The Perfect Clone (26 page)

Frank sat back down, he knew better than to challenge Mr. Avery once he’d made his mind up. “Well that beats all, doesn’t it? I get ambushed by the rebels and come home only to get ambushed by you guys. Just for the record, this sucks.”

Richard laughed. “What would have sucked is if you hadn’t made it back to us so that we could have this conversation.”

That remark threw a curtain of melancholy over the current situation. “You’re right. I can’t believe I let this shit happen.” Frank shoulders visually slumped from their former height as his hardened reserve deflated.

Richard chose to use the lull in Frank’s defensive nature to find out more. “What happened out there Frank? How did a routine trip to the warehouse turn into a hostage situation?”

Dr. White cleared his throat to remind the men of his presence. The men fell silent as he finished gathering up the tools of his trade. The physician didn’t care to hear the particulars of what went on within the inner circles of the Community. He had learned a long time ago, that sometimes, ignorance was bliss. He considered this to be one of those times. He’d made his wishes known from the beginning and the men seemed to respect that wish. There was no need to change things now. “I’m done for the time being. Frank, I expect to see you before the day’s out so we can get those x-rays.” Picking up his medical bag, Dr. White made quick strides in his effort to get out of hearing range and back to the confines of his office.

Frank’s gaze stayed on the doctor until he was out of sight. “It happened so fast. I let my guard down. I know it’s my fault, but I felt bad for the girl and wanted to help.”

Richard preferred just the facts, not a story. He reminded himself to be patient. The man was obviously shaken. “What girl?”

“I was headed to the warehouse to make my routine pick-up. I noticed a car stalled on the side of the road. I didn’t think much about it until I saw a young girl waving her arms for help. There weren’t any other cars on the road, so I decided it wasn’t a risk and pulled over to assist. Once I was out of the van, seven heavily armed men came up out of the field and surrounded me. That’s the last thing I remember before waking up, strapped to a chair in the warehouse.”

Matt put his hand on Frank’s shoulder. “There were seven of them?”

Frank nodded. “Best I could tell.”

Matt was intrigued with the story. “What type of car was this girl driving?”

Frank appeared to be searching his memory. “It was an old Honda Civic. She had the hood up.”

Richard repeated the information to make sure he had it right. “So, you see an old model Honda Civic with the hood up. A young girl is waving her arms to flag down help. There weren’t any other cars on the road, so you pulled over, and were ambushed by seven heavily armed men? You woke up tied to a chair in the warehouse. What year model would you say the car was?”

Pulling at the recesses of his mind Frank replied, “I’d say it was probably mid to late 80’s.”

Matt chimed in. “No wonder you thought the girl was broke down. An old car like that should be in the auto graveyard.”

“I felt bad for her. All I could think of at the time was that she was young and out on that stretch of road, alone. It’s not a place I’d want my wife or kids stranded—if I had a wife and kids.”

Richard wondered out loud, “How many men were at the warehouse when you woke up?”

Frank searched his memory as he counted them off on his fingers. “Let’s see. At first count there were eight, but more came and went.”

Richard contemplated Frank’s run down of events. “I hope you were able to nail the SOB that worked you over.”

“Damn right I did. When our team showed up, I popped his ass first.”

Richard shook his head, appearing to be sympathetic to what the man had been through. “Did you say that the seven men were heavily armed?”

Frank replied, “You bet your ass they were.”

Richard put a hand on each of Frank’s shoulders. “You’ve had a tough day. Why don’t you head to your room and get some rest. I’ll talk to Doc and let him know that you’ll come for those x-rays after you get some sleep.”

Frank seemed relieved that he didn’t have to tolerate any more poking, prodding, or questioning for now. “I appreciate that.”

Matt offered up his own assistance. “Don’t worry about food. I’ll have something sent to your room.”

Frank’s smile was grateful. “That’d be great Mr. Kincade. A full belly, a long rest, and I’ll be good as new.” 

