Lonely Road

By Patrick Ford

When Peter Andrews is called to British Columbia to identify the body of his brother, he finds himself embroiled in an international plot to greatly damage the United States.

It was a plot that has been ten tears in the making, the brain child of a Middle East madman.

Peter meets Lucy, a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the famed 'Mounties', and together they battle to uncover and foil the plot.

This is an explosive and erotic story, filled with action,a story that will get your heart racing, a story that shows how vulnerable we are to the actions of any meglomanic with an insane agenda.

It reminds us once more that the price of peace is eternal vigilance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick Ford
• Release date: Apr 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386690733

Patrick Ford

Patrick has had an interesting life – student, soldier, farmer, accountant, teacher. He is widely travelled and loves history. His wide experiences have given him deep well of knowledge from which to draw inspiration for his stories. He writes from his home in rural Queensland and produces what Aussies call “a bloody good yarn”.

Book preview

1: It Has to Start Somewhere

Canada is the second biggest country in the world, measured in area, almost ten million square kilometres, with fewer than thirty-five million people. Outside the big cities, it is easy to remain undiscovered if that is what you set out to do. The man in the olive drab rain slicker may not have had this in mind, but right now, he was doing just that. He lay face down, as if asleep, in the gutter of a lonely road, about ten kilometres from the town of Trail, in British Columbia, only a few hundred yards from the US border and the State of Washington. Just on dusk that Saturday evening, in July 2012, Dave Grills and two of his friends came along the road in Dave’s battered old Dodge pickup; they had been celebrating long and hard in the bars of Trail, and they had taken a wrong turning about ten minutes before. Dave pulled up the Dodge. Hey, guys, this is the wrong road, let’s turn around.

His friend Tony said, Wait, I need to take a leak, before tumbling out of the cab to the roadside, stumbling to the gutter, tripping, and falling. He looked back to see the man in the olive drab rain slicker lying on his face. Dave, he called, Come see this. Between them, they rolled the man onto his back, only to recoil in horror. The man had no face. Tony stumbled further into the woods beside the road and vomited. Dave reached for his cell phone.

It took the Mounties half an hour to get there. Dave recognised the first of them to leave the car. It was Inspector Robert Clewes, the man in charge of the uniform section of the Trail Detachment. Clewes was a big, hard faced man of perhaps forty-five years of age, reputed to be a man who treated suspects harshly. He looked at the body and turned to the three teenagers standing pale-faced by the road. Do you know this person? he demanded. The boys, by now almost sobered up by the shock of their discovery, told him what had happened. Clewes looked them up and down before telling his companion, an attractive woman of about thirty, to take their details. Go home, boys, he said. Be in my office by ten tomorrow. We will need you to sign statements. Now leave the policing to me. By now, the coroner and a hearse had arrived. Clewes left it all to the scene of crime people and moved over to his companion, Corporal Lucy Thompson. What do we have here? he said.

I guess we will have to wait for the forensics and the coroner to tell us, she said. That face looks like something out of a horror movie. It looks as though someone has gone to work on him with a carving knife.

Clewes said, It’s strange that he was here. This road doesn’t see much traffic. He thought about it for a while. "Maybe that’s why he was here, he said, unlikely to be found in a hurry. Oh, well, we should know more in the morning. Let’s go home."

The town of Trail is located astride the Columbia River, about ten kilometres from the US border. It lies between the Monashee mountains to the west and the Selkirk mountains to the east. Here, shielded from most of the eastbound weather systems, the summers are hot and dry. In winter, the ranges protect the town from the worst of the wintry winds, although snow is common. Trail is home to over seven thousand people, mostly of European descent. It is a company town. The giant mining conglomerate, Tek Cominco, dominates the local economy. Here Tek has established the largest lead and zinc smelter in the world. In addition, it built the Waneta Dam on the Pend D'Oreille river near its junction with the Columbia river; the energy generated by that hydro scheme provides power for the smelter, and the town, with excess fed into the grid of BC Hydro. Tek employs almost two thousand of the town’s seven thousand inhabitants. The RCMP has a large facility in Trail, not only for local policing, but to liaise with the Americans only a few miles downstream, and to house and work with various agencies to do with immigration and national security.

At ten the next morning, Inspector Crewe and his squad awaited reports on the body found alongside Kelso Road. Dave Grills and his friends had arrived and given formal statements about their find; now they were waiting on the scene of crime people and the autopsy. By noon, they had it all. It was a curious business, thought Lucy. Some things didn’t add up here, she felt. The scene of crime report stated the obvious. The man showed no sign of what had killed him apart from the damage to his face.

Identification was easier. The man had a travel wallet on him. Marked in bold colours, ‘Xtreme Travel, Brisbane’ it contained a passport, travel papers, itinerary, credit cards and other personal effects. They took his fingerprints and sent them to the databases in Ottawa and Washington. Then they considered the autopsy report.

