The Hit

by David Baldacci

  He said proudly, “Country by country, leader by leader, step by step. It was all in the timing. It was a perfect jigsaw puzzle. I spent two years figuring it out. Every contingency. Everything that could go wrong. Everything was accounted for.”

  “Not everything.”

  “That’s impossible,” he snapped.

  “You didn’t account for me.”

  Reel heard the noises before he did. But when he did he smiled.

  “Your time is up, little lady.”

  “I’m not little. And I’ve never been a lady.”

  Her boot came down on the back of his head, bouncing it off the hard dirt and knocking him out cold. She grabbed the pages and stuffed them back into her duster.

  Reel retraced West’s safe path to the cabin and gave it the quick once-over. There were stacks of weapons, ammo, grenades, packs of C-4, Semtex, and other plastic explosives. Through a window looking out on the back porch she saw fifty-gallon drums of what looked to be gasoline and maybe fertilizer. She doubted they were for the generator or to grow crops. She figured the barn was probably full of those containers as well.

  She also glimpsed detailed plans of attack on major cities in the United States. These folks were domestic terrorists of the worst kind. She grabbed anything that looked like it might be important, including a USB stick plugged into his laptop, and stuffed them in her coat pockets.

  She also snagged a couple grenades. A “lady” could never have too many grenades.

  She ran back out, raced over to his Jeep, threw open the rear door, and pulled out the scoped rifle and a box of ammo in the cargo pad.

  She hustled back to her Explorer, jumped in, and peeled out. But before she got to the main road, she realized it was too late. When she saw what was coming at her, she had no option other than turning around and heading back toward the cabin.

  It looked like a few precious seconds were going to end up costing Reel her life.

  CHAPTER

  41

  REEL PUSHED THE GAS PEDAL to the floor and the Explorer roared up the twisting gravel drive. In her mind she was planning her attack. When outnumbered, retreat wasn’t always an option. Superior forces rarely expected an outgunned opponent to charge at them.

  Reel wasn’t going to exactly do that. She was going for a modified version of an all-out assault.

  She checked the rearview mirror and gauged the distance between her and the massive Denali chasing her. It was full of what she presumed were wackos posing as freedom fighters, and she presumed they were all heavily armed.

  Well, she would find out exactly how heavily armed they were in a few seconds. And how well they handled their weapons. She just hoped the feint she was planning worked.

  She gained the separation she needed, lowered the window halfway, and skidded the Ford to a stop, leaving it blocking the road. She grabbed the rifle, rested the barrel on top of the half-lowered window, took aim, and shot out the front tires on the Denali. For good measure she put a round through the front grille. Steam started to pour out and the Denali ground to a halt.

  The doors opened and men jumped out gripping a variety of weapons.

  Pistols and subguns did not concern her. They didn’t have the range to hurt her.

  They opened fire but nothing came close to her.

  She shot three times and three of the shooters fell, all with nonfatal wounds, which was intentional on her part. She just wanted them out of the action. And there was a sense of fairness as well. She didn’t have to kill them and so she let them live but in no condition to fight.

  She shifted her attention to another man who jumped out on the left side of the Denali. He was holding a scoped rifle.

  That could reach her. So Reel put him down with one shot to the forehead. He fell backward and the rifle spun out of his dead hands. No one went to retrieve it.

  The men, probably wondering what the hell they had gotten themselves into, retreated to the back of the Denali, using the big vehicle as a shield.

  But through her scope Reel could see some of them pulling cell phones out.

  They were calling in reinforcements.

  Ironically, that was what she wanted. It would give her the time to proceed with part two of her plan. She gunned the engine and headed toward the cabin.

  A few moments later she skidded to a stop a good distance from the cabin behind a stand of trees and leapt out. She pulled the grenades from her pocket, ran toward the cabin, pulled the pins, and threw the grenades through the structure’s front window.

  She was turning back to run to the Explorer when Roy West plowed into her.

  Reel managed to keep her feet, but he had one hand wrapped around her throat. He assumed that with his superior size and strength the battle was over.

  West could not have been more wrong.

