The Target

by David Baldacci

  It was just the way it was here.

  Chapter

  45

  YOU WILL SEE THAT WE are not disturbed.”

  Dikes said this to the large man in a black uniform who was stationed at the end of the hall. Along this hall was only one doorway and behind it a bedroom.

  The guard saluted, and as Dikes turned away, shoving Reel in front of him, the man let a small smile escape his lips.

  Dikes unlocked the door and pushed Reel, her hands still bound behind her, through the opening. He walked in, closed the door, and locked it.

  He took off his gloves. She turned to face him.

  “It has been a long time, Sally. Too long.”

  “I feel the same. I’ve been wanting to come back and kill you for a long time. Thanks for giving me the chance.”

  He laughed, a cold, mirthless sound.

  “Kill me? You obviously know nothing of the situation. You are entirely within my power here. You are a woman. I am a man. You are tied up. I have a gun. This place is heavily guarded by my men. I will decide when you die. Only me. It is just like the concentration camps. Run with absolute authority and perfect order. Things of beauty. But I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “What I understand and what you don’t could fill a library, Leon.”

  His smug look faded. “You know I do not permit anyone to call me by that name. I am Der Führer to all.”

  “Really? My nickname for you was always Little Dicky Dikes. Descriptive and accurate. I still don’t know how you got me pregnant. I never felt a thing. Didn’t even know you were inside me. But you do have small hands and feet, and you know what they say.”

  “If it makes you feel better to speak such nonsense, please, go right ahead. It will not change anything that will happen here tonight.”

  “I agree. It won’t.”

  He took off his cap and undid the buttons of his shirt. He smiled. “So, did you miss me?” He took off his gun belt and put it on the table.

  “Probably not as much as you missed me.”

  He removed his boots and undid his trousers and stepped out of them.

  She looked down. “I hope you took a Viagra pill. Otherwise, there’s probably not going to be an appearance of the equipment you’re going to need. You are an old man, after all.”

  “I intend to show you that I am a man, all over again. You remember last time, how you screamed? In joy, I am sure.” He pointed to the bed. “Lie down. Now.”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  He pulled his pistol from its holster and pointed the muzzle at her head. “Now, Sally. I am growing impatient.”

  Reel lay on the bed.

  He pulled off her sneakers and then her socks.

  He rubbed her feet. “Your skin is still soft.” With a violent jerk he ripped her jumpsuit down to her ankles and threw the garment against the wall. “I forget if you like it rough or not. I have had so many women since you.”

  “How many did you have to pay? And how many did you have to kidnap?”

  “You never really saw my virtues, did you?”

  “Why would I waste my time in a pointless exercise?”

  He was bending over her when she spit in his face. He straightened and took a moment to wipe his face with the back of his hand before turning to pick up his pistol.

  Reel sprang off the bed and swung her bound hands under her feet so they were in front of her. She ripped the scrunchie out of her hair and held it like a garrote. Before Dikes could turn back around, the garrote was around his throat. She jumped off the floor and clamped her legs around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides. She lurched backward and they fell onto the bed.

  They bounced up and down as he struggled to free himself. The mattress springs started to squeak noisily. Reel heard footsteps grow closer to the door.

  She started to pant and then moan loudly as the mattress kept squeaking. Saliva was coming out of Dikes’s mouth as he was slowly being strangled.

  As he tried to cry out for help, Reel started yelling. “Do me! Oh, God, do me, Der Führer! Do me!” she shrieked. “Yes, yes!” She bounced up and down on the mattress until she thought the bed would collapse.

  Then she heard the footsteps tiptoeing away from the door. She could imagine the guard smiling to himself, imagining his boss screwing her brains out. Maybe he thought he would get the leftovers.

  She felt Dikes growing weaker. She clamped her legs like a vise around him. The garrote was cutting into his neck, so fiercely was she pulling on it. He started gurgling.

  “Yes, yes!” she screamed, covering the sounds he was making.

  And then she started to turn his head slowly to the side even as she kept increasing the pressure on his neck.

  “Give it to me,” she called out. “Give it all to me.”

  He was facing her now. His eyes were bulging and blood-filled from the hemorrhaging her stranglehold was causing. Foam was pouring out of his mouth.

