Into the Fire (49 page)

“Gotta call for help,” he told Murphy. “Tess—shot.”

Oh, Christ, no, not Tess, too. “Is she inside?” Murphy asked, taking the wires from him. Jesus, they were slick with blood, and again he made himself think of Hannah, not Angelina. Hannah, who was still alive. Please, God, let Hannah still be alive. He had to wipe the wire on his shirt before attempting to make the connection. His hands were shaking—son of a
bitch
…

“Truck,” Nash told him.

Murph shook his head. “There weren’t any trucks in the driveway.” But then he saw that Nash was trying to pick something up, beside him on the ground. It was a small handgun—.22 caliber—and Murphy realized that by
truck,
Nash meant that one was approaching, pulling into the driveway with no attempt whatsoever at stealth.

He took the weapon from Nash as everything around him slapped into sharp focus. He held the handgun with hands that could have threaded a needle in one try, as he prayed that someone from the Freedom Network had come back for something they’d forgotten—so he could kill the motherfucker where he stood.

But whoever got out of the truck started shouting. “Eden!”

And Nash reached to put his hand on Murphy’s arm, leaving a streak of blood. “Pregnant girl,” he said. “Eden. Must be…Zanella. SEAL.”

“Zanella,” Murphy shouted, “back here.” Because as big of a pain in the ass that Navy SEALs could sometimes be, they could, at times, come in handy.

Sure enough, the man who came around the side of the cabin was wearing a Naval uniform. Dress whites, with plenty of ribbons. His eyes were wild. “What. The
fuck
?”

“You one of Tommy’s SEALs?” Murphy asked as the man—Zanella—got right to work, trying to stop Nash’s bleeding, as Murph re-attached the wires.

“Yeah, who the fuck shot Nash and where the fuck is my wife?”

“Took her,” Nash gasped. “With Tess and…the others.”

“Took her where?” Zanella’s dress whites were no longer white. “Holy shit, Nash, how could you still be alive?”

Murphy shot Zanella a hard look. Things not to say to a man who was hanging onto consciousness by a thread.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“By the others—you mean, Hannah and Sophia?” Murphy asked the wounded man, trying to focus him on information they could use.

Nash nodded. “Think so. Haven’t checked…the whole…cabin…”

This time Murphy exchanged a look with Zanella that was mutual apprehension. The SEAL was thinking the same thing. There could be more wounded or even dead inside.

“When you finish there,” Zanella told Murphy quietly, “I’ll go and look.”

Murph managed a nod. Please God, don’t let Hannah be in there, dead…“What was your wife doing up here?”

“It’s a very long, very fucked up story.”

“She’s pregnant?” Murphy asked. Jesus, he was back to all thumbs…

“Yeah,” Zanella said. “Six months.”

Great. Two more innocents to be caught in the kill zone.

“Who the fuck did this?” Zanella asked Nash again.

He was still conscious. “Don’t know. Just started…shooting…”

Murphy knew. “The Freedom Network. Had to be. How many of them were there?”

“Didn’t see them. I was…” Blood flecked Nash’s lips as he coughed. “Must’ve…left me…for dead.”

An understandable mistake. Murphy could now see that the wound on Nash’s head wasn’t a bullet-hole as he’d first thought. Although truth be told, if anyone could keep moving with an injury that would have instantly killed another human being, it would be James Nash.

The man must’ve crawled into the cabin to find that the phone line had been cut. Before he’d crawled back out, he’d opened the window, broke through the screen, and thrown the telephone out—so he wouldn’t have to crawl all the way back inside to use it after he connected the cut wires. It dangled now, by its cord.

Murphy picked it up, hung it up, then put the handset to his ear.

Dial tone.

But instead of dialing 911, Murphy did one better.

He called Dave.

If there was a God, she was a merciless bitch to bring this kind of violence into Murphy’s life again—this time to his front door.

“No one’s inside,” Izzy reported, as he finished his check of the cabin’s interior. He went over to the window, beneath which Murphy was now up to his elbows in Nash’s blood, even as he stayed on the phone with Dave.

Good old Dave Malkoff. A medevac helicopter was on its way, and Dave himself had an ETA of just a few more minutes. He was traveling with the rest of the cavalry—Jenk, Lindsey, Lopez, and Gilligan.

Who was no doubt already shitting dobermans, and blaming Izzy for Eden’s abduction.

How the fuck had this happened? With both Nash and Tess armed and on guard?

And how the fuck was Murphy still standing? Nash’s bloody and torn flesh had taken Izzy back, in a rush, to that fucking awful day that a terrorist had walked into a Kazbekistan hotel lobby and opened fire, killing SEAL Chief O’Leary, and damn near doing the same to Izzy.

