BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) (46 page)

With a last burst of energy she raced across the yard, listening to Dylan banter with Boggs, knowing he was trying to buy time, knowing he could salvage less than a minute more—perhaps only seconds.

She reached the corner of the house, then clawed at the straps of the backpack, frantic to get it off …

“You’re still going to die!
Right now!”
Boggs shouted, so long that the cell phone speaker crackled.

“Sure, sure, because you have a back-up detonator inside the bomb—right,
Doctor?
A cell-phone activated one—right,
Doctor?
You plan to use your smartphone, right from out there in the trees where you’re hiding—right,
Doctor?
”

Silence.

Then:

“You think you’re very clever, don’t you? But you’ve given yourself only a very brief Pyrrhic victory. There’s not a thing you can do now. We’re going to play the game again, Hunter, and in ten seconds you won’t think you’re so smart. You won’t be thinking anything at all. So now, as I count down from ten, you may all say your goodbyes.”

Adair looked at his wife. “I love you, Nan.” His voice was hoarse.

“I love you,” she whispered back, holding his eyes.

“Oh, Daddy!” Kaitlin cried out to Adair.

His features were tortured. “I’m so sorry, baby!”

Hunter had to grit his teeth to keep the smile fixed on his face.

She finally shrugged off the backpack and swung it in front of her. Now her fingers fumbled to undo the snaps at the top.

“Ten … nine … eight …”

She yanked it open, shoved her hand inside among the four spiky black antennas protruding from its top … found and flipped a switch.

“… seven … six …”

She hoisted the bag into her arms again and staggered along the back wall of the house, moving toward the den …

Smartphone in hand, Zachariah Boggs watched the house from his hiding place in the trees. When his countdown reached
five
, he ducked behind a thick tree trunk for protection and pressed the speed-dial button that rang the cell inside the bomb.

“… three … two … one … Bye-bye, all!”

He braced himself for the blast.

Five more seconds passed.

Nothing happened.

He frowned and pressed the speed-dial number a second time.

Waited …

Nothing.

He smacked his phone a few times, thinking the batteries may have been jostled loose—only to realize that the screen was lit, but the videocam feed from inside the house was gone.

What the hell?

He quickly thumbed in the entire nine-digit number of the cell phone inside the bomb.

Still nothing.

Desperate, he pulled out and keyed his walkie-talkie.

“Rusty, something’s wrong with my phone!”

He released the key.

And heard nothing. Not static. Not anything.

“Rusty!”

Dead air.

Hunter wondered why Boggs halted the countdown at
six.
Dead silence gripped the room as they all held their breath, waiting for him to resume.

But no more sound came from the cell phone on the table.

“Boggs?” Hunter ventured.

Silence.

Some new twisted game?

“I’m talking to you, you pompous little prick.”

No response.

Then he knew …

He began to laugh. Then he turned to the Adairs.

“We’re okay, now, folks. The Marines have landed.”

He took a long, deep breath and released it.

Grant Garrett, I owe you yet another box of cigars.

Eyes closed, back against the wall, Annie cradled the jammer and waited for the world to shatter.

Thirty seconds passed.

Then her lips began to tremble and her legs grew wobbly and gave way and she slid slowly to the ground. She sat there, shaking, staring into blurry green space, trying to stifle her little sobs. She flipped up the NVGs and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

I did it, love … I did it …

It all caught up with her in an instant. She felt beyond exhaustion, physically and emotionally drained. She wanted to collapse right here, right now, on the cold earth.

Then she remembered that Boggs and his partner were somewhere close by. With a rifle, shotgun, and handgun.

She carefully placed the Man Pack Jammer on the ground next to her and slid it out of sight behind a shrub. It would continue to block any transmissions within a sixty-meter radius for hours. But of course that included her own commo with Garrett and the Predator. Until she got out of its range, she would be on her own.

Against two armed killers.

