Liberation Day - A Thorn Byrd Novel

by Dustin Stevens

“What have you got on that address, Coach?”

  A half dozen hours had passed since their last conversation, though Thorn had managed only a few hours of anything resembling rest. Once the call had come in from Steubin authorizing him to use the satellite surveillance system, he had brought his laptop into the living room and posted up. With Abby asleep by his side and his bare feet resting on the coffee table, he had sat inert for the past three hours, trolling the grounds as best he could.

  So far, it had been little more than an exercise in tedium and frustration.

  His only hope was Ingram’s afternoon had been more productive.

  “Property has a paper trail a mile long,” Ingram began, reading the information from a printout in hand. “It’s owned by a company named Axis Industries, which as far as I can tell doesn’t exist - or if it does, it’s only business transaction ever was to buy that house.”

  “Axis Industries? Yeah, that sounds legit,” Thorn said, letting his voice relay his disbelief.

  “Even better? Paid in full. Cash.”

  At that Thorn’s eyebrows rose, a puff of air passing over his lips. “Damn. Place looks like a palace on the satellite imagery.”

  “Does on the real estate listing too,” Ingram said. “Gardens, pools, fountains, everything.”

  “All the makings for a criminal’s lair in a bad movie,” Thorn said.

  “My first thought as well.”

  “Who the hell has that kind of cash on hand?” Thorn asked.

  “And that was my second thought,” Ingram added. “The kind that tosses containers full of people into the harbor, I guess.”

  For a moment, silence fell between them, Thorn nodding with Ingram’s assessment.

  “What else?” Thorn asked.

  “Not a whole hell of a lot,” Ingram said. “I took a look at things from the air. Place is enormous, have to assume it’s well protected.”

  After three hours, Thorn had been over every surface visible from the heavens. Each one had already been committed to memory.

  More than once he had run naval ops with less concrete visual data.

  “Sheer cliff walls lining two sides of the property,” Thorn said. “High fences and gates on the other two. Whoever designed it meant for the place to be a damn fortress.”

  “Yeah,” Ingram agreed.

  “Any chance there’s much more to be mined from the records?” Thorn asked.

  Turning to face forward, Ingram squinted into the camera, wagging one hand on an edge. “Maybe, but doubtful. The back trail is clean, scrubbed to a shine. Anything I do find is likely to have been planted to throw off anybody snooping around.”

  Leaning forward, Thorn sat the laptop onto the coffee table and rested his elbows on his knees. He ran a palm along the back of his head, scratching at the scalp with his fingers.

  Right now they had a location, but precious little else. There was no name, no clear motivation for what was going on. It would be possible to simply hand over the address to Turner and his associates, letting them handle it as they saw fit.

  If things happened to go sideways though, there would be no way of telling when another opportunity might present itself.

  “We need more intel,” Thorn said, placing it out there so Ingram knew he was thinking aloud rather than slinging an accusation.

  “I concur,” Ingram said, “but like I just told you, I don’t know how much more I can pick out of this stuff.”

  “No,” Thorn said, shaking his head and raising his gaze to look at Ingram. “I don’t mean financials, I mean on the house itself.”

  “Meaning?” Ingram asked.

  “When I was in the service,” Thorn said, “we had these things that were like electronic relay stations. Small, no bigger than an alarm clock.”

  “Which you used as an enhancement point for satellites,” Ingram said, nodding along.

  “Exactly,” Thorn said. “Right now I’ve got a good picture of the grounds, but I’m not seeing any more detail than cars moving around. If we could somehow get a relay station in place...”

  “We could start running facial recognition,” Ingram said, finishing the thought, his own voice trailing away as he chewed on it. “Interesting idea.”

  “The problem is, the ones we had were basically useless beyond a quarter mile out,” Thorn said. “And given the size of the grounds...”

  “It would have to be placed on-site,” Ingram said.

  Thorn nodded in agreement, not bothering to voice anything further.

  “Give me an hour,” Ingram said, “let me see what I can dig up. I’ll call you back.”

  The screen cut to blue before Thorn had a chance to respond, the bright sapphire color causing his eyes to squint. For a moment he sat and stared at the mute program before exiting out of it and pulling the satellite imagery software back into place.

  He was less than a minute into another sweep of the grounds when his cell phone vibrated on the table beside him.

  Chapter Forty