The Midnight Caller (Jack Widow Book 6) Read online

  As he neared what he thought was the edge, he heard a quieted PURR! It was a familiar sound. It was the sound of suppressed gunfire.

  And suddenly, the metal deck in front of him sparked and bullets ricocheted and his instincts for self-preservation kicked in, overtaking him. He froze solid.

  Funny how many suicides wind up being aborted at the last minute due to every animal’s natural need to stay alive.

  Karpov froze and before he could force himself to continue forward, he felt strong soldiers’ arms grapple him and haul him backward.

  The redheaded leader had wrenched him back off his feet and slammed him onto the hard, cold steel deck. The breath was knocked out of him.

  The redheaded leader jabbed him once, hard, straight in the face.

  “Don’t try that again!” he shouted.

  CHAPTER 50

  WIDOW HAD CONTINUED WALKING about as far as he could go until he felt that he was safely out of the reach of the NYPD’s net, at least for now.

  The lawyer was dead. There was a dead bad guy, who would probably come up as a John Doe for the low-level computer database of the NYPD. Which might cause them to investigate with Homeland or the FBI, which may provide some better results.

  Widow had no intention of being a part of their investigation. He had had his fair share of police lately. And there was a more pressing matter. The bad guy had said “Nuclear Strike.” Now the stakes were much, much higher and Widow had to skip ahead. With such a threat out there, a credible one, there was no time for red tape and half-measures. He had to go over the heads of local law enforcement. And unfortunately, he had to set aside Eva’s safety, for the time being. A nuclear strike was more important. She would understand. But he intended to get her back, alive.

  Where should he go? Where to start?

  The boyfriend, Edward, was dead as well. He could not start there. He had only the name Farmer, who was supposedly a CIA agent. No reason to doubt that that was the truth.

  But with the threat of a nuke, the thing to focus on for now was the stolen Russian submarine.

  Widow walked back the same path that he and Eva had come, back to Grand Central Terminal. He had seen a payphone there.

  Once he got there, he went underground and back to the phone. It was not being used, which was not a surprise. Most people had their own personal phones on them.

  Widow picked up the phone before he realized that he had no change. No quarters.

  He did not want to go searching around for a place to get change. So, he simply dialed one of those call-collect services that he had seen advertised somewhere.

  He waited and got the operator and requested to call collect. He gave her a number that he had used before that he knew from memory.

  She asked him to wait while she tried to connect the call and then he heard Rachel Cameron’s voice answer. He was given a chance to say his name, which he did. Then he listened as Cameron was asked if she accepted the charges. She did.

  “Widow? What the hell is going on?”

  “I need your help.”

  “Okay?”

  “There’s a situation. A Russian submarine has been stolen. It’s nuclear. I believe that they have a US target.”

  Cameron paused a beat and then she said, “I heard about it.”

  “What? You know about it?”

  “Why do you think I’m at the office on a Sunday? The whole unit is here. We’ve been working overtime with Norfolk and COMNAVAIRLANT, trying to get hold of the sub’s location.”

  COMNAVAIRLANT stands for Commander Naval Air Force Atlantic.

  Widow asked, “Did you send me to The Plaza Hotel on purpose?”

  “What? Of course, I did. It was your birthday gift.”

  “No I mean to get involved in this?”

  “What? I don’t understand?”

  Widow took a breath. He was a believer in coincidences, only because he had been the victim of wrong place, wrong time, many times before. But this did seem suspect.

  “You did not send me there because of Eva Karpov?”

  He could hear Cameron kind of snarl over the phone.

  “Who? Widow, I don’t know who the hell that is.”

  Widow said, “She was kidnapped while I was at the Plaza. She was being held for two days by a group of armed men. Supposedly, they were part of a bigger operation.”

  “What operation? What’s this girl gotta do with it?”

  “I believe that they wanted to hijack this sub.”

  “You know who’s responsible then?”

  “Yeah. Some guy called Farmer.”

  “Farmer? Never heard of him.”

  Widow said, “There’s more. You already know that the Russian sub is nuclear, but do you know who the boat’s captain is?”

  “No. Who?”

  “A man named Karpov.”

  “I’ve never heard of him either,” she said, but then he heard her sigh. And she said, “That’s someone related to Eva Karpov?”

  “Her father. She says.”

  “This guy Farmer kidnapped her to get her father to turn over the boat?”

  “Supposedly, Farmer convinced her that he’d help her and her father to defect. I don’t believe that Karpov thought he was going to be turning over the sub to a bunch of terrorists.”

  “Wait, defect? Like in that movie? The one with James Bond?”

  “Sean Connery, not Bond, but yes. Kind of like that movie. The Hunt for Red October,” Widow said and then he paused a beat and added, “It’s a better book.”

  “This Karpov captain, he believed that this guy Farmer wanted to help him? Sounds naïve to me.”

  “Could have been. But this guy Farmer is supposedly CIA, which explains the manpower and the means and even the location of the hotel. The CIA love their expensive-ticket items.”

  Cameron ignored the quip about the hotel and simply asked, “CIA?”