Murphy’d lost not a friend but his
wife
in a similarly out-of-the-blue incident, far more recently than that.

Izzy had purposely stepped up and volunteered for the dread-filled task of checking the cabin, praying to the God-bitch that no one deader than Nash was inside, praying that he didn’t have to break the news to Murph that his new girlfriend, Hannah, wasn’t—as Angelina had been—in need of a body bag. Praying to whomever would listen—merciless or otherwise—that Eden and Pinkie were safe.

Even while knowing that, wherever they were, Eden had to be terrified. She was tough, but goddamn.

And as long as Izzy was praying, he threw in a plea for Jim Nash. The man was alive through sheer ire. Izzy could not imagine being Nash—fighting for every breath while knowing he was about to be flown to the nearest hospital trauma center, willing to walk into the fires of hell for Tess, but unable to do anything more than succumb to anesthesia for surgery that he probably wouldn’t survive. Knowing that even if he did wake up, it might be to a world in which the woman he loved was no longer a part.

Kind of the way Vinh Murphy had done, a few years ago.

Murphy now put down the phone. “Dave must be close—I lost the connection.”

“There’s blood—not a lot—on the floor, beneath a window that’s broken, up in front,” Izzy reported. “But that’s it. It doesn’t look like anyone else was shot.” He held up the note he’d found, so Murphy could see it. “This was stuck to the kitchen table with a knife. It says,
wait for instructions, do not contact the authorities, and no one else will die.
”

The former Marine looked at Izzy with eyes that were murderous. “Dave had Lindsey on the phone with the FBI—their surveillance team reports that a chopper just landed in the Freedom Network compound outside of Sacramento. They’re too far away to get a visual, but they have four human infrared images—all being carried off the chopper and into a building.”

Izzy’s heart was in his throat.
All
being carried.

But Nash stirred—he wasn’t unconscious as Izzy had thought. And to him, that was good news. “Tess is alive,” he breathed.

Way in the distance, Izzy could hear the thrumming sound of the approaching medevac helo that Dave had called for. But there wasn’t just one helo coming toward them—there were two. Murphy heard them, as well, and he looked at Izzy again. “I’ve got some extra clothes up in the loft. You better go change into something a little less glow in the dark.”

Izzy nodded. Yeah. They would await those instructions that were coming from the Freedom Network fuckers, but they damn well weren’t going to follow them.

“Because I said so.” Dave got right up in Dan Gillman’s face to say, “Because
I
am in charge.”

They were words he’d never believe he’d ever utter, but there they were, coming out of his mouth.

“Who died and made you God?” Izzy Zanella was not helping things, especially considering that Dave had helped Lopez and Murphy pull Gillman off of him. Five seconds ago, the two SEALs had been at each others’ throats, arguing about whose fault it was that Eden was in danger, but now they were united in their never-gone-through-BUD/S-training disdain of Dave.

He knew he could never out-macho them, so he used the same approach Decker did when he was in command. He got quiet. “No one died,” Dave reminded them all, reminded himself, too, even though the idea of Sophia in the hands of the Freedom Network made his skin crawl. “And we’re going to keep it that way. As for who made me God? Tom Paoletti made me God, ten minutes ago, over the phone. You got a problem with it? Take it up with him—after we get our people back.” He turned to Murphy. “We can forward any calls coming in to the cabin’s landline to your cell phone, but if you take their call while we’re on the chopper, they’re going to hear the sound of the blades.”

And they’d deduce, correctly, that Murphy was working with the authorities.

“Here’s what I suggest we do,” Dave said to Murphy. “We recut the phone line and take the chopper north, set up camp outside of the FN compound, start gathering whatever gear we think we’ll need. Meanwhile, someone stays behind here in Dalton. At a predetermined time—three, four hours from now—he or she connects the phone line and forwards any incoming calls to your cell. When the Freedom Network calls, you tell them it took you that many hours to get the phone line up and working.”

Murphy looked at him. “Suggest?” he said. “I thought Tommy made you God.”

“You don’t work for him anymore,” Dave pointed out, his steady gaze somber.

Murphy nodded. “It’s a good plan,” he said.

“Yeah,” Izzy interjected. “Except, who stays behind?”

“Not me,” Gillman said. “My sister’s in there—”

“I’m her husband,” Izzy argued.

“I’ll stay.”

Dave turned, and sure enough, it was Jay Lopez who’d volunteered. It was clear it pained him to stay back, out of the action. But he was a team player.

“Let’s do it,” Dave said. “Let’s move.”

