Highway to Vengeance: A Thomas Highway Thriller (2 page)

Fighting back tears, I said, “I love you,
baby. I love you so much.”

But Josie’s eyes were already closed. She
was gone.

And now, so was I.

CHAPTER TWO

A few hours later I was sitting alone at my
dining room table with a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. The cap
and plastic seal that I’d broken less than forty-five minutes
earlier were still lying on the table in front of me.

Nothing was on; no lights, no television, no
stereo, nothing. My only company was the constant hum of the
refrigerator and the occasional and fleeting rattle of a passing
car. I was wallowing in the silence, using the alcohol to drown out
my thoughts, trying desperately to get this day over with in the
false hope that the next one wouldn’t hurt quite so much.

I took a lengthy plug straight from the
bottle of Jack and managed to get less than half the amount into my
mouth. The rest spilled on my chest. I idly wiped the whiskey off
my shirt and my hand came away smeared in red. It took me a moment
to realize that it was Josie’s blood. I hadn’t bothered changing my
clothes since she’d died in my arms.

I sat there, staring at her blood on my hand
and thinking about how far I’d come in the past few years—from an
angry, ultra-intense, hardcore Navy SEAL with a severe attitude
problem to a love-struck sap who couldn’t stop smiling and
laughing—all because of Josie. It was a transformation that neither
I nor anyone that had ever known me would have ever imagined
possible.

Before Josie, my worldview had been as
pessimistic as it got. I’d kept my sanity mainly by treating
everything and everyone I brushed up against with casual
indifference layered with a heavy dose of sarcasm. She had tempered
me with her optimism, helped me to enjoy life, taught me to focus
on the good things and let everything else slough off my back like
water on a turtle’s shell. I loved her for that. Loved her more
than anything in the world. And now she was gone.

Some time later I realized someone was
knocking at the front door. The bottle was still in my hand. I took
another drink and stood up and walked over and opened the door.

Standing on the porch was my one and only
true friend, Dave Willis.

Willis was an enormous man, standing 6’5”
and sporting 250 pounds packed on a lean frame with long, powerful
muscles. His hair was cut tight against his skull, his face clean
shaven, his jaw carved from granite. As always, he was stuffed into
a shirt that was at least two sizes too small, accentuating his
massive upper body even further.

We had known each other since our freshman
year in college. We spent four years playing baseball together at
the University of San Diego, the last three as roommates. After
graduating, we went our separate ways; me into the Navy and Willis
into professional baseball.

Willis played in the minor leagues for a
couple years before a series of injuries prematurely ended his
career. He came back home and opened a Security and Investigations
Company with the help of his father, a retired LAPD detective. I
occasionally did some work for them on the side, when the need for
my singular skills came up.

“How are you holding up?” Willis said.

“I’m still pretty much numb.” I held the
bottle up. “And trying to stay that way, as you can see.”

“I thought you were supposed to lay off the
heavy stuff since the accident?”

“I am. And I hadn’t had a drop until today.
But I figure I get a free pass this one time.”

“Makes sense.”

“I thought so too. Well, come on in.”

Willis walked past me, stopped, and waited
uneasily. Normally he was the ultimate alpha male, immediately
dominating every room he walked into, unafraid to say anything to
anyone at anytime. But on this night he was visibly uncomfortable.
He didn’t know what to do with his hands and he kept on shifting
his weight from one leg to the other. Under normal circumstances it
would have amusing, but right now, amusement was the last thing on
my mind. I simply closed the door behind him, walked over to the
couch, and sat down. Willis settled into the recliner next to
me.

“What did you find out?” I asked.

“I talked to my contact in the department,”
Willis said. “The cops found the car that hit Josie. It was
abandoned in the zoo’s parking lot.”

“Did they get anything off it?” I asked,
even though I was certain I already knew the answer.

“No. The vehicle had been wiped clean of
prints.”

“Figures.”

“But they were able to track the car back to
the owner.”

“Let me guess. It was a dead end.”

Willis tilted his head slightly. “It was
reported stolen an hour before the accident. How’d you know?”

I shrugged.

“Don’t give me that shit,” Willis said.
“What’s going on here, Highway? What haven’t you told me?”

I took another pull from the bottle of Jack
and thought about how to approach things. I decided on the direct
route.