  “That’s what she told me.”

  “I think we need to bring you both in. Where are you now?”

  “I’m in New York still. At Grand Central Terminal, but she’s not with me.”

  “Where the hell is she?”

  “They got her. Again.”

  “How?”

  “Long story. But there’s a dead Russian immigration lawyer down near the UN building. We were attacked. They got away with her.”

  “Immigration lawyer? Wait, what did Eva do here?”

  “She was a spy.”

  “A spy?”

  “Yeah, the lawyer was her handler.”

  Cameron said, “This gets better and better.”

  Widow decided not to tell her about Eva’s cover job as a model. The whole thing sounded more and more like an airport spy novel.

  Instead, he said, “Send someone to pick me up, but Cameron, I can’t come to you. This Farmer guy intends to use the boat to launch a nuke at us. I’m sure of it. It’s the only thing of value on the boat.”

  “What? Why would he do that?”

  “No idea. But we have to presume that’s what they’re planning. I need to get to Norfolk.”

  “Navy command?”

  “I knew a guy who should still be there. Nick Ebert. We can trust him. Last I heard he had been stationed there. He’s in counterintelligence. Find him, will ya?”

  “Okay. Stay there by the phone. I’ll call you back.”

  She hung up and Widow did the same. He turned and looked around and found a bench along the nearest wall, within earshot of the phone. He took a seat and waited.

  CHAPTER 51

  THE MAN IN BLACK punched Eva square in the stomach one more time. And she heaved forward as far as she could, tasting the doughnut that she had eaten earlier.

  By this time, they were not at their final destination, but they were already at the tip of Long Island, the northeastern side, on Highway Twenty-Five in Orient. They had pulled off the road and onto a dirt path. They drove for a while. Eva was gagged in the back of the panel van. She felt the bumps and knew tha
t they had gone off-road.

  After the van stopped, the doors opened and two of the men who had kidnapped her, twice now, got out and stretched their legs.

  The man in black had hopped into the van with her and the third guy, who held her elbows back.

  That was when the man in black punched her in the gut. He did not speak a word to her, not one. No questions. No requests. He just punched her. And then he punched her again. Same spot. Same pain.

  After she caught her breath he pulled her chin up and ripped the gag out and said, “When I tell you to, you will speak.”

  She said nothing.

  The man in black stepped out of the van, pulled out a satellite phone and twisted his hand to see his watch. He waited.

  They waited a long time and finally the sat phone rang.

  The man in black answered it and said, “Yes.”

  He listened.

  Said, “Yes,” again. And then he listened some more.

  Then he turned and walked back to the van, climbed inside and said, “She’s right here.”

  He reached the phone to her and held it in place for her. He said, “It’s for you.”

  Eva listened and heard the wind blowing loudly in the background. Then she heard her father’s voice.

  He spoke in Russian, a simple, “Are you all right?”

  But then he was struck by someone, she knew by the sound, and she heard a voice order him to speak English.

  He asked, “Are you safe?”

  She did not attempt to speak in Russian.

  She said, “I’m alive. In New York, somewhere.”

  Then she paused a beat and stared up at the man in black. She said, “Don’t do whatever they want you to do, Papa!”

  The man in black pulled the phone away and listened.

  He heard Farmer speak, “That’s enough. Hello?”

  “It’s me,” the man in black said.

  “Thank you for cleaning up after me.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “The Listener told me there was interference. Some guy?”

  “Again, don’t worry about it. We’re back on track now.”

  “So same schedule then?”

  The man in black looked at his watch, then he said, “Yes. We keep going. Unless the Listener says differently.”

  A pause and a deep breath between both men.

  Farmer said, “We’re actually going to do this.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll see you at Moreau’s in two hours?”

  “In two hours. See you.”

  Then Farmer said, “If Karpov tricks us, kill the girl.”

  The man in black said, “In one hour, fire the nuke. If I don’t see news of it by then, she’ll be dead one minute later.”

  And both men hung up.

  The man in black looked at Eva and smiled. Now that she knew they were actually going to fire a nuclear missile, she made that expression that he loved on the faces of his victims as he strangled them. It was not the same, but very close. She looked completely terrified.

  Eva muttered something that the man in black pieced together. It was something like, “No. All those people.”

  He slid back out of the van, tossed the sat phone on the ground and stomped on it over and over, violently, until it was only shattered pieces of a phone.

  Then he said, “No going back now.”

  Eva stayed quiet.

  “Get her out and onto the boat.”

  The men who had kidnapped her hustled to it, pulled her out and dragged her along a smaller path between some brush and out onto a secluded beach. A military-looking zodiac was waiting in the shallow water.

  She was thrown into it like a bag of bricks. A moment later, the men all climbed in and the man in black followed.

  They left the van where it was alongside the man in black’s motorcycle.

  He sat right next to Eva and ordered one of the men to go. That guy climbed back out and shoved the boat farther out onto the water, where it was deep enough to use the motor. Then he climbed in, soaking wet.

