Fallen Angel

by Jeff Struecker

"Yes. It's where customers can drive their trucks to the door and load things up. We have confrontations there all the time. Someone gets ticked off at someone else for hogging the space or parking a trailer so no one can share the space. We have a fistfight at least once a month."

  "Let's see it."

  "On it." The security man called up another file. The image of a covered area open on three sides appeared. A dark, full-sized Toyota pickup waited by the door. The windows were tinted. Zinsser judged it to be a late model, maybe less than five years old. They watched as the trio loaded the back of the vehicle.

  "She's definitely with them," Brianne said.

  "I can get the license number," the guard said.

  "Go ahead," Zinsser said, "but it won't do any good. I'm sure the plates are stolen. So is the truck."

  "I'm on it." Brianne was on the cell phone before Zinsser could respond. A few moments later, she returned. "I had my office run the plates. They belong to a 1995 Ford Mustang."

  "I'll bet a check of reported stolen vehicles will turn up a Toyota Tacoma double cab."

  "They're checking." Brianne returned the phone to her pocket. She touched Elliot's arm drawing the man's attention from the monitor. "Do you have a good broadband connection here?"

  "Sure."

  "Good, I imagine these files are large. Okay, we're going to send these files to the FBI. I'll fill in the e-mail address. I want to do that now. They'll be able to enhance the video, then our video forensic guys and gals will tear into it."

  "Facial recognition?" Zinsser marveled at the resources available to the FBI. CID had to do with smaller facilities, distant labs, and sometimes independent contractors.

  "You betcha. When they're done, we'll know how many eyelashes each of the perps have."

  "I'd be happier with an address. That's our next problem."

  After sending the video files, Zinsser and Brianne shook the hands of Elliot and the security guard.

  "You may have saved a girl's life, Mr. Elliot. You're okay in my book."

  "Thank you, Agent Zinsser. Let me know if there's any way I can help."

  "There's one thing you can do. Give that young lady who took the verbal beating the rest of the day off."

  Elliot grinned. "Will do, Agent. Will do."

  MOYER RAN ON POINT, J. J. and Crispin behind. Time was more important than stealth. He knew where the Russians and Chinese were. He doubted they could hear him plowing through the thin forest. Running with full gear was difficult at best; running through a wooded area and downhill was tough. It required focus, the one thing Moyer lacked . . .

  Gina's eighth birthday party . . . pink dress . . . ten sugar-fueled girls.

  Gina in the backseat of his car with two friends, all talking at the same time, no one listening, driving Moyer nuts.

  Gina getting an award at school.

  Gina in junior high drama doing her best with the few lines of the Crucible she had.

  Gina pelting him with marshmallows during a family camping trip.

  Gina saying, "Ew, ew, ew, ew," when he taught her how to bait a fishing hook.

  Gina at thirteen starting to look like her mother.

  Gina . . . Gina . . . Gina . . .

  His vision blurred and he took a small branch in the face. He touched the stinging flesh and saw blood on his glove.

  "You okay, Boss?"

  "Peachy, Colt. Just peachy."

  He started jogging again. Fifty steps later the sound of automatic fire rolled along the hills and valleys. The three dropped to the ground.

  More shots.

  "It's started." Moyer's thoughts ran back to the field where the Chinese were trying to pop open the satellite. It had only taken minutes for the confrontation to start. "Let's move."

  Moyer was on his feet again and charging down the hill toward, not the FedEx van, but to the area where Crispin's nano-copter found the Russian vehicles.

  They had work to do.

  CHAPTER 34

  PENG'S FIRST INDICATION OF trouble was the red splatter that hit the satellite and dotted his face. The noise of power shears masked the shot. Peng looked up from his work in time to see what used to be Hsu Li's face, now a mass of red meat.

  He released the tool and dropped to the moist ground.

  Pop-pop-pop.

  Peng pulled his weapon close, fingered off the safety, and tried to assess the situation. To his left he could see Zhao Wen facedown in the grass; to his right Gao Zhi lay in an awkward position, his arms and legs bent in unnatural angles. Even at distance, Peng could see the man had breathed his last. Especially sad. Gao had two children.

  The shooting stopped and Peng had an idea why. If he were hunkered behind a boulder or some other natural defense, there would be bullets flying everywhere. Whoever was shooting was avoiding putting holes in the satellite. It was, perhaps, the only reason Peng was still alive.

