"You know her?"
"I know of her, Jack. Commander McCoy is one of the most skilled and trusted a.s.sa.s.sins in the entire United States military." Troy turned toward Jack so the men standing behind Skylar couldn"t hear him. "Red Cell Seven has been considering making her the first woman ever initiated into it," he explained. "Dad had mentioned her name to me before. She"s very highly regarded all the way up the chain of command."
"What"s she doing here?"
"I heard from Dad last night. It was right after I got that "dive deep" message. Before we started out for New Jersey from Brooklyn, I spoke to him while you waited in the truck. I told you I needed to take a-"
"And you didn"t bother telling me he was alive?" Jack asked incredulously.
"I"m telling you now."
"Oh, well, thanks for that," he said sarcastically. "Glad you finally got around to it."
"Focus on the task at hand, brother."
Jack winced. He still hated being schooled by his kid brother. "What"s she doing here?"
"I"ll spare the details for later when we"re one-on-one, but Commander McCoy and Dad met last night. Apparently, President Dorn was going on offense. He was trying to destroy Red Cell Seven by waging civil war on us, by murdering us." Troy nodded back at Skylar. "Commander McCoy was leading the attack."
"Jesus," Jack whispered.
"Fortunately, Dad was able to convince her of what the real story was. That she was on the wrong team if she was fighting for President Dorn. Even more important," Troy continued, "Dad discovered what was going on here in Harpers Ferry." He gestured upriver toward the town. "Daniel Gadanz is planning another major terrorist attack."
"What kind of attack?"
"He"s planning to a.s.sa.s.sinate multiple federal officials starting sometime in the next day or two. The target list starts with the president and goes down through the Cabinet to Congress all the way to the intel and law enforcement agencies. And with the kind of money Gadanz has, the threat must be taken very seriously."
For a few moments, Karen"s fate slipped from Jack"s mind as the enormity of what Troy had just described hit him full force. "How did Dad find out?"
"He"s been with Shane Maddux since he disappeared," Troy answered. "They were both laying low in a cabin in the woods of western New York. They were worried Dorn was coming after them, and they were right. But I guess Maddux wasn"t just laying low. Like Dorn, he went on offense." Troy shook his head in disbelief. "Shane was working with Gadanz on this plot, which they called Operation Anarchy. Maddux was feeding Gadanz highly cla.s.sified information, along with details on how to execute Operation Anarchy so they could kill as many of the targets as possible."
"So Maddux is trying to wipe out opposition from the left wing to cells like the one we"re familiar with."
"That"s exactly right," Troy said. "Anyway, Dad sent Commander McCoy down here to help us. I"m not sure how much he told her about us, but I"m going to a.s.sume, at least for now, it wasn"t much."
"My G.o.d." Jack spoke up loudly as the realization suddenly struck him. "Is it possible Maddux was in on having Little Jack and Karen kidnapped?"
"It"s not just possible," Skylar said as she reached into her jacket pocket and produced the small notebook Bill had found in Maddux"s bedroom closet at the cabin. "There"s no doubt about it. He was definitely in on it." She handed it to Troy. "It"s all in there." She pointed at the notebook.
"Why?" Jack asked. "What could possibly be Maddux"s motive for having my wife kidnapped?"
"I don"t know," Troy said. "I agree, it doesn"t make much sense."
"Well, you were right about it being an inside job," Jack muttered. "That"s how Jennie knew you were in Spain six weeks ago. Maddux could have known and could have told her. He could have gotten those pictures of you and then handed them off. And it"s why Jennie thought . . ." His voice trailed off.
He"d been about to say it was why Jennie had accused Troy of killing Lisa Martinez. Maddux was one of the few people who knew the young woman had been murdered and would have pinned blame for her death on Troy to manipulate Jennie-which, apparently, had worked.
Troy glanced over at Skylar. "How did my father convince you that Dorn was wrong? How did he convince you not to kill-" He interrupted himself as he pointed down the slope at the road. "Here we go, people. There"s a truck."