She drew the Beretta from her jacket pocket. Struggling to her feet, she teetered dizzily and leaned against the wall. After a few seconds she felt a little steadier. Weapon in hand, she lowered her NVGs once more and began to creep slowly along the back wall, toward the eastern side of the house.

Behind the tree, Boggs was eyeing the house, trying to figure out what had happened, when he thought he saw faint movement. He stared intently, wondering if it was only his imagination.

No—there.

A dark, spectral figure was sliding slowly along the lighter-colored wall.

FBI hostage rescue?

Now he knew why his communications weren’t working.

And suddenly, Zachariah Boggs was scared.

Moving cautiously to avoid being spotted, he pocketed his smartphone and placed the cell phone and walkie-talkie on the ground. He picked up the shotgun lying there, then began to move, one careful step at a time, back into the trees. After a moment, he started to run toward the road, stumbling and crashing heedlessly through the branches.

Annie heard noise out in the trees. She recalled what Grant had reported.

That would have to be Boggs.

She was torn: Go inside and free Dylan—or go in hot pursuit and take out the threats?

He won’t be safe as long as they are out there.

She knew the guy on the ridge had not just the rifle, but their vehicle. She had to prevent Boggs from reaching it and escaping. But to do that, she needed to re-establish commo with Grant.

Taking a breath and hoping her taxed legs wouldn’t fail her, she dashed out from the house across the lawn, and into the trees at the eastern edge of the property. Nobody shot at her.

She immediately encountered an ATV trail heading through the woods back toward the road. And heard crashing noise in that direction. She hustled off after Boggs. And as she left the range of the jammer, her earpiece crackled to life.

“—stalker, do you copy?”

“Nightstalker copies. The bomb is neutralized. Repeat: bomb neutralized … I’m now in foot pursuit of Tango One.”

“Thank God! … The UAS has eyes on you and both tangos. Tango One is heading east, away from the vehicle.”

She made a snap decision. “Direct me toward the vehicle and Tango Two. That’s their only escape. The Predator can track Tango One.”

“Roger that.”

She reached the roadway a moment later. When Grant reported that the man on the ridge appeared to be moving around the truck, she took the opportunity to run across the road and into the trees over there.

Grant directed her to a relatively easy path up the slope of the ridge, then guided her to circle behind the man’s position. She crept toward him through the trees from the rear.

Soon she spotted his pickup truck on a narrow dirt road. He stood beside it, on the driver’s side. Despite the cold, he wore only a flannel shirt. He held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, aimed toward the house; in his other hand he held a walkie-talkie. A rifle and handgun rested on the passenger side of the truck’s hood, lying on what looked like the man’s jacket.

She moved behind a tree about fifty meters away.

“Base,” she whispered. “Tango Two in sight. His back is to me. Getting within range to take him out.”

“Negative, Nightstalker! You can’t do that. No shooting. Repeat:
No gunfire.”

It astounded her. “Sir—why not?”

“You are within two hundred yards of homes. The last thing we need is shots fired, and neighbors alerting the cops. Think it through. If either you or our mutual friend is caught up there, then much more than this one op is blown. You know how much flak the Agency takes for our black ops. So what happens to us if we’re caught doing this sort of shit on American soil? We can’t risk that.”

“But sir—” she hissed into the mic.

“No ‘buts.’ This is not just about you, or him, or me. It’s about the
Agency
—our very survival. That’s why this op must remain black. Inky black. So, here is how you play it. You capture, subdue, and leave the tangos for the locals. You shoot
only
as a last resort, in direct self-defense. And if you
must
use deadly force, then you clean up the mess afterward, to make sure there is no blowback to us. That’s an
order
. Do you copy?”

The Beretta’s sights were trained on the back of the man in the distance. She wanted to scream in frustration. But Grant had already gone way out on a limb for them tonight. She owed him at least this much.

“Yes, sir. Copy.”

She slipped from behind the tree and moved toward the man, pistol at the ready.

He stood beside the truck yelling into the walkie-talkie, his back still to her.

“Zak! Come on, man! Can you hear me? … What the hell’s happening?”

