There was nothing as unnerving as a sprint across an open space when a gun was in play. Rachel put her head down and charged towards the nearest stand of trees, hoping, praying… Once she hit the treeline, she tucked and rolled, getting as small as possible before she wriggled deep into the well-manicured brush. Then, she threw out her scans—
Sandalwood.
Of course.
(A surge of relief went along with that particular shade of brown, which she didn’t want to think about, followed by the realization that the man with the sandalwood core was standing over a body, which she really didn’t want to think about but would certainly have to, as bodies were something of a priority in her line of work.)
She stood and ran through the underbrush.
When she broke into a small clearing, Rachel had to cover her mouth to hide her smile. Sandalwood, yes, but sandalwood wearing a white polo shirt and plaid pants? Her fashion sense shied away from the notion that Wyatt might be caught dead in plaid, but her sense of humor hadn’t had much exercise over the last few days and was loving it.
“So, whatcha been doing?” she asked, as she threw her scans around to make sure a second shooter wasn’t taking aim from somewhere in the trees.
Wyatt pointed towards the body on the ground. It was a woman in her late twenties with dark hair, lying face-down and unconscious. Like Wyatt, she was dressed in golfers’ casual; unlike Wyatt, she had the chemical signature of gunpowder residue across her hands.
The psychopath was leaning on a putter in an abusive manner. Rachel would have put money on that club being the source of the divot in the unconscious woman’s hairline.
She reached out to Gallagher’s cell phone, and the FBI special agent answered on the first ring: “Rachel? Go.”
“Shooter is down,” she said aloud for Wyatt’s benefit. “Apparently, Mulcahy sent backup in case something like this happened.”
She glanced at Wyatt for confirmation. He shrugged and made a wavy more-or-less movement with his hand.
“What do you need?” Gallagher asked.
“Paramedics—the shooter was armed and sustained a severe head wound when my backup intervened. Tell them we’re near the 13th hole. Look for a grove of cherry trees, then turn east into the pines.”
“All right. Send your location to my phone. I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
Rachel signed off and went to check the body.
“Gimme,” she said to Wyatt. He held out his putter, handle first, and she used the club and her feet to roll the unconscious woman onto her back.
“Nice bedside manner, Peng.”
She ignored him, and flipped frequencies to take a photo of the woman’s face. “Where’s her gun? I’m not finding it.”
“Disarmed her during the fight. It’s over there.” He pointed towards the underbrush, where a century’s worth of raspberry brambles knotted themselves into a spiky wall.
Rachel stared at him until he sighed and walked off to search the thicket.
Sirens, far in the distance.
She gave her inner prude a professional talking-to, and then scanned the strange woman’s body for tattoos and microchips. Neither, nothing, but there were some interesting layers of recent scar tissues on her buttocks where RFID implants might have been concealed and then removed.
Wyatt came out of the thicket, bleeding through his plaid pants and exceedingly grumpy, gun in hand.
“Oh goodie,” Rachel said. “A NORINCO semiautomatic pistol. Don’t you just love how every giant screaming clue we’ve found points us straight back to China?”
“I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” Wyatt said, as he dabbed at his bloody legs with a tissue.
“Agent Peng?”
“Over here!” Rachel called, before her mouth closed with a snap as she realized it might, perhaps, be a remarkably stupid idea to introduce Wyatt to the FBI special agent who had been in charge of the Glazer case. But then Wyatt was greeting Gallagher in his new role as Rachel’s long-lost Army buddy, and Gallagher was buying it because there was no reason on earth she shouldn’t buy it, and Rachel wondered anew about long cons.
This was followed by the arcane bureaucratic rituals required when a shooter was apprehended on a private golf course that catered to politicians. Rachel swore she would never again be involved in a shooting incident without an FBI special agent present: the paperwork was wrapped up within a half-hour, with Gallagher’s assurance that Detective Hill would have the first chance to interview the mystery woman when she woke up.