AT THE bottom of the hill from The Fisherman"s Inn, Sterling turned the bus left onto Route 340 and headed east for Washington, DC. He"d waited until the coast was completely clear both ways-which hadn"t taken long, as there was very little traffic this far out in the country even at noon. He wasn"t accustomed to driving such a large vehicle, and the roads were slick from the light rain that had been falling for several hours, so he was being extremely careful. He could have no incidents of any kind during this trip.
As he guided the bus over the bridge across the Shenandoah, he glanced left, downriver toward the confluence with the Potomac. For a moment something seemed strange, and he couldn"t place it. Then he realized what it was. No cars had been coming the other way for some time. And then, as he peered ahead through the mist, he saw flashing lights and too many police cars for a simple traffic stop.
As he brought the bus to a sharp stop behind an old pickup truck, his breathing went short, and a violent panic wave surged through his chest. He"d known better, but he"d let his ego get squarely in the way of his common sense. Guiding principles were never to be violated, yet he had.
"Oh my G.o.d," he whispered as everything became clear.
He slammed open the bus door, rose up from the driver"s seat, turned around, and gazed back at the twenty-four expectant faces, his heart pounding crazily. "I regret to inform you that we have a situation," he said as calmly as he could. These people didn"t have their hunting rifles, but unless they were stupid, they had handguns. And they"d need them if they were going to survive. "It"s everyone for themselves, people. G.o.dspeed!"
JACK WAS the first of the team to spot people spilling from the bus like rats from a sinking ship-the truck Troy had spotted three minutes ago had turned out to be a false alarm. The bus had just come to a jerking stop at the back of the traffic line, and maybe the ma.s.s exodus was innocent, maybe there was an emergency on the bus and the panicked rush to exit was completely innocent. Maybe this was a false alarm, too.
But it sure didn"t look like it.
"Troy!" Jack shouted over his shoulder, pointing frantically as he took off down the hillside, pistol leading the way. "Come on!"
He sprinted down the steep slope, dodging trees and boulders as best he could while fighting to keep his balance on the wet ground. Still, Skylar and Troy quickly raced past him like deer and hurdled the last ten feet down to the road beside the cars that were waiting to be allowed through the roadblock a hundred yards to the east. The bus was fifty feet away, and men and women were still spilling out of it and sprinting off in every direction as Jack"s boots. .h.i.t the pavement.
For several strides he followed Skylar and Troy as they raced along the roadside toward the bus. But when a man who"d just jumped off fired at them, Jack ducked in front of a late-model sedan being driven by an elderly man with a terrified expression on the other side of the cracked windshield.
The ma.s.s exodus from the bus wasn"t innocent at all. The bus had been taking a.s.sa.s.sins to Washington.
Jack sprinted ahead on the driver"s side of the traffic line, past three vehicles immediately in front of the bus, just as someone burst out from behind the last one-a pickup-aiming a pistol at him.
Jack shot twice before the other guy could, lowered his shoulder, and crashed into the man hard. They tumbled to the pavement, with Jack ending up on the bottom. The man brought his pistol up to fire, but Jack knocked it away with a backhand left and then nailed the man flush on his bearded jaw with a crushing right, aided by the pistol he was still clasping tightly.
The man fell away and lay limp on the road facedown.
As Jack scrambled to his feet, he spotted a woman fifteen feet away aiming a weapon at him. Just as she pulled her trigger a gunshot exploded from the left, and the woman staggered back a few feet before falling over the guardrail and tumbling down the riverbank.
Jack"s gaze snapped left, but Skylar had already turned to fire at another target. She"d just saved his life, he realized in the middle of the chaos.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man not wearing a black shirt aiming at Skylar. Jack raised his gun smoothly, aimed at the chest, and fired just before the man could. As the man collapsed, Jack swung the barrel of his gun to the front of the bus and trained it on a woman who"d just jumped out of it and was about to fire at Skylar. Again he fired and put the woman down.
This time Skylar recoiled and hunched down, as if she"d been hit. But an instant later she whirled around, glared at Jack, and then nodded before sprinting out of sight around the bus.
