by Rebecca York
“Three or four firing. At least around front. Is there a back door?”
“No.”
“That’s good. They may not have the back covered.”
“What are we going to do?”
He took her shoulders and turned her toward him, his expression grim. “You’re going out a back window. Do you have more bullets?”
“Yes.”
“Take your gun and take more ammunition, but don’t engage them unless you have to. Don’t take anything with you. Run as fast as you can. Head through the woods. If you come to a road, make sure they’re not patrolling it. As soon as you can get to a phone, call Rockfort Security in Rockville, Maryland. Talk to my partners, Shane Gallagher or Max Lyon. Tell them what happened. Tell them… Jack Brandt wasn’t able to discover Trainer’s main mission.”
Doubt and disbelief crossed his features.
“What?”
“At least I don’t think I know Trainer’s main mission,” he clipped out.
“What does that mean?”
“Like I said, my memory’s got some holes.” He gave her a hard look. “You’d better get going.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Draw their fire while you get away.”
“No.”
“It’s the only way for one of us to get out of this. And one of us has to tell Rockfort what happened.”
“We’re both going,” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
Chapter 6
Jack checked the clips on the guns he’d taken off the two men who’d come to the house pretending to be FBI agents. He was getting low on ammunition.
When he spared Morgan a look, he saw a steely determination. “You’re not going out there,” she said. “I won’t let you kill yourself because of me.”
“Maybe I’ll take them out.”
She made a rough noise. “You have a couple of handguns. They’ve got machine guns.”
He flapped an arm in frustration. “We don’t have a lot of time to argue about it.”
He hadn’t known how right he was. The shooting was apparently over and also the offer of safe conduct for Morgan.
In the next second, a canister crashed through the living room window and landed on the sofa, spewing smoke and fire in all directions. Almost immediately, the chintz slipcover went up in flames.
Morgan gasped.
Jack grabbed her arm and herded her farther down the hall, wondering how long before the flames reached them.
Outside he could hear whoops of triumph from Trainer’s men. Maybe the colonel was there himself, directing the operation.
“Come on out if you don’t want to roast,” someone called. He thought it was Ryder, one of the men who had played FBI agent earlier. Cocky again now that his buddies had rescued him.
Jack didn’t spare the breath to respond.
Behind him, more furnishings were catching fire, turning the living room into a suburb of hell.
The smoke was pouring into the hall and thickening around them. Jack was already coughing as he grabbed Morgan’s hand. “Get down.”
“This way,” she said.
He hadn’t expected her to take the initiative, but she seemed to know where she was going. He followed close behind as she leaned over and kept low while she sprinted down the hall, the smoke and flames at their backs.
There was still a chance they could get out a window, but now he was sure the attack was planned to herd them to the back of the house where men with machine guns would be waiting to mow them down when they tried to escape.
Morgan led him into a bedroom and slammed the door. It blocked the smoke, and he took a grateful breath of the relatively untainted air. But from the way the fire was burning, he knew the flames would reach the door soon, and then they could either burn up or take their chances at a window. He’d go first and draw their fire and hope she could get away, but he wasn’t counting on it.
Morgan’s voice was low and urgent as she began to speak. “This house was built in the 1830s—and it has some unusual features. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad. You know—where people helped escaped slaves travel north.”
He tried to wrap his head around what she was telling him and finally thought he got the import of the history lesson.
“Are you saying there’s another way out?”
She pointed to the floor. “Under there.”
He watched while she pushed the rag rug aside. Under it, he could make out the outline of a rectangular shape in the wooden floor, with a small metal circle embedded in the wood at one side.
When he reached into the circle and pulled, the piece of flooring groaned with disuse.
He pulled harder, and it finally came up, almost throwing him backward. He recovered his footing and stared down into darkness from which the scent of damp earth and mold wafted upward.
“There’s a ladder,” Morgan said, pointing her flashlight beam at the rungs.
“Where does it come out?” he asked.
“In the woods.”
“How far?”
“Maybe fifty yards.”
He was making swift calculations. The house would burn for a while. Trainer might want to order his men inside, but not without special equipment. By the time they got inside, he and Morgan would be long gone, and maybe the attackers would think they had burned to crispy critters.
Morgan handed him the flashlight, and he shined it into the dark tunnel below the house, seeing a dirt floor and walls.
He knew they had to get away fast, but one more problem leaped into his mind.
“Did you leave your wallet in the living room?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Is there any money back here?”
“I think there’s some in one of the bedroom drawers.”
“Take it. We’ll need it when we get out of here.”
She crossed quickly to the dresser, knelt down, and opened the bottom drawer, then rummaged under some clothing. Pulling out some folded bills, she shoved them into one of the pockets of her knapsack.
“Go down,” he said.
“And you’ll follow?” she asked, her voice anxious.
“Yeah. After I close the trapdoor.”
***
Outside in the woods, Wade Trainer cursed under his breath. He didn’t allow his men to use foul language, and he believed in practicing what he preached, but this morning he needed an outlet for his frustration.
