Protective Measures

by Dana Marton

  “I don’t know. The only man I ever talked to never told me anything. I only know his first name, and even that is probably fake. He had me call him Benito.”

  Benito.

  Danny stood as the gears clicked in his brain. Then he took off running for the chopper that waited for him on the hospital roof. He didn’t waste time calling the Colonel until they were in the air.

  He wasn’t back from his emergency meeting yet.

  “Benjamin Mezger,” Danny dictated the name to Sylvia. “The boy on the security video must be his younger brother.”

  Some years ago, Danny had been slated to go undercover into a rapidly growing militia group, but he’d been pulled in at the last minute and sent on an international mission. He’d recognized the boy’s features because he’d spent considerable time studying the mug shots of the group’s leaders.

  He’d been supposed to infiltrate a subgroup in Arkansas, one that Ben Mezger had founded before moving on to Virginia. Some of Mezger’s buddies had called him Benito after Mussolini, the Italian dictator.

  He gave what he knew to Sylvia, and she ran the information through all the law-enforcement databases. She had a location for him within ten minutes.

  “He might be out by Doher in the hills. There’s a record of the cops being called by a couple of hikers who were harassed in the area a few months ago. They said they saw some kind of a camp, but the cops couldn’t find it.”

  “How good a location do we have?”

  “Not very. Want me to send a chopper to check out the area?”

  “I don’t want them to know we’re coming. If Kaye is there, I don’t want them to move her. Just have them drop me in as close as possible to where we know the camp is, and I’ll find it on foot.”

  A compoundful of men were bound to leave plenty of tracks in the woods. He was trained for these kinds of missions.

  KAYE WALKED and stumbled for only a few hundred yards before she realized she wasn’t going to make it. There was nothing around her but forest, no lights beckoning from the distance. Her best chance of finding a phone was back at the compound. Her two options were going back there or bleeding to death in the woods.

  She turned around and prayed she would have the strength to make it that far.

  The eerie sounds of the night scared her senseless. Her love of outdoors didn’t expand beyond her well-tended garden. She wasn’t the outdoorsy type.

  She kept on walking, stumbling through the undergrowth. The way back to the compound seemed longer. Probably because she was losing strength rapidly. At the end, she almost missed it, walking blindly through the woods. The barking of a dog and some shouting pointed her in the right direction.

  The compound wasn’t as quiet now as when she’d arrived. People were running around with flashlights, instructions were being yelled.

  “She can’t be far.”

  “You take the east ridge.”

  “She’ll go toward the road.”

  Too bad nobody mentioned which way the road was.

  Kaye kept to the shadows of the woods and surveyed the buildings, then picked the largest and crept over to it. Not all buildings had lights, but this one did. The hum of a generator betrayed the source.

  She came up inch by inch and peeked through the window. The small room contained a metal bed, a chair and a desk, an old military footlocker.

  Two men ran by her in the dark, just a few feet away. If everyone was looking outside, the safest place to be was inside. She wedged her fingers under the window frame and wiggled it up.

  God, it hurt to be climbing.

  Desperation pushed her forward. Pull up. One leg over, then the other. When she was in, she closed the window behind her and wiped away the bloodstains she’d left.

  The table held a jumble of papers, sheets of blueprints, schedules, newspapers, garbage, a dog-eared porn magazine. No phone. She searched the footlocker next and found nothing but a few sets of worn army fatigues.

  She moved to the door, opened it an inch and peeked out. A short, dark hallway—empty. She stepped from the room, keeping her ears on the noises filtering in from outside—mostly swearing and nasty jokes.

  This room looked the same as the first, except for the heap of clothes by the foot of the bed. She went through the pockets. Some change, a wad of toilet paper. Bingo. Her fingers closed around a small cell phone.

  But she didn’t have the chance to dial. There were footsteps out in the hallway and they were coming straight toward her. She had just enough time to dive under the bed before they came in.

  Four boots, two men.

  “I could kill the idiot,” one of them said.

  “Freaking Bobby. He’s always jumping the gun.”

  “I told him a hundred times to leave Miller alone until our priority mission was accomplished.”

  Another man came in.

  “I’m sorry. I messed up. I thought I had the bitch.”

  It had to be Bobby.

  One of the others shoved him. “You didn’t think. You never do. Now everything is compromised.”

  “No way. I got her good. I thought she was dead. There was enough blood.” He scraped his white sneakers across the wood-plank floor. “She won’t make it far. She’ll bleed out before long.”

  “You better hope and pray. Because we’re too far gone with the plans. Things are already in motion for Friday.”

  What was on Friday? She tried to think of the schedule for the House. They’d be voting on a resolution to ensure fair distribution of U.S. humanitarian assistance. There were couple of other small items she couldn’t quite recall.

  The Senate? Nothing there, either.

  The only significant political event she could think of for Friday was the Friendship Summit. The president was flying to California to meet with the president of Mexico to discuss the new immigration reform, part of which would be a general amnesty.

  Was that the target?

  Compound in the woods, men running around in mismatched camouflage uniforms. Sure didn’t look good. She had to get this information to Cal and she had to do it fast.