For her part, Rachel sent the photo of the suspect to Jason, and cross-referenced the serial number of the NORINCO semiautomatic against the master list of stolen weapons that Smith had given to her. Jason said the photo matched that of the woman who had snuck into Ethan Fischer’s hospital room (surprise!), and the serial number matched one of the stolen guns on the list (and surprise!).
After that, they rejoined Judge Edwards and his partner and the four of them went to finish their round, because it wasn’t the first time any of them had been threatened at gunpoint, and they were playing the coveted Blue Course and it was unlikely that a new club member like Edwards would get the Blue Course again if he rescheduled, and anyhow Rachel and Gallagher were ahead by six strokes and there were some forms of injustice that just couldn’t be allowed to stand.
Wyatt caddied for Rachel on the last holes. He was good at it.
At the end of the game, the judge and the congressman settled up. Rachel and Gallagher left for the women’s locker room, each fifty bucks richer. Well, Gallagher was richer; Rachel had passed her winnings on to Wyatt as a tip. The psychopath had thanked her as he pocketed the money, bemused grayish oranges hanging across his body like an overladen golf bag.
Rachel folded herself into a fresh business suit and waited for Gallagher by the locker room door. When the older woman appeared, she seemed slightly brighter than she had been at the end of their golf game.
“Good news?” Rachel asked her.
“Does it show? Got some useful information about a suspect for a change.”
“Excellent,” Rachel said. “This job is hard enough without the occasional break.”
“You aren’t kidding.”
The two of them moved into the bar. It was senselessly opulent. Rachel’s boots clicked across marbled tiles with inlayed mosaic frescos. Exposed beams ran across the ceiling and tied into huge wooden pillars, and the far wall was devoted to photographs of famous golfers. She tossed a scan over these and wondered—briefly—about life choices.
“Agent Peng?” Gallagher’s colors were threaded with yellow concern, and her voice was just above a whisper.
“Yeah?” Rachel pulled her attention away from an alternate timeline where she played Augusta and Pebble Beach on the regular. “Sorry, went woolgathering. Yes?”
“Do you know anything about Homeland taking over OACET?”
Rachel chuckled. “I know Homeland’s wanted to roll us into it since OACET went public. But we’re not law enforcement—what I do is just a tiny part of OACET’s overall operations. We’re mostly civil servants and administrators. If anything, OACET’s closest equivalent is that we’re the IRS for data systems. Homeland can’t make the argument stick.”
“That’s good.”
Ah. Knudson’s core of sour raspberries floated around Gallagher’s colors. “Did someone from Homeland reach out to you?” Rachel opened her left hand and rubbed the scars across her palm. She had never filed an official complaint against Bryce Knudson for injuring her, which meant absolutely everyone in Washington knew how she got those scars.
“Let’s just say that someone would be much happier with OACET if Homeland were overseeing your agency.” Gallagher opened the door for her, and they walked outside into the early spring air. “I’m not rooting for him—I’d hate to lose access to those Agents you’ve loaned me.”
“Put in a good word for our autonomy, and you can keep them forever. When did this happen, by
the way? After the kidnapping, or before?”
Gallagher did the single-shouldered shrug of women who didn’t want their purses to slip down. “Rumors have been floating around for a while.”
Knudson, smug in his pinks.
“I’ll bet,” Rachel said darkly. “Well, if it happens, it’s because Homeland’s found a way to bully us into joining. And that’s not going to happen.”
They shook hands and parted ways, Gallagher towards her car and Rachel towards an old unused putting green far behind the clubhouse. Wyatt was waiting for her. He had changed from his golf clothes to his usual rough-and-ready jeans and Henley, with an old baseball cap to complete the image.
“She seemed nice,” he said, as dry as the Sahara after a sandstorm.
“You take a lot of chances,” she muttered.
“I get bored. Why’d you ask for me to come on the interview? You said there’s no way you’re putting yourself in a car with me.”
Rachel didn’t reply, and let him stew until his colors began to run red and beige.
Not that she’d tell him, but her decision to bring Wyatt along to visit a militia had been a stroke of genius. The list of people she was willing to drag into the serpent’s den was depressingly short. Other women were out. Just one hundred percent out. Yeah, they probably weren’t going to be raped and murdered, but…
The fact she had to add that “but…” was reason enough.