  He exerted his last bit of strength to try to throw her off. That did topple them off the bed, but Reel’s grip never failed. She swung her right leg up and placed her foot against the top of his head.

  She whispered, “Goodbye, Leon. And tell Der Führer to kiss my ass when you see him in hell.”

  She screamed, “Yes, you son of a bitch!” She jerked his neck to the right with her hands at the same time she slammed his head to the left with her foot. Dikes’s neck snapped cleanly.

  As he grew limp she relaxed her legs around his torso, pushed away from him, and then gripped his lifeless hand and took off his watch. She rose from the floor breathless.

  With her hands still bound, she picked up his gun, strode to the door, checked the time on the watch, counted to five, and then fired the weapon three quick times into the ceiling.

  And then all hell truly broke loose.

  Chapter

  46

  THE EXTRA-LONG SEMI THAT had passed the van earlier had doubled back and parked. From the trailer had emerged three black SUVs. There were eight men in each vehicle. Each man was armored, had night-vision optics, and was loaded with weaponry.

  They headed toward the front of the neo-Nazi complex.

  From the rear came ten more men who had parked their motorcycles a quarter mile away and made the last part of the trek on foot. They were armored and had night optics too, and were also loaded for bear. Or at least for neo-Nazis.

  Robie was leading this group. They crossed a rise and then swiftly made their way down it. Three hundred feet away was the cluster of buildings with a fence around it. Robie checked his watch and waited five minutes. Then he signaled his men forward.

  A hundred feet away they stopped. Their optics revealed clear green images of the perimeter patrol. There were only three of them. Robie’s group moved forward again to within fifty feet. Rifles were aimed and red dots appeared on the chests of each of the perimeter uniforms.

  Robie checked his watch again. He followed the second hand as it made its way around the clock face.

  Then the three shots rang out and Robie started to run.

  Instantly, three rifles fired and the three perimeter men dropped where they stood. They weren’t dead, merely tranquilized. Robie and his team didn’t want to deprive the men of a long prison sentence.

  Robie was over the fence in a few seconds, followed by five of his men. They dropped down inside the compound and immediately received fire. They took cover and returned it, this time with live rounds.

  Meanwhile, in the front, the electric-powered SUVs had moved so silently with lights out that they were nearly at the gate before the guards there could react. By then it was too late. The gates crashed inward and the SUVs hurtled into the inner yard. The men sprang out of the vehicles and raced straight toward the main building.

  The two guards there were quickly surrounded and trussed up.

  Reel had shot the guard in the hall who had been eavesdropping on her and Dikes’s “lovemaking.” She hurried on and shot anoth
er neo-Nazi who appeared in front of her with his weapon out.

  A moment later she was slammed against the wall and the gun fell from her bound hands. A foot kicked it away. She recovered her balance and stared up into the face of the huge Albert, dressed in his black SS uniform. He smiled down at her still in her underwear as he slid his tongue along his mouth.

  “I’m gonna have some fun with you, sweet thing.”

  Reel struck so fast Albert had no time to react. She slammed her foot into his crotch, doubling him over, and then whipsawed around and struck him in the right kidney with her elbow. He screamed in fury, but only for a second. Using the wall opposite as both a launch point and for leverage, she pushed off and slammed both feet into his buttocks. Bent over as he was, Albert crashed headfirst into the wall opposite. The top of his skull hit first, driving his neck upward to an impossible degree and his head back so far that his neck broke.

  Dead Albert dropped to his knees. Reel was already racing onward and never saw him slump to the concrete floor.

  She heard a scream to her left and raced down that hall.

  One man stumbled out of a doorway, a knife sticking out of his chest. He slumped to the floor, dead, his cap falling off his head on the way down.

  Laura appeared in the doorway, saw Reel, and said, “They separated me from Julie. I think she’s down this way. Hurry.”

  The two women raced down the hall and toward the room at the end. There was a crashing of glass, screams, and then gunshots.

  Reel shouted, “That’s Julie!”

  She and Laura sprinted forward.

  “Julie!” screamed Reel.

  The door was bolted, but she shot the lock off and burst into the room.

  And stopped.

  Two men lay on the floor, their bodies covered by shattered glass. Julie was flattened against one wall.

  There was movement at the window.

  Reel pointed her gun that way and then caught a breath.

  Robie clambered through the empty window and dropped to the floor. He put his pistol back into his holster and looked at Julie.