S
ACRAMENTO
, C
ALIFORNIA

The Sacramento FBI office was in an uproar.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the harried receptionist earnestly told Decker. “But Mr. Cassidy isn’t available for walk-in appointments—”

“Decker!” Jules Cassidy was coming out of an elevator and saw him standing there. Waved him over. “It’s okay, Janet.” He briefly shook Decker’s hand. “You got here fast—last I heard, they were still trying to reach you. Come on back, I’ll fill you in.”

Decker followed the shorter man down the corridor, aware of Jo Heissman, still in the lobby, watching him. He successfully tamped down the urge to turn back and thumb his nose at her.

“What’s the word on Nash?” Cassidy asked, and Decker took several steps in double time to catch up.

“He’s still out there, in the dark,” Decker said, assuming Dave had filled the FBI agent in on Nash’s disappearance. “I haven’t heard from him yet, which is why I wanted to ask you about…” The Agency, Decker was about to say, but the look Cassidy was giving him was a blend of confusion and disbelief.

“Oh shit, you don’t know.” The FBI agent grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into a conference room, where two young women sat at a table, in front of several open files. “I need this room,” he told them. “Immediately.”

“Don’t know what?” Decker said as the women gaped at them from their seats.

“Get out!” Cassidy actually clapped his hands at them, and they finally grabbed their files and scurried for the door. “Thank you,” he called after them, then shut the door. His face was grim as he turned back to Decker. “You better sit down.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-THREE

D
ecker was reviewing the FBI files documenting their past eight months of surveillance of the Freedom Network’s Sacramento area compound when Dr. Heissman was escorted into the conference room.

“Sit,” Decker told her, dismissing the aide who’d brought her, then nodding to the chair opposite him. She sat, but her body language screamed that she’d taken disapproving note of his lack of a
please.

“If I’m under arrest,” she said, “I’d like to be read my rights.”

“You’re not under arrest.”

“Then why was my phone and my handbag confiscated?”

“That was done at my request,” Decker said. “I have trust issues. And I know you’re smart—you’ve been hanging around for a while, you’ve probably figured out what’s going on. And you’ll also know what the next step has got to be.”

“Photos have surfaced that have been identified as Tim Ebersole,” she told him. “Despite the ability of technology to alter photographs, these are believed to have been taken two days ago, which means that he wasn’t murdered back in March. The FBI is now investigating a probable case of insurance fraud and tax evasion, and a warrant has been issued to search the Freedom Network compound, to find the man in the recently taken photos. Only problem is, even if the warrant allows the FBI to enter the compound without warning and with force, the Freedom Network will resist. They’re going to have a full-scale battle on their hands, women and children will die, and it will be the biggest snafu in the Bureau’s history, surpassing even Waco and Ruby Ridge. How am I doing?”

Decker nodded. “What you don’t know,” he told her, “is that about an hour ago the Freedom Network attacked Hannah Whitfield’s cabin outside of Dalton, critically—perhaps fatally—injuring James Nash and Tess Bailey, and kidnapping Tess, Sophia, Hannah, and Eden Zanella, the pregnant wife of a Navy SEAL who was helping us try to locate Vinh Murphy.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that,” she said, and despite the animosity between them, it was obvious that she sincerely meant it.

“Murphy’s heading north right now, with a team from Troubleshooters. He’s going to stall for time, pretend to negotiate—request proof of life. Meanwhile, I’m going in—”

“To the compound?” she interrupted.

Decker nodded. “—to find Ebersole. The FBI can’t do it, but as a civilian with a personal agenda—”

“You’re going in
alone
?”

“Nash is a little tied up right now,” Decker said tightly. “Considering he’s in surgery that he’s not expected to survive.”

“So your response to the impending death of your friend is to get yourself killed, too?”

“I didn’t call you in here to analyze me,” Decker said.

“I know you spec ops types think you’re supermen—”

“I prefer to think of myself as Captain America,” Decker said.

“—but to get in and out of the compound with Tim Ebersole—”

“I didn’t say anything about getting out,” Decker told her. “I just have to find him. And then I’ll see what happens. I do know this—I have to be more ready than he is to die. I think I’ve probably got that going to my advantage.”

“So this
is
a suicide mission,” she said quietly.

“Most of them are,” Decker told her. “But there’s a huge difference between being suicidal and being ready and willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Despite what you think you know, Doctor, I
don’t
want to die on this mission. But if I do, and in doing so I help save the lives of people I love? It’ll be a win.”

