the Black Hawk helicopter. “Help the colonel escort the prisoners when he’s done with his conversation. I will have the pilot relocate down at the base of the ravine and meet you all there.”

“Yes, sir.” Lewis watched the two men disappear over the ledge, then climbed up into the helicopter.

“Let’s go.” Lewis slid on his radio earphones, then raised his hand and pointed down. “Take us to the ravine.”



“Yes, sir.” The pilot flipped the ignition switches and then hit the button to set the blades in motion.

A moment later, the radio beeped in Lewis’s ear.

“Pitman.”

“Lewis, it’s General Trygg. I need to speak with Colonel Rayo. He isn’t answering my transmission.”

“He isn’t available, General.” Lewis kept the satisfaction from his tone. Just.

“Have you obtained the cylinders?”

“Yes, sir. We have,” Lewis answered. “But our flight back has been delayed.”

“Delayed?” Trygg snapped. “What’s the problem?”

“The colonel is interrogating McKnight and Doctor Haddad,” Lewis responded. “I am to meet them at a pickup point down at the base of the ravine when he is done.”

“Interrogating?”

“Yes, sir.” Lewis leaned back in his seat, pictured the frown on Trygg’s features. “The colonel was questioning McKnight regarding some information on a bar fight several years back.”

“I see,” General Trygg replied before pausing a long moment. “You have the cylinders in your possession, Lewis?”

“Yes, sir.”

Another pause. “When they return to the helicopter, I want Doctor Haddad restrained. Then I want you to dispose of Booker McKnight. I don’t want him found, Lewis. Understand me?”

“Colonel Rayo won’t like—”

“That’s an order, Doctor,” Trygg snapped.

“Yes, sir,” Lewis answered. “And if Colonel Rayo objects?”

“Tell him to report to me when you land,” General Trygg said. “I’ll take care of any objections.”

The trip down to the base of the ravine took mere minutes. Beyond the windshields lay an ocean of loose sand and rolling dunes. A good place to dump a body. Give the vultures a day, and no one would ever find McKnight.

After all, he had his orders. Lewis’s lips twisted. But very few carried as much satisfaction.

“Let’s go,” Rayo yelled from the edge of the ravine, catching Lewis’s attention.

The men prodded Booker and Sandra up into the helicopter. Lewis grabbed a set of handcuffs from a nearby bag, tossed them to the nearest guard. “Cuff her.”

“What are the handcuffs for?” Jim demanded.

“General Trygg’s direct orders, Colonel. He wants Doctor Haddad and McKnight restrained,” Lewis sneered. He glanced at the man nearest the doctor. “Do it.”

Sandra winced when the handcuffs clamped around her wrists.

“A waste of steel, right, Rayo?” Booker’s eyes narrowed as the guards handcuffed his wrists in front of him. “I won’t be finishing this ride, will I?”

Jim looked at Lewis, who shrugged and turned back in his seat. “Take it up with the general, Colonel.”

The pilot pulled back on the throttle.

The floor jolted under Sandra’s feet, tossing her off balance. She grabbed for the nearest beam with both hands.

Suddenly, bullets ripped across the windshield, over the outside of the helicopter.

“Hold on!” the pilot yelled, then jerked the throttle, banked the helicopter around.

Equipment flew against the walls, through the open door. Men scrambled against the tilt, slammed into the back of the helicopter.

Booker shifted, catching himself on a hanging strap, his eyes on Lewis.

Lewis grabbed the wall, raised his pistol.



“No!” Sandra gripped the beam harder, swung her legs up and kicked Booker square in the back.

“Grab McKnight!” Rayo yelled. But the warning came too late.

Booker flew through the open doorway and dropped two stories to the desert below.

“Make sure she doesn’t cause more trouble!” Lewis ordered.

Sandra spun around saw the pistol gripped in one of the guards’ meaty fists.



Pain exploded in her temple and then she fell.

Into a deep, black void.

* * *

BOOKER BLINKED, FORCING his eyes to open against the glare of the sun, the sharp stabs of pain as his body woke.

She shoved him out of the helicopter!

Booker focused, spit out the grains of sand, then raised himself up on his hands. When he got ahold of the doc’s beautiful neck, he’d wring it.