His hands clenched at his sides as he mentally reviewed the past eighteen hours, intent on figuring out where he’d gone wrong.
And the only thing he could fault himself on was leaving Buckman and Stanford alone with the prisoner after one of the interrogation sessions.
Wade was sure he had been close to getting Jack Barnes to talk. But he’d had to step out of the room for a few minutes when he’d gotten an urgent communication from his moneyman.
By the time he’d come back, the whole situation had gone to hell in a handbasket. Barnes was gone, one of his men was down, and the other was working frantically to revive him.
He’d already punished the morons. At the same time, he’d ordered others to search for Barnes. The man had to be in bad shape. How far could he get?
The logical place to start was the compound. When it was clear that Barnes had somehow stolen an SUV and gotten off the property, Wade had widened the parameters. They’d found the vehicle in a ditch. At least the man had limited his escape radius.
He’d known Barnes was good. He simply hadn’t realized how good—or how duplicitous the man had turned out to be.
Barnes was an ex–Navy SEAL with reasons to be disgusted with the service. Two years ago, he and eight other SEALs had been sent on what turned out to be a suicide mission in Afghanistan. Not like that operation where SEALs had killed Bin Laden. In this case, Barnes had been the only one who’d escaped alive.
Of course, Wade hadn’t taken the man’s word for any of that. He’d used a co
ntact to check his military records, which had agreed with the man’s story.
And the personal part had fit. Barnes had mourned the other members of his team, and as soon as he’d been able, he’d left the service, then wandered the country, like some kind of modern-day Rambo, with a chip on his shoulder and the skills to wreak havoc if he chose.
Wade had thought he’d turned the guy around.
Since joining the RAM, Barnes had accepted the militia code and followed the rules, down to the proscription against getting to be best buddies with anyone. But looking back, there were some clues that he might not be what he seemed. After their initial conversations, he’d stayed out of ideological discussions. He kept to himself more than was strictly necessary, and he had a tendency to wander off into the woods by himself when he wasn’t on duty. Taken together, all those things had aroused Wade’s suspicions, and he’d assigned a couple of men to keep tabs on the guy. The troops were happy to do it, because Barnes projected a grating aura of superiority.
It had taken weeks of covert surveillance. In fact, Wade had been about to give up on getting anything on the guy, until his surveillance team followed Barnes back to camp while everyone was on maneuvers. He’d ducked behind the latrine, then zeroed in on Wade’s office, and he’d been sitting at the computer when Thackery had whacked him over the head with the butt of his gun.
He’d stopped breathing, and Thackery had panicked, calling out for help. Wentworth, Wade’s physician’s assistant, had rushed in and slapped Barnes across the face a couple of times, and that had brought him around, still groggy.
When they’d been sure Barnes wasn’t going to croak, Wade had looked at his computer. The screen had been displaying the desktop, but that didn’t mean Barnes hadn’t somehow gotten farther in—and erased the evidence of his snooping.
Wade was sure he’d been close to finding out what Barnes knew, when the guy had escaped. He was good, but there had been no way he could get far on foot. Not naked, beaten to a pulp, and half out of his mind from torture. Once he’d abandoned the vehicle, it had been a process of elimination to track him to this house, which belonged to a widow named Morgan Rains. She must have seen the guy in the woods and taken him in, because Wade couldn’t imagine Jack Barnes coming up and knocking on the door. Or maybe Jack had forced his way in and held her hostage. And there was another possibility as well. Morgan Rains could be a plant, stationed at the house and ready to rescue Jack Barnes if he got into trouble.
He took an involuntary step back as the heat from the fire he’d started threatened to set his clothing on fire.
If it was hot as hell out here, it must be unbearable inside the structure. Barnes and the woman were going to burn up in there if they didn’t come out soon. Or maybe they had already passed out from smoke inhalation, and there was no way of saving them. Which was a shame, because Wade was still missing the information he needed. And his moneyman was going to want details.
He swore under his breath again. Everything had been going his way, until Barnes had come along. Wade had found a prime location for his camp in Skyline, Virginia, close enough to Washington, D.C., to easily attack the capital. He’d improved the facilities. Acquired a nice stock of weapons. Set up practice areas and trained his men to be the soldiers he needed to pull off the operation he’d planned. His troops would obey him without question, and he thought about ordering one of his men to go into the burning house and drag Barnes and the woman out.
But that option had little chance of success. And he wasn’t in the business of wasting men when there was no purpose to it.
Clenching and unclenching his fists, he watched the house burn with a feeling of triumph and defeat warring inside himself. The traitor would be dead, but Wade wouldn’t find out what he’d gotten out of the computer, or who had set up the spy operation. Was the government spying on the RAM? He’d have to move up his timetable.
***
Jack watched Morgan climb down the ladder, testing the wooden rungs as she went. He breathed out a small sigh when they all held.
After she reached the tunnel floor, she turned and looked up anxiously.
“Come on.”
“I’ll be right there.”
