Up on the big screen, the darkness flickered in and out of light, and then a message appeared. It was a random mix of letters and numerals that appeared to Jonathan to be gibberish.
“Can anyone make sense out of that?” he asked the room.
“Let me earn my way into your heart,” Derek said. “I’m running it through decryption software. It will run all the possibilities and within a few minutes it’ll spit out—”
“I’ve got it,” Venice said. “It’s an address.”
Derek shot her a look that was equal parts amazed and wounded. “How did you do that?”
“You’re not my only source, cowboy,” she said. She ran the decrypted address through some mapping software and came up with a location. When she was done, she recoiled from her screen. “That can’t be right.” She rolled the wheel on her mouse to pull away from the structure and revealed it to be a house, located in the middle of nowhere.
Derek read out the address from his computer. “That’s not far from here,” he said. “Maybe thirty minutes.”
“Twenty,” Jonathan corrected.
“Not much of a target,” Gail said.
“It’s not a target,” Jonathan said.
Boxers guessed, “A rally point?”
“That’s where I’d put my money,” Jonathan said.
Venice’s eyes showed fear and anger. “To attack Fisherman’s Cove?”
“To follow through on his promise,” Jonathan said. “Again.”
Derek said, “Percy and Ariana DeWilda are the owners. Mean anything to any of you?”
“Never even heard the name,” Jonathan said.
Derek did a lot of clacking on his keys, then made the image on the big screen switch to an image that was much sharper. “Here it is real-time,” he said.
An overweight lady in her thirties was spray painting something in the backyard.
“How’d you do that?” Jonathan asked. “That’s a hell of an image.”
“I told you we have some of the best toys in the world,” Derek said with a smile. “Even this far away from DC, you’re still part of the Greater Washington Metro Target Package. That means satellite coverage twenty-four seven.”
“That’s amazingly sharp,” Gail said.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Derek said. With dizzying speed, the image zoomed in so close that they could count the woman’s eyelashes.”
“Holy crap,” Boxers said.
“Is that legal for you to do on U.S. soil?” Jonathan asked. “Photographing people in their yards?”
Derek beamed. “It’s not our satellite,” he said. “It’s Chinese. And while I’m not sure, I’d guess it’s not legal.”
Venice laughed and said, “That is so awesome!”
“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed. “It is pretty awesome. Can one of you tell me which political jurisdiction that property is in?”
“It’s in unincorporated Mattaponi County,” Derek said.
Jonathan turned to Gail. “Would Doug Kramer have jurisdiction there?”
Gail shook her head. “I don’t think so. Not directly.”
“But they don’t have a county police,” Jonathan said. “Sheriff’s office, maybe.”
“They’ve got the State Police,” Gail said.
“Ah, shit,” Jonathan said. “I don’t want them involved.”
“Then don’t tell them,” Boxers said. “What’s your plan?”
“I’m not sure I have one yet,” Jonathan said.
“Does what you’ve got so far involve breaking things and making noise?” Boxers asked with a grin. Honest to God, sometimes he looked like a huge puppy who just saw the leash to go out.
Jonathan laughed. “Yeah, that’s pretty much a sure thing.”
* * *
Jonathan took his time meeting the gaze of each man who’d gathered around the massive dining table in his kitchen. Jonathan had always considered himself a gourmet cook—even though others disagreed from time to time—and when he remodeled the firehouse to his needs, he included a gourmet kitchen. It occurred to him as he looked at the gathered faces that maybe he should have cooked something.
Clockwise down the table and around the far end, he observed Chief Doug Kramer, then Rick Hare, Charlie Keeling, and Oscar Thompkins, members of his security team for his office and Resurrection House. He’d already briefed Doug, who’d decided that it was best not to involve his police officers in what was to come. It wasn’t that they didn’t have the guts. Instead, it was because they couldn’t keep themselves away from social media platforms that revealed every move of every day.
Boxers and Gail sat on his left and right, respectively, while he occupied the seat on the near end of the table.