She nodded, her eyes somber, her mouth a tight line. “So if you didn’t call me in here to talk you out of—”

“I called you in here to contain you,” he told her what she’d already figured out. “Until our people are out and safe, I’ve requested that you remain right here.”

She laughed. “So…what? Now you think I work for the Freedom Network?”

“Of course not,” he said. “But the jury’s still out on whether or not you work for the Agency.”

T
HE MOUNTAINS EAST OF
S
ACRAMENTO
, C
ALIFORNIA

Hannah woke up slowly, painfully, as if swimming for a barely discernable surface in the suffocating silence of muddy water.

Her head was pounding and the light—dim as it was through the windows—hurt her eyes. Something was terribly wrong, and she struggled to remember, to…

She sat up with a gasp, still foggy and dull, but aware that she was no longer in Patrick’s cabin, in Dalton. Whatever the men who’d attacked them had given her to knock her out was still dragging her down, but she fought it, willing herself back to clarity.

The room she was in was small and empty of all furniture. It seemed to have been designed as a jail cell, or the world’s least-hygienic, very-public bathroom with a toilet standing alone in one corner, but no sink, no shower. The walls were of concrete block construction—no drywall to try to kick her way through. There was only one window, with bars covering it, through which daylight still shone. She wasn’t alone, thank God—or maybe not thank God, because along with Sophia, Tess, too, had been dumped on the floor beside her.

Tess, but not Jim Nash.

Hannah lay back for a moment, hands against her throbbing head, unable to keep tears from escaping—one from each eye, running down her face and into her useless ears. Please, God, let the only reason Nash wasn’t with them be because he was male and they were female. The Freedom Network often segregated according to gender. Even in their dining hall, women sat at different tables from the men.

But okay. As much as she wanted to lie here with her eyes closed, weeping about the injustice of having been shot at, drugged, and kidnapped, it was likely that Tess, who hadn’t just been shot at, but shot, still needed first aid.

So Hannah forced her eyes open, wiped her face and sat back up. And as she shifted closer to Tess—God, her ankle hurt like a bitch—Hannah saw a bandage beneath the woman’s still-bloody shirt, another on her right hand. Apparently she had received at least cursory medical care from their captors—who’d completely ignored the gash on her head from being struck by that rifle barrel. Her hair was sticky with blood and she had a lump the size of a baseball. Had they drugged her, too, along with knocking her unconscious?

Hannah didn’t know, but Tess’s breathing seemed steady and a finger to her throat revealed that her pulse was strong.

Sophia stirred as Hannah checked her pulse, too. She roused, gasping with alarm and jerking back, as if she couldn’t stand to be touched. But she exhaled her relief as she recognized Hannah. “Where are we?”

Hannah tried the door—solid and solidly locked—before she went to the window and…sure enough. She’d been here before—she recognized the dining hall, the children’s barracks, the armory, and the rows of cabins and guest cottages. If she remembered correctly from her tour back in the spring…

“We’re in the schoolhouse in the Freedom Network compound. A section of this building doubles as a brig.” She turned back to Sophia. “There’s a series of rooms—cells—like this, four of them in a row. I’m going to tap on the walls—I want you to listen, see if Nash taps back, because maybe he’s being held in the next room and…”

The look on Sophia’s face stopped her.

“You know something I don’t know,” Hannah asked, filled with sudden sharp dread. “Tell me.”

“Back at the cabin,” Sophia said, misery in her blue eyes, “they gave me a shot of something and…Before I went under, I heard someone say
Leave that one, he’s dead.
”

Murphy’s phone finally rang, and across the tent, Lindsey leaped to her feet.

“You ready for this?” she asked as she turned on the recording equipment.

Murphy nodded.

As Lindsey and everyone else in the tent—Zanella, Jenkins, Gillman and Dave—slipped on headphones so that they could listen in, she reminded him, “They think you’re still in Dalton.”

Instead, they were so close to the Freedom Network compound—a quarter of a mile away—it was all Murphy could do not to grab a rifle and go over the fence. He knew that Izzy Zanella had been thinking similar thoughts, getting more and more distant and grim as each hour passed.

They’d arrived at an airfield, well east of Sacramento, in record time. Dave had arranged for a pair of trucks to be there, waiting, and they’d driven the rest of the way into the wilderness, to this base camp. It was clear that Dave had been talking to the FBI, and that most of this equipment had come with their blessing. It was also apparent that the Agent-in-Charge believed that the Troubleshooters would have a better chance of rescuing their missing people without official FBI involvement.

They believed that bringing in a hostage negotiator would result in a standoff that would last for months—and would surely result in bloodshed.