  Reel twisted her body to the left, breaking his grip around her throat. At the same time she brought her knee up between his legs, with devastating results. West’s face turned purple, his knees buckled, and he grabbed his crotch. She slammed her right elbow into his left temple. He screamed, gasped, and started to fall away from her. But his foot accidentally hooked her leg and Reel fell too, him on top of her.

  Before they hit the dirt the grenades detonated. And so did every other explosive and flammable material in the cabin. The roof blew twenty feet in the air and pieces of wood, metal, and glass became deadly shrapnel flying out in all directions at supersonic speed.

  Reel felt the impact of some of this debris collide with West’s thick body. Hundreds of dull thuds, actually. His face turned white, then gray, and then blood started to pour from his mouth and nose.

  Ironically, he had become her shield.

  Reel rolled to her right, throwing the now dead man off her. She staggered up and looked at the flames and thick plumes of dark smoke rising up into the sky. She looked down at her clothes. The duster was shredded and covered in West’s blood. Reel had not escaped unscathed either. She had cuts on her face and hands, and there was a dull pain in her right leg from where West had fallen on her. But she was alive.

  She looked at the barn. The flames would reach that structure very soon. She didn’t want to be around to witness or feel that flame ball.

  She jumped into the Ford, backed up, and gunned it.

  She heard vehicles racing up the road. The reinforcements had come. And with the explosion they would concentrate all their attention on the cabin.

  That had been her intent when she had blown it up.

  She knew exactly where she was headed next. When you built a cabin in the middle of nowhere and filled it with explosives and plans of mass destruction, you would never be content with simply one road in and out. If the authorities came, you had to have another form of escape.

  And Reel, who had been looking for just such a route, had spied it on the way in when she had done her recon.

  A logging road to the east. That was her exit. Unfortunately, two vehicles were blocking her path out. Along with a dozen men with enough firepower to tangle on equal footing with a fully equipped Army squad. They had outflanked her.

  So this was it.

  CHAPTER

  42

  REEL SAT IN THE FORD and stared down at the men. They were arrayed in two defensive positions that could quickly be modified to offensive scenarios. They were dressed in makeshift uniforms, cammie pants, muscle shirts. Most were large, with fatty, bench-press-swollen chests and shoulders and bulging guts.

  They were pointing sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols, and MP5s at her. When they opened fire, which they looked prepared to do right now, the first volley would wipe her out.

  This was not how Reel imagined dying. Not at the hands of jerks who looked like they were barely one evolutionary step removed from cavemen.

  In the distance there was an explosion. That must have been the barn going up, she thought. She fingered her pistol. She could hit the gas and make a run at them, but the odds of her breaking through the blockade were n
ot good. A quick calculation in her head put her survival rate at less than five percent.

  Then she heard vehicles moving in behind her. She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw two more trucks and ten more militiamen slide in less than a hundred yards behind her.

  Now she was outgunned and outflanked.

  My survival rate just dropped to zero.

  She pulled her gun and stepped from the truck. She had decided she was not going down without a fight. They would never be able to say that about her.

  The men took careful aim and their fingers went to their triggers. They would have her dead center in a lethal field of fire.

  She gave a small shake of the head, and even managed a smile.

  “Finito,” she whispered to herself.

  “Go to hell!” she shouted at the militiamen as she raised her gun for what would certainly be the last time.

  That’s when the first explosion hit.

  Caught off guard, Reel instinctively ducked and rolled under the truck. Her first thought was that one of the idiot militia guys had dropped a grenade and blown himself up.

  When she looked back it seemed that this was indeed the case. The trucks on her forward flank were on fire, the men there dead, dazed, or scattered.

  But then from the corner of her eye she saw a shot originate from a ridge to her left. It impacted with the side of one of the trucks on her rear flank. Its fuel tank ignited and lifted the two-ton truck three feet into the air, scattering lethal bits of metal in all directions.

  Six of the men there were gutted where they stood and dropped, never to fight again. Then the gunfire opened up. But they weren’t firing at her. They were firing up at the ridge.

  Reel looked out from under the truck. The sunlight was in her eyes, but she slid a bit to the right and the glare vanished. She grabbed her binoculars from her pocket, clapped them to her eyes, and spun the focus lever.