Hill was right out, obviously. Santino and Zockinski, too. She couldn’t bring Phil, because Phil was too trusting, or Jason, because Jason was too Jason. If she brought Josh or Mulcahy, they might never come out again for a whole host of reasons including public image, kidnapping, extortion, and the (highly unlikely but still possible) casual murder spree.
She needed someone who looked like an all-American good ol’ boy. A former soldier. Someone who was absolute murder in a fight.
Wyatt’s colors sharpened as he scooped up an old golf ball and took aim at a turtle sunning itself in a nearby water hazard.
“Do it and I’ll break your arm,” she warned him.
He threw the ball, missing the turtle by intentional inches. “Is this it for the rest of the day?” he asked. “’cause it seems like you’ve got better shit to do.”
His timing was excellent: she pointed towards the sky.
Wyatt looked up, and began to laugh.
EIGHTEEN
The ground slipped away below them, a patchwork quilt of early spring greens against winter browns. It was lovely, unexpectedly so—Rachel had expected rural Pennsylvania to be more about missing teeth and the passionate romancing of cousins, not these clean squares stitched together by orderly lines of trees.
Live and learn, she told herself. Besides, coal country was out there, maybe just ahead of them, maybe right around where the Sugar Camp Militia was located. A wide open strip mine would set the mood nicely.
Wyatt was asleep across from her. Almost as soon as they had gotten in the helicopter, he had smirked at her in pinks before he pulled his hat down over his eyes. He had gone to sleep as quickly as blinking, his conversational colors popping off like he was his own blown bulb.
Not his first time in a helicopter, then.
Not hers, either. As helicopters went, Rachel had been in bigger, better, and faster. But the model AW109 had been in service for forty years, and was ideal for ferrying her and Wyatt from one of the most prestigious country clubs in the world to a backwoods group of militants. It was quick, light, and sturdy, and (most importantly, from Rachel’s point of view) cheap to operate.
The helicopter dipped slightly as it began its descent. Wyatt woke, his colors snapping to attention in camouflage greens as he instinctively reached for a gun that wasn’t there.
“At ease, soldier,” Rachel said.
He pushed his hat back and sat up with a glance out the window. “Nice country.”
“Ever been here before?”
Wyatt shrugged in indecipherable grays.
“Help me out,” she said. “You seem like the kind of guy who’s spent time in a militia. Are we walking into a war camp or what?”
He pointed to the dossier that Gallagher had provided on the Sugar Camp Militia. “Should be in there,” he said.
“Your opinion.”
Wyatt’s attention moved to the window again. “Depends on who started it, and who’s running it now.”
The helicopter began its final descent. Rachel pushed her scans down and away… Yup, there was the edge of a quarry, big enough to scar the farmland all the way to the nearby mountains. The hole cut in the earth was hemmed by rows of evergreens along one side, with what appeared to be a series of smallish buildings separated by fences.
Rachel plastered pure boredom to her face and stretched out her legs so she wouldn’t have to tug her pant cuffs down once she stood.
“Do I get a weapon?” Wyatt asked.
She reached into her jacket and removed her service weapon from its concealed holster. The gun had come back with her from Afghanistan, and the only time she refrained from carrying it was when she needed to squeeze herself into a cocktail dress. Wyatt recognized it: when she held it out to him by the handle, his colors brightened in interest.
He reached to take it, and she turned and slipped her gun into the helicopter’s open lockbox. “Psych,” she said, as she punched the digital lock. “Wait, do the kids still say that? Probably not. Seems like they never should have said it in the first place.”
Wyatt sat back and fumed in irritated oranges.
“What are we going to find here?” she asked.
“I dunno,” he said. “I didn’t do any prep work on this place.”
“C’mon.” Rachel prodded his shin with the toe of her boot. “It’s a militia. They’re all the same.”
Purple humor appeared in his colors. “That’s your first mistake,” he replied, and wouldn’t say anything else until the helicopter’s landing skids hit a long patch of dirt road about two hundred yards from the buildings.
