Threat warning

by John Gilstrap

  “The fact is,” said Brother Zebediah, “it’s not about you. Nothing in this world is about you. Nothing is about anyone. We live or die together on this planet, and you Users are so intent on owning the world and its resources for your own gain that you kill indiscriminately. Not just with guns, but with power. It’s time to return the power to where it belongs.”

  “To you,” Ryan said, still trying to wrap his head around it all. “And you do it by killing others. Killing to stop killing. Am I getting it right now?”

  The expression in Sister Colleen’s face hovered somewhere between hurt and disappointment, yet Ryan still didn’t have a clue why. She stood abruptly and threw a tightly rolled ball of tan fabric onto his lap.

  “That’s a triangular bandage,” she said. “I think you should tie a knot in it and put it around your neck as a sling. Try to keep your hand higher than your elbow if you can.”

  Clearly, she was done, and even more clearly, she was angry. She turned to the door.

  “What did I say?” Ryan asked after her.

  Colleen said nothing. She stormed out past Brother Zebediah, who followed her and slammed the door. He was still refitting the padlock when someone flipped a switch and Ryan’s world returned to blackness.

  CHAPTER TWENTY – THREE

  “At least we know that Ryan is in Copley’s house,” Venice said. “That’s important data.”

  “I disagree,” Jonathan said. “All we know is that Neen dropped him off there. Other than that, we’ve got only conjecture.”

  “And what about the mom, Christyne?” Gail asked. “Nobody even mentioned her.”

  “Baby steps,” Jonathan advised. “Explore the lead you’ve got, and hope that the others fall into place.”

  “By sheer dumb luck?” she asked with a chuckle.

  “In a perfect world, no,” Jonathan said. Her negative tone was beginning to wear on him. “But if the best I can catch is pure dumb luck, then I’ll take it.”

  Boxers said, “I recognize that look, Dig. What’s the plan?”

  Jonathan looked at his watch. “We know that the meeting of the elders-whatever the hell that means-takes place a little over five hours from now, at seven.”

  Venice said, “Digger, do you agree that the conversation we eavesdropped on said that the meet was going to happen in Copley’s house?”

  “I do,” he said.

  “Good,” Venice said. “Because when he built the place twelve years ago, he used an architect and a professional engineer. And wouldn’t you know it? He had the decency to file all the plans at the assessments office at the courthouse.”

  Jonathan grinned, yet again amazed by Venice’s capabilities to ferret out information. “Are you telling me you have drawings?”

  He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I’ve got floor plans, electrical, HVAC, sewerage, you name it.”

  Gail scowled, as if to say, Is that even possible?

  “Only a fool bets against Venice,” Jonathan said.

  “This is unbelievable!” Venice howled from Fisherman’s Cove. “Copley likes to buy his furniture from a place called Colony House in Falls Church. I can send you purchase orders, if you’d like.”

  Jonathan assured her that that would not be necessary.

  It took a few minutes for the floor plans and other architectural drawings to transfer, but once they did, the first stage of their plan became obvious. Jonathan discussed it with his team, spending the better part of an hour working through the details and the possible complications-of which there were too many to count-but when they were done, everybody had a job to do.

  They’d changed into black, despite the brightness of the day.

  Camouflage was a particularly difficult challenge in the wintertime, given the absence of leaves on the trees. Throw in the fact that every breath you took launched a cloud of condensation into the air, and blaze orange was as good a color as any to stay invisible.

  Rather than trying to blend in with their surroundings, then, Jonathan’s team had opted to blend in with their adversaries. They’d still make every effort to remain invisible, but on the off chance that they were spotted, they hoped that the spotters might see armed people in black and assume that they were friendlies. It was a high-risk bet, but sometimes you just had to play the hand you were dealt.

  They drove from the command post to a side road near the Copley house, but far enough away to remain undetected. Following their GPS, they hiked a quarter-mile due west to the fence line. From there, it would be another quarter mile to the house itself.