So here Murphy and the Troubleshooters were, in one of a group of tents, in a base camp festooned with party balloons and a banner hung from the trees saying
Happy Birthday, Grandpa Baker.
This attempt to hide their true purpose from any stray Freedom Network patrols added that little extra surreal spin to the late afternoon.

But now, finally, the wait was over.

“Remember, let them talk. Let’s find out what they want, before we ask for proof of life.” Lindsey was wearing her police detective face—an impressive blend of take-no-shit and commanding compassion. She was ready and available for anything he might need.

Man, he’d missed having her as a friend. It was a weird time to be thinking that, as he answered his phone, praying this was, indeed, the Freedom Network calling with their instructions—with their kidnap ransom demands.

“This is Murphy,” he said, his voice raspy with his anger. Whoever was on the other end of this phone had shot Jim Nash—who’d gone into cardiac arrest as he’d been carried onto the medevac chopper. They’d managed to revive him—but it had been frighteningly difficult to do so. And there’d been no word on his condition since he’d been lifted into the air.

“Mr. Murphy. What a pain in the balls you are.” The voice on the other end of the phone had a distinct bayou drawl. “No doubt you still think we’re responsible for killing Angela.”

Jesus Christ, the son of a bitch didn’t even get her name right.

“It took you awfully long to get your phone back in order. You better not have contacted the police or the FBI,” the man continued.

“I haven’t,” Murphy lied. “I’m alone.”
Is Hannah safe? Is Tess still alive? Let Eden go—she has nothing to do with this. I want to speak to Sophia…
He clenched his teeth against all of the things he desperately wanted to demand, and Lindsey nodded her approval, her hand warm on his shoulder.

“Then here’s what you’re going to do,” the man instructed. “You’re going to go someplace public—to the Taco Bell or the library there in Dalton. You’re going to draw a crowd, you’re going to come clean. You’re going to confess to killing Reverend Ebersole, you’re going to admit that the photos you took were photo-shopped, that they were taken months before the murder, back when your friend Hannah was a guest in the compound, and then you’re going to put a gun to your head and pull the trigger and end your worthless life.”

Murphy sat in silence as his heart sank, because, shit, their plan was brilliant—and additional proof that Hannah’s crazy conspiracy theory was right and Ebersole was still alive. The man on the phone clearly knew that the photos had made their way into the world, and probably even to the FBI, but that Murphy’s “confession” would throw doubt onto their authenticity. As well as neatly tie up the Ebersole murder case, with no need for a pesky trial or further investigation. Problem was, Hannah, too, could testify as to the exact date and time those photos had been taken….

He finally spoke. “What, am I supposed to just have
faith
that you’ll release my friends? I don’t think so.”

“You hardly have a choice—”

“You want to bet?” Murphy said. “Here’s what
you’re
going to do. You’re going to give me proof that my friends are alive before this negotiation goes any farther. I want to speak to all of the women you took. I want to have a conversation with
each
of them, so that I know you didn’t record their voices and then put a bullet in their heads, the way your acolyte did to Angelina.” He enunciated each syllable of her name. “You call me back in fifteen minutes with all four of them still alive, or I will put myself into FBI custody so fast your motherfucking head will spin.”

He hung up his phone far less forcefully than he wanted to—he couldn’t risk breaking the damn thing.

He met Lindsey’s and then Dave’s eyes as, across the tent, the entire team removed their headphones.

“Okay,” Dave said. “This is not something we didn’t expect. They want a trade. You for their hostages.”

“They want him
dead,
” Izzy pointed out the obvious. “That’s not a trade. That’s fucked up.”

“So we Hollywood it,” Gillman chimed in. “Lopez is still in Dalton. We send him into the Taco Bell, with fake blood and a weapon loaded with blanks. He says he’s Murphy and—”

“That won’t work,” Murphy cut him off.

“Actually?” Jenkins said. “It might.”

“No.” Murphy shook his head. “It won’t. Because they have absolutely no intention of letting Hannah and the others go.”

Eden’s back was killing her, and she honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt Pinkie kick, which was starting to freak her out.

But that was nothing compared to the solid case of heebie-jeebies that the Freedom Network drone with the wandering eye was giving her.

It wasn’t her left eye, looking off God knows where, that was the problem. It was the questions she’d asked, while sitting beside Eden’s bed in this pseudo-hospital room, here in the freaking middle of nowhere. Did heart disease, cancer, or mental illness run in Eden’s or the baby’s father’s family? Had she consumed drugs or alcohol during her pregnancy? Had there been any record of mixed race in her ancestry? Was she a Christian—a real, true Christian, not that ignorant kind who didn’t believe in the Bible?