There was no other injury apart from the damaged face. The torture to his face has killed our man; he would have bled out eventually, said Dr Offerton, their forensic pathologist. "They have subjected him to a lengthy period of torment, possibly two or three days. You can tell that they inflicted the wounds one after another, his eyes and his entire face destroyed a layer at a time, nose, ears, and lips all missing. He must have upset some lovely people. I think they killed him elsewhere and transported him to this place, probably in the trunk of a car. There is hypostasis, as you can see. Blood has settled along his left side, and there are signs of heating, probably by the car muffler, on the same side."

Toxicology? asked Crewe.

No results back yet, but no apparent signs externally of poisoning, no signs of a regular drug user. We will have to await the test results.

Ok, said Crewe, bag him and tag him and put him in the freezer. We will have a look at these papers and see what they tell us.

THE PAPERS IDENTIFIED the body as that of Ross Douglas Andrews, aged forty-five, of the suburb of St Lucia, in the city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It bore many endorsements; the man had travelled extensively. Peter James Andrews, with a vague address: ‘ADF PO’, in Sydney showed as the next of kin. There was a digital camera, an expensive one, but the man had no watch or ring or other personal jewellery.

Lucy switched on the camera and scrolled through the images. There was nothing personal, just photos of the tourist parts of Vancouver, the Okanagan and Penticton, mountains, forests and streams and some wildlife, elk and once, a beaver. There was nothing there of importance to the case. However, Lucy remembered a special unit in Vancouver specialising in such things. She thought it could tell, at least, deleted images, maybe even retrieve them. She suggested this, but Crewe dismissed the idea immediately.

The fingerprints did not make a hit. That was not surprising; an Australian citizen would have to be a really bad guy to be in their systems. Crewe had them sent to the Australian Federal Police in Canberra. They didn’t know it then, but there would be no positive report from the Australians either.

Just then a call came in - there had been a multiple homicide on the west side. The Kelso Road case got pushed out of the limelight.

2: Mistaken Identity

At Tarin Kot airbase , Afghanistan, Major Peter James Andrews of the Australian army boarded the RAAF transport that would take him to Sydney, the news he had just received swirling in his head. Ross was dead. He could not believe it; like him, his big brother had never had a sick day in his life. Both had grown up in the seventies, before a fearful nanny state legislated fun out of a child’s existence; there had been football injuries and lots more in the small Queensland town where they had been born. They had grown up tough and self-reliant. How could this have happened to Ross?

In Sydney, they told him about the discovery of his brother’s body in Canada. So far, that tallied. Ross had recently emailed him about a sabbatical he had planned. Ross was a motorcycle tragic; he had intended to ride right across Canada, down to New York, west to Chicago, and then to retrace Route 66 to California. Ross had plenty of money and six months in which to do it, and he was plenty excited about it; he had not gotten far. His CO offered Peter six weeks of compassionate leave. The RCMP wanted him to go to Canada to identify the body, and they had offered to pay his travel costs. As he was the only remaining member of his family, he felt he just had to do it.

AS QANTAS FLIGHT 07 surged east and north into the night, Peter settled back in his seat, a cold beer at hand, and reviewed the lives of his brother and himself. They had been born in a small outback town, Oakbridge. Their father, Donald, had been the police sergeant there. They had grown up in a carefree and liberal atmosphere, despite the staid Presbyterian upbringing of their parents. Their grandfather, too, had been a policeman who had come to Australia from Glasgow after World War 2. Oakbridge offered many opportunities for two strong and energetic young boys with more than a modicum of adventurous spirit. There were vast expanses of paddocks and farms and a nearby forest of Cypress Pine. Their friends constantly invited them to their farms, where they learned about firearms and bushcraft, horses, and four-wheel-drive vehicles. They both played rugby and excelled. They were not big men, just under six feet in height, with the slender tough build of their Scottish ancestors, light on their feet, fast, and with a natural endurance. A physical life beckoned them.

Ross had been clever at school and his parents scraped together their meagre savings and sent him to the University in Brisbane. He studied physics, got a Doctorate, and worked as a researcher; but he was closemouthed about his work, even with Peter.

Peter loved the work of his father’s police officers, and he haunted the police station. He wanted to be a policeman but changed his mind the day the army recruitment display visited their tiny town. This looked so much more exciting! They looked at his school reports and suggested he apply to the Royal Military College for officer training. To his surprise, the army selected him. His family was grateful for this, in those days, a police sergeant’s salary not at all lucrative', and they could not afford another child at University. The army would pay all his expenses and give him an excellent job at the end, plus discipline and an attitude to life of which his parents would approve.

Peter excelled in the army. He grew to like the ordered life, the traditions, and the certainty the army offered him. He graduated in 1990, near the top of his class, just as Desert Storm and the liberation of Kuwait dominated the headlines. It might have been the fascination he had with his father’s work or not, but he topped the class in military law with a record score. The CO asked him in for an interview, tapping his desk with his swagger stick, and leafing through his personnel reports. Mr Andrews, he said, Have you ever given any thought to joining the Military Police Corps?

Peter had, but he had other ideas. He wanted to test himself against the best, to become one of the world’s elite, the Australian SAS. Besides, their fellow soldiers who were all their potential targets dislike military policemen. No, sir, he said, I’m not interested in that line of work. The CO was sanguine about that. He knew how the other ranks regarded MPs. He could have ordered the boy to such an appointment, but he did not believe in trying to put square pegs in round holes. Lieutenant Peter Andrews found himself posted to the 4th (Commando) battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment. His journey into the special forces had begun.

