Echo of War Read Online Free PDF Page A

injured?” Meriweather said. “Can we—”
    â€œMy wife,” he panted. “They took my wife!”
    Seventy-five miles away in Gloucester point, Joe McBride was enjoying one of his favorite hobbies: late-night vintage horror movies. Tonight he’d lucked out and found the 1960 Vincent Price version of The Fall of the House of Usher. As far as McBride was concerned Price was the king of what he liked to call “creepy campy.” Humor and terror all in one.
    The phone jangled on the end table. McBride started, nearly spilling his popcorn. He glanced at the clock: three A.M. Who the hell … “Yeah, hello.”
    â€œHey, Joe, it’s Charlie Latham. Sorry to call so late.”
    â€œCharlie … Jesus. You scared the hell out of me.”
    â€œLemme guess: Horror movie?”
    â€œYep— House of Usher. ”
    â€œGood one. Listen, we need your help.”
    This caught McBride off guard. He knew Charlie from having worked with the FBI on several cases, but they’d never worked together. Latham’s bailiwick was counter-espionage; McBride’s, kidnapping. “Who does? You?”
    â€œNo, the higher-ups. They know we’re friends, so—”
    â€œThey thought you’d have more luck getting me to say yes.”
    â€œThat and lure you out this late at night.”
    â€œI’m retired, Charlie.”
    â€œConsultants don’t retire—they just take longer vacations.”
    McBride chuckled. “What’s going on?”
    â€œA big one, something up your alley. We’ve got an agent on the scene who’ll explain everything.” McBride hesitated. There was some truth to Latham’s jibe: Being freelance, he could slip into and out of retirement as he chose, and he’d done so several times in the past few years. That was the problem with doing what you loved for a living: What was the point in retiring?
    â€œOkay. I’ll take a look,” McBride said. “No promises.”
    â€œFair enough.”
    â€œWhere am I going?”
    â€œA little town called Royal Oak on Maryland’s eastern shore. A helicopter will be waiting for you at Fleeton.”
    McBride hurriedly got dressed and drove the thirty miles up the coast to the Fleeton airstrip. As advertised, a Maryland State Police helicopter was waiting, its rotors spinning at idle. The pilot stuck his hand out the window and waved him aboard. Five minutes later they were airborne and heading east across the bay to Whitehaven, where they landed in a farmer’s field. From there a Wicomico County sheriff’s deputy drove him three miles to the scene.
    Through the wrought-iron gate McBride could see a dozen unmarked and marked police cars lining the driveway to the two-story Cape Cod. Figures milled about the open front door. McBride could hear the overlapping crackle of radios and murmured voices. Yellow police tape fluttered in the breeze along the stone wall.
    McBride felt that old familiar swell of excitement in his chest. He took a deep breath to quash it. Big case, big stakes. Retirement be damned. Still, there was part of him that wanted to turn around and go home. Exciting as they were, kidnapping cases took their toll on him, dominating his every thought and emotion until the case was resolved—and sometimes beyond that when things finished badly.
    McBride had come to the “hostage talker” business largely by accident, having stumbled into it during his junior year at Notre Dame as he watched a police negotiator secure the release of three bank tellers taken during a robbery gone awry. This one man, standing in the midst of a dozen armed cops, a coked-out and twice-convicted felon with nothing to lose, and three hostages who didn’t know if they would live to see their families again, had turned an impossible situation into a miracle. The robber went to jail and the hostages went home to their loved ones.
    The next day McBride