Jack took a quick step after her, then stopped, horrified by the scene to the left. Another a.s.sa.s.sin was pointing his gun at Troy from close range. But Troy had his back to the shooter.
Jack fired and put the man down-but not before Troy fell.
Jack raced to Troy and knelt down, terrified. Blood was spreading across Troy"s shirt from a wound to his upper chest.
He took Troy"s hand tightly as Troy stared back up in desperation. It was the first time Jack had ever seen this kind of fear in his brother"s eyes.
AS NEAR as Sterling could tell, he"d sprinted at least a mile through the forest. He a.s.sumed that the people who"d ambushed them on Route 340 would have choppers in the air quickly. In fact, he was surprised he hadn"t already heard the thump-thump-thump of rotors. Still, the tree cover seemed thick enough to hide him, though he wasn"t sure about that. And it certainly wouldn"t protect him from the dogs that would certainly be let loose very soon.
All he knew for sure was that he needed to get as far away as possible from this place as fast as possible.
He jammed his hand into his pocket and grabbed the vial filled with amber liquid to make sure it was still there. This vial had suddenly become infinitely more crucial.
"THE CHOPPER will be here in less than a minute," the trooper called to Jack, who was still kneeling beside Troy. "The pilot"s gonna put it down right here on the road, right out in front of you," he said, gesturing. "It"s one of ours, not a big medevac, so it"s small enough to get down through the trees. The guy flying the bird"s a pro. He"ll have your brother to urgent care in Charles Town in five minutes. And they"ve got a surgeon on the way from Hagerstown who"ll meet him at the UC facility."
Jack glanced up as the sound of rotors in the distance reached his ears. How the h.e.l.l anyone could get a helicopter down through that small an opening was a mystery. But good for him, because this spot was the only flat surface anywhere close to Troy with an opening in the trees above it. And Jack didn"t want to move Troy until the helicopter got here.
Multiple ambulances were racing to the scene as well, but the EMTs wouldn"t be able to do much here on Route 340. Jack was no doctor, but the pool of blood on the wet road at his knees and the ashen color of Troy"s face told a bad story. Troy needed a skilled surgeon statim.
He squeezed Troy"s hand. "Hold on, brother," he urged as his phone went off again. "Two minutes and you"re in the air, headed to help."
By the time Jack could pull the phone out it had stopped ringing. This was the first chance he"d had to check calls since they"d sprinted down the hillside toward the a.s.sa.s.sins spilling from the bus. Now he saw that Cheryl had called from her cell phone six times in the last ten minutes. And she never left multiple messages unless something was really wrong.
He hit the "call back" b.u.t.ton.
"Jack?" she answered loudly before the first ring ended.
"Yeah, it"s me." His mother sounded awful, on the verge of tears. "What"s wrong?"
"It"s your father," she said, sobs racking her. "He"s been hurt very badly."
Jack grimaced in shock, as if he"d just taken a shot to the stomach himself. "What are you talking about?" he asked as his gaze flashed to Skylar, who was standing ten feet away, speaking to one of the men who"d come with her to Harpers Ferry. "What happened to him?" he asked hesitantly as the rotors grew louder.
"What"s going on?" Troy gasped, squeezing Jack"s hand hard.
"Easy, brother."
"Is that Troy?" Cheryl asked quickly. "Is he all right? I"ve been trying to call him, too, but he doesn"t pick up."
"Troy"s fine."
"He doesn"t sound fine. He sounds-"
"Tell me what happened."
"A few hours ago Bill was found in a cabin in western New York by two deer hunters. They got caught in this terrible storm we"re having, and they took cover inside the cabin." She sobbed loudly. "They found Bill lying in a pool of blood in a back bedroom."
Jack glanced at Skylar again. She"d claimed Bill was alive when she left that cabin. "But-"
"There was another man dead in the same bedroom from a bullet wound," Cheryl continued, "but Bill had a . . . he had a terrible knife wound. He"d lost so much blood, Jack. Oh, G.o.d. I don"t know what I"m going to-"
A hurricane from above wiped out her words as the chopper began its descent straight down through the narrow opening in the treetops.