“Okay, here it is,” Jonathan said. “Nothing of what follows during this meeting is a mandatory job requirement. It is not an order. I want you to acknowledge that.”
The men shrugged and nodded and grinned their general agreement.
“Not like that,” Jonathan said. He kept his tone so serious that he hoped that it would infect them. It did. When he had their real attention, he said, “Rick, what I’m about to ask you to do is illegal and could wind up getting you wounded or killed. We will try to create a good cover for it, but if the cover breaks, you’ll likely go to prison. Are you willing to do this thing?”
Rick was a combat vet who’d been seriously wounded in the Sandbox. He stood. “Mr. Grave—”
“Call me Jonathan, please. Or Digger.”
Rick smiled. “Mr. Grave,” he said, “I owe you and this town pretty much everything I’ve got. You bet on me at a time when I had nobody left. Now, I’ve got a family and a reason to get up in the morning. If you asked me to crawl through razor blades for you, I’d do it, sir.”
Jonathan waved both hands in front of him. “I don’t want it to be like that here.”
“Well, sir, it is,” Rick insisted. Early thirties, blond hair, and handsome, Jonathan supposed, despite the scar on his cheek. He showed no hesitation. “I have one request, though,” he went on. “This can’t hurt my family. I’m asking you to give your word that if something happens to me, they’ll be taken care of. And I mean taken care of, sir.”
Jonathan stood, as well, because it seemed like the right thing to do. “You have my word.”
“Then I’m on board.” Rick started to sit.
“There’s one more thing,” Jonathan said. “And while I’m sure it is completely unnecessary, I feel obligated to say it.”
Rick stood straight again.
“If, for any reason you were to leak this, or turn on the team—”
“I would never do that, sir.”
“I’ve got to finish this,” Jonathan said. “If you betray the team, the repercussions on you and your family would be devastating.” To be totally honest, Jonathan didn’t know if he could follow through with a threat like that, but it was a nod to Boxers, who didn’t trust anyone.
“I understand that, sir,” Rick said. “And because I understand you had to say it, I take no offense.”
“Thank you,” Jonathan said. “Charlie?”
Charlie Keeling was likewise a wounded veteran, and he was New York City through and through. From his accent to his perpetual bitching about never finding a decent pizza in Virginia, he was everything Jonathan had come to expect from a Yankee—brash, opinionated, and funny as hell. A little round in the middle, he was strong as a bull.
“What, I gotta stand up?” he said as he rose. “I heard every word you said, and I’m with every word Rick said. Boss, you tell me jump and I’ll say how high? Yeah, I get that it’s dangerous. And since I got no wife or kids, I’m gonna go out and marry somebody real quick just so I can make somebody rich if I get off’d.”
Jonathan smiled but said nothing.
“That enough?” Charlie said.
“I guess that’ll do,” Jonathan said. “Oscar?”
Oscar stood as Charlie sat, giving the impression of a human teeter-totter. He looked uncomfortable. Bey
ond uncomfortable. Five-eight and thin, he was supervisor of the security team at Resurrection House. “Mr. Grave, sir,” he said in his thick Tennessee accent. “Please don’t think me a coward. I can’t do this.”
The direct honesty startled Jonathan. “I won’t think—”
“I would take a bullet for the boys and girls of Rez House. I hope you know that. I would take a bullet for you.”
“You don’t have to explain this,” Jonathan said.
“When the fight comes to me, I’ll fight back to my last breath. But I can’t bring the fight to others. I’m too old for that.”
“You’re forty friggin’ years old!” Charlie said.
“Stop!” Jonathan commanded. “I get it, Oscar. I really do. But I have to ask you to leave.”
“Will I still have a job for tomorrow?”
“Of course, you will, Oscar. Of course, you will.”
The man looked close to tears as he walked past Charlie and Rick and left out the back door.
“Got no time for weasels like that,” Boxers grumbled.