  He fired up the motor and a moment later they were cruising along at a high speed out around Long Island. They threaded through markers along the shoreline and weaved out until they were headed north and east toward nothing but blue horizons.

  CHAPTER 52

  KARPOV WAS HAULED BACK DOWN the ladder and through the communications tower to the bridge, with nothing but defeat on his face.

  Eva was his little girl. She was all he thought of.

  Farmer said, “Keep him standing.”

  The redheaded leader did as he was ordered.

  “What’s the password?”

  Karpov looked at the floor panels and said nothing.

  “Karpov, I won’t ask again.”

  Karpov looked up, slowly, and stared at the faces of his men who were still on the bridge. They looked at him under gunpoint. Their eyes were all blank. They looked almost as defeated as he did. They looked hopeless. They knew that they were probably all going to die.

  In shame, he answered Farmer.

  He answered with one word, “October.”

  Farmer smiled. He had the password. He had the keys. He had the nukes. Now all he had to do was wait one hour until the deadline.

  CHAPTER 53

  THE PAYPHONE AT GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL rang once and Widow jumped up and walked over to it, catching it on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Jack Widow?” a voice from the past asked. The sound behind the voice was familiar. It was a lot of ambient noise, like people talking and machines bleeping and making sounds.

  “Yep.”

  “It’s Nick,” the voice said and then Widow heard a door open and wind noises.

  “Hey, Nick.”

  “Man, you are all wrapped up in this mess?”

  “I guess so.”

  More wind.

  Widow asked, “Where the hell are you?”

  Ebert did not answer that. Instead he said, “Listen, no time to chat over the phone. I took the liberty of sending you a car. Go out of the terminal back to the street. You should see it.”

  “What kind of car?”

  “Don’t worry. They know what you look like.”

  And with that statement, Ebert hung up the phone.

  Widow hung up and turned and walked back out of the terminal and up the stairs to the street.

  He did not know what kind of car he was looking for. But he saw a navy blue sedan. Completely forgettable except for someone who knows better, and Widow knew better. It was a Navy vehicle. No doubt about it.

  It did not look like a police cruiser, but it was armored like one. There was no light bar on the roof, but that was only because sirens and blue lights were embedded in the grille.

  There was an array of antennas planted on the back like little steel telephone poles.

  The driver was leaned up against the vehicle. He called out from across the street.

  “Jack Widow?”

  “That’s me.”

  “Hop in. We don’t have a second to waste.”

  Widow scrambled across the street and opened the rear door, out of habit. He was about to hop in when the driver said, “Sir, you can sit in the front.”

  Widow arched his eyebrow out of reflex. He was not used to sitting in the front of a cop car.

  He shut the door to the back, opened the passenger front door and dumped himself down on the seat. Shut the door. Buckled up.

  “Ready?” the driver asked.

  “Ready.”

  And they were off to a destination that Widow did not know. He assumed to JFK airport because more than likely Ebert was far away. Probably at Norfolk.

  CHAPTER 54

  THE LISTENER LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. Time was running out. Soon the whole world would witness the first and last nuclear attack on the United States and they would blame the Russians for it.

  So far, everyone was buying it. So far everyone believed that a Russian
submarine had gone quiet and was headed into Atlantic waters off the US coast.

  They had reacquired the girl. The man in black had texted the Listener’s phone and told him the good news that Karpov had given up the password and now the nuke would be armed.

  The Listener had considered pulling back on the operation. After all, a lot of people that he knew would die. A lot of people, blind to the world, blind to the uselessness of the current military.

  They would die in less than an hour now. They would die in a fiery blast of nuclear clouds and sky and radiation.

  The bums in Washington would have to listen then. They would have to return the state of the military back to its former grace.

  The Listener was not going to back out. No. He could not now even if he wanted to. Farmer was unreachable.

  The Listener texted the man in black one last time before the planned nuclear strike and said, “Go dark. Will reach out to you after the heat dies down. One more thing. Wait for the strike, but don’t wait for Farmer to make it. Just kill the girl. At your discretion.”

  The Listener waited, but there was no response. He figured that meant the man in black was already on his way to Moreau.

  He stared down at his phone and selected edit in his messages app. He swiped to select all and swiped again to delete all. Then he did the same under call log.

  He took his satellite phone, kept it in his hand. Then he slipped a coat on top of his uniform, walked out of his temporary office and stepped out into the hall. He walked past sailors and other crew members, ignoring their salutes, and made his way to the deck of the USS Washington, which had once been a flag battleship until its decommissioning in nineteen forty-seven. It had recently been constructed once again, not the originally ship, and not as a battleship, but a new breed of high-tech aircraft carriers for the US Navy. They just reused the name, an unconventional approach, but worthy, the Listener figured.

  The very existence of the new kind of ship was another slap in the face to him and his cause to reestablish fear in the rest of the world. Why on earth does the government spend all this money on new tech that they never intend to use in battle?

  The Listener walked out past flight crew members who worked on deck. Around his neck was a pair of binoculars, very expensive ones. He liked to walk around from time to time and observe the performances of the other ships in their vicinity. The sailors onboard were used to it.