The Summer House
- Автор: Паттерсон Джеймс, Дюбуа Брендан
- Год: 2020
- Язык: английский
- Год: Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN: 978-0-316-53955-5
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «The Summer House». Краткое содержание книги:
To ensure that justice is done, the Army sends Major Jeremiah Cook, a veteran and former NYPD cop, to investigate. But the major and his elite team arrive in sweltering Georgia with no idea their grim jobs will be made exponentially more challenging by local law enforcement, who resists the Army’s intrusion and stonewall them at every turn.
As Cook and his squad struggle to uncover the truth behind the condemning evidence, the pieces just won’t fit — and forces are rallying to make certain damning secrets die alongside the victims in the murder house. With his own people in the cross-hairs, Cook takes a desperate gamble to find answers — even if it means returning to a hell of his own worst nightmares...
It feels like a cold fist has just punched my gut. “You’re not staying with me?”
He curses. “Are you nuts? How long do you think me and my Little Bird will last if I stay up there, like a goddamn fly on a tabletop? The muj will start dropping in mortar rounds in about ninety seconds.”
The rocky surface rushes up.
“Nope,” he goes on. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes to pick you up, head back to the FOB. Hope you can get your business done in that amount of time. You got a gold pass for one round trip, and that’s it.”
I tense up because at our rate of descent, my mind is screaming at me that we’re going to crash, but being the expert he is, Chief Cellucci works the controls and flares us up, the twin landing skids barely touching the ground.
He slaps me on the shoulder. “Go! Get the hell moving before I get a mortar round in my lap!”
I get the straps and buckles undone, reach behind me, get my rucksack, open the side door, and toss the rucksack out. I take off the borrowed crash helmet and shift and drop to the ground — making sure I land on my good leg — and I close my eyes and hold my breath as I’m engulfed in a whirling cloud of dust and kicked-up small rocks.
With a humming roar, the Little Bird lifts off and then dips into a ravine, until all I hear is the dimming noise of the engine. Then it pops back into view, and I spot Cellucci as he hugs the contours of the nearest ridge, waggling back and forth, like he finally wants to show off.
Fair enough.
I grab my rucksack and start toward the hidden bunkers of OP Conrad. I notice faded white PVC tubes stuck in the dirt — homemade urinals — and there is netting hanging up, and dirt berms, and HESCO barriers, made of metal webbing and about the size of large freezers, filled with rocks and dirt. There are antennas and satellite dishes, and one, then two, then four men emerge from a dirt entrance, like spelunkers coming up after being lost for a month.
“Hey,” I say.
The four men come closer, and now I understand why Cellucci couldn’t raise the outpost’s radio.
The four men are wiry, tall, bearded, and wearing the traditional sandals, cotton pants, sheepskin vests, and flat wool hats of Afghan villagers.
And fighters. All are carrying AK-47s, with belts and pouches around their skinny waists.
With horror, I realize that at some recent point the Taliban must have overrun this place. I drop my rucksack on the ground, hold out my hands — I have my service weapon holstered at my side, but going for it would be an instant death sentence — and I say, “Hey, does anyone—”
The closest one yells something I don’t understand and then hits me in the stomach with the butt of his AK-47.
Chapter 89
The hearing room in the Sullivan County Superior Courthouse is packed, with not a single seat available along the two sets of four long wooden benches. Before the benches is a wooden bar with a swinging gate, and to the left is the juror’s box, which is empty. Captain Allen Pierce and Dr. John Huang are standing against a wall near the doors leading into the outer hall. Only by showing their CID badges and appealing to the patriotism of the courthouse attendants were they able to get in.
Huang says, “What a circus.”
