by James Hunt
The heat signature from the house had died down, and Bryce found the assassin near the front with the satellite’s thermal scan of the area. He currently blocked their only escape route.
“The moment I tell you to go, floor it,” Bryce said. “And do exactly what I tell you to do.”
Becca let out a breath and rubbed her grip over the leather of the steering wheel. “Just keep us alive, Bryce.”
He peered up from his laptop, his eyes switching between the view of the shattered windshield and the flight path of the drone, which was now only sixty seconds away. “Grace, I hope your parents didn’t have anything in that house they expected to save.”
“Not really,” Grace said. “Why?”
“Because what’s left of that burnt rubble is about to be blown off the face of the earth,” Bryce answered. And then, as the flight path of the drone aligned with the location of the assassin, he enhanced the image of the screen.
A light whistling echoed from the sky, and Becca and Grace both lifted their heads to the noise. And Bryce watched the assassin on the screen quickly sprint around the left side of the house toward the backyard.
“Now! To the right! Gun it!”
Their tires chewed up the grass, and just when the Jeep picked up speed, Bryce watched the assassin round the corner to the backyard, rifle aimed, poised to shoot.
“Head straight for the path to the roadway out of here, and do not let up on the gas!” Bryce kept his eyes flitting between the computer screen and the gaining assassin behind them. “How fast are you going?”
“Just hit forty!” Becca answered.
“Jesus Christ,” Bryce said.
Three gunshots popped off into the night, the rest overshadowed by the approaching drone. The screen of Bryce’s laptop blinked rapidly as the missile was fired. The Jeep rounded the front corner of the house, and from what Bryce could see, the assassin was still dangerously close—close enough to include the Jeep in the blast radius. “Shit!”
Becca was screaming something in Bryce’s ear, but he couldn’t hear what she said. He was too busy trying to divert the missile away from his target. His fingers flew across the keyboard, and the missile was practically in the rearview mirror when Bryce finally managed to make it nose-dive.
Chapter 11
Mallory paced the floor of his office. The flesh over his cheeks was translucent, and the sour pit in his stomach had only worsened over the past hour. His eyes remained glued to the phone on his desk, which should ring any moment. And the information his team told him would either save or condemn him. Perhaps both.
It didn’t help that the secret service had just informed him that Runehart was dead. Hill’s doing no doubt, but until he could figure out where the chips were going to fall he had to play dumb. He had at least until tomorrow morning to come up with a plan. But how he put it together depended on what his team found.
Waiting was always intolerable. It gave him time to travel every dark path in his mind. The stakes were so high. What happened next could change the course of intelligence agencies forever.
A quick knock at the door, and his secretary pushed her body halfway inside. “Director? You have a call on line three. It’s secure.”
Heart racing, he reached for the phone, his sweaty fingers slipping against the plastic case, which he quickly placed to his ear then relayed the mission code. “Mission Review Alpha-Tango-Foxtrot-Charlie, go for report.”
“Director, mission was success. We have the documents and no detection by the target.”
All at once, Mallory felt his body collapse inward, a wave of relief taking down all of the apprehension running through his mind. “I want them uploaded to our secure server immediately.”
“It’s already in process, sir.”
“Good work, Captain.”
Mallory ended the call and immediately left his office, passing by the extra security detail that was added after Hill’s infiltration.
The guards outside of Mack’s room stepped aside and let Mallory enter. The door swung shut after his entrance, and Mallory was left inside the small two-hundred-square-foot room by himself with the former operations manager for the GSF.
“We have the documents,” Mallory said. “They’re being uploaded now, and then my team is getting the hell out of there.”
Mack kept his head down, his eyelids drawn so close that it looked as though they were completely closed and he had fallen asleep. Mallory inched closer, reaching out a hand to place it on Mack’s shoulder, when the man suddenly lifted his head.
“Enough evidence to prove Runehart played a hand into what Grimes did?” Mack asked.
A notification pinged on Mallory’s phone, and he took a deep breath as he sat next to Mack. “Let’s find out.” He scrolled through the first few documents, nothing more than his will, which divvied up what was left of his personal belongings, and according to their files, it wasn’t much.
But there was one email, one golden nugget amidst the sea of crap he filtered through that brought it all home. Runehart sent Grimes an email in which both parties acknowledged their conspiracy together and it gave detailed plans to frame the GSF and pin them against the rest of the world. It, also, singled out Grimes as acting alone as he states in the communication, ‘no one knows’.
It was exactly the news Mallory needed to hear.
“Yes!” He clutched both hands into fists and tossed Mack the phone. “Do you see that! Do you see it? HaHA!” He paced the floor in a tight circle, a bundle of nerves and energy. But when his bald counterpart looked at the phone, then set it aside, Mallory knew something was wrong. “What?”
“It’s not enough, Mallory,” Mack said.
“What are you talking about?” Mallory walked over and picked up the phone, shoving the screen into Mack’s face. “Everything we need is right here, and I haven’t told you the best part.” He leaned in close. “Runehart’s dead.”
Mack lifted his head, the faint expression of surprise on his face.
“Yeah,” Mallory said, nodding quickly. “And now that we have this we can spin his death anyway we want.”
