Shadow of Betrayal jqt-3

by Brett Battles

  “Wait, we’re going to try to get inside the fence?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Didn’t you promise Orlando this was just a simple recon, and we wouldn’t be doing anything that could get us into trouble?”

  “I guess I was wrong.”

  The truth was Quinn hadn’t planned on making an incursion at all, but the opportunity presented itself, and instinctively he realized it might be their best chance at getting in. In his job, listening to those instincts wasn’t a luxury. He trusted them, and this time they had said, “Move!”

  From the left, toward the other end of the valley, there was the sound of several footsteps. The others had arrived.

  Quinn peeked between the rocks at the guardhouse. The door had opened halfway, and there was the shadowy form of a man standing just inside. As Quinn angled to the right so he could get a look at the guards, he pulled out his camera phone. They had closed into a tight group around their prisoner. Quinn snapped several photos as they approached the guardhouse. Once everyone was inside, he chose the best pics and attached them to a hastily prepared email.

  Need ID on man tied up.

  He started to address it to both Orlando and Peter, then changed his mind and sent it to Peter only. Best to let Orlando relax and not worry.

  “You’ve been checking for sensors?” Quinn asked Nate.

  His apprentice nodded. “They were placed about every fifty feet through the hills, but the last one’s more than a hundred feet back there.”

  “So there’s none up here?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just meant I hadn’t seen any more.”

  The lack of sensors this close to the guardhouse made sense. If there had been any, every time a guard went for a walk or to relieve himself the alarm would sound. That was an annoyance no one would want to deal with.

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “As close as we can get.”

  He stepped out from behind the rock and hoped to God that he was right.

  CHAPTER 28

  “I see them,” Base said.

  Tucker picked up his radio. “About fucking time.”

  It was unfair, he knew. The rocks out there were a bitch. But dammit, he hating waiting this long. He wanted to know who was sneaking around their operation, and what he wanted.

  Two minutes later, Base said, “Ready for video hookup.”

  Tucker already had the video window open on his computer. The light level was a little low, but he could still make out several of his men moving around in the background. Then a face appeared on the screen. Tucker recognized him as a guy named Carter.

  “You have a picture?” Carter asked.

  “Yes. Could use a little light.”

  “Hold on.”

  A few seconds later, the picture lightened up by twenty percent.

  “Better,” Tucker said. “Let me see him.”

  “Over here,” someone barked on the other end.

  A body moved into the shot. Male, dark clothes.

  “Can’t see his face. I need to see his face,” Tucker said.

  Someone adjusted the light on the other end, illuminating the intruder’s face. Tucker couldn’t help feeling a moment of disappointment. He’d been hoping the man was Jonathan Quinn. He would have liked to have seen the look on the cleaner’s face once he realized who was in charge here. A fucking laugher that would have been. But apparently Mr. Quinn had lost the Dupuis woman’s trail.

  “Who the hell are you?” Tucker asked.

  The man kept his face neutral and his mouth shut.

  A rifle butt swung into the frame and slammed into the captive’s stomach. The man doubled over and fell out of the frame.

  “Get the fuck up,” a voice off camera yelled. “You hear me? Get the fuck up.”

  Tucker could hear retching off camera, then something scraping against the concrete floor. For several seconds nothing happened, then the captive’s head moved back into the frame, rising unsteadily from the bottom.

  “Let me ask you again,” Tucker said. “Who the hell are you?”

  “No,” the man said.

  This time the rifle hit him in the kidney. The man flew forward, screaming, almost running into the camera.

  Tucker smiled. Not because of the man’s pain, he was ambivalent about that. He smiled because the man spoke, and in Tucker’s experience once someone opened his mouth, he would eventually tell whatever he knew.

  “Bring him in,” Tucker said.

  He could hear Carter starting to say “Yes, sir,” but the guard was cut off as Tucker quit the program.

  He pushed himself away from his desk and stood up. There were two empty cells along the hall where they were keeping the woman. One of those would be fine for their new guest.

  He took a deep breath, then picked up the phone and punched in the number for the lab.

  “Yes?” The voice was young. One of the technicians.

  “I need to talk to Mr. Rose,” Tucker said.

  “He left a couple of minutes ago. Headed up to the main level.”

  Tucker hung up without saying anything, then rushed out of his office hoping to catch his boss before the old man disappeared into his quarters. Mr. Rose’s rule number one: If the door to his private room was closed, he was not to be disturbed. There wasn’t even the phrase “except in cases of emergency” tacked on. If he was inside, all could wait until he reappeared.

  Tucker passed only one other person in the corridors on his way to the elevators, one of his security men on patrol. When the facility had been built, it was designed so that a hundred people could work inside at the same time. Mr. Rose’s operation was manned by less than half that amount — twenty security personnel, seventeen technical staff, Mr. Rose, and Tucker. Thirty-nine total. Of course, that wasn’t counting the Dupuis woman. Or Mr. Rose’s special packages.

  When he reached the elevator, the car was already there and empty.

