Nobody’s Hero (Ben Koenig #2)

Chapter 65

Koenig used his Fairbairn–Sykes to dig the bullet from the tip of his boot. If it had been a TV show, he’d have said something like ‘Get this to the lab.’ But it wasn’t a TV show, so he threw it in the trash. He knew who’d fired it.

They were already over the Atlantic. Alan the copilot had wanted to fly to the nearest commercial airport, but Draper wasn’t in the mood. She told him that he was flying them to DC, and if he quit bitching, there’d be a six-figure bonus in his next pay cheque.

The Gulfstream was a lease, but it had been retrofitted for Draper’s private intelligence company. There were three main compartments. The front was the seating area. Four luxurious leather seats, cream-coloured. Two on each side, facing each other opposite elegant teak tables. Each seat had its own oval-shaped porthole. They were flying through the night, so the shutters were down. The middle section was the intelligence hub. It was on the other side of a soundproofed door. Computers, a printer, a cabin wall-mounted TV screen, high-tech communication equipment. A narrow table. Bunch of other stuff Koenig didn’t recognise. The third section was the smallest. It contained the galley, the bathroom, a basket stretcher and defibrillator (seemed Draper’s guys occasionally got into the odd scrape), a safe and a secure equipment locker.

Margaret handed Koenig a frosty bottle of Blue Moon. ‘That was a very brave thing you did, young man,’ she said. She had paled in the last thirty minutes, and she had already been whiter than salt.

Koenig drained half the bottle. It felt good. He said, ‘I got lucky.’

‘It was more than luck,’ Carlyle said. ‘There was something unsettling about the way you walked towards those men, Ben. They had body armour and machine pistols. You had nothing, yet you didn’t seem concerned. Your calmness made them panic. What am I missing?’

‘I guess you’re not the only one with secrets,’ Draper said, taking the seat beside him. She was carrying a laptop. ‘And the Pentagon won’t commit to full body armour for the exact reason Koenig exploited. Until the mobility issues have been resolved, it isn’t combat-ready.’

Draper opened her laptop. ‘Now, I have to tell Pete’s parents their son is dead.’ She glanced at Koenig. ‘What are you going to do?’

He touched an imaginary cap. ‘Police work, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Police work, Benjamin?’ Margaret said.

‘I’ll go through the reports on the men and women who Bess thinks have been murdered. I used to be part of the oldest law enforcement agency in the country. Crime detection is in my DNA, Margaret.’

‘So is arrogance,’ Draper said.