The two men walked with Frank until he entered the interior building and the door closed behind him. Matt shook his head. “It’s hard to see one of our men beaten like that.”

Richard agreed. “Indeed it is.”

Pulling out his cell, he called into the tech room. “I want the GPS locater run on all vehicles that are in the field. Send me a satellite image of the area where Frank’s van was found, you should still have the GPS coordinates on that from Cara’s earlier request. Transmit the information to Cara’s office. Thanks.” Richard walked up the steps and let himself into the security office. Taking the chair behind her desk, he fired up the computer and entered his password.

Matt filed in behind him. He picked up the Community land line before going through the motions of dusting off the available chair and a taking seat of his own. “I need to order delivery,” he said into the receiver. “I need a New York strip—cooked medium, a loaded baked potato, steamed vegetables, a tall soda and two waters delivered to room 107. No, that’ll be all, thank you.”

Richard drummed his fingers on the desk as he waited for the tech team to locate and transmit the files. “Here it is.”

Matt walked over so that he could see the image as well. “Looks like a stretch of pavement running between two corn fields. I can certainly understand Frank’s concern regarding the young woman.”

“If I were on a casual outing and came across a damsel in distress on this stretch of road, I’d say yes. But take a closer look and tell me what you see.”

Matt leaned into the screen as Richard enlarged the image. “Corn,” he replied flatly.

Richard zoomed out on the image then clasped his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. “What do you see now?”

Matt wasn’t sure what Richard was asking for. He still only saw corn.

Mr. Avery unclasped his hands and moved to the GPS locations. Once he saw that one of their sedans was parked at the safe house, he relaxed a bit. Ben had mentioned two prisoners, so it only made sense that Cara would take them there for questioning.

He switched back over to the corn field. Grabbing the land line, he dialed back into the tech room. “Locate Frank. I want to know exactly where he is.”

After a brief pause the tech returned. “He’s in his room, sir, room 107.”

Richard breathed a sigh of relief. “Who am I speaking with?”

“Charlie Jones, sir,” the man replied.

The sense of urgency in Mr. Avery‘s voice was obvious. “Great. Listen Charlie, I want that room locked down, and I want it locked down now. No one is to come or go. No phone calls, no television, nothing. I want his cell phone disabled immediately. I want it sealed tight. You got that?”

“Lock down on room 107 initiated. Lock down complete. Cell phone disabled.”

“Charlie, I need you to listen very carefully. You are responsible that room 107 remains on lockdown until you receive face to face instructions from me saying otherwise. Sleep on the control panels if necessary. Is that understood?”

Charlie was ready to take charge of his responsibility. “Yes sir. I guarantee it.” Richard returned the receiver to its cradle and looked back at the image.

Matt was confused. “At the risk of sounded stupid, what’s got you fired up?”

Richard continued to stare at the monitor. “You said yourself, that all you could see on this stretch of property was corn divided by pavement. That’s because that’s all there is to see. There is no place in broad daylight for seven men to hide.”

Richard pulled up an internet search of a late 80’s model Honda Civic and pointed to the picture. “Tell me Matt. Do you see how seven, heavily armed men, one girl and a healthy sized Frank are all going to squeeze into that little car; especially during the light of day when it’s possible for traffic to pass by?”

Matt shook his head. “I see your point. Frank said there weren’t any other cars on the road and that’s why he assumed it was safe to pull over.”

Richard interjected. “There weren’t any cars at the time. But can you tell me, that by the time it would have taken seven men to set an ambush and then wait for another vehicle to arrive at the scene so they could all make their getaway, that they weren’t worried about another vehicle coming by? Mind you, according to Frank, these men were heavily armed. I don’t pretend to assume that our rebels are the brightest of the bunch, but they’re not idiots either. Ben said that almost all of the bodies had identification on them and there weren’t any guard dogs or cameras on site to warn them of our approach. Ben also said that the weapons were standard home defense type items with the exception of the C4 that was strung to the doors. He said there wasn’t anything meeting the criteria of heavily armed. Does this sound like a group that could sneak up out of a corn field in plain day light and take one of our own men?”

