Henley didn’t answer immediately. Grant was correct in his assumption. It wouldn’t matter, not for what he had planned. “Easton. Fred Easton.”
Grant had a blurry picture of someone in his mind. A man. “The little bastard by the elevator?”
“Correct.”
A moment of dizziness caught Grant by surprise. He squeezed his eyes shut, tilting his head back, waiting for it to stop, as nauseousness crept over him. “What the …?”
“Still not feeling so hot?”
Only then did Grant make the connection. Drugs. “Jesus! What the. hell. did you… give me?”
“Couldn’t pronounce them if I tried.”
The dizziness slowly subsided. He kept trying to untie the rope, but his fingers just wouldn’t work. “How’d you manage to find me tonight? How’d you know where I’d be? You couldn’t have posted surveill … ” His eyes narrowed as he answered his own question. “A homing device.”
Henley nodded. “Even that didn’t make it easy. You kept ‘disappearing,’ sometimes for days at a time. Your precious Vette would stay parked in the garage. Of course, with my full-time job, I couldn’t always track you. I’m assuming that’s when you got most of your ‘work’ done.”
Grant still couldn’t imagine why the hell Jack Henley had become a traitor, and why he wanted him dead. “Why, Jack? A big fucking why’d you do it?”
“Doesn’t your current situation remind you of anything?”
“My current… situation?”
“The night you and Joe found me and Vicky at the old airfield in England. Isn’t this how you found us? Tied, beaten?”
Grant’s shoulders went slack. “This is about your wife?”
Henley waved the gun in front of him. “You’re goddamned right it’s about Vicky! Isn’t that reason enough?! She died because of you!”
Grant was stunned. He was still weak from low blood pressure, and his voice kept giving out. But he couldn’t let it go, and he verbally struck back. “Vicky took her life because she couldn’t come to terms with what she did! She betrayed you, Brits, Americans, and herself! And you know that’s the… fucking truth, Jack!”
Henley stepped directly in front of him, leaning close. “No!” he shouted. “You and Joe took your fuckin’ time trying to find her even when I asked you to! All you could think about was tracking down that sonofabitch Labeaux or talking to Torrinson, when you could’ve been looking for her!”
Grant suddenly realized Henley had “gone off the deep end” months ago. If he could only convince him he needed help… before he pulled the trigger.
“Jack, look, right now we both need to calm down. C’mon. Untie me. Once we’re outta here, we’ll find… ”
“Bullshit!”
Grant took a deep breath. Okay. Different approach. “Listen, Joe and I made our decision to retire in part because of what happened to Vicky.”
Henley slowly lowered the Beretta, trying to make sense of Grant’s statement. “You… ”
“That’s right! Don’t you think for one goddamn minute her death didn’t weigh heavy on us, too, Jack! Why do you feel so goddamn sorry for yourself?”
“What the fuck do you mean?”
Grant closed his eyes, as dizziness swept over him again. His voice was getting more hoarse. “What?”
“I said, what the fuck do you mean?!”
“Oh, yeah. Do you believe you’re the only one who’s lost somebody close?”
“What does that have to do with you and me?!”
Grant took a deep breath. His brain was telling him to keep talking, bide for extra time. But he didn’t know why. “I lost my wife, too.” Henley’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. Grant continued, “I’m… I’m pretty sure I told you… that night we ran into each other at that pub. My wife Jenny died while I was in Nam. I couldn’t get home in time to be with her. She died, all alone. I never forgave myself,” he added quietly. A longer moment of coherency and Grant struck back. “But you were the only one who could’ve stopped your wife, gotten her help. Why didn’t you, Jack? Because you’re nothin’ but a weak ‘dick!’” Uh-oh, Grant thought.
“You sonofabitch!” Henley lunged forward, swinging his weapon, the barrel striking just above Grant’s temple.
Grant’s body rocked sideways, the chair nearly tipped over. Dazed, he felt warm blood dripping down the side of his head. His vision blurred, but he could tell Henley was backing up with his Beretta held at arm’s length. Even if he could somehow move out of the line of fire, turn, fall over, anything, Henley would take more than one shot.
Grant lowered his head. He pushed too far. He had to face the fact — he was a dead man. He exhaled almost all the breath left in him. After all the combat missions, Vietnam, the death traps, hell holes, all the risks taken, yet here he was about to die in a dark, damp basement, at the hands of a former Navy commander.
Henley kept backing up until he was ten to twelve feet away, making sure he had an easy, accurate shot.
Grant was powerless to do anything. “Jack, don’t. do. this.” But he knew it was going to happen. “Jack!!”
Henley took aim, and pulled the trigger.
Two bullets found their mark. One struck Grant in the right shoulder, just missing his collarbone, the jolt sending him and the chair backwards. His head hit hard on the concrete, knocking him out.
The second round penetrated Henley’s chest. The impact from the hollow point slammed his body against the wall, with the round fragmenting, maximizing tissue damage, causing rapid blood loss. He fell forward. His body landed on the concrete with a sickening thud.
Fred Easton walked past Grant, verifying he was unconscious, then he stood over Henley’s body. He knelt on one knee, with his S&W .357 Magnum held tightly. With the size of the wound, and the amount of blood loss, Henley should’ve been dead, but Easton checked for a pulse anyway, surprised to find one, weak, but still beating. Standing up, he kept looking at the man who had mentally lost it.
In the beginning, he was confident they could pull it off. He also believed he would never come under suspicion for the theft of top secret documents. Henley had assumed full control. But then Henley found his chance to turn the theft into a personal vendetta, telling him he planned to kidnap, then kill Grant.
They could have ended it right after they drove away from the garage, in some deserted field, or alley, or even the river. Instead, they brought Stevens here, to suffer, as Henley put it. Easton saw there was only one way to end it, to protect himself. He’d get rid of Henley.
He checked for a pulse again. Nothing. Turning away, he walked back toward Grant. He debated. Should he finish what Henley started? Stevens not only knew his face, but his name as well. He’d just answered his own question. He moved his arm forward, aiming the weapon at Grant’s head.
An explosion of sound erupted within the confined space, as Adler and Novak came rushing in, firing simultaneously. Rounds struck Easton in center mass, with more penetrating the upper chest. His body spasmed as each round hit him. He stumbled backwards, falling against the cinder block. Staring down, unbelieving at blood pouring from his chest, he slowly slid down the wall, his body crumbling.
Adler and Novak cautiously moved forward, keeping their weapons aimed. Adler knelt near Grant, but kept his eyes on Easton.
Novak moved closer, kicked away the .357, then got down on a knee, and checked the carotid artery. “Deceased,” he said as he crawled over to Henley’s body. “Ditto.”
They holstered their weapons. Novak crawled next to Grant, as Adler’s knife sliced through the ropes binding his wrists and legs. Then they lifted him off the chair and laid him on the floor.
Adler crawled behind him, then sat on his own haunches before gently lifting Grant’s upper body off the concrete. He scooted closer, enough for Grant to rest against him, keeping his shoulders above his heart. Novak pressed his hand over the wound. Blood flowed more swiftly then they expected.