"What the-" Jack shouted as Troy grabbed him tightly by the front of his shirt. "Save your strength. What are you doing, Troy?"
"You"ve gotta take this chopper out of here," Troy gasped with a wild look in his eyes as the blast of wind from the helicopter blew leaves and branches everywhere. "You"ve got to get to that cabin in New York."
"What are you talking about?"
"I heard what Mom said. You"ve got to take this chopper out of here, get to a plane, and get to that cabin."
"You"re taking this chopper," Jack yelled above the wind and the roar as the craft neared the pavement. "You need a doctor immediately."
"No. You"ve got to get the Order. It"s the last one. It"s the one that was in the cave on Gannett Peak, and it"s in the cabin. Dad told me everything on the phone when I talked to him in Brooklyn. If that last Order falls into the wrong hands, Red Cell Seven is done. Dorn can destroy us if he has both of them. The Supreme Court can declare us outlaws and shut us down, throw our agents in jail. I can"t let that happen, Jack. I can"t."
Jack stared down into Troy"s intense expression, which was twisted by the awful pain he was fighting. Jack was well aware of how crucial it was for Red Cell Seven to possess at least one original of Executive Order 1973 1-E. Bill had explained that last December before sending Karen and him to Gannett Peak.
"I"ll drive to the closest airport and take a-"
"No!" Troy shouted as loudly as he could. "Seconds could matter. If the news agencies pick up on Dad"s situation and where it happened, Baxter will send his people out there immediately. He"s smart. He"ll figure that"s where the Order is. Red Cell Seven"s too important to the security of this country to let that happen. What happens to it is way more important than what happens to me."
"We could send someone ahead, someone from RC7."
"No," Troy gasped. "The only person I trust with this is you. You"ve got to get that doc.u.ment."
It was a level of patriotism Jack couldn"t comprehend.
"Take Skylar with you," Troy said.
"She might have-"
"No," Troy cut in, clenching Jack harder as another spasm of pain tore through him. "I heard Mom say it was a knife wound to the neck. It had to be Maddux."
"Why did it have to be Maddux?"
"Maddux always has a switchblade bound to his right wrist beneath his sleeve. It"s why he always wears long sleeves." Troy coughed several times. "Go, Jack," he whispered. "Now. Please, brother."
"I can"t do it, Troy. I can"t leave you here like this."
Troy shook his head. "You don"t have a choice."
CHAPTER 37.
AT TROY"S insistence, Jack and Skylar had squeezed into the little helicopter and flown to the airport at Hagerstown-which was across the Potomac River and north of Harpers Ferry. There, Jack had convinced a young pilot to fly them in his four-seat Cessna Skyhawk through the storm lashing the Mid-Atlantic and northeast to Corning, New York-for twenty grand plus fuel.
After making it to Corning, they"d rented a car and driven north through Watkins Glen and up the western sh.o.r.e of Seneca Lake to the cabin where Bill and Maddux had holed up for the last nine months, parking the car a mile away and hustling through the rain-soaked forest.
"Where"d you learn to shoot?" Skylar asked. "That was pretty d.a.m.n impressive back at Harpers Ferry."
They were standing thirty yards from the cabin, inside the tree line so they could see the structure but no one could see them. They were waiting for the last members of New York law enforcement to finish their investigation and clear out so they could search the place for the Order.
"Troy," Jack answered dejectedly.
Troy was in critical condition at a hospital outside Washington, while Bill was in critical condition at a hospital in New York City. And Karen was gone-probably forever. It was tough for Jack to focus. His world was shattered.
Cheryl was being raced to New York City by members of the Jensen family security detail, nearly inconsolable as she prepared to see Bill for the first time in nine months even though he was unconscious. And she didn"t even know about Karen being kidnapped and Jennie being dead. At least they"d gotten L.J. back, Jack thought to himself. His mother had sobbed in relief when he"d told her that. She"d felt terribly guilty for being the one who"d lost the little boy.