  She saw the muzzle of a sniper rifle. And not just any sniper rifle. She had one just like it. A customized job that only had a few patrons.

  The gun fired once, twice, three times.

  Reel looked back and saw three men drop to the dirt, dead.

  She stared back up the ridge. The man was moving so fast and so low to the ground that he resembled a cougar going after prey.

  Her jaw sagged. It was Will Robie.

  She marveled at his ability to maneuver so fluidly through the rough terrain. Then she wondered why he was giving up the high ground.

  She stopped wondering with what he did next.

  He fired a round into the fuel tank of the second truck on her rear flank. He’d had to move to get a sight line on the tank. He must have been chambering incendiary rounds, because this truck exploded too. Three more men died and the survivors ran for it, disappearing down the road in full retreat.

  Robie stopped, pivoted, and then rapid-fired with his sniper rifle at the remaining men on the forward flank.

  Acquire a target and fire. Acquire a target and fire. It was like taking breaths, as natural and seamless as could be. Reel counted off each shot and with each round fired, a man fell. Robie never once missed. It was a man against children.

  They took cover and fired back. But even though he was outgunned it was like Robie had the superior firepower. While the militia shot wildly, their adrenaline and fear making it unlikely they would hit anything, Robie aimed and fired with such calm efficiency that it was like he was playing a video game and could hit reset anytime he wanted.

  After another minute of this slaughter the remaining militia on the forward flank were in full-scale retreat.

  That left just the two of them.

  Reel looked back at Robie. He stood on a small knoll staring down at her.

  She came out from under the truck and held her pistol loosely at her side.

  He had dropped his rifle. His Glock was in his right hand. He held it loosely too.

  Reel looked at the burning carnage and the dead bodies and then back at Robie.

  “Thanks.”

  Robie took a few more steps forward and then stopped. He was nearly at level ground, sixty yards from her.

  They both knew the same thing.

  Twenty more yards of closure and their Glocks would easily be in kill range.

  “You could have just let them kill me,” she said. “More than twenty to one, inevitable. Keep your hands clean.”

  “Wasn’t on my option board.” Robie glanced at one of the dead men. “Who are they?”

  “Militiamen. And not very capable ones.”

  He nodded. “Did you kill Jacobs and Gelder?”

  Reel drew a few yards closer and stopped. She glanced at Robie’s hands. They hadn’t moved. But it would only take a second for that to change and the Glock to fire.

  “How did you know to come here?” she asked.

  “Friend of a friend. Didn’t know if you’d be here or not. I was looking for West.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you were looking for him.”

  Reel said nothing. She just stared at his gun hand.

  “You don’t have to send any more cryptic texts, Jessica. I’m here. So tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “It’s complicated, Will.”

  “Then let’s start out simple. Did you kill them?”

  Robie walked forward another five yards. They were now right on the cusp.

  Neither of them was holding their Glocks loosely now. The muscles in their trigger hands were flexed tight. But the fingers were still on the trigger guards.

  “You haven’t changed much, Will.”

  “Apparently you have,” said Robie. “Roy West? Where is he? With the pile of bodies?”

  She shook her head. “Not those piles. But he’s still dead.”

  “You killed him too?”

  “He did himself in. It’s dangerous to fill your house with explosives. Like living with rattlesnakes.”

  “Why did you need to find West?”

  “He had something I needed.”

  “A document?” asked Robie.

  Her face flashed concern. “How did you know about that?”

  “Did you get it?”

  “I already had the document and I’ve read it. I wanted more info, but I didn’t get it.”

  “So all this was a waste?” he said.

  They both glanced sideways. In the far distance a sound could be heard. Sirens. Even in the middle of nowhere explosions and gunfire drew the police eventually.

  She looked back at him. “I know what you’ve been tasked to do,” she said.

  “And I’m giving you a chance to explain.”

  “So explanation before execution?”

  “That depends solely on the explanation.”

  The sirens were drawing closer. Each singsong screech burst the quiet like artillery rounds.

  He added, “And we’re running out of time.”