  “Nothing they can do to stop us this time. This time we have it figured out,” one of the men said.

  “Damn right. They’re not gonna see this one coming, the sons of bitches.” Another spat on the floor not two feet from her face.

  Who were they? Some kind of militia? A hate group? That made sense. Maybe they didn’t object to her politics as much as to her heritage. And a lot of those groups were anti-immigrant as well—keep the country pure and all that.

  Somebody shouted something outside. She didn’t understand the words. Two of the men left, Bobby and the one who had shoved him. The third guy remained and sat on the bed.

  “DUMB-ASS Bobby screws up, we get sent out here for mosquito bait.” The first man pushed through the bushes.

  “Damn woman ain’t worth it. City girl.” The second man spat. “She’ll be dead good enough on her own.”

  “She’ll have a heart attack the first spider she sees.”

  Danny crouched, still as the tree behind him, watching through the sparse leaves of the undergrowth, biding his time, listening to the men.

  Kaye was alive, and she had escaped. He’d had a high regard for her since the beginning, but it had grown ten-fold in the last couple of hours.

  When the men had passed, Danny moved through the woods like a ghost, stopping now and then when he heard others. Come on. Time was everything. He had to find Kaye before the men did. Trouble was, he could find no trace of her, no matter how hard he’d looked, the task made more difficult by the soldiers of the New Brotherhood traipsing all over the place, confusing the tracks.

  They’d been out for hours and he with them. He didn’t dare let them too far out of sight for fear that they’d find Kaye first. If that happened, he was prepared to attack at a moment’s notice. But so far, the night had yielded results neither for him nor for his enemies. Maybe he would have better luck now that the moo
n was finally out from its cloud cover.

  His cell phone vibrated once in his pocket. He made sure no one was within hearing distance, then flipped it open.

  “Any news, Colonel?”

  “Kaye called in. She is inside the compound, in the largest building. She’s lost some blood.”

  But she’s alive, he thought, and his heart rate steadied.

  He knew the exact location, had circled the camp twice upon arrival before he’d figured out from the upheaval that they didn’t have Kaye. “Anything else?” He ran without sound.

  “She sounded weak. I think she said she was under a bed with people coming and going from the room. She had to hang up in mid sentence.”

  “I’m on my way.” Danny closed the phone and doubled his speed.

  He didn’t slow until he was about a hundred feet from the camp.

  He could only see three men, one cleaning his gun, another smoking next to the open fire, the third sleeping in a makeshift hammock. He listened, but couldn’t hear voices coming from any of the cabins. The rest of the soldiers must have run off to search for Kaye.

  He moved with care. The Colonel had said she was in the largest building. In the makeshift camp, that meant a ten by twenty cabin. He crept up to the back, looked through the window and caught sight of a man writing at a desk. The room was too small to have taken up the whole building. There were others, but how many? And how many men did they hide?

  Impatience pumped his blood.

  The man kept writing.

  Blow the sucker away, grab Kaye, get the hell out of there.

  That would have been the most satisfying way, but not the best. He had no backup. If he alerted the others to his presence, one could grab Kaye. Stealth was an important factor in every operation—in a solitary operation it was perhaps the most crucial element.

  He rounded the building and stepped into the woods, walked a few hundred feet before he let some bullets fly into the air.

  The men came in a hurry, passed right by him as he crouched in the cover of the bushes. He circled back to his target, looked inside, but couldn’t see anyone. He was through the window in three seconds.

  Kaye wasn’t under the bed.

  Where was she? He checked out the hallway, crossed to the other door. That room was dark.

  “Kaye?” He whispered the single word as he stepped forward, not letting himself think that he might not find her. She was here somewhere. She had called.

  “Kaye?”

  In the shaft of light the open door let in, he saw something move under the bed.

  He was on his knees and pulling her out the next second. “I’m here.”

  “I don’t feel good,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  He looked her over as he hauled her up. She was dirty and sweaty, her hair bedraggled, her cheek scratched in a spot. She was the best damn sight he’d ever seen.

  “How badly are you hurt?” He ran his hands over her arms, looking for anything broken. Her legs had to be okay—she was standing.

  He saw the patch of dried blood on her side even before she pointed to it, would have gladly killed the bastard who’d done that if he could have gotten his hands on him. He hoped he’d have the honor of being on the cleanup crew that came in after Kaye was tucked away in safety.

  Which was why he was here. He snapped to it and lifted Kaye into his arms. She didn’t look as though she would be up to climbing and running. He glanced at the window, then thought, to hell with that. He wasn’t going to jiggle her around and cause her more pain than he had to. To hell with stealth. He had her. His main objective now was to get her to a hospital as fast as he could. If anyone saw them he’d deal with them. His right hand, hooked under her knees, held his handgun, safety off.

  “Ready?”

  She nodded weakly against his chest.

  “Here we go. Hang on,” he said and kicked open the cabin’s front door.

  Camp was empty, the men still probably looking for the source of the gunfire. Danny made a beeline for the trees.

  He could hear some shouting a hundred feet or so east of them. He flattened against a tree, holding Kaye tightly. When the men were out of hearing distance, he moved on.