Pierce doesn’t say a word, just takes it all in. Across from the empty jury box are two tables and sets of chairs. One table is occupied by District Attorney Cornelius Slate, sitting slumped in his chair. The other table and chairs are empty, and that’s where Pierce expects Staff Sergeant Caleb Jefferson to show up in a few minutes. At the other side of the enclosure is a witness booth, the raised bench for the judge — also empty — and another booth that looks to be occupied by an older African American woman, probably the court clerk. Two male uniformed court attendants stand by the judge’s bench.
Huang nudges him with an elbow. “Look. Over there. Do you see who has a prime seat?”
Pierce spots Sheriff Emma Williams sitting in the first row, with her campaign hat in her lap, and she’s laughing and whispering to everyone near her.
Huang says, “She looks happier than hell. Why is that?”
Sheriff Emma Williams checks her watch. In a few minutes that old fool Judge Howell Rollins will come in — hopefully not stumbling after his usual breakfast of two Bloody Marys — and get this show on the road.
She smiles as she takes in all of her people in the courtroom and doesn’t even break her smile at seeing those two sad-looking Army folks standing over there against the wall, like theatergoers who were promised orchestra seats and now are forced to stand throughout the show.
And what a show today promises to be. Behind this courthouse is the Sullivan County Jail, and that place is hers. Boyd Tolliver is in a two-person holding cell, and when that double-crossing piece of shit Staff Sergeant Jefferson pleads guilty and is sent back there, in preparation for being transferred to a state prison, well, the official story will be that he attacked this poor citizen out of rage, and said citizen had to defend himself.
The other two will be taken care of later, tonight or early tomorrow morning.
Of that she has no doubt.
And the woman CID agent who nearly got her head blown off, Williams heard late last night from a nurse at the hospital that she’s in a coma and probably won’t make it. She rubs at a healing scratch on her hand. Hell, even those two redneck clowns she put down a couple of days back near Hunter Army Airfield haven’t yet been reported missing.
Then... Tuesday, Election Day, and the day after, she’ll start packing her bags.
Williams scans the room, seeing her people. Will Fletcher, who took out a loan from her four years back when his dump trucks needed repair and will be paying off the loan for another three years. Moss Gray, who refused to give her a cut of his ’shine business, and whose two sons are now doing time over in Georgia State Prison. Ray Cass, who illegally dumps waste oil and gasoline from his three service stations in the local state forest, and who is going to do a favor for the sheriff late tonight, by disabling the bay doors for the Ralston Volunteer Fire Department so they can’t respond when an electrical fire breaks out at the Ralston jail, incinerating the poor prisoners incarcerated there.
Just the two, of course, but that will be enough.
Williams catches the eye of the tired-looking Chinaman standing back there and gives him a little wave and a smile.
Huang nudges the JAG lawyer with his elbow. “Did you see that? Did you? She waved at us. A big smile and she waved at us.”
Pierce says. “Confident little witch, isn’t she?”
Huang whispers again, “You don’t understand.”
“Then clarify it, Doc. The games are about to begin.”
“The sheriff is more than just confident,” he says, recalling the look on her face. “She’s taunting us. She’s telling us that no matter what happens today, it’s all going to come out in her favor.”
Pierce says, “That’s news? Staff Sergeant Jefferson is pleading guilty.”
“No, it’s more than that,” Huang says, desperately trying to keep his voice low. “Remember our stay at the jail last night, when the jail attendant told us that she heard the DA had pissed off the sheriff by getting that guilty plea? That humiliated her. She’s not a woman to be humiliated.”
A door at the far end of the courtroom opens, and an older man with snow-white hair and wearing black robes slowly comes in.
The woman clerk calls, “All rise!”
Huang whispers, “Allen, I think she means to kill the staff sergeant.”
Chapter 90
Afghanistan
Once my eyes adjust to the gloom of the bunker’s interior, I see five men of various ages and beard lengths staring at me, four of them sitting against a rough rock wall with AK-47s leaning against their knees. The one without an automatic rifle is minding a little gas stove that is heating up a kettle of water. A sixth one, who disarmed me earlier, is about to go through my rucksack.