“Josie’s so-called ‘hit-and-run’ wasn’t an
accident,” I said. “Somebody had her killed.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. I saw the whole thing go down.
Trust me, it was deliberate as hell.”

Willis pondered this for a moment. “I assume
you didn’t say anything about it to the cops?”

“Hell no. I didn’t tell them shit. I’ll
handle it myself.”

“That’s what I figured,” Willis said. “Do
you have any idea who was behind it?”

“Actually, I do.”

“Hang on,” Willis said. He pulled a small
notebook and a pen from his pocket. “Alright, talk to me.”

“The man behind it is David Russo,” I said.
“He owns an import/export company down in Chula Vista.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Willis said.
“What’s the name of the company?”

“Russo and Sons.”

Willis jotted this down. “What makes you
think this Russo guy was behind it?”

“Josie was defending some kid who worked for
him on a drug arrest,” I said. “Apparently, Russo owns a warehouse
that’s the back end of a cross-border tunnel from Mexico. The kid
was going to cut a deal and turn in Russo in exchange for
leniency.”

“And you think Russo had Josie killed so the
case against him wouldn’t move forward?”

I nodded.

“But why kill Josie?” Willis said. “The kid
she was defending still knows what he knows. He’ll just get another
lawyer and start the whole process over again.”

“No he won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was found dead in his cell
earlier today, hanging from the bars with a shoelace around his
neck.”

“He killed himself?”

“That’s what they claim,” I said. “But after
what happened to Josie, I’m not buying the suicide angle.”

Willis looked up from his notes and leveled
his gaze at me. “So you think Russo had them both killed?”

“Yes.”

Willis pursed his lips and nodded absently,
pretty much dismissing my theory with his demeanor.

“You think I’m grabbing at straws, don’t
you?” I said.

Willis shrugged. “I don’t have enough
information to know anything with any certainty, but your theory
does seem a bit far-fetched.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, suppose you’re right about the first
part, that Russo was responsible for the death of Josie’s client.
Why then would he still go after Josie?”

“Because she’s the only other person that
knew what her client knew.”

“I understand your reasoning,” Willis said.
“But with the client dead, Russo’s case goes away. There’s nothing
Josie could do with the information. Russo isn’t in any jeopardy.
Therefore, he’d have no reason to kill her.”

“Maybe Russo didn’t know that,” I said. “Or
maybe he just didn’t want to take any chances.” I took another
drink from the Jack, wiped my mouth with my sleeve. “Or maybe
there’s a piece of the puzzle that I’m missing.”

“Or maybe you’re jumping to conclusions to
try and make sense of your wife’s death,” Willis said.

My head snapped up. I caught Willis’s eyes
and held them with a steady gaze.

He met my stare without flinching. “Don’t
get me wrong. I’m not saying that Josie wasn’t murdered. And I’m
not saying Russo wasn’t behind it. But you don’t know anything for
sure.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know for
sure.
Yet
. But I
do
know Josie is dead. And I
do
know her client’s dead. And I
do
know that they
were both killed under mysterious circumstances shortly before they
were going to make a deal with the District Attorney that would
have implicated Russo on some extremely serious charges.”

“But that’s all you
know
,” Willis
said. “And you need to remember that. If you go into this thing
confused between what you know and what you think you know, then
what’s really going on might slip right past you unnoticed.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
Willis was right. If I was going to have any chance of seeing this
thing through, I needed to be open to all possibilities, not locked
into one.

“I guess I am overreacting a bit,” I said.
“Sorry about that.”

“You don’t have anything to apologize for,”
Willis said. “And trust me, we’re going to find out what happened
to Josie. I promise you that. I’m just trying to make sure you
approach the situation with the right mindset.”

“I know. And I’m sure I’ll appreciate it
later, but right now, it’s kind of hard to see things
rationally.”

“That’s completely understandable,” Willis
said. “But you have to get your mind straight before you go any
further with this.”

“I know,” I said. “And I will.”

“All right. Then on to business. What do you
need from me?”

“A full work-up on Russo,” I said. “Anything
and everything you can get a hold of, no matter how small it may
seem.”

“I’ll start on it tonight,” Willis said.
“What else do you need? A clean weapon? A new set of wheels? A
fresh cell? A place to hole up for a while?”