“Nobody has an obligation to fight,” Jonathan said. And while he knew that was the deal, he couldn’t wrap his head around the concept of walking away.
“All right, General,” Doug said. “What’s the plan?”
Chapter Thirty-three
It was after five when the Batmobile and Doug Kramer’s Chevy Suburban pulled into the scrub growth about a half mile through the woods from the target house. In fifteen minutes, it would be full dark, and that was the environment when they would normally have the greatest advantage. Jonathan anticipated, though, that the bad guys would have night vision as well. With that one element equalized, surprise and marksmanship remained their only leg up.
The first step was to get the DeWilda family to safety. Then, Jonathan and his team would surround the house and wait to see what happened. To be on the safe side, Resurrection House was on full lockdown, and Doug Kramer had unilaterally authorized his entire twelve-officer force to remain on Alert One, which meant that they be able to be activated to full duty within fifteen minutes. He’d have to crawl through broken glass for that at the next City Council meeting, but he didn’t have time to seek a vote.
They’d divided into two teams, with Jonathan, Gail and Boxers composing Team One, and Doug Kramer, Rick Hare, and Charlie Keeling composing Team Two. During the mission brief, Jonathan made it clear that if any assault was to be made on the building, Team One would be the door kickers, and Team Two would provide support and cover. The last thing they needed was a circular shooting gallery of good guys when the balloon went up.
As Jonathan and Boxers passed out equipment, Jonathan said, “I know you’ve used most if not all of this before, so any questions? The only thing that’s changed much in the last few years are the NVGs.”
Charlie turned the night vision goggles over in his hands. “On-off switch, headband, use your eyes. Is that pretty much it?”
Jonathan smiled. “Yeah, that’s pretty much it.”
“And how ’bout the rifle? Is that still look-aim-shoot?” Charlie teased.
“Don’t be a dickhead,” Boxers grumbled with a smile.
Rick Hare asked, “So, what kind of shit do you guys do when you disappear for weeks at a time? Why do you have all this gear?”
“Sorry, Rick,” Jonathan said. “You’re still not cleared for that.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Jonathan handed out some armbands. Each of them bore a round Security Solutions logo. “Put these on. They’re IR reflective. If things get hyperconfusing, when your infrared lights hit one of these, you’ll know he’s a good guy.”
The guys all took the bands and slid them over their sleeves. “Does this mean if a guy don’t have a band, I can shoot him?” Charlie asked with a big grin.
“Not funny,” Jonathan said. “I want you guys in full-soldier. No cheating. That means plates in your carriers. Helmets on. We have every reason to believe that the people we’re going up against are very good at what they do. Let’s make their job as hard as we can. Now, coms check.”
Jonathan had issued radios to everyone. Jonathan, Boxers, and Gail—the members of Team One—were designated One-one, One-two, and One-three, respectively. The same pattern was repeated on Team Two for Doug, Rick, and Charlie. Once each of them went through a brief check, Jonathan keyed his mic, and said, “Mother Hen, did you get all that?”
“Affirmative,” she said.
“What’s the bird’s-eye view tell you?”
“Still clear,” she said.
“Stay close,” he said. To the teams, he said, “Let’s go.”
The bareness of the trees was less of a problem at night than it would have been during the day, but as they closed in within fifty yards or so of the objective, they’d still be visible to anyone on the other side with night vision.
The biggest tell in their approach would be the recently fallen crunchy leaves on the forest floor. That was one good reason to arrive early and be in place when the meeting convened.
Jonathan was betting—in the absence of any evidence—that the bad guys would arrive sometime tonight, but for all he knew, they could be waiting out here for days.
And then there was the possibility that he and his team had misread every tea leaf. He decided not to think about that one.
As he advanced through the woods, Jonathan struggled with the notion that the root of this mission was to kill. He was not an assassin. He’d killed many people in his time, both for Uncle Sam and for Security Solutions, but those killings had always been in support of a larger mission—and more times than not as a response to people trying to kill him.