  Three men down. That left him and Wei Dong, and he couldn't see Dong. Peng crawled along the body of the satellite and peered around the cover. He still couldn't see his man. He activated his radio. "Dong, can you hear me?" Nothing. "Wei Dong, do you read?"

  Nothing.

  He failed. He failed in his mission; he failed his men; he failed his country. He wanted to see where the fire came from, to see who took the lives of his men by ambush, but to lift his head meant certain death. Four men died before Peng knew there was a problem. His enemies were professionals.

  What would he do in their place? He knew. He would advance several men for the final kill. One would approach straight on, others from the side. Peng guessed he had five minutes to live, if that.

  He pushed the lever that turned his QBZ-95 to full automatic.

  He bolted to his feet.

  He screamed.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Bullets spit from the end of the carbine at nearly one hundred rounds per minute, but with only thirty rounds in the clip, the weapon fell silent a few moments later. He was up long enough to see that his first estimate was right. Three armed men were approaching, spaced four or five meters apart. He hit each one. He didn't hear screaming, so he assumed he killed them. He saw something in the tree line that chilled his blood: a glimpse of several other men.

  Peng's life was over. But the knowledge didn't bother him. He had long suspected he would die in battle. He just didn't expect it to be today.

  His failure ate at him as he slammed a new clip into the weapon. If he failed, maybe he could make his attackers fail as well, steal their glory, make the death of their men meaningless.

  THE M110 FELT AWKWARD and large in Rich's hand. This was J. J.'s weapon. Although Rich trained with it, fired a similar weapon many times, he preferred his more familiar M4. Moyer insisted on the switch. He needed J. J. for something else and the remaining half of the team needed a long-range shooter.

  The Russians fired from just inside the tree line. Rich counted nine shots felling four men. Not bad considering the situation, but in the end, it was a massacre. Only one man remained. He just made a valiant attempt to even the odds and had some success, but Rich knew what the Chinese soldier didn't: three dead Russians meant five still alive.

  Rich watched the action through the high-powered scope on the sniper rifle. "Doc, situation."

  "Russians still in the trees. I see some motion to the sides. They may be trying to flank him."

  "I concur, Shaq." Pete spoke in a whisper.

  "Stay on them. I've got— What's he doing? Junior, check me on this."

  From the corner of his eye he saw Pete move his binoculars to the area around the satellite. "Grenade. If Colt were here he could tell the kind."

  "Grenade. He can't throw that far enough to do any good."

  "Shaq, I don't think he's planning on throwing it."

  Rich was puzzled. "What else would he—?" He swore under his breath, pulled the butt of the rifle tight into his shoulder socket, and sighted on the man, setting the illuminated, red crosshairs on the man's head.

&
nbsp; He watched the man hold the grenade in one hand and reach for its top with the other. Rich balanced the weapon on its collapsing bipod. The sound and flash suppressor on the end of the barrel added four inches to the M110's length.

  Rich compensated.

  PEND KNEW HE HAD very little time. The satellite was his goal, now it was his shield, but the attackers wouldn't wait forever. He had to do the deed and do it now. The grenade was heavy in his hand.

  The idea was simple. Arm the handheld bomb and drop it in the opening Peng cut in the satellite's skin, destroying the optics and electronics. If he lived through that, he'd repeat that act with the white phosphorus grenade attached to the side of his pack. Explosion and heat should destroy the inside of the big device—at least the important part of it.

  He took a deep breath, fingered the arming mechanism, recalled exactly where the hole was he created—

  —black.

  SOMETIMES I HATE MY JOB.

  Shaq took another deep breath and kept his sights trained on the Chinese soldier. There was no doubt the man was dead.

  "Nice shot, Shaq." Pete nudged Rich's shoulder.

  "Whatever."

  "I only meant—"

  "Let it go."

  A moment of silence.

  "What now, Shaq?" Jose kept his voice low.

  "We follow Boss's orders."

  "About Boss, Shaq—"

  "Don't go there, Doc. If you're going to tell me he's acting a tad weird, I already know. If you're going to tell me that it's your job to judge his fitness, I already know. So just can it."

  "Got it."

  Shaq let his gaze drift back to the battlefield. Soon the Russians would make their move and find one more dead Chinese soldier. The M110 and the AK-47 fired a similar size round. They would assume they got lucky.

  "We're outta here."

