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Overview
To most people, Maj. John Rexford is a retired Marine living in the Catskill Mountains of New York on disability. Even John’s girlfriend, Maggie, has no idea he’s really a CIA spook recruited in Afghanistan and assigned to kill enemies on US soil.
With exemplary skills in hand-to-hand combat and small arms weaponry, John Rexford completes a string of successful kills, eliminating terrorists and their money supply in the New York Metropolitan area. With the FBI hot on his trail for these illegal assassinations, John must find a way to stop an international team of explosives experts from destroying New York City’s aqueducts, killing thousands with chlorine gas, and burning the five boroughs to the ground. During his mission, John runs afoul of a high level underworld assassin who uses his mastery of yoga to silently strangle his victims. When the assassin discovers John’s one liability—his girlfriend, Maggie—John will have to make a terrible choice between her life and the capture of her abductor.
This tightly scripted story begins with a terrorist plot and gradually turns into a clash between two professional killers, with the lives of both John Rexford and Maggie hanging in the balance. As the characters collide with deadly force on the streets of New York in Cut and Cover, the line between right and wrong blurs, long-standing loyalties are questioned, and no one is really sure, even if they succeed, what the final outcome will be.
Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781510701502 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 10/06/2015 |
| Sold by: | SIMON & SCHUSTER |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Kevin Hurley draws his inspiration from a family history of military service from the Korean War to present-day Afghanistan, as well as from his martial arts interests. His professional career includes consulting for private sector corporations and government agencies, and he is a board-certified entomologist specializing in EPA regulations. He lives in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York where he is an avid cyclist and practitioner of Yang-style tai chi chuan.
Read an Excerpt
Cut and Cover
A Thriller
By Kevin Hurley
Skyhorse Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Kevin HurleyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5107-0150-2
CHAPTER 1
BROOKLYN
"Do they think we're fools?"
They turned their backs toward the white Ford Econoline parked up the street, rubbed their mouths, and smoothed their beards to frustrate lip readers.
"Apparently," Abdul replied. "I'll take the next bus when it pulls up. You take the one on Lafayette. I'll meet you there."
"There? At the bus?"
"No, you ass, at the place." His cousin hadn't paid attention during the English classes they attended at BOCES. Abdul always had to spell it out for the fool. "I'm sure the house is ready?"
"The house is ready."
"Allah Hafiz," said Abdul.
"Allah Hafiz."
His cousin walked east toward Lafayette Avenue. Abdul stood by the curb and waited for his bus. A Hyundai Sonata with chrome wheels and four muscled teenage boys, dressed as the magazines taught them, menaced and boomed hip-hop and rolled down the street in arrhythmic pulses of brake and accelerator. Abdul glared at them, thought better of it, and turned away.
Abdul looked to the pavement and prayed that Allah would forgive his negativity. Black gum winked up at him from the sidewalk, shiny and smooth from countless footfalls. The tarnished wads were compressed into the concrete, jagged onyx against a gray and glass-sparkled backdrop. Residual antifreeze had pooled along the curb, unnaturally green as it lifted oil and dust from the road.
The persistent thump-thump, thumpthump beat of the urban jungle gnarled his sensitive ears, clawed at his thoughts, and burned his blood to scabs. Gas fumes slid into his nostrils and muddled his thoughts like cheap perfume. A coupon for Kennedy Fried Chicken stuck to the street next to his sandaled feet, glued in place by sugary soda and road sand.
A drop of sweat slipped off his tanned and wrinkled brow, held for a moment on one long lash, and splashed into his eye with a salty burn. He raked his finger over the socket to soothe the itch, but pushed too hard and scraped his eyeball so even more tears gushed out. He tried to blink away the irritation and temporary blindness.
The closed left eye compromised his peripheral vision. His right eye spasmed and twitched in sympathy. A rumbling came from down the street. The beat coming from the Hyundai dwindled as the rumble grew stronger. Abdul's ears focused on the bass sound to compensate for his temporary sightlessness.