He told himself that this was a special case, that these terrorists had proven themselves to be morally bankrupt. They had fractured their social contract beyond any possible repair. The fact that they had wrought this havoc for reasons no loftier than a paycheck sickened him.
And they dared to kill two youngsters who had done nothing wrong but to take a job whose full impact was unknown to them.
That would have to be enough motivation, he supposed, because that was all he had.
He worried about Team Two. He knew Doug Kramer to be a good cop, and he knew Rick Hare and Charlie Keeling to be good guys and good security guards, but he’d never seen them in this kind of action, and until they’d been in the shit, you could never know how anyone would respond. That’s why they were assigned to cover and support.
At Jonathan’s order, the teams spread out laterally, separated by twenty feet, more or less. They approached slowly and without conversation. So far, he liked what he saw.
* * *
In the War Room, Venice and Derek manned their screens. They could verify without equivocation that nothing had changed.
Venice hadn’t felt like this about a man in a very, very long time. Thirteen years and nine months ago, give or take the months since Roman’s birthday. And while that relationship did not end well at all, this one felt different. They had so much in common, not the least of which were unmatched skills at computer hacking. Imagine! When his TickTock2 outed her Freak Face666, it could have been a disaster. Instead, it turned to this.
“Your boss doesn’t like me,” Derek said.
“I don’t know that that’s true,” Venice said. “I saw him smile at one of your jokes. That’s a higher bar than you might think.”
“And Big Guy—”
Venice held up her hand. “Stop right there. Boxers hates everybody. I’ve known him for years, saved his life more than once, and he barely tolerates me.”
“How much influence does he have on Mr. Grave?”
“You’ve got to stop calling him that,” Venice scolded. “If you want his respect, you’ve got to call him Digger. Or Dig. Call him Jon or Jonathan, though, and you’ll be toast.” As she heard herself, she laughed. There really were quite a few unspoken rules.
“I think he thinks I’m a pussy,” Derek said. �
�I’ve got a fifteen-inch neck and a thirty-one-inch waist.”
“You’re not an operator,” Venice said. “He doesn’t expect a lot of brawn. You’ve got to give him more time. You can’t be pushy with Dig.” She gave a coy smile. “But if I say I want you around, you’ll stay around.”
Derek smiled back. “Because he’s so afraid of you?”
“No, he respects me and always lets me get my way,” she explained. “Now, if I got Mama involved, then he’d be terrified.”
Derek sat up suddenly in his chair and tapped some keys. “Uh-oh, there’s a change,” he said.
The live feed from the Chinese satellite showed a pickup truck pulling into the DeWilda’s driveway.
Venice reached for the radio. “Scorpion, Mother Hen. Emergency traffic.”
“Whatcha got?”
“Someone just arrived at the target building,” she said. “Stand by.” She pointed to Derek. “Pull back till we can see the teams and give me a distance between them.”
The image fell away.
“Okay, Scorpion,” Venice said. “You are less than two hundred yards from the target. Recommend you stay put until we can get you more intel.”
After a brief silence, during which she imagined that he consulted with Gunslinger and Big Guy, his voice returned. “Negative, Mother Hen. Appreciate the concern, but we need to get close enough for eyeballs. I promise we won’t be reckless.”
Venice pointed at Derek again. “Now bring us in close to the truck. How do the Chinese not know you’re doing this?”
The non sequitur seemed to startle him. “Huh? Oh. This technology is able to view a gajillion images at the same time. I guess there’s a chance someone might stumble on it, but it’s not likely.”
On the screen, the pickup truck returned. A youngish guy, probably midforties, stepped out of the truck wearing woodland camouflage clothing. When he leaned back into the cab, he withdrew a rifle and what looked to be some kind of equipment vest.
She relayed the information to Jonathan, then said to Derek, “I’m guessing that the ability to tap into what we’re looking at was quite an espionage coup for the United States.”
“Oh, God, yes. I’m not a field guy, but I believe that the Chinese professor who helped us with this was executed.”
Total Mayhem Page 34