  Rich was up and moving down the hill headed for the FedEx truck, his mind trying to sort out events and his friend.

  MOYER SLOWED AND PREPPED his M4 for action. He motioned for J. J. and Crispin to spread out. He moved from tree to tree, eyes scanning from side to side, ears straining for the sound of boots on the ground or an unexpected engine. His senses sharpened but he felt slow, as if weights were tied to him. It wasn't a physical weariness, although he was short stocked on sleep and food. This weariness came from the expenditure of emotional energy; something he was unfamiliar with.

  More popping, the sound of gunfire but distant. If the Russians were there, then they weren't here. Moyer harbored concerns a man or several men were left behind to guard the vehicles, being this deep in a wide expanse of nothing didn't require such caution, but Moyer wasn't going to risk the lives of his men or the success of the mission by being careless now.

  He took a knee and again scanned, listened, and this time he sniffed. Soldiers were notorious smokers and he had worked with enough foreign forces to know the habit was universal. He sniffed again but only the smells of a damp forest reached his nostrils.

  Moyer motioned for his men to huddle up. He laid out his plan. "You got five minutes. Got it. Five and only five. Don't make me come out and get you. Clear?"

  The reply came in unison. "Clear."

  Then a one-word command. "Go."

  THE PRESIDENT ATE DINNER in the Situation Room. He canceled several appointments to track the activities on the ground. One more day of that and the press would notice.

  He kept dinner simple: a couple of ham sandwiches and a glass of iced tea. When had Moyer and his team last eaten?

  He carried the plate with one sandwich still untouched and the glass of tea half-consumed. Huffington blamed Ambassador Hui for his loss of appetite. That and what he just witnessed in the real-time display. The Chinese unit was down and not by Moyer's team.

  It wasn't the loss of life that concerned him. Huffington was still ready to send a cruise missile over the sovereign territory of a government with a nuclear arsenal, a country with strained relationships with everyone and near chaos within its borders. There were times when Huffington wondered who really stood at the wheel of that country.

  Hui did not do what he was asked to do. All right, ordered to do. Perhaps Huffington could have handled things better, but he was trying to work the psychology of the situation. Hui had to believe his country's Spec Ops team was about to become part of the distant landscape. Apparently that didn't matter, at least not to Hui. He made the call but did little to convince his superiors the president wasn't kidding. They called his bluff, and if Colonel Mac hadn't called with a reason why Moyer wasn't pursuing the prize, Huffington would have given the order.

  Now he had to wait. Now he had to trust. Despite his bluster, he was still thankful it was Moyer's team on the ground.

  CHAPTER 35

  "SO CLOSE, YET SO far." Brianne pulled from the parking lot. "How do we find her?"

  For the first time, Zinsser was seeing a crack in Brianne's ironclad armor.

  "We should assume she's fairly close. We're forty or fifty miles from the Moyer's neighborhood. The abductors stayed close because they had to get the holding cell built, snag Gina, and make the video."

  "You don't know that."

  "You're right, I don't, but I think I'm on target. They could have traveled across state lines, but why bother? Surely they know doing that would bring in the FBI."

  "If they're smart, then they'd know the FBI investigates crimes against children, which includes abductions. State lines have nothing to do with it. They'd also know the moment they attempted to interfere with a military mission, we could investigate under our counterterrorism arm. In theory, we are limited in the crimes we investigate, but just between you, me, and the fence post, we investigate whatever we want."

  "Okay, maybe they stayed within a hundred miles for other reasons. I still think timing has something to do with it."

  Brianne leaned her head back against the headrest. She looked weary. "What I can't figure out is how they know about Moyer's mission. They have inside info."

  "There's definitely a mole somewhere. Leaking sensitive information isn't new. Private First Class Bradley Manning sent classified documents to WikiLeaks in 2010 by the boatload. Retired Chief Warrant Officer John Walker Jr., did spy work for the Soviet Union from the late 1960s to 1985. The list goes on. The government and the military are huge organizations. The U.S. military is the second largest armed forces in the world, second only to China. With 1.5 million active-duty military, there's bound to be a few bad apples and twisted minds. There are nearly 2 million civilians working for the government. That brings the number to well over 3 million people."

  "But only a handful has access to secret material."

  "I'll give you that, but I bet the number is larger than you might guess. The whole Private Manning and WikiLeaks thing was stunning because Manning was close to the bottom of military rank yet easily stole