Kodiak Sky (Red Cell Trilogy Book 3) (18 page)

“Of course not,” Jennie agreed.

“It’s okay. We should be on our way in a few days.”

“Good.” Jennie pointed at a deli just up the street. “Let’s get something to drink. I’m thirsty.”

“Sure.”

When they entered the store, they headed for the back and the big glass coolers full of cold drinks.

“What do you want?” Jennie asked, letting Karen go when she was sure Karen was stable on her cane.

“I’ll take a—”

A strong arm came from behind Karen and clamped a wet rag over her nose and mouth so she couldn’t scream. Another powerful arm came from the other side and clasped her tightly across her chest, then pulled her roughly backward against a big, strong body.

She dropped her cane and struggled, but in her condition she was no match for the man. And whatever the rag was doused with overcame her quickly. Her head felt as if it would explode, and then her eyes fluttered shut.

Karen was unconscious even before her attacker dragged her through the narrow doorway on one side of the coolers and back into the stockroom. It all happened so fast. Other than the man who’d attacked her, no one else in the store saw what had happened—except Jennie.

F
OR WHAT
seemed like an eternity, Jack and the kid behind the steering wheel stared at each other over the pickup’s console. The kid had cherry blond hair, a thin face, and bad acne on his chin. He was a baby, Jack realized. He couldn’t be more than seventeen.

Jack brought his hands up and turned away as the kid fired and the gun exploded with a deafening roar. He wondered where he’d been hit as he tumbled backward onto the gravel driveway. Maybe he couldn’t feel the pain yet because of the adrenaline coursing through his body, or maybe he was already dead and this was what it felt like to die. No physical pain, just a terrible sadness.

As Jack struggled to his feet, still trying to figure out if he’d been hit, he heard the kid begging and pleading. And then he realized what had happened as Troy dragged the kid from the vehicle and quickly splayed the boy out on the other side of the gully like a gutted deer. Troy had grabbed the kid at the last second through the driver’s window, causing the round to blast up into the truck’s ceiling.

“What’s your name?” Troy demanded fiercely as Jack came around the front of the pickup and jumped to the bottom of the gully.

“Charlie,” the kid answered, already sobbing. “Charlie Griffin.”

“Is your father Wayne Griffin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is he?”

“They left a few hours ago to do some things.”

“They?” Troy asked.

“Him and a friend.”

“Are you all right?” Jack asked after getting to where Troy and Charlie were. “Are you hit?”

“I’m fine,” Troy snapped as he held the kid down with one hand and pulled the kid’s belt off with the other. “Get his gun. It’s in the truck somewhere.”

By the time Jack found it, Troy had lashed Charlie’s wrists tightly together behind his back with the belt.

“What the hell?” Troy demanded, rising to his feet when he was finished and coming right to where Jack was standing, so he was right in Jack’s face. “Goddamn it, what did I tell you?”

“Shoot first,” Jack answered solemnly. Troy was so right. He’d frozen at the critical moment. “But he’s just a kid.”

“
So what?
He was gonna kill you.”

“I know,” Jack admitted. He’d
never
make that mistake again. He’d be a trigger-happy fool from now on. His whole body was starting to shake hard as the reality of what could have just happened sank in. “You saved my life.”

“We’re even for Alaska,” Troy muttered. “Let’s check out the house out. We’ve got to make sure no else is around. Then we’ll interrogate this little shit.”

“What do you mean, ‘interrogate’?”

Troy’s eyes flashed back to Jack’s, and they stared at each other intently for several moments as the kid began to bawl loudly. “I mean,” Troy said deliberately and loudly so Charlie could hear, “that I will use any and every method I have to in order to get any and every piece of information I can out of this young man as fast as possible.”

“He’s not a man, he’s a boy.”

“Don’t start,” Troy warned. “My son’s been kidnapped, and this kid may know where he is. I intend to find out immediately if he does, and whether or not you agree with my methods is of no consequence to me whatsoever.”

“Don’t do it,” Jack whispered.

“I will do it,” Troy replied calmly. “I have no problem doing it. If you’re going to try and stop me, try now. Let’s get it over with, because I will put you down.”

He couldn’t beat Troy in a fight. And he wouldn’t point a gun at his brother. “You can’t torture him.”

“If he doesn’t answer me right away, or he doesn’t answer truthfully, I will absolutely torture him. To
death
if I need to.”

Charlie’s sobs grew loud.

“You can’t know if he’s telling the truth or not.”

“Oh, I’ll know. Believe me, I will.”

Jack’s phone went off, indicating that he’d received a text message. He dug the phone from his pocket and checked the screen. As he read the words there, the breath rushed from his lungs. Suddenly he was in the same boat as Troy.

“We have Karen, too,” the message read.

“What is it?” Troy demanded.

Wide-eyed, Jack held the phone out. But it shook so wildly in his hand Troy had to grab it from him to read the words.