  A dog barked somewhere behind them.

  What dog? He hadn’t seen one before. It must have been out with one of the search teams.

  “I can walk,” Kaye whispered against his shirt.

  “Not fast enough.” He pushed harder. Even his strength and speed could turn out to be insufficient. He was running through unfamiliar terrain, while his pursuers probably knew every tree. He scrambled over a fallen log, slowed when he caught a small groan from Kaye.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Just a little dizzy,” she said.

  “Blood loss.” And she was probably dehydrated, too. He stopped for a second and set her down. He took his water bottle off his belt and lifted it to her lips, happy to see that she was strong enough to hold it.

  “Who are these people?” she asked once she’d slaked her thirst.

  “Militant hate group. White supremacists.”

  She nodded soberly. “The guy who took me, the others called him Bobby. I think he was the one who came to the house, too. When we were in the attic—” Her hand fluttered up to her neck as she remembered. “He said something about me climbing too high. I thought he meant going all the way up there.” She shook her head.

  “Speaker of the House,” he said. “Third in line for the presidency.”

  The noises behind him grew a little fainter. Maybe the men had gone off in the wrong direction. He hoped so. Kaye needed a moment of respite.

  “Let me see your injury.”

  The stain on her shirt was no longer brown. The fabric was soaked red with fresh blood. He pulled the material aside, wiped the area enough so he could see what he was dealing with. The wound was shallow; the knife had probably bounced off a rib. But the cut was made in an unfortunate place in an unfortunate way so it moved every time she moved, unable to heal. He pulled out his small emergency kit and opened the tin, put it on the ground.

  “You’re going to sew me together?” She kept a brave face, but he caught a twinge of something in her eyes. Revulsion? Fear?

  “No.” He gave her a steady smile. “You’ll be in a hospital in an hour. It’ll hold until then.” He cleaned the wound and dressed it.

  “How are you?” she asked. “I wasn’t sure if you could come.”

  “They would have to kill me to stop me.” Didn’t she know that?

  “They came close.” She passed the bottle back to him.

  “Hungry?” He fished a protein bar out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her, grinned when she devoured it in two unlady-like bites.

  “Sorry.” She wiped her mouth. “I was starving.”

  “You want another?”

  The way she was looking at him just then, he would have given her anything.

  “Kaye?” He stepped closer and leaned forward, brushed his lips over hers on impulse. And then, of course, the second their bodies made contact, he wanted more.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry.” She pulled back and looked away. “I can’t.”

  “Kaye, I—”

  The dog was barking again. Closer this time. Must have picked up their scent.

  “We have to go.”

  “Let me try and walk.”

  “We’ll go faster if you don’t.”

  She didn’t argue, but let him pick her up.

  “You did good back there,” he said as he started out, ignoring the sting of rejection. “Hiding where they weren’t looking. The forest would have been rougher on you. It’s what I would have done.”

  Her chapped lips stretched into a tentative smile.

  He shook his head. “I didn’t even think of looking for you there. I figured you’d think as a civilian and run for the hills.”

  “I tried. I was too weak to do it. I thought maybe I could hold out until help came.”

  “You did
.”

  “Thanks for saving me again.”

  “You saved yourself with that call.”

  “I didn’t get to tell Cal everything. These people are planning some kind of an attack this Friday. I think maybe during the Friendship Summit.”

  That was major. “Got any details?”

  She shook her head.

  “Derickson and Alvarez will be discussing legalizing some of the workforce that slipped through the border over the past twenty years, a conditional amnesty for illegal immigrants,” he thought out loud.

  “And they are proposing a new law that would make it easier for Mexicans to receive work permits to work in the United States,” she added.

  “Not the kind of changes The Brotherhood would appreciate.” Still, taking out two presidents was one of the boldest and most nefarious plans he’d come across during his military career.

  “I don’t imagine they approve much of what Derickson does in general. He’s the most liberal president in decades.”

  The men behind them were getting closer, their voices growing louder.

  He had to find water to throw the dog off scent. He hadn’t come across any creeks while searching for Kaye in the woods earlier. If he did now, it would be pure luck. He rushed forward, hoping for the best.

  He didn’t get it.

  He ran into another team that was coming back toward the compound. Where the hell had they come from?

  There were men behind him, the dog sounding closer and closer. There were men ahead of him, a good-sized group judging from all the noise they made. He couldn’t go left, the gorge there was too steep to attempt with Kaye.

  He had to leave her.

  No.

  Doing that went against all his instincts, but drawing the attention of the men who hunted them was the only thing he could do for her.

  He clipped his phone off his belt and pressed it into her hands, bent his head to her ear. “Keep down, don’t make a sound, call for help as soon as you’re alone,” he said, and set her down behind the thick bushes to his right. “Don’t wait for me.”

  He looked at her one last time before he charged forward, letting some bullets fly. Return fire came at once, from both directions. He threw himself to the ground, hoping the two teams would shoot each other, but they figured out what was going on fast and after a minute or two of desperate shouting and cursing, the fight stopped abruptly.