Noble Warrior (28 page)

A bloodless revenge, served cold.

I don't want to take his life
, M.D. told himself before he'd broken into Krewls's house.
I just want his destiny to unfold. But Stanzer…

McCutcheon picked up his knife and put the eight thousand dollars in cash back in his pocket.

“Where's your cell phone?” M.D. asked.

“On the counter.”

“I need it.”

M.D. scooped up Krewls's phone and looked at the screen. Guy didn't even use a passcode lock. McCutcheon put it into his pocket. Krewls reached out and grabbed M.D.'s arm.

“Please,” Krewls said. “Don't.” His eyes were red and bloodshot.

M.D. glared at the hand that clutched his sleeve, and the memory of the guy not named Timmy flashed across his mind.

“Remove your fingers or I will snap every joint in your hand.”

Krewls, unable to offer anything more than puppy dog eyes, released his grip and McCutcheon headed for the door, a ghost about to disappear.

Target one
,
executed
.

McCutcheon left the house and vanished.

Krewls, still at the kitchen table, dropped his head into his hands, no idea what to do. Then he spied something. A small item. Sitting on the cheap floral tablecloth, an option for his destiny
revealed.

There they were, lifeless yet profound. A pair of shoelaces.

T
hree hours later McCutcheon sat in the corner booth of a red-and-white diner in the city of Lansing, Michigan, making sure to face the front
entrance at a diagonal angle so he could see every patron that either left or entered the establishment. To his right, thirty feet away, a path to the restroom. Beyond that a swinging door that led
to the kitchen, which was sure to have a back exit to the street.

From this point forward, any place he entered would need at least two ways out.

He eyed the menu. Chicken-fried steak. Deep-fried catfish. French-fried potatoes, home fries, mozzarella sticks, deep fried.

A waitress approached.

“May I please have a large salad, no dressing, no croutons, extra tomatoes, carrots, and cucumbers?”

“Sakes alive, that sure is healthy.” The waitress's laugh caused her rosy cheeks to jiggle. “Sure you don't wanna try the meat loaf?”

“Just a salad, please. But a big one.” M.D. smiled. “I'm kinda hungry.”

“They ain't that big.”

“Can you make it a double?”

“You want two of 'em?”

“Yes, please.”

“A double it is.” The waitress jotted down a note and scooped up the menu. “That sure is one heck of a memorable order. Most folks who come in this time of day are looking for
taters, beef, and gravy.”

McCutcheon held the grin on his face, but behind his smile he knew he'd just made a mistake. Being remarkable, standing out in any way, was not what he wanted to do. Being notable made him
memorable, and being memorable made him easier to track.

Hunger, he realized, had clouded his judgment. So had a lack of sleep. He ought to know better than to order something so atypical in a place like this. It was an amateurish slip-up, a silly
blunder, but serious enough to cause M.D. to hit the pause button and take stock of his situation. Yes, he wanted to go, go, go, but upon deeper reflection he knew he couldn't continue at
this pace. If he did, more errors would continue to stack up. Avoidable ones. The kind that might cost him his life.

Sometimes, he realized, the fastest path forward required putting on the brakes.

M.D. took a deep breath.
Slow down
, he said to himself.
Take some time, recuperate, and think things through.

In the Notes section of Jeffrey's cell phone, McCutcheon opened a new, blank page and typed in the word “
NEEDS
.” Underneath, he typed the
letters
F
,
R
,
T
, and
P
, each on its own line.

F
stood for
Food
. His body needed nutrition. Check. Though he'd slipped up in the way he'd ordered his salad, M.D. knew a plump, pleasant waitress in an
unexceptional part of town that he'd never been to before would not be his downfall.

No need to be paranoid, he thought. No one was chasing him. At least not yet.

R
stood for
Rest
. Best plan would be to jump on a bus so that someone else could do the driving, and he could shut his eyes for a few hours on the way to his next destination.
Not a bus out of Lansing, though. After the gaffe with the salad, M.D. decided it would be safer to depart for his next destination from a different city. This led to the
T
section of his
list:
Transportation
.

After eating he'd steal a car, drive somewhere within a two-hour radius, dump the vehicle, and catch a Greyhound. He'd have to be careful about where he stepped off the bus, though.
Best for it to be a city he'd never previously visited. This meant he'd need yet another form of transportation afterward. But what, steal another car? No, something more efficient,
more nimble, and stealthy. A motorcycle. Yeah, that sounded good. But not a hot one. A bike that he'd purchase. But how?

He looked at Krewls's phone and decided to deal with the details of this part of things a bit later.

Overall, each move McCutcheon plotted would allow him freedom and mobility, but changing the mode of how he would get from place to place three times in the next twelve hours felt like a smart
way to cover his tracks. It was the Squiggly Line Theory, no direct paths from A to B. No patterns, no footprints, no discernible sequences, or designs. Move, vanish, move, vanish, move vanish,
then appear.

Puwolsky and Stanzer would never know what hit them.

M.D. looked back down at the
P
section of his list. The
Plan
required more attention. McCutcheon sat back, closed his eyes, and allowed the worn padded cushions of the oval
restaurant booth to support his full weight. He was tired. He was hungry. He had much to do. He also hoped the waitress would hurry up and deliver his salad. With a little luck, she'd be
smart enough to bring him a nice, tall glass of water, as well.

The diner's front door opened and three men dressed in jeans, long-sleeved shirts, and work boots entered. They grabbed a booth four spots down from McCutcheon and debated about whether to
go for the chicken-fried steak or the meat loaf. Nothing to worry about, M.D. thought, and he returned to considering his plans. Pinching a car would be easy, he knew, because all security measures
were only as strong as their weakest link.