“Not unless he wanted to be taken. I’ll be damned—” Matt planted his butt on the edge of the desk, for once not concerned with any grime that might soil his perfectly pressed slacks. “Do we need to contact our team to let them know?”

Richard considered his options. He could alert the team to his suspicions. But that would cause anyone else that might be helping Frank to discontinue whatever it was that they were supposed to do, thus keeping a traitor hidden. On the other hand, he could sit back and hope that Cara pieced it all together and smoked out any other possible traitor herself. Running the scenarios around in his mind, he opted to go with his grandfather’s advice on this one. He’d hold his cards and let the opponent make the next move. Cara was as smart as they came. He had to trust that she’d come out on the winning end of this deal.

“No. I think it’s best if we leave this one to Cara. Let’s just hope she’s as smart as I think she is.”

“Let’s hope she’s smarter,” Matt uttered.

Chapter 23

With the prisoners secured in separate rooms at the back of the house, the guys had crashed wherever they could.

Tank and Ethan had claimed the third bedroom, which suited the others just fine since no one else could deal with their robust snoring.

Cara had each man pulling a two hour watch throughout the night with her taking the last two. She chose last shift so she’d have time to think.

Jack had told her where to find the man that had given the orders, and strangely enough, she was familiar with it. She recalled staking it out when she first came to work for Richard.

According to Jack’s squealing confession, the man he worked for was Vicky’s cousin. Apparently, Vicky’s parents were unaware of her extracurricular duties. Jessie’s internet search had revealed that the father was a loan officer at a bank and also a member of the local Masonic Lodge. But her cousin, on the other hand, was a radical activist in opposition to what he dubbed the N.O.W., or the New World Order. He was a small time thug really. He clearly worked for someone bigger; she just had to find out whom. It was time to give Mr. Avery a call.

“Yeah,” he sounded occupied.

“You know that I generally act first and ask for forgiveness later, but I’m not touching this one without a ‘go ahead’ from you. Were you filled in on last night’s activities?”

“Yes. I hear it was messy but productive.”

“Yeah, well, the mess is about to get even messier. That’s why I’m calling.”

Richard could hear the frustration in her voice growing. “Discontinue this call. I’ll contact you via web. You know the drill.”

Cara hit the end button on her phone and laid it on the table. Shit, she didn’t want to wake Jessie up, but he was the tech guy in their group and this had to be sorted out. Cara walked over to the couch and slapped his arm with the backside of her hand. Jessie caught her hand before it landed and peered at her through a half opened eye.

“What’s up?” Although his voice was groggy, Cara knew he could snap her wrist in a flash. That’s the way she’d trained her team to operate.

“I have a web date with the boss. I need you to set me up.”

The man released her wrist and stood up. “Not a problem.” Flipping open his laptop, Jessie entered his password and opened up a network tunnel. He liked this particular version of the network security, because it diverted his internet address to anonymous network servers before establishing a working connection. It made his internet service port appear to be from somewhere in the Bahamas—if traceable at all. Mr. Avery would be using the same protocol, but the way the in-house tech had set his up, it would probably be directed to a port in Great Britain, Africa, or who the hell knew where. After establishing a secured connection, he dialed in via internet link using their integrated web phone. The rule of thumb was verbal communication only, with the aid of voice-altering software and absolutely no visuals, names, or places. Jessie pushed the laptop toward Cara. “You’re in.”

Richard’s altered voice came through the computer speakers. “Talk to me.”

Cara’s altered voice replied. “I’ve got a location on the local small time HQ and operator, but you’re not going to like it. I think that one of our players also plays for the other side. I don’t have enough Intel at this point to determine who it is.”