  Frowning, he headed to Mr. Rose’s suite, hoping he wasn’t too late. As he turned onto Mr. Rose’s hallway, he nearly ran into the old man. He was standing just five feet around the corner, talking to a technician Tucker had seen a couple times before.

  Whatever conversation they’d been having had stopped the minute Tucker appeared.

  “Glad I caught you,” Tucker said.

  Mr. Rose just stared at him.

  “We’ve caught an intruder.”

  That woke the old man up. “What? Where? Here in the base?”

  “No,” Tucker said. “He was outside the fence, near the gate. He tripped the sensors, then hid when my men went to find him.”

  “But they caught him.”

  “Yes,” Tucker said.

  “Who is he?”

  “I don’t know yet. He wouldn’t give us his name. My men are bringing him here right now.”

  “Into the facility?” Mr. Rose did not sound happy.

  “I can question him here, and we can run his prints through the system.”

  “Do a complete scan of him before you bring him down,” Mr. Rose said. “Understand me? We can’t chance anything jeopardizing the operation.”

  “Okay. Sure.”

  “Not ‘okay, sure’! It should not even be an option. You should have already thought of that.”

  “Of course,” Tucker said. He’d known his mistake even as he’d spoken the words. He tried to do a little damage control. “It’s standard operating procedure is all I mean. We’ll definitely do it.”

  “That’s not what it sounded like.”

  “I apologize if I was unclear.”

  “You were,” Mr. Rose said.

  No one spoke for several seconds.

  “Was there more, Mr. Tucker?”

  “No,” Tucker said. “That was it.”

  “Give me a full report when you are done talking to him.”

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  “Come on, come on, come on.” The words were more in Quinn’s head than spoken.

  He and Nate ha
d crawled to within a foot of the gate. It was built like the fences, horizontal wires about half a foot apart. And while it looked like it could also be electrified, it wasn’t humming like the double fence that converged to meet it.

  “Come on,” he whispered again.

  Getting to the other side should have been simple. They should have been able to slip through the deactivated fence while the others were inside with their prisoner. The problem was that one of the guards had decided it was a good time to take a leak. And even though he had finished, he was taking his sweet time zipping up and rejoining his friends inside.

  Each second longer meant it was a second closer to more of the guards coming back outside. Perhaps they would take the prisoner through the gate and to the Yellowhammer facility. Maybe even after they were gone, someone would flip a switch turning on the power to the gate. Quinn’s best chance was to move now, before any of that could occur, but the son of a bitch seemed to be enjoying a little alone time.

  Finally, the guard finished up and went back inside.

  About goddamn time, Quinn thought.

  He glanced at the window. No one seemed to be keeping tabs on the outside. What was inside was more interesting to them at the moment.

  He gave Nate a quick nod, then crawled forward into the pale light that illuminated the gate. Once he was moving he didn’t stop. He pushed his backpack to the other side first, then squeezed between the wires. They were pretty taut, but they gave enough to let him through. Nate followed right behind him.

  Once they’d both made it, they ran in a crouch down the road until they found a good spot from which to keep an eye on the gate. Turned out their precautions were unnecessary. It was another ten minutes before the door to the guardhouse opened again. This time, though, it wasn’t another pee break. It looked like the whole squad had come out, and with them the prisoner.

  The gate opened and the group passed through. They continued down the road, passing less than a dozen feet away from Quinn and Nate’s position.

  Once they’d gone by, Nate looked at Quinn, his eyebrows raised in a question.

  Quinn nodded.

  Without a word, they began to follow.

  * * *

  The elevator let Tucker out in a secure room at ground level. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, they were all concrete, and at least two feet thick, built to withstand a direct, pre — nuclear era attack. Of course, these days you wouldn’t need an atomic bomb to do the job. A single bunker buster would destroy the whole facility.

  Tucker pressed his palm against the security-release pad next to the door, and was greeted with the gentle whoosh of the lock releasing.

  Tucker entered the main part of the structure. From the outside it looked like a small one-room cinderblock hut built in a small clearing between piles of boulders. Most people would mistake it for something left over from one of the handful of failed mines that were spread through the Alabama Hills.

  Inside, there was another palm reader near the exterior door, and on the wall above it, a ten-inch television monitor. Tucker touched the power button on the monitor, and the feed from a camera mounted on the cabin’s roof appeared. It provided a wide shot of the entire visible area in front of the cabin, and since it was in night vision mode, everything was in tones of green.

  Tucker’s men had just come out of the dry wash to the left and were seventy-five feet away, on the other side of the road. Tucker scanned the hills behind them. He didn’t expect to see anyone, but he had a hard time believing their new guest had come alone. What he saw was rocks, and nothing else.

  Tucker placed his palm on the reader. This time the sound was more a heavy click than a whoosh. He pulled the door open, but stayed in the shadows as his men closed the distance.

  The prisoner was walking in the middle of the group, his head down. Not defeated, more like he was conserving his energy.

  Thinks he’ll be busting out of here, Tucker thought. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  Once everyone was inside, Tucker then led the way to the waiting elevator car. It was large enough to hold all of them with plenty of room to spare.

  It wasn’t until the doors shut that he turned to the prisoner.