Mack rubbed his thick hands on even thicker thighs and shook his head. “You don’t know how deep Runehart’s connections go.”
Mallory crossed his arms and puffed up his chest, a momentary inflation of his ego triggered by the good news. “You do know that you’re not the only one who is the head of an intelligence agency, right?”
“And Runehart was only half the problem,” Mack said. “The rest of the world’s intelligence directors will want a face and a name from the GSF. We may not have been the cause of the problem, but we have infiltrated and operated on everyone’s soil for a very long time. That’s not something they’ll forgive quickly.”
“What are you saying, Mack?” Mallory asked.
Mack paused, and drew in a breath. “I’m saying I need to insure that my people are left alone when all of this is said and done. And there’s only one thing I know that can make it happen.”
***
The headlights of the truck that Sarah stole bounced along the back road, bringing to light quick flashes of trees, bushes, dirt, and grass. Sarah jerked the wheel left and right, her foot slammed against the accelerator as she sped toward the cabin.
Black smoke drifted lazily against the starry night sky, and Sarah squeezed the steering wheel until her knuckles blanched. Her heart pounded out of her chest, and no matter how many times she tried Bryce over the radio, there was only silence.
Sarah rounded a sharp turn and then immediately slammed on her brakes. The truck skidded forward a few feet and then abruptly came to a stop, the pair of headlights illuminating what was left of the charred cabin.
She jumped out of the car and unintentionally removed the Colts from her holsters. She didn’t even realize they were in her hands until her foot stumbled into the crater in the front yard that measured at least four feet in diameter and three feet deep.
Soil tumbled down
the massive hole, and Sarah circled it, a paralyzing fear about who may have been in the blast radius. But the closer she looked and the more she examined, she saw no traces of blood, bone, or clothes. It seemed that whatever target the explosive was intended for had missed. But who was the target?
The sinking pit in the middle of her stomach grew larger, a feeling of helplessness overtaking her senses. Sarah fell to her knees, the tears collecting in her eyes. She dropped the pistols from her hands and fisted handfuls of the cool soil. She rocked slowly back and forth, feeling the warm flow of a few tears running from the corners of her eyes. She should have been there. She should never have left them alone.
A rush of static blasted into the communication link in Sarah’s left ear, and for a moment, a well of hope rose from the despair. “Bryce? Is that you?”
“—rah. Ca- --u h—r me?”
Sarah spun in circles, searching the tree line. “I can hear you. Tell me Becca and the kids are with you.”
“They’re with me, and they’re okay,” Bryce answered.
Sarah’s knees buckled from the good news, but she still managed to keep her feet under her. “Thank God. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the past thirty minutes. Where the hell are you?”
“We had another run-in with that assassin,” Bryce answered. “I had to call in a drone strike.”
Sarah glanced down at the crater in the earth and raised her eyebrows. “Are you telling me that thing can survive a blast from a missile?” She let out a low whistle. “Talk about resilient.”
“It didn’t get close. He managed to catch up with us just before the missile was about to make contact, so I had to divert the trajectory away from its target. But for the time being, it was enough to force the thing to leave us alone,” Bryce said.
“Where are you now?”
“Better I send you the information to the uplink in your arm,” Bryce answered. “I have a feeling there are a lot of feelers out for us right now, and I’m still not on a secure line.”
“Right,” Sarah said, taking one last look at the crater before heading to the truck. “Playing it safe.”
When Bryce said they were close, he wasn’t kidding. Sarah found them a mile down the road, tucked away in a motel that Bryce had purchased with what cash they had left. The moment the door opened, she wrapped her arms around Ella and Matt and squeezed them until they clamored to be let free. “I’m just so glad you guys are okay.”
Becca was the next to receive the brunt of her affection, but both were glad to see each other alive. “You work with some people that are very good at their job,” Becca said.
“She wasn’t so bad herself,” Bryce said, tinkering away at the laptop. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen better driving from someone like that.”
“Yeah,” Grace added, pointing to Sarah. “She could have given you a run for your money.”
Becca gave a lighthearted smile and then took a seat on the edge of the bed, where the twins crawled over and piled into her lap. “Just don’t ask me to do it again.”
“Probably won’t be able to make any promises on that anytime soon,” Sarah said then immediately turned her attention to Bryce. “Runehart used Grimes to start his own intelligence team. He wanted us out of the way to make room for an army of that genetic freak that keeps chasing us.”
“You’ve got that right,” Bryce said, flicking on one of the projector screens. “Check this out.” Dozens of documents appeared on the wall, all of them correspondence between Bryce and Runehart. “There were at least two dozen signals sent between the two. But whatever application they used deleted the contents immediately after they were read.”
Grace paced the floor, rubbing her chin. Sarah found the Mack-esque features that she displayed somewhat amusing, and for a moment, Sarah thought Grace was going to start grunting and ask for a cup of coffee to help her think.
“With Runehart’s influence inside the Senate and who knows how many in the intelligence community, he’s not going to go down quietly, or away,” Grace said, breaking from the concentrating stare into the carpet. “He’ll refute this till he’s blue in the face. He’s already built a platform in which his constituents trust him and will believe whatever he says, regardless of the fact that he is part of the very institution that they hate.”