What is it? Just the city bus. Praise Allah. It was the 38 going back over to Lafayette. It wouldn't stop here. He would wait for the 26 bus.
Abdul blinked harder through his tear-filled eyes and made out a blurry flock of pigeons fighting for position on the mosque's dome. A man on a bicycle? A delivery guy? Riding so close to the bus? Some swine at least tried to keep their bodies sound, though their minds remained cesspools.
He tilted his head skyward, extended his neck, closed his eyes again, and said a quick prayer to Allah for his health. More tears rolled off his cheeks. The Brooklyn 38 bus rumbled and hissed as its driver tapped the airbrakes.
The long-bladed dirk cut through Mohammed Abdul Bari's slender trachea, sliced his larynx, and ground his esophagus against his spine. His carotid artery hung helpless in two parts, pouring his life into Brooklyn's catch basin.
* * *
"Put it up on the screen again. Play it again."
Kieran Gilchrist raised his voice one decibel beneath a barking St. Bernard's and pointed his finger at the play button on the computer touch screen. He tapped it twice in frustration. The surface sponged in and out, leaving a ghostly fingerprint as the gas in the monitor expanded and contracted. The technician slid the mouse over the play button and clicked it once. A black and white image on the computer screen began to play. Kieran watched the recording made by the FBI stakeout team that had been positioned on Lafayette Avenue in the Ford Econoline.
"What do you see, sir?" Stephen Walker asked the senior official in charge of the FBI's Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence division, who stood at his right shoulder and exhaled warm coffee breath onto the screen. Desktop tappers annoyed Stephen, but in the interest of self-preservation he kept his opinions to himself.
Stagnant air hung in the room of the White Plains satellite office because the HVAC engineers hadn't been able to get the thermostats to work with any accuracy. Kieran stared at the image on the screen, his brows knit together, his ruddy complexion a contorted portrait of primal angst. He loosened his tie another inch and unbuttoned his collar.
Kieran resembled a fading professional wrestler, minus the steroids and greasy hair. He had piled thirty extra pounds on his muscular frame since the divorce, and it made the dry heat that much more unbearable.
"Play it again." His voice was more a yip than a bark this time.
"I can put it on repeat, and we can watch it over and over," said Stephen, in a practiced balance between helpfulness and sarcasm.
"Play the damn thing." Kieran's hoarse, growled response initiated quick clicks from Stephen's adept fingers.
They watched the screen replay four more times, believing nothing would change, but hoping for different results. The eye becomes bored by repetition, but the brain might rearrange the images until something changes and a clue appears.
The blue and white Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus came into view on the screen's right side in a mosaic of fuzzy gray pixels.
"Stop." The command grated a nerve that ran from Stephen's right ear to tense muscles in his neck. He clicked the mouse and froze the digital world that had captivated the last forty minutes of their lives.
"Is this the first time we see the bus?" said Kieran.
"Yes, sir," Stephen replied.
"And on the left, that's the first time we have Abdul Bari on the screen with the bus?"
"Yes, sir." Stephen moved the mouse over Abdul Bari's image to show he knew what was going on, confirming which of the Arab-featured people on the busy Brooklyn street was their man.
"Why is the 38 bus coming down our street? That bus route goes from Lafayette to DeKalb Avenue. Why is it down here on Graham?"
"We checked, sir," Stephen replied. "There was construction on the normal route, so the driver was in the process of cutting down a few blocks and then cutting back up to Lafayette. The driver —"
"In the process? What do you mean, 'process'?"
"Just, just that he is driving, sir," Stephen said. "I mean he is in the proc —"
"Who's the driver?" Kieran wiped his forehead with his sleeve and left a gray stain on his white, heavily starched cuff.
"Jeffrey Hirsch," said Stephen. "He's been with the MTA for eighteen years. Big fat guy, two kids, and no connections to crime. He's a dead end, sir. Another schlub doing his job. He was back at the bus depot before we even got ahold of him. He had no idea what happened. He kept going and made the next right. The agents said he cried, he was so scared. Like a baby."