  Contrary to Jonathan’s conservative survival plan, they forwent the heavy body armor that he generally would have insisted upon-ditto the Kevlar helmets-in order to match the kit worn by the resident guards. Jonathan also left behind the twelve-gauge Mossberg shotgun that he would normally have worn slung under his armpit, and the bandolier of ammunition that went along with it. You never knew what kind of spotters they had deployed, and that kind of accoutrement was just too easily identified.

  There was a limit, though, to the extent Jonathan would go to blend in. They would each carry their M4 carbines, which looked enough like the M16s used by the staff to pass a cursory glance, but he insisted that each of them carry a full load of ten extra mags of ammunition, for a total of three hundred rounds. It bulked them up on their web gear, but ammunition was the one thing he would never scrimp on. They each carried a sidearm, as well. Jonathan had his Colt 1911. 45, Boxers his Beretta nine millimeter, and Gail her Glock. 40. Sidearms were the most personal of weapons. The smart warrior carried the one with which he was most comfortable. Gail’s years in the FBI had made the Glock. 40 second nature to her.

  Jonathan also insisted on night vision. The violent side of his world was inescapably tied to the night, and the ability to navigate where others were blind was the single greatest playing-field leveler. Each of them, then, carried a rucksack that contained night vision, glow sticks, a couple of general-purpose charges with initiators, plus a supply of Pop-Tarts-a high-sugar and high-carb source of emergency food in case their PCs hadn’t been fed in a while.

  The hike through the woods was entirely uneventful. They walked cautiously, trying to make as little noise as possible in the dried leaves and underbrush, but daytime stealth was different from nighttime stealth. The trick was to look as natural as possible while still trying to remain undetected.

  They spread out, too, keeping fifty yards between them both laterally and longitudinally. Boxers led, with Jonathan bringing up the rear. They kept in contact with each other and with Venice-“Mother Hen”-via encrypted radio.

  “Hey, Scorpion,” Venice said through Jonathan’s left earbud. “I’ve got more good news for you. The house has got security cameras, and they beam their signals to a security company via the Internet.”

  Jonathan pressed the transmit button in the center of his chest. “How is that good news?”

  He could hear the pride when she said, “Because I own the Internet. I’m working right now to record empty fields of view. If you can give me a half hour, I’ll be able to loop the recordings and route the fake images to the transmitters.”

  Amazing, Jonathan thought. “What are their fields of view?”

  “Assuming that they use only one company to monitor, it appears that only the house itself-the perimeter and the interior-are monitored.”

  “The fence line?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Mother Hen, you’re my hero,” Jonathan said. He knew that Venice would take it as the high praise that he had intended.

  Ten minutes later, Jonathan, Boxers, and Gail all arrived at the fence that surrounded Michael Copley’s sprawling home. The fence was nothing special-chain link, but of a gauge more suitable to a secure military facility than, say, a swimming pool. A Y-shaped bed of barbed wire capped the fence. If the links proved too tough to cut-and Jonathan guessed that they would-those same links would be that much easier to climb, and provide that mu
ch more stable a platform to take out the barbed wire with a pair of snips.

  “Sure is a lot of sunshine out here,” Boxers grumped as they hunkered together in some bushes at the base of a very significant oak tree.

  Jonathan looked at his watch. It was almost four o’clock. “Not for long. Give it another hour.”

  “Bullshit,” Boxers said. “I’ll give Mother Hen the thirty minutes she needs to cover my ass, and then I’m going to work.”

  Watching Jonathan and Boxers interact with each other-the lighthearted banter in the face of impending danger-Gail realized that she didn’t belong here. She would never be a full-fledged member of the team. These two men shared so much history-so much past pleasure and pain-that she couldn’t hope to become a part of it.

  Everything about this operation felt alien to her. In her ordered world, formerly defined by the rule of law, planning meant everything. You didn’t make a move without a piece of paper telling you it was approved, and you didn’t fire a shot unless you were one-hundred-twenty-percent sure that it was defensible in court.