He and his brother had never married; their work consumed them both. Peter decided not to make some young woman a single mother with a dead hero husband and father who, one day, might come home in a flagged draped coffin. They were both attractive to young women, and in the casual and open sexual climate of the time, had no shortage of lovers.

By 2008, it had involved him in many peacetime operations with a few UN-sanctioned postings and the Australian led operation that had successfully overseen the foundation of the new nation of Timor Leste, formerly the colony of Portuguese Timor. He had been on five rotations now to Afghanistan, firstly to fight the Taliban up close, secondly to bring peace and order to the Australian sector of responsibility. It had been hard going, never without danger, for there was no front line, and your colleague today might be your killer tomorrow; now he understood a little of his uncle John’s Vietnam experience.

FOUR MONTHS AGO, THE army withdrew him from his task of training Afghan soldiers to take over responsibility for their own security and gave him leave. He went back to Brisbane and looked up his brother. Ross took a weekend off and they spent it by the blue Pacific, (not that Peter needed a suntan), and in the bars and restaurants alongside it.

On their last night, over dinner, Peter tried to break the long thick wall of silence over just what kind of work Ross was doing. Bugger me, Roscoe, he said, it can’t be that important! His brother just gave him an enigmatic smile, almost a big brother’s smile of superiority.

Pete, I can’t tell you anything about my work, not even who I actually work for. I am officially employed by the University as a researcher, and that is what I do.

There must be more to it than that. You certainly earn more than a mere captain; look at your apartment, your car, not to mention that Harley Davidson you play with all weekend.

Well, you know I studied physics. I still research that field, but some of it is confidential, you know. If I told you, I’d have to shoot you!

Peter left it at that. They turned to talk of Afghanistan, and Ross’s great bike ride he had planned for the northern summer two years hence. Why don’t you come with me? he said. Six months away from all those bastards trying to shoot you would do you the world of good.

However, Peter could not have six months’ leave, even if the offer tempted him a little. He stayed at the beach for the rest of the week before reporting to his Sydney headquarters. On Monday, he reported to his CO.

THE COLONEL HAD A MUCH-decorated brigadier with him in his office. Peter saluted and took the proffered chair. Well, Pete, said the colonel, Where do you go from here? There was a brief pause. Meet Brigadier O’Connell. He has a proposition for you. O’Connell wore the insignia of the General Staff, not Corps badges. Peter wondered what this signified.

Captain, he said, I am the Military Police representative on the General Staff. I want you to come and work with me. There is a promotion in it.

That was not such as good an incentive as it might have seemed, since Peter was due for promotion soon, but it intrigued him that policing had reappeared in his life. What is the job, sir? he asked.

Captain, I don’t know how much you know about modern military policing, but the old stereotype of doing traffic duty and hauling in drunken soldiers is long in the past. Within the current security environment since 9/11, things have changed exponentially. Our need now is for investigators, not arresting officers. We want clever and smart men. You were a star at military law once and your combat experience will be invaluable.

But sir, I don’t want to leave my regiment. It is the cream of the crop. I don’t want to be another desk driver.

You wouldn’t be, replied the brigadier. it would embed you within your own unit and would operate in the field with it. The Americans have been doing this for years. They call them ‘combat MPs’. These boys don’t carry desks but carry computers and rifles. I think you will feel right at home. Soon after, Peter found himself at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri learning about his new trade. Three months later, he re-joined the regiment in Afghanistan. He had learned more about the fascinating arts of forensic science and crime detection than he could have imagined. Now he understood how much his father had loved his job.

WHILE PETER ANDREWS sipped, and pondered, and finally slept, Corporal Lucy Thompson also sipped on a Canadian Club and ginger and pondered; but she did not sleep. She had a gut feeling that there was something wrong here.

Why had Inspector Crewe dismissed it out of hand with no further examination of the SD card from the camera? Why was there so little blood on the jacket? The coroner had said it would have taken the victim a long time to die. Why move the body? Why was the corpse not wearing a wristwatch or any personal jewellery? He carried an expensive camera; surely, he would have had a watch? Why had the Inspector neglected to submit a DNA sample immediately? It’s obvious who the dead man was, he said. Why give the overloaded coroner an unnecessary task?

She had asked him why he had adopted such a cavalier attitude toward the body. We know who he is, Crewe had said. His brother’s on his way to ID him. We’ve got better things to do with our time.

But, sir, shouldn’t we be following up on the other materials like the carpet fibres, toxicology, and the autopsy? We don’t even know the cause of death!

Are you deaf, Corporal? What did the coroner say?

"But sir, he wasn’t sure; he said the facial injuries probably caused death."

The officer rose to his full height, his face red and his eyes blazing. How dare you question my actions? I was a policeman before you were born. Get out of here... now!

LUCY WAS A HIGHLY INTELLIGENT young woman. She had grown up on a cattle ranch southwest of Calgary, close to the Rocky Mountains, along with three brothers who treated her as just another brother. She was strong minded and self-reliant, and she did not appreciate being