He tossed down the knapsacks and the bedroll they’d brought, then stepped onto the ladder. He was just reaching up with both hands to lower the door the rest of the way when an explosion boomed out, shaking the house to its foundations. Maybe from the propane tank or another bomb Trainer’s men had lobbed inside.
Whatever the reason, the rung under Jack’s feet wavered, and he scrabbled to get a grip on the side supports. When the ladder arched backward and threw him against the far wall, he lost his footing and tumbled off into space.
From below him, he heard a scream as he plummeted downward into blackness.
Chapter 7
For long moments, Jack was nowhere at all. Then, to his shock, he woke up in a place he didn’t want to be. Back in Trainer’s clutches, powerless to defend himself from the burns and the blows.
He was lying on a hard surface, naked and shivering from the pile of ice cubes heaped onto his chest.
“Wake up, you bastard,” a harsh voice ordered. “You’re not going to escape by sleeping.”
He kept his eyes closed, feigning unconsciousness.
“I said wake up.” The speaker was Wade Trainer himself.
Jack’s brain swam with confusion. He’d thought he’d escaped from the torture room. Now he was back again.
Trainer slapped his face—hard. But it was just a bee sting compared to what had come before. To remind Jack, the man poured something hot and stinging on a couple of the cigarette burns he’d already gouged into Jack’s flesh.
He couldn’t hold back a groan, but he kept from screaming.
“Good. I’ve got your attention.” The militia leader’s voice turned conversational. “You find out what a man is made of by the way he responds to torture. So far, you’re being stupid.”
Jack clenched his teeth as he gazed up into Wade Trainer’s face. The remarkable thing was that there was nothing remarkable about Trainer’s appearance. He looked ordinary, with features you might see on a guy riding the bus to work. His dark hair was straight and graying at the temples. His nose was small for a man, his lips thin, his eyes gray. They were the most notable thing about him. Not because of their color but their steely determination. When you looked into them, you knew this man had a purpose.
He made a formidable opponent. But Jack was being smart—following his SEAL training and looking for an opportunity to escape.
“You went to a lot of trouble to get into the RAM. Who are you working for?”
“Nobody.”
“Don’t screw with me now. That fight in the bar where I first saw you beat the crap out of a guy—that was staged, wasn’t it?”
“No.”
“You let me think you were a badass lone wolf, bitter about losing your buddies. You let me think you wanted to get back at the U.S. Government.”
“I do.”
Trainer snorted. Ignoring Jack, he went on. “You made me think you bought into the RAM ideals.”
“I do.”
“Bullshit. You made yourself look like the perfect recruit. You had discipline. All the skills I needed in a man. I even made you an instructor. But it was all an act.”
“No.”
“Cut the crap. You may think you can hold out. But you’re going to spill your guts to me like everybody does under torture. Why not make it easier on yourself and tell me now. Then I’ll kill you quick.”
Jack didn’t waste his energy with a snappy reply. He let his mind float away—to a place where the pain was happening to someone else—only he could still feel it.
“Why were you in my office?”
He’d been in the office? Jack didn’t remember that or anything else right before waking up in the torture chamber, but he filed the information away.
Trainer leaned over him, grinning as he took a dr
ag on his cigarette and held it up, studying the glowing end. Then he pressed it against Jack’s shoulder.
He called on every drop of inner strength he possessed, determined to deny the militia leader the satisfaction of hearing him scream. But keeping silent was getting harder.
“Who are you working for?”
“Nobody.”
“You’re lying.”
When he turned his head away, the militia leader grabbed his hair and snapped his face back, damn near breaking his neck in the process.
When he didn’t respond, the man closed a hand over his shoulder, his fingers rubbing against the new burn mark as he shook him.
“Jack. Wake up. Jack. Can you hear me?” an urgent voice asked.
The voice didn’t sound like Trainer, but it had to be. Or one of his men. There was nobody else in the torture room. Or was his memory wrong? He didn’t recall the place smelling damp and musty.
He tensed his muscles, waiting for the right moment.
“Jack?”
In the dim light, he could barely see who had spoken his name. Was that really Trainer hovering above him? His mind refused to focus, but his body reacted in the way he’d been trained. This was his chance to get away, and he took it. Springing forward, he knocked the bastard out of the way where he landed on his ass against the wall.
When he heard a grunting sound, he felt a surge of victory.
“Jack.”
It didn’t sound like Trainer. And as the familiar face finally came into focus, he dragged in a sharp breath.
It wasn’t Trainer or one of his men. And he wasn’t in the brightly lighted torture chamber.
He was in a dark place, illuminated only by the glow from a flashlight sitting on the floor. In the dim light, he saw Morgan picking herself up.
“Shit.” He wasn’t back in Trainer’s clutches. His brain had made up that scenario when an explosion shook the house, and he fell down the ladder and blacked out.
“Morgan?” he asked in a strangled voice.
“Yes.”
He ran a shaky hand through his hair as he thought about the short amount of time they’d spent together. “I attacked you before, didn’t I? When you first found me, right?”
