Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [97]
Fingers touched the side of his cheek and Mickey loudly yelled out. “Hey!”
A stupid tree branch!
He almost had a heart attack. Mickey then ran like a midget halfback bound for seven across the last icy patch of back lawn.
Halfway there, his metal lunchbox popped open. It just about exploded as an orange, rolled-up papers, a thermos tumbled out.
Mickey Kevin dropped the lunchbox.
He crashed up the back steps and got his hand on the cold metal stormdoor.
And then…
Then Mickey Kevin turned. He had to look back.
His chest was pounding nonstop now. Ka-chunk, ka-chunk, like a huge machine was inside there. Making ice or something equally noisy to hear. He had to look back.
Nobody was there!
Nobody was following him at all.
Oh brother! Oh boy, oh boy.
Nobody was behind him.
Nobody!
It was completely quiet in the backyard. Nothing moved. His lunchbox lay overturned in the middle of the snow. It glowed a little in the dark.
Mickey squinted real hard.
He was feeling pretty stupid now. He’d made it all up; he was almost sure of it… Except he still wasn’t going to go back and pick up his fallen lunchbox. Maybe in the morning. Maybe in the spring some time.
What a little baby! Afraid of the dark! He finally disappeared inside the house.
Mary K. was dicing vegetables with a big knife on the butcher block in the kitchen. The TV was turned on to Mary Tyler Moore.
“How, was practice, Mickey Mouse? You look beat up. Wash, huh. Dinner’s almost ready. I said—how was your basketball practice, fella?”
“Oh, uh … I don’t know how to do a stupid layup. It was okay.”
Then Mickey Kevin smoothly disappeared, slid like a shadow into the downstairs bathroom.
He didn’t wash his hands and face inside, though. He left the overhead light switched off.
Mickey Kevin very slowly rifted a handful of lace bathroom curtain. He stared out into the dark, very creepola backyard, squinting his eyes tightly again.
He still couldn’t see anybody.
The stupid cat, their stupid cat Mortimer, was playing with his lunchbox. There was nobody else. Nobody had really chased him, he was suddenly sure. He couldn’t see anybody…
He couldn’t see the real-life bogeyman watching the Carroll house from the darkened back lot.
Chapter 72
IT WAS JUST AFTER FTVE O’CLOCK when an Army colonel named Duriel Williamson emphatically strode into a windowless office hidden away inside the thirty-four-acre Pentagon complex.
Carroll was already waiting in the Spartan, bureaucratic green room.
So was a Captain Pete Hawkins, who had formally escorted Carroll from the visitor’s pickup desk, back through the dizzying grid of tightly interlocking Pentagon corridors.
Colonel Williamson was outfitted in the full dress uniform of the U.S. Special Forces—including a blood-red beret, cocked jauntily. Colonel Williamson’s hair was short and bristling, a salt-and-pepper crew which looked appropriately stern. His voice was starched as well, but showed heavy hints of irony.
Everything about Duriel Williamson said: no bullshit permitted here. State your business, mister.
Captain Hawkins made the introductions in a polite if strictly formal military fashion. Hawkins was clearly a career bureaucrat, a survivor.
“Mr. Carroll from the Defense Intelligence Agency, on special assignment by order of the President… Colonel Duriel Williamson from Special Forces. Colonel Williamson is stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Colonel Williamson was David Hudson’s immediate superior during both phases of his Special Forces training. Colonel, Mr. Carroll is here to ask you some questions.”
The Special Forces officer put out his hand to Arch Carroll. He smiled amicably, and most of the preliminary nervousness and formalities dissolved. “Glad to meet you, Mr. Carroll. May I sit down?”
“Please, Colonel,” Carroll said. Both men sat, followed by Captain Hawkins, who would remain in the room for the interview, a matter of protocol.
“What is it you need to know about David?”
Carroll’s eyes widened and rose from a short, written list of questions he’d