“It's all right. It's all right,” I consoled him. I put my arm around Damon's shoulders and we headed home.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Sixty

Thomas Starkey, Brownley Harris and Warren Griffin took separate flights to New York City, all leaving out of Raleigh-Durham Airport. It was safer and a lot smarter that way, and they always worked under the assumption that they were the best, after all. They couldn't make mistakes, especially now.

Starkey was on the five o'clock out of North Carolina. He planned to meet the others at the Palisade Motel in Highland Falls, New York, just outside the United States Military Academy at West Point. There was going to be a murder there. Two murders, actually.

Then this long mission was over.

What was it Martin Sheen's commanding officer had told him in Apocalypse Now? “Remember this, Captain. There if no mission. There never was a mission.” Starkey couldn't help thinking that this job had been like that for them a long haul, a relentless nightmare. Each of the murders had been complicated. This was Starkey's fourth trip to New York in the past two months. He still didn't even know who he was working for; he'd never met the bastard.

In spite of everything, he felt confident as the Delta flight took off that evening. He talked to the flight attendant, but avoided the kind of innocent flirting he might do under other circumstances. He didn't want to be remembered, so he stuck his face in a Tom Clancy thriller he'd picked up at the airport. Starkey identified with Clancy characters like Jack Clark and John Patrick Ryan.

Once the jet leveled off and drinks were served, Starkey went over his plan for the final murders. It was all in his head; nothing ever written down. It was in Harris's and Griffin's heads, too. He hoped they didn't get in any trouble before he got to the Point tonight. There was a raunchy strip club in nearby New Windsor called The Bed Room, but they'd promised to stay at the hotel.

Finally, Starkey sat back, closed his eyes and started doing 'the math' again. It was a comforting ritual, especially now that they were close to the end.

$100,000 apiece for the first three hits.

$150,000 for the fourth.

$200,000 for the fifth.

$250,000 for West Point.

$500,000 bonus when the entire job was done.

It was almost over.

And Starkey still didn't know who was paying for the murders, or why.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Sixty-One

Sharp, steep cliffs of granite overlooked the Hudson River at West Point. Starkey knew the area well. Later that night he drove down the main drag in Highland Falls, passing cheesy-looking motels, pizza shops, souvenir stands. He went through Thayer Gate with its turreted sentry tower and stone-faced MP on guard. Murder at West Point, he thought. Man oh man.

Starkey put the job out of his mind for another few moments. He let impressions of West Point wash over him. Impressions and memories. Starkey had been a cadet here, been a first-year plebe like the two youngsters he saw jogging back to barracks now. In his day he'd shouted the cadet motto' Always the hard way, sirl'over a thousand times if he'd shouted it once.