She was within fifteen feet of him when he must have heard her or spotted her in the truck’s outside mirror. Without warning, he spun and hurled the walkie-talkie at her.

It struck her hard, in her upper right arm. She gasped at the pain and barely managed to keep her grip on the Beretta.

He spun back to the truck and clawed for the rifle, just out of reach across the hood. Flipping up her NVGs, she rushed him. She slammed into his back, knocking him hard against the truck. He grunted and turned. She started a jiu-jitsu takedown—only to find that her right arm had gone numb.

He grabbed her useless gun hand and started to pry her fingers from it. She seized the gun’s barrel in her left hand and tried to twist it from him. But he knocked her hand aside, grasped the barrel himself, and stepped back to wrench it from her grip. His momentum caused him to trip and half-fall against the truck.

He now held her handgun by the barrel in his right hand. Rather than try to run, she rushed him again, this time aiming a kick toward his midsection. It only grazed his hip, but he was off-balance and it sent him to his knees. As he struggled to rise, she kicked again, and this time luck was with her: It caught his right forearm and knocked the weapon several feet away into the darkness.

She went after it, but her legs felt like mush and couldn’t move fast enough. He caught her from behind and wrapped his cable-like arms around hers in a bear hug. She tried to stomp his instep but, roaring like an animal, he lifted her right off the ground.

She felt helpless as a rag doll. Her energy was spent. Her flailing kicks against his shins had little power or effect. The hideous pressure on her ribs crushed the breath from her lungs. Trapped down along her sides, her hands could only scratch weakly against his thighs, trying in vain to get at his groin.

But then her left hand closed on something else. And she knew instantly what it was.

With a desperate twist of her body she yanked the hunting knife free of its sheath. Then plunged it upward, into the meat of his forearm.

“Ahhhhhhh!”

His scream pierced the air and his arms fell from her body, and before she could think or he could react she whipped around and jammed the blade forward into his stomach, as hard as she could.

It cut off his scream. The tall red-haired guy folded over, clutching his middle. His face bobbed inches from hers, his eyes and mouth gaping oval wounds filled with shock and pain.

Then another face drifted in from memory … the face of Adam Silva.

The blade, warm and sticky, shook in her fist.

“You son of a bitch!”
she snarled.

Then drove it in again.

Within a minute after running across the street in front of Adair’s house, Boggs had found an ATV path in the woods. But it was heading east, parallel to the ridge—away from Rusty and the pickup.

He paused to make a fast decision.

If those
were
FBI hostage-rescue thugs outside the house, then there was a strong chance that they already spotted Rusty and his truck. Or would, the minute he tried to flee. It was now too risky for
him
to head over there, too, where they could both be trapped on that little dead-end road.

He no longer had the walkie-talkie to warn Rusty. He hated to abandon him like this, to leave him behind to fend for himself. But Rusty was a good, loyal soldier. He knew the risks. Rusty wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice himself for the greater good, if he had to—

—unlike so many others. Unlike that
Judas,
Conn. Or that
coward,
Dawn. No, Rusty wouldn’t blame him for leaving him behind. And if he were captured, he wouldn’t betray him, either.

As for
her—
well, she had made her choice, hadn’t she. When push came to shove, she revealed her
true
commitments. The rest had been nothing but talk, all pretense. Years of bullshit that he should have seen through, long ago. It was a good thing that he found out the truth about her
now,
instead of at some critical moment when it might have really mattered.

Good riddance to the bitch …

So he headed east, down the dark, almost invisible trail, pushing deeper into the forest. He knew that eventually this path would intersect some forest road. From there he would get his bearings and find his way out of the area …

After fifteen interminable minutes, Hunter heard the front door open.

“Dylan?”

The voice was faint. It took a couple of seconds for it to register.

“Annie?” he shouted, incredulous.

He heard steps coming down the hall.

Then she was framed in the entranceway, pistol in hand.

Her face, hands, jeans, and leather jacket—all smeared with blood.