“You think all that’s necessary?”

“If you’re going to do this thing, you might
as well do it right. You have no idea where it’s going to lead.
Might as well prepare for the worst case scenario right from the
beginning so you’re not scrambling later.”

He had a point.

“I tell you what,” I said. “Just set me up
the same way you’d set yourself up for a job. Do whatever you’d
normally do.”

“Sounds good,” Willis said. “How soon are
you looking to get started?”

“A few days,” I said. “I want to begin as
soon as the funeral’s over.”

“You sure you don’t want to take a little
time to grieve? Get the emotions out of your system?”

“That’s what the next few days are for,” I
said. “After that, I’m not going to shed another goddamn tear until
whoever’s responsible for her death is in the ground too.”

BUD/S TRAINING: GUT-CHECK

It starts at just after three in the
morning. One hundred and fourteen prospective SEALs, varying in
ages from 18-29, out in the courtyard, bustling around in the dark,
trying to line up in formation, instructors screaming the entire
time, trying to invoke confusion. Eventually we arrive in the
correct positions.

It begins with pushups. Fifty of them. With
water being sprayed in your face. And an instructor yelling at you
to do them correctly. Back straight. Arms locked. Up. Down. Up.
Down. All the while reminding you that this is only the beginning.
That there is no success like failure, and that failure is no
success at all.

Next come sit-ups. One hundred. Then
pull-ups. Twenty. Instructors screaming more insults. More water,
sprayed onto your chest, your legs, your head, into your face. Then
squats. Then duckwalks. Then frog steps. Then back to pushups as
the cycle begins anew.

Two hours straight of this and your muscles
are nearly spent. Exhaustion sets in and your mind starts
whispering at you to quit, just give it up. And this is just the
beginning of the first day. Things haven’t even begun to get
difficult yet.

Finally the morning sun starts to peek out
from behind the haze. You head to the next evolution. A 1000
yard-long obstacle course nicknamed The Grinder. With a 75
foot-high net wall and a climbing apparatus twice as tall. Two
hours of running, jumping, crawling, climbing, swinging. Constant
motion. There is no let-up, no breaks. Again instructors barking,
telling you to go faster, get up that ladder, you’re too slow, too
weak, too pathetic to continue on. Just give up now. Save yourself
the pain. Ten minutes later, you’ve finished the course. A
30-second breather and then you get to start right back at it.
After two hours, your forearms are burning, your fingers are numb,
your legs are wet noodles. And then you’re done with this
evolution. On to the next one. On to the beach.

Once there, you get to run four miles. On
dry, loose sand. In combat boots and fatigues. Soaking wet. In
under 32 minutes.

Nobody makes it. More insults. It’s only
going to get worse, the instructors say. Just quit now. You can’t
hack it. Failure equals pain. Put out or get out.

And then you make a mistake. Leave before
you’ve been dismissed. Or talk out of turn. Or don’t answer a
question promptly. Or just plain look at an instructor wrong.
You’re told to get wet and sandy.

You run down to the 56 degree water, get
soaked, then roll in the sand until you’re covered from head to
toe. Top of the head. Behind the ears. Eyelids even. A human
sandcastle. And if you’re not sandy enough, more pushups. Twenty.
And then you get wet and sandy again. God help you if you aren’t
sandy enough the second time.

The next evolution is surf passage. Six man
teams, paddling out on their inflatable boats, into twelve-foot
waves, getting flipped over once, twice, three times before making
it past the surf break. And once you get past, it’s time to turn
around and paddle back in. Getting flipped again. Head over heels.
Sucking in cold, salty saltwater. Coughing it out. Nose burning.
Foam spraying in your face. Stinging your eyes, forcing them
closed, confusing you even further. And then you find the ocean
floor. You plant your feet and push off, praying you break the
surface of the water before your lungs run out of air. Finally you
reach the surface. Fresh air. You gasp, catch your breath. Then you
need to regroup. Find your paddle. Flip the raft back over. Climb
in. Paddle back to the shore, hoping not to get flipped again. You
reach the sand, climb out, lift the raft over your heads. Arms on
fire and legs filled with cement, you carry the three-hundred pound
raft back to the instructors. You line up in formation.