  Even the sole focus on the rescue of the precious cargo was unique to her experience. During her days with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, the primary goal hadn’t truly been the liberation of the hostages. Rather, it had been to lawfully ensure that the bad guys did not get away, and that the legal case you built against them would withstand the scrutiny of the bad guys’ legal defense team. They worked very, very hard to make sure that the hostages remained unharmed, but at the end of the day, it was a better career move to convict a kidnapper for murdering a hostage than it was to reunite a hostage with his family and then have his assailant walk on a technicality.

  Gail was surprised by how rapidly her heart was hammering in her chest. She didn’t dare contribute to her colleagues’ banter for fear that her voice would tremble in the process.

  She told herself to settle down. This wasn’t the first time that she’d strayed outside the law while in Jonathan’s employ. That trend had started on the mountaintop in Pennsylvania, and then continued into the wilds of Alaska some months later. She’d approved illegal wiretaps and photographs that never should have been taken, but those were mere violations of civil rights. She’d killed, but that had always been in self-defense. Jonathan was right to question her ability to kill prophylactically. That skill-to kill in order to eliminate an enemy before he could kill you-was perhaps the single most important factor that separated what police did from what soldiers did.

  Studies had been written about it, in fact. Several decades ago, during America’s War on Drugs, the Drug Enforcement Administration had enlisted the aid of Navy SEALs for the interdiction of seaborne drug trafficking. The planners had envisioned the SEALs as a legal force multiplier that would chase down bad guys, place them under arrest, and recover countless millions of dollars in drugs.

  In practice, the plan had proven disastrous. The SEALs chased down the boats easily enough, and they recovered the millions of dollars in drugs, but more often than not, there were no people left to arrest. If a bad guy had a gun, he was killed, consistent with the SEALs’ long-standing training.

  It made sense when Gail thought about it. What was the point in having a conversation with a guy who wants to kill you?

  If only prosecutors were that sensible.

  The lesson learned from SEAL exercise was that training trumped intentions. When you invest millions of dollars in creating a warrior, that’s what you get. You don’t get a cop.

  Now, Gail worried that the opposite was true. Could she be the warrior she needed to be when the time came to pull the trigger? And if not, then who would take her place?

  Finally, an easy answer: No one would take her place. If she froze, the mission would come unzipped; and if that happened, everyone might die.

  She could do this, she told herself. All it took was a total commitment to “We’ve got a guard coming,” Boxers’ voice said in her ear.

  Gail shot her gaze first to the Big Guy, and then followed his eyeline into the woods, where a black-clad sentry was wandering into view.

  “No guns,” Jonathan whispered. As he spoke, he drew his KA-BAR knife from its scabbard on his left shoulder. The finely honed edge flashed white against the flat black finish of the blade. Gail shifted her eyes and saw Boxers mimic the move.

  Her own knife remained in its sheath on her belt. Another training deficit. She reached out to Jonathan and touched his arm.

  He glanced at her briefly, then shook his head and pursed his lips in a silent shh.

  “Let him go unless he poses a threat.” Jonathan’s whisper was barely audible over the radio.

  Gail settled more deeply behind the bush that provided her concealment, her heart hammering Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus.” To her right, Jonathan and Boxers both looked like coiled snakes, every muscle tensed, their knives ready to separate the guard’s soul from his body.

  The foliage confounded any clear view of the man as he approached, but to Gail’s eye he could have been the very sentry they’d seen in Rollins’s satellite photo. Tall and lean, he appeared to be young. He wore his M16 casually, dangling by a sling from his shoulder. He was nowhere near ready to confront an intruder. He had the complacent, bored look of a man who’d been walking the same route for far too long while seeing far too little action. Gail thought ruefully that she could probably jump out at him and yell, “Boo!” and he’d be half a mile away before he ever got his hand to his weapon.

  This was all good news.