Kieran scissored his meaty fingers through his thin red hair and rubbed both sides of his tense jaw until the tendons crackled. Pressure bands released in his skull. He dropped his right hand to his navel and scratched through his undershirt.
"Forget him for the moment," he said. "He never stopped anyway. He couldn't have reached out the door and cut our guy, unless his arm was seven feet long. How high are the bus windows?"
"There are different models of this bus ..." Stephen realized his mistake too late.
"I don't care about any model but this model. Understood?"
"Yes, sir."
"Go on."
"None of the windows open," said Stephen. "The bus — this bus — is air-conditioned and the windows are sealed. Only the door opens to let people on and off."
"In and out. People don't get on the bus. They get in it."
"Yes, sir."
"What about the other passengers?" "There were none, sir," Stephen replied. "His route doesn't officially start until he gets up to Lafayette."
"Put a picture of a Brooklyn MTA bus on the screen."
Stephen performed a Google Image search and pulled up the model of the bus Jeffrey Hirsch drove. Kieran noticed that even if the door was open, a killer would have to lean way out and down to reach someone of normal height who was standing on the sidewalk. It was unlikely.
A driver posed through the large tinted windshield: a multiethnic model who satisfied the MTA's politically correct photo op requirements. The MTA would have everyone believe no one was black, white, or Hispanic in Brooklyn anymore. To portray Brooklyn as a multihued rainbow of racial bliss couldn't be further from the truth. Kieran snorted at the hypocrisy.
"And the bus windows were intact, none broken, all the seals in place?"
"We had two agents push all their body weight against every curbside window. They didn't budge; all the seals were in perfect shape. The bus is fairly new."
The closest seat was up front, curbside, and a few inches from the door. If the bus slowed down and the driver opened the door, a well-trained, physically fit, and nearly acrobatic assassin could lean out and slice a throat. A rider could have jumped down into the stairwell where passengers boarded, and dealt the killing slice. But Jeffrey Hirsch would have to have been an accomplice or a hostage for this theory to ring true. Someone had to open the door to the street.
"You sure you found out everything about this driver?"
"Hirsch is a union member waiting to get his pension," Stephen replied. "He loves the job. Everyone on the route knows him. No religious affiliation, but he was born a Catholic. He's forty-two, five foot nine, 240 pounds of Almond Joy, minus the almonds and the chocolate." Stephen checked for a grin, saw a frown, and continued. "His wife's a nurse, and his kids get good grades. Nothing remarkable about him, except the fact that he spent the last eighteen years driving that bus route and didn't kill himself."
"Don't hypothesize unless I ask you, Walker," said Kieran. "This unremarkable bus driver is the only person close enough at any time to assassinate Bari. Unlikely, but he's all we have for now."
Stephen kept his eyes forward on the MTA bus he had Googled.
"No openings anywhere on the curb side of the bus where someone could slide a knife through, say, at neck height?"
"No openings anywhere on that side, sir. Except some baggage storage below." Stephen moved the cursor to the baggage compartments and made a few circles with the cursor. "But it's not used because these buses are short-run. We checked it out. Nothing but cobwebs in them. The latest models don't even have storage. This was the last one made with this design."
Kieran exhaled and attacked his itchy naval again, convinced something from the dry cleaners caused the irritation. He put both hands in his pockets, spun a quick circle in place, and jangled some loose change.
"How fast was the bus going?"
"Look at the screen's lower right-hand side, sir," Stephen said. "There's a mile-per-hour indicator." He pointed to it with a flick of the cursor. "The bus is traveling at about thirty-two miles per hour when it comes into the screen, taps its brakes lightly once, and slows down to about twenty-two as it approaches the subject. It maintains that speed until it gets close to the end of the block and, of course, slows to make the turn."
"Of course. Roll it again. Let it roll from the top, and stop before we lose sight of Bari."
Stephen clicked replay.