“Um, about that,” Sarah said. “So, since Runehart was doing all of this bad stuff, and I thought that you guys could be dead, and because he was saying a lot of stuff to piss me of… I sort of killed him.”
“You what?” Grace and Bryce asked at the same time.
Sarah held up her hands. “Trust me, if you saw the guy, you would have done it too.”
Grace crossed her arms. “It does tie up our loose ends. And if Mallory was able to get the information that Grimes sent to that law firm, then we can pivot all of that evidence toward Runehart.”
“There is still the issue of the world’s most talented spies hunting us, along with Runehart’s rabid dog,” Bryce said.
Sarah held up her finger. “They’re might be a way to solve both of those problems.”
Chapter 12
The facility that Bryce pinged Sarah’s location to the rest of the world was an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of DC. It was chosen not only because of its remote location, but also because it provided plenty of spaces for cover.
With the speed in which they needed to prepare for the mission, Sarah didn’t have time to really stock up on the supplies she would have liked, so it was back to the basics with just her utility belt complete with explosives, knives, and various pistol attachments, extra magazines of .45-caliber ammunition, her Kevlar clothes, and of course, her trusty 1911 Colts.
Her hand still ached, and the stitches and tender left side of her face were a reminder of what she was up against. She knew this was going to hurt. She knew she might die. But the alternative was worse.
The property that encompassed the warehouse was littered with massive shipping crates, old concrete sewer pipes, and broken-down and discarded vehicles. The night sky was still dark, but with the sunrise in a few hours, the entire place would be bathed in light and shadows.
Sarah maneuvered around the obstacles, Bryce still in her ear, on the lookout for their guest of honor. “So were you able to find anything on this guy?” She stopped and leaned up against one of the concrete tubes.
“From what I was able to pull off of Runehart’s servers, it looks like the person we’re dealing with has been genetically engineered using a gene called Cas-9,” Bryce answered. “Think of it as a super-steroid that makes any human perfect.”
“Then that’s what must be in my genes.” Sarah chuckled and removed one of the Colts, twirling it around her index finger.
“He’s faster than you, stronger than you, smarter than you, and has a higher level of endurance than you do,” Bryce said. “And I’m guessing his mental capacity has allowed him to become proficient in multiple forms of hand-to-hand combat as well as mastering several weapon systems that include pistols, rifles, knives, and heavy artillery.”
The twirling of the Colt ceased, and Sarah scratched the back of her head. “Yeah, when I asked what you’ve learned about him, I was hoping you could point out some type of flaw or weakness that I could exploit?”
“He doesn’t have any,” Bryce answered, rather quickly.
“Perfect. So I’m going up against the world’s most perfect fighting specimen while also dealing with the looming threat of the world’s intelligence community sending their own highly trained assassins to kill me.”
“Yup,” Bryce answered.
“It’s gonna be a long night.”
Sarah huddled next to the large concrete tube, waiting for any signal from Bryce as he watched the area with his eye in the sky. Time passed slowly, and when Bryce finally spoke, Sarah nearly fired the pistol in response.
“I’ve got a heat signature coming from the east,” Bryce said then let out an exasperated breath. “And he is boo
king it.”
Sarah peered around the end of the tube, the warehouse structure blocking the view to the east, where the target was located. “Sounds like that’s our guy. Can you zoom in and get a feel for the heat he’s packing?”
“Let’s see here,” Bryce said, humming to himself. “Looks like he has an M-4 and what looks to be a backpack, and two pistols. I’m assuming he has explosives along with extra ammunition.”
“Let’s just hope he left the kinky stuff at home,” Sarah said, her eyes catching movement near a window on the first floor of the building. She darted to the other end of the cement tube, fully aware that the bastard could have seen her, and then sprinted toward one of the rusted shipping containers. “Just keep an eye on him for me.”
“Will do,” Bryce said. “Christ, he’s just so fast! He’s darting around the inside of the warehouse like he’s on a motorcycle.” A hint of fear crept into Bryce’s tone, and he chose his next words carefully. “Sarah, I don’t know if this is such a good idea. I think you may be in over your head on this one.”
“Well, if you did your job correctly, I won’t be the only person out here tonight that he’ll have to deal with.” Sarah poked her head around the side of the container, this time not seeing any movement from the warehouse windows. “Where is he now?”
“Still inside,” Bryce said. “And he’s just… standing there on the first floor.”
Sarah arched an eyebrow. “Think he’s waiting for me?”
“I do,” Bryce answered.
Sarah stepped out and exposed herself. “Well, I’ve never been one to shy away from a dance.” She walked leisurely to the warehouse, hoping to buy herself some time, and when she opened the side entrance door, rusty from years of neglect, she quickly aimed both pistols into the darkness.
At first, she saw nothing, and when she checked the display on her arm, she saw the beast had still not moved from his location toward the center of the first floor. Stacks of old crates and boxes were piled high and cluttered the cement floor. She kept her Colts raised, and all of her senses processed the surrounding data on overdrive.