Rachel rapped on the partition between the cockpit and the cabin, and waved to the pilot. Wyatt slid the door open and jumped out first; when his head stayed nice and intact, Rachel leapt from the helicopter.
She nearly blacked out from the silence.
“Whoa,” she said, as she groped her way back to the helicopter and took a seat on the nearest piece of stable metal.
“Airsick?” Wyatt grinned at her in smug pinks.
She waved him off. “Not sick,” she said, trying not to gasp for breath. “Kinda… Kinda the opposite.”
There was so little here.
She hadn’t been out to the country much since she got her implant. The stray bed-and-breakfast with Becca, of course, because Wall Street type-A personalities apparently had to go antiquing in the Poconos twice a year or their licenses were revoked, but the Poconos were infested with cell towers and Wi-Fi. Those trips had set her benchmark for the digital ecosystem. The digital ecosystem—that persistent chatter of the Internet of Things, as well as those non-Things that were offline but were plugged in or battery-powered or hand-cranked or otherwise gobbling and spewing energy—was unavoidable for the Agents. It was as pervasive as cicadas in the summer, and eighty times as annoying. When her implant was active, Things and non-Things screamed. Always. They might be a little quieter at night, but they were always there.
Stepping out of the helicopter was like plunging into a void.
“Get your shit together, Peng,” Wyatt muttered.
“Yeah,” she gasped. “Yeah.” She let her fingertips linger on the metal skin of the helicopter as long as possible, as if drinking deep from the machine’s EMF, before pushing off and clomping up the dirt road.
A large metal gate lurked at the end of the road. The gate was set into a wall made from steel-reinforced concrete, and chained tight at its break point. Off to the side was a person-sized door, also made from steel, but with intriguing locks and slots that seemed designed for weaponry. It rem
inded her of an Afghani warlord’s fortress.
Except for the small fruit stand sitting off to one side of the main driveway. The building was shaped like a small fairy tale cottage, with an open front and a dozen different kinds of eggs and honey for sale. The woman behind the counter wore a thick cotton and crinoline dress in greens and reds, and had her hair braided with red felt flowers. She smiled warmly at Rachel and Wyatt, even as her surface colors hung around her like a wary gray cloud.
Rachel flipped frequencies to read the sign over the gate: Sugar Camp Christmas Trees.
She turned her implant off and then back on again. Yup. The sign still read: Sugar Camp Christmas Trees.
In a very merry cursive script.
With candy canes on either side.
And a snowman.
“Oh, screw this nonsense,” she grumbled under her breath, and then shouted: “Hey! I’ve got an appointment, and I’m on a tight schedule. Let’s not pretend you missed the arrival of the freakin’ helicopter, okay?”
The wicket gate in the wall swung open. An older man stood there, with a core the same color green as old-fashioned carnival glass. “Guests knock,” he said. “Usually.”
“Right.” Rachel stepped quickly over the hard-packed earth and stuck her hand out. “Agent Peng,” she said. “Office of Adaptive and Complementary Enhancement Technologies.”
“I know,” he said, as he ignored her extended hand. “I’m Ahren. C’mon in.”
With a last almost-wistful scan towards the helicopter, Rachel entered the militia’s camp, her personal psychopath following close behind.
“I’m assumin’ you’ve been briefed,” the man said.
“No,” Rachel said. “I prefer to do cold interviews. Helps me keep my sources of information straight.” A total lie, but a plausible one she’d used many times before. And she hadn’t been able to do more than skim the file that Gallagher had given her on the flight up.
So she had utterly missed any description of the front entrance of the militia’s camp as Santa’s workshop.
Becca had taken her to a Renaissance faire right around Halloween, and the two of them had rented sweaty costumes and spent too much money on turkey legs and ridiculous-smelling soaps. The militia’s village put her in mind of a small-scale version of that, with five tiny but ornately decorated buildings painted up like Christmas. These were all closed, but her scans told her they had been recently used, with no dust and all products laid out in well-ordered displays.
Brute Force Page 27