"Stop just before we lose sight of him." Kieran stared at the flat screen. "Close-up on the face." Mohammed Abdul Bari's eyes were shut as he faced the sky. Tears slid down his cheeks. Was he emotionally distraught? Did he want to die? Did he see the blade coming and stand there like some pacifistic suicidal recipient? Why didn't he move? Maybe Bari didn't know it was coming, maybe he was unprepared to die. But why was he crying?
"Who kills a man on the street in broad daylight, Walker? And what man stands there and lets his neck be sliced like a holiday turkey?"
"If I may, sir?" said Stephen.
"Go ahead."
"As to who killed him, the weapon's simplicity lends itself to an Al Qaeda or other trained soldier making a statement about a traitor. And this is what happens to bad jihadists when they get out of line."
"Go on." As much as Kieran rode Walker, the young man interpreted the meaning behind the silence inherent to surveillance videos better than most. In fact, Walker improved with no sound, whereas most people were lost with full audio. To mute one's sense of hearing sharpens the viewer's eye, and leaves his mind open to possibilities buried by the brain when it has to simultaneously sift through both audio and video. "And the tears?"
"I don't believe he's crying, sir," said Stephen. "The rest of his facial muscles are flexed slightly upward. This indicates a "presmile," if you will. This man was, if not happy, at least content for the moment."
"Happy he was going to die?"
"You mean these are tears of joy for the afterlife?"
"Perhaps he was waiting for the knife like a fly waits for the spider to crawl down the web. Maybe he'd given up."
"Take a look at his eyebrows, sir. Notice they're pulled forward, toward the center of his brow."
He leaned a little closer to the screen. He didn't know what it meant, but he might never have noticed without Walker.
"When a person is in a presmile, the eyebrows involuntarily come closer together as the cheek muscles lift upward," Stephen explained. "You have to try and lift your eyebrows upward if you're ready to smile. That would be a put-on face, an act. This man isn't acting. Also, the upper eyelids droop slightly in this expression. Please try it, sir. You'll see what I mean."
Kieran pulled the corners of his mouth back a little and felt his eyelids droop the slightest bit.
"Do you see, sir?"
"Maybe. So what?"
"He isn't faking," said Stephen. "If he was ready to die, or lifting his tearful eyes to Allah in acceptance of the knife with his head in the position, chin up," he pointed at the screen, "his eyebrows would have been lifted in a passive expression. Like Jesus is portrayed on the cross."
"So you don't think Bari is ready to die. You think he probably doesn't even know he's going to get his throat slit like a sheep, and he's happy as a clam because the bus is coming?"
Stephen offered a slight laugh at the similes. Kieran remained straight faced.
"It's useless for us to conjecture why he might be smiling," said Stephen. "But we know he's happy or, at the very least, content."
"Then why, Sam Spade, is he crying?"
"Spade? Sir?"
"Don't sweat it, Walker. There's no app for that. You will agree that he's crying?"
Walker closed in on Bari's face a few more percentages and scrunched his eyebrows together.
"I wouldn't say crying. I think his eyes are watering from the sun, or some irritant. He's not unhappy. He's not giving up his spirit. He has no reason to cry, in the emotional sense. He has tears. We shouldn't read anything into it without more evidence. Based on his face, I would let that theory drop, sir."
"Then why did Hirsch tap the brakes?"
"He probably tried to slow down for the curb. You have to let a little pressure out at a time, so the bus doesn't jerk the passengers."
"But there were no passengers, Walker. The bus was empty."
"It's a habit. He's slowing down a little for the curb."
"Maybe he had to slow down to get a good angle on Bari. A signal to someone next to Bari to take action."
"Maybe," said Stephen. "But I think it's the way they all drive, letting off brake pressure to ease into the corner."
Or maybe, Kieran thought, Hirsch's accomplice has learned to hide between the pixels of this two-dimensional screen.
They rolled the tape until the sun went down.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Cut and Cover by Kevin Hurley. Copyright © 2015 Kevin Hurley. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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