  “Look at me,” Tucker said.

  The prisoner didn’t move.

  One of the guards reached out and pushed the man’s chin up so that Tucker could see his face.

  “Who the fuck are you? And what are you doing on my land?” Tucker said.

  The prisoner smiled like he was the smartest man in the room and had no interest in talking to any of them.

  Tucker shook his head. “You don’t want to mess with me.”

  The man let out a laugh.

  Tucker counted to five, then punched the guy in the face, knocking him backward into the wall. He slumped down, blood pouring from his nose.

  They left him there until the doors opened again.

  “Put him in the room two doors down from the woman,” Tucker said.

  He stepped through the opening, then headed for his office. He’d let the bastard stew in his own blood for a while before he started the serious questioning. But he wouldn’t wait too long.

  He didn’t want to let his own anger fade.

  CHAPTER 29

  Quinn and Nate watched from a distance as the guards walked into what had to be the main entrance to Yellowhammer. Someone had been waiting for them just inside the door, but whoever it was remained in the shadows, unidentifiable.

  Quinn knew if they were going to try to get inside, this wouldn’t be the way. He examined the map Peter had sent them, then glanced up to get his bearings.

  “We’ll head for that hill over there,” he whispered, pointing at a mound to the northwest.

  “Should we check in?” Nate said.

  Quinn shook his head. “It’s fine. We’ll let her sleep.”

  “We’ve been gone a long time. I’ll bet she’s not sleeping.”

  Nate was right. Knowing Orlando, she was still waiting up for them.

  “I’ll text her, okay?” Quinn said, annoyed.

  “Fine. Okay. Whatever you want.”

  Quinn pulled out his phone and tapped in a quick message, then pressed Send.

  Still on recon. All good. Get some sleep.

  “Happy?” Quinn said to Nate.

  “I’m always happy. I was just watching out for you.”

  Quinn stared at him for a moment, then broke away. “I’ll lead.”

  * * *

  There was no cinderblock hut covering the back door to Yellowhammer. There was no need. It had been built utilizing the existing entrance to a mine hidden by several boulders. Quinn only knew this because of a notation on the map. Finding the actual entrance was another story.

  They fanned out, each taking a section of the hill that looked like the best bet. At first Quinn thought he’d come up dry. It was just more rock on rock. A glance over at Nate told him his apprentice was doing no better.

  Quinn walked twenty feet up the slope and took another look around, not expecting much. But then his eyes stopped on a flat-top rock sticking out from the side of the hill.

  He made his way over to it, half walking, half slipping across the gravelly surface. There was something about the surface of the rock. Some of the color along the top seemed odd, lighter.

  Scrapes, he realized as he got close.

  There were dozens of them, each leading toward the edge of the rock that hung out into the air. Something had been moved. Something big. He peered over the side. There, leaning against the scraped rock, was another slab.

  “Over here,” he called out.

  Nate jogged over.

  “That rock doesn’t belong there,” Quinn said. “I’d say it was up here not long ago.”

  “That thing must weigh over a ton,” Nate said. “How the hell would they have moved it? Couldn’t have just manhandled it.”

  “Helicopter,” Quinn said. “The same way they get in here.”

  It w
as the only piece of machinery that would have been able to do the job, given the physical restrictions of the location. And once the job was done, the entrance would be sealed off.

  “I hate to point this out,” Nate said, “but we don’t have one of those.”

  “We don’t need it. We just need to move it enough to get in.” Quinn pointed toward the right edge. “It’s already leaning a little. We just need to help it along.”

  He pulled off his backpack and removed the twenty-foot piece of climbing rope he had coiled at the bottom.

  “Slip this over the top. Then get up there and push the rock with your feet. I’ll pull the rope. Careful you don’t fall once it starts moving, though.”

  “Ha-ha,” Nate said.

  Once everything was in place, Quinn said, “On three. One. Two. Three.”

  He pulled as Nate pushed. At first nothing happened. He wondered if perhaps the rock was lodged in tighter than he had assumed.

  “Again,” he said.

  Nate groaned. “Come on, you son of a—”

  Then it moved. An inch at first, then two, then six. When it finally stopped, there was a gap three feet wide by almost five tall.

  It wasn’t until Nate came down and was helping him coil up the rope that Quinn realized he had made his apprentice push with his legs. Or leg rather. Nate’s missing limb hadn’t even occurred to him. And, he had to admit, it seemed not to have made a difference.

  “You want me to lead, or you?” Nate asked as they pulled their packs back on.

  “Have at it,” Quinn said.

  Nate smiled, then slipped into the newly created opening.

  * * *

  It looked at though it had been decades since anyone had used this route into the underground facility. Twenty feet in, there was a door all but rusted shut. But time had weakened the metal so much they were able to wrestle it open without breaking out any of their gear.

  Using flashlights, they made their way down a set of stairs that had been cut into the earth, then covered with a layer of concrete that had long ago started to crack. The walls and ceiling of the tunnel had also been reinforced, but weren’t doing any better. There were patches where concrete had fallen and broken into pieces on the steps.