  As the sentry approached within a few yards of their hiding place, Gail looked at Jonathan, whose eyes never left his prey. He remained perfectly still, nothing moving but his eyes as the young man passed the tree that shielded them, and then continued to wander down the line and around the corner. The danger had come and passed in a little over a minute. When the guard was out of sight, Jonathan’s shoulders finally relaxed.

  “That was encouraging,” Boxers said, sliding his KA-BAR back into its scabbard. “I like clueless guards.”

  Jonathan raised his eyebrows as he slid his own knife into its sheath. “I make it a point not to underestimate anybody with an automatic weapon.”

  “Actually, I thought I was overestimating,” Boxers countered with a smile.

  “Are you guys safe and clear now?” Venice asked over the radio.

  Jonathan touched the transmit button. “Affirm,” he said. “Wasn’t even close.”

  Really? Gail thought. What does close look like if that wasn’t it?

  “You sounded pretty tight on the radio,” Venice said. “Are you sure?”

  “Does it matter?” Emotionally, Venice had the most difficult job on the team. Hers was a world of impressions and anticipation, while the team on the ground had the benefit-for good or ill-of real-time knowledge. It never hurt to shield her from certain realities.

  Venice said, “I’ve got all the footage I need for the broadcast loop. Are you ready to go?”

  It was the statement they’d been waiting for-the statement Gail had been dreading. Was she ready to go?

  “Are you spinning the recording?” Jonathan asked.

  “All the monitoring company will see is uninterrupted boredom,” she reported. “But understand that I’m going to need to record again. We’re going to have to show nighttime approaching. Otherwise the monitors will see something wrong. Then, once it gets dark, I’ll need another half hour of darkness to make the loop.”

  “Shit,” Jonathan cursed off the air. He hadn’t considered that.

  “I’ll give you plenty of notice,” Venice assured. “I’ll also be monitoring the live feed, so I’ll be able to tell you if danger approaches.”

  “Are we set?” Jonathan asked his team.

  Boxers was already on his feet, walking toward the fence.

  Gail nodded, but apparently, it wasn’t convincing.

  “This is fish-or-cut-bait time, Gail,” he said softly.

  She nodded more aggressively this time. “Le
t’s go,” she said.

  They chose a spot along the fence in the rear sector of the estate where trees pressed in close and drooped over the barbed wire. Jonathan judged this to be a spot where the cuts they needed to make would be less likely to be spotted.

  Boxers climbed the fence with a dexterity that Gail would have found impressive from anyone, but particularly given his size. Maybe it helped that by just standing at its base, he was already three-quarters of the way to the top. He planted the toe of one boot in the wire mesh of the fence and reached with one hand to raise himself high enough that the barbed wire was at face height. He’d already drawn the snips with his other hand.

  “I hate this part,” he said. He placed the jaws of the snips around the wire, then hunched one shoulder to protect his neck, and looked away and down. “In three,” he said. “Two, one.”

  There was a snapping sound, and then the wire sagged. He repeated the procedure for the four lines of wire on their side of the fence, and then he leaned across and dispatched the four lines on the far side. That done, Boxers continued up and over the side.

  “You okay, Big Guy?” Jonathan asked. “You look a little winded.”

  “Winded my ass,” Boxers replied. “When you get your little razor butt over here, we’ll arm wrestle and see who wins.”

  It had been a long time since Gail had climbed a fence, and she was proud of herself for doing it with her dignity intact. When they were all assembled on the other side, she said to Jonathan, “What happens when the sentry notices the cut wire?”

  He shrugged and forced a smile. “That’s another one of those moments where we pray for luck to be on our side.”

  The lucky breaks were beginning to stack pretty high.

  They spread out to recon the mansion from the outside. Sooner or later, they were going to have to enter the house, and before committing to that kind of risk, they needed to learn as much about the place as they could. Jonathan and Boxers split the duties to view the front and sides, each of them taking positions on either side of the long driveway, and Gail was relegated to watching the rear and reporting on what she saw.