  “Are you hurt?”

  She shook her head and stepped toward Robie, her feet crunching over the glass that littered the floor. Robie put his arm around her and then looked down at the men.

  “I think they had orders to kill Julie in the event of an attack.”

  “So you shot them through the window,” deduced Reel.

  “So I shot them through the window,” confirmed Robie.

  His walkie-talkie squawked and he spoke into it and then listened.

  “We’re secure. No casualties on our side. Most of the assholes just gave up.”

  “Well, not the one who really counted,” said Reel.

  “No prison for Mr. Dikes?” said Robie.

  “Not in this life,” replied Reel. “Let’s hope in his next one. For all eternity.”

  Robie pulled his knife and severed the bindings on Reel’s hands. He took off his jacket and draped it around her.

  Julie looked from Reel to Laura. “Is she your daughter?”

  Reel rubbed her wrists and shook her head slowly. “I’d like you to meet FBI Special Agent Lesley Shepherd, Julie.”

  Shepherd nodded at Julie and gave her a shy smile. “I just look really young for my age.”

  Robie said, “The FBI doesn’t like people being kidnapped. They provided all the ground assets we needed.”

  Julie said, “FBI? So, super agent Vance?”

  “She cares about you a great deal, Julie. She’s the reason we were able to put this all-out effort together.”

  Reel looked at Robie. “Any problems finding us?”

  He shook his head.

  “How did you track them?” asked Julie. “I heard Dikes and his men talking about the steps they’d taken to make sure you couldn’t do that.”

  “Our friends at National Geospatial,” answered Robie. “They sort of run the spy satellite network.”

  “The DD of the CIA spoke with her counterpart at Geospatial,” added Reel. “And they dialed up several satellites. They tracked us all the way to our rendezvous with Dikes’s men. They placed an electronic marker on us at that point. There was no way to lose us. They simply followed using multiple eyes up in the sky. The actual technology has a specific name, but it’s classified. I’m just glad it worked.”

  “Very hard to lose a bunch of satellites,” said Robie. “They fed us the location on the ground. We passed by the van carrying Reel and Shepherd. We were on motorcycles and in a semi. We surrounded the place and waited for the signal.”

  “Signal?” asked Julie.

  “Gun fired three times in a row by Jessica,” said Robie.

  “But how did you know she’d be able to get to a gun?”

  Robie smiled. “That’s where the element of trust comes in.”

  “I did what I needed to do,” said Reel. “And then fired the gun.”

  “And that’s when we came charging in,” said Robie.

  “And saved me again,” finished Julie.

  Reel went over to her and knelt down. “You wouldn’t have needed saving but for me. I was the reason you were taken.”

  “I told them a false story about you. That you were still in WITSEC. I wanted him to be surprised when he found out what you really could do.”

  “He was surprised.”

  “And I was never really afraid.”

  “Why not?” asked Reel.

  “I knew you’d come and save me.”

  “How could you be so sure?”

  Now Julie smiled. “That’s where the element of trust comes in.”

  Chapter

  47

  NICOLE VANCE SIPPED A MUG of hot coffee as her team processed the scene.

  She glanced over at Robie and Reel and Agent Lesley Shepherd, who were sitting in chairs inside one of the rooms of the neo-Nazi facility. Sitting between Robie and Reel was Julie, huddled in a blanket and drinking hot chocolate.

  Vance walked over to them and said, “We’ve had our eyes on this group for a while. Domestic terrorism in addition to just being scumbags. They were smart how they went about it. Never left any evidence or witnesses behind. They had their hands in lots of things, though, we believe. Including human trafficking and arms dealing.”

  “Nice people, just like the assholes they were emulating,” said Robie.

  “And with so many of them in custody it might lead us to other places and more arrests.”

  “I wish you nothing but the best on that.”

  She glanced at Julie. “You need anything else, Julie?”

  The girl shook her head. “I’m just glad Jerome is okay.”

  “He was lucky. His skull is apparently a lot harder than they thought. He’s still in the hospital, but the docs have assured me he’s going to be okay. We’ll get you home on a pair of Bureau wings as soon as we can.”

  “I’ve got a lot of homework to catch up on,” admitted Julie.

  Vance glanced at Robie. “How jaded youth becomes.”