What was an automobile's weakest link? Its key, of course.

M.D. had been taught that once automobile manufacturers began installing engine immobilizer systems into all their vehicles, stealing cars had become ridiculously hard. It's why Stanzer
never bothered to train McCutcheon in the art of hot-wiring a ride. Modern cars contained uniquely programmed microchips in their ignition keys, a technology super tough to crack or circumvent. No
key, no start, no way around it.

Yet even though technology had advanced leaps and bounds, people (Stanzer explained) were as gullible as ever.

“Why steal a car?” Stanzer said. “All you really need to do is have someone hand you the key?”

“And how do you do that?”

“Through social engineering.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It's the art of exploiting human vulnerabilities,” Stanzer said. “And for the modern-day soldier, it's a must-have tool in your arsenal of weapons.”

Hour upon hour of studying behavioral psychology made Stanzer believe he understood most people better than they understood themselves.

“Still not sure I get it,” M.D. said.

“Look at it like this,” Stanzer replied. “Think of yourself as a hacker of humans. What three qualities do most human beings possess?”

“Eyes, ears, and a nose.”

“Very funny,” Stanzer said. “Number one, most people view themselves as good. Number two, most people view themselves as helpful. And number three, most people want to be
liked. Choose your target according to these parameters and then exploit that person's weakness.”

McCutcheon shook his head. “You're evil.”

“I'm effective,” Stanzer replied. “There's a big difference.” Stanzer went on to explain how lots of people possessed car keys, and that all M.D. needed to do
if he ever found himself in search of a ride was to find someone to hand him a key. McCutcheon scanned the restaurant.

Hmm, maybe the waitress?

“Here's a double-size salad for you, honey. I combined it all into one large bowl to make it easier for ya. That okay?”

“Perfect,” M.D. said. “Thank you.”

“And for some reason, I don't have you fixed for a soda pop,” she said handing McCutcheon a tall glass of water.

He smiled. “With a wedge of lemon. You've got my number, don't you?”

She returned the grin. “Yes I do. Need anything else?”

“Actually,” McCutcheon said, “would you mind changing the channel? Stories like this depress me.”

The waitress spun around and looked at the television screen hanging off the wall.

“You got it, hon,” she answered. “World's got some good stuff in it, too, but you wouldn't know it from watching the TV.”

“That's true,” M.D. said.

“Me, I try to look for the good in folks,” the waitress said. “Try to do it each and every day. Flat out lose my mind on this planet if I didn't.”

She clicked off the television and M.D. thought about her last words.
Looked for the good in people every day, did she?

“Oh, one more question,” M.D. began before she walked away.

“Sure thing,” the waitress said. “Anything, honey.”

McCutcheon took a second before making his next request. “What's the biggest hotel in the area? You know, the largest one that's nearby?”

“Oh, that would be the Grand,” the waitress responded. “Only a few blocks away.”

“Think they're full today?”

“Well,” she said, “there's a dentist convention down at the Lansing Center this week. Few thousand folks talking about teeth for the next three days. They might have some
rooms left. You want me to call for you?”

“You're too nice,” M.D. said with a grin. “But I have my phone right here. I'll just Google it. And by the way,” M.D. added as he punched his fork into a big
bowl of leafy greens. Scamming the waitress out of her car wouldn't be right. Only a jackass would socially engineer a working woman like her. “This looks really good.”

“We aim to please,” she said before disappearing back into the kitchen. McCutcheon plunked a bite of food in his mouth and gazed back down at the screen of Krewls's cell
phone.

Eat slowly
, he told himself.
All the answers will come soon enough.

It wasn't long before M.D. cooked up a plan to score a car and then drive it to the bus station in Kalamazoo, 75.8 miles away. Obtaining a motorcycle afterward, he realized, would be
something he could easily take care of on the Greyhound via the Internet before he napped. Still there was the bigger issue of how to ensnare Puwolsky and terminate Stanzer. Each would be
difficult, he knew. Each for different reasons.

M.D. plugged the phone charger into the wall so he could juice Jeffrey's cell to max capacity, and then set up a news alert on Krewls's phone. If any information bubbled up across
the Web about a prison break, the cell would flash an immediate notification.

So far it appeared Jeffrey had remained quiet. Probably would for a while, too, but M.D. knew it was only a matter of time before Stanzer discovered McCutcheon had escaped. To orchestrate a plan
to eliminate a covert operative guaranteed that the colonel would follow up in order to make sure all the
i
's had been dotted and
t
's properly crossed. M.D. might be
free for the moment, but the clock was undoubtedly ticking.

His best defense, he knew, would be to play offense. Attack the two men and bring the battle to them. After a few more of forkfuls of salad, McCutcheon began to cobble the ideas together. His
first order of business, however, before he could launch any sort of offensive, would be to cover his flank. He knew he wanted to attack his enemy's greatest weakness, but he also knew that
their first order of business would be to attack his. Stanzer, once he got news about McCutcheon's escape, would without a doubt be thinking in this manner.

Before advancing any further, M.D. would need to double back.

He thought about calling home, but couldn't risk the phone lines being tapped, so for the next thirty minutes M.D. toggled back and forth between his two cells and his fork, setting into
motion details of a new plan as he ate his meal. Having cell phones, he realized, was far more valuable to him than owning guns. Funny, he thought, how the aims of battle had remained the same for
centuries, but the weaponry with which warriors could attack had changed greatly.