CHAPTER 26

H
ARPERS
F
ERRY,
West Virginia, was a quaint town of less than three hundred residents located seventy-five miles northwest of Washington, DC. It was nestled into the eastern side of a steep hill overlooking the wide, deep confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. Immediately across the Shenandoah to the east were more of West Virginia’s heavily wooded shoreline and tall hills. A short distance downstream from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia turned into Virginia. And to the north, immediately across the Potomac, were Maryland’s tall, steep cliffs. It was a unique area in that it formed the confluence of two great rivers and three historic states.

Harpers Ferry had been vitally strategic to both sides during the American Civil War. Guarding the border between North and South, important river crossings, and multiple railroad lines that used the riverbanks as passes through the Appalachian Mountains, the town had changed hands several times during the war after fierce fighting.

A century and a half later, the isolated enclave was serving as a strategic location again—this time for Liam Sterling. He’d quietly brought in twenty-four of the world’s deadliest sharpshooters—like importing fine red wines, he’d told them last night—and the assassins were all staying at a bed-and-breakfast called The Fisherman’s Inn. The inn was constructed on the crest of the hill overlooking the confluence and had a magnificent view of the two great rivers joining forces in the valley below.

Harpers Ferry was a perfect place to prepare for Operation Anarchy, which he had named this historic attack. The town was well off the beaten track and intimate enough to easily detect unfriendly trackers. Sterling was still congratulating himself on his choice of location as he walked along through the late-afternoon sunshine.

Twelve of the assassins were men, and twelve were women, and they were all sharing rooms as if they were couples. The inn’s proprietor believed theirs was a church group using his facility as a base for a retreat. Sterling had told him they had come here to get away from life’s everyday rigors, to mellow out a bit, and to enjoy several days of biking, hiking, prayer, and general appreciation of the beautiful fall weather.

The proprietor had asked no questions. He was only too happy to hang a “no vacancy” sign out front for a few days.

Why
would
he question anything, Sterling thought to himself as he led the group across the westerly of two CSX Railroad trestles that spanned the Potomac only a stone’s throw upriver from its confluence with the Shenandoah. They looked like twelve average American couples out for a relaxing time. It wasn’t as if they were brandishing hunting rifles with dangerous-looking telescop
ic sights atop the barrels, or they had signs hanging from their necks advertising what could potentially be the deadliest day in history for America’s most senior officials.

All the deadly hardware was safely locked away in a climate-controlled public storage facility near Tysons Corner, which was fifteen miles west of the White House. It had taken some coaxing to convince the men a
nd women to temporarily part again with the weapons, which they’d sent on ahead of themselves in cloaked packages. But when t
hey’d heard about the size of the payoff they’d quickly agreed. While he hadn’t been specific with them yet, he planned to pay each of them three million dollars.

Sterling would keep the rest of the money, which, after expenses, could still net him nearly three hundred million dollars, and maybe more if he worked things right.

It was an amount he definitely had to keep very quiet. He was getting fifty million alone to kill the president, and the same for all three Jensens combined. So his assembled assassin team could not logically lay claim to any of that money, because they would have no part in those four kills. And he was betting that three million dollars was more than most of them had ever earned for a single job, far more, despite how good they all were.

Still, should they find out that their take was less than twenty-five percent of the total payout, there could be problems. Percentages were percentages irrespective of totals. Other than himself, the only person in the world who could accurately and legitimately relay the total bounty the team would receive was Daniel Gadanz. And Gadanz had no incentive to whisper that amount to anyone—until Operation Anarchy was over.

But when OA was over, the drug lord would have an incentive to send that figure out into the spook ether so he could save himself from having to pay the lion’s share of the three hundred million, because the other assassins would turn on Sterling. Fortunately, he’d anticipated that possibility and taken measures to protect himself.

He always tried to think like everyone around him was thinking. That ultimately made anticipation much easier.

Sterling smiled as a locomotive’s horn wailed at him sadly from the east. The CSX main line out of Washington, DC, split in two on the north shore of the Potomac, which lay just ahead of them at the other end of this bridge. One track—the line they were walking beside now—followed the south shore of the Potomac to points west, while the other line—which traversed a bridge over the Potomac a little to the east of this one—hugged the Shenandoah’s western shore for points south.

It didn’t matter which bridge the train took over the Potomac when it got here. They’d get an impressive, close-up look at it going past, because the two bridges were very close. And as it passed, he would deliver sensitive information concerning the attack. Even hidden, high-tech microphones listening from up on the Maryland cliffs wouldn’t pick up anything as a hundred empty coal hoppers thundered past. It was terribly paranoid to think those mikes could be there, he knew, but he wasn’t taking any chances with this mission.

And he was very aware of how thoroughly the NSA had blanketed the globe with listening devices.

“All right, people,” he called, turning to face the group, which trailed behind him in a strung-out line like ducklings trailing their mother. “Let’s bring it in close. Come on, come on,” he called in a slightly nagging nasal tone, trying to imagine what a church leader would sound like.

He’d never been to church, so it wasn’t easy. The masters at the orphanage had never been able to make him go to chapel, or see the point of it.

“I have some announcements.”

Sterling had to give his team credit. They’d taken direction well. They certainly looked the part of a church group, at least to him. The women wore plain blouses with conservative pants or skirts, and none of them had heels on. And the men wore blazers and slacks with shiny, tasseled loafers. Some of the couples were even holding hands, and he wondered if any extracurricular activity had erupted at the inn last night. The walls of the place were thin, and he hadn’t heard anything. But he wouldn’t doubt that it had. After all, they naturally did things quietly. And, Sterling knew, assassins were as much into casual sex as everyone else in the world, perhaps more. They appreciated the fragility of life more than most, and therefore the need to live every day and night to its fullest.

Well, that was their business. As long as they executed their piece of the mission, he didn’t care what they did on their own time. And these twenty-four individuals were the best of the best. They could shoot the asshole out of a mosquito from a thousand yards—while it was flying.

The men and women huddled close to him as the three giant diesel locomotives appeared out of the tunnel a hundred feet away on the track closest to them.

“You all know what this is about,” Sterling said as loudly as he dared over the screeching of the hoppers’ steel wheels against steel rails when the locomotives were past. “When you get back to your rooms you will find envelopes beneath your pillows. Use the first letter of each word to determine your specific target. That progression will spell out the title of the individual, not the name.”

Last night, he’d ordered them to make their own beds in the morning and to request privacy so no one would come into their rooms while they were gone. But he’d still used code in the communication, in case housekeeping snooped.

“Starting now, you will have twenty-four hours to determine the probability of success of your individual mission on the target day, and we will be in close contact during that period.” He pointed back at Harpers Ferry as though he were giving directions for a tour, and they all followed his lead by turning their heads and nodding. “The target date is in the envelope as well. However, that date is subject to change.”

Sterling had already done general research on the near-term schedules of their targets. This time of year actually seemed to be working out well. Everyone was back in Washington and in session after the summer break. It looked like the secretary of state might be traveling, but that was all right. In fact, it might make her more vulnerable, and he had another assassin trailing her. A technology guru he paid handsomely had hacked into schedules and itineraries, and everything was coming together.

“It’s a soft date,” he explained to the group. “We’ll have to coordinate closely because, as I’m sure you can understand, this must be pulled off on the same day. All of the attacks will have to come within minutes of each other if we expect maximum success. Once the shooting starts, the rabbits will dive for their holes, and our window of opportunity will slam shut. So we will be flexible as far as the date, though it can’t be that far off from what I’ve suggested. When I have settled on a certain date, you will go on that date no matter what, and you will ask no questions.”

“What’s the payoff?” a woman in front asked.

Sterling had promised them only that their reward would be significant, but he hadn’t been specific up to this point. They had to be thinking high six figures. That would make sense in today’s world and would fit the “significant” description.

“Each of you will receive three million dollars for your mission.”
Impressive
, he thought to himself. None of their expressions had changed when he’d announced the number. They were cool customers. But they were impressed. They had to be. “I’ve already deposited a million in each of twenty-four escrow accounts, which, as of four minutes ago,” he said smoothly as he checked his watch, “you may now all access and move into your own accounts as you see fit. Instructions for doing so are on that letter in your room. And you will receive the other two million dollars within twenty-four hours of the successful execution of the man or woman you’ve been assigned to kill.”

He took a deep breath. He’d seen a couple of tiny grins break the surface in the back of the pack. They were impressed, all right.

A rush coursed through his chest. The countdown had begun.

E
ARLY THIS
mor
ning Gadanz had flown from his compound in Tijuana to this one, which he kept in the jungles outside Bogot
á
. It was one of his smaller facilities, but he maintained more security here than in any other compound around the world except the one in Tajikistan. Law enforcement wasn’t the problem here in Colombia. The danger here came from other, much smaller drug lords who were desperate to somehow destroy his dominant and still-growing share of the South American cocaine trade.

For some reason he hadn’t suffered a migraine all day, even on final approach this morning to the landing strip down the hill. Generally, he was guaranteed to feel it then because of the gradual and prolonged change in cabin pressure. The pilots were under strict orders to get the plane down as fast as possible once they’d identified the landing area, but there were physical constraints, and he understood that. He hated the headaches, but they were better than fiery crashes.

Gadanz scanned the message he’d just received. Sterling now had possession of Jack Jensen’s brand-new wife and Troy Jensen’s one-year-old son, in addition to President Dorn’s illegitimate daughter. Things were going very, very well.

Gadanz leaned forward, grabbed his head, and screamed. This migraine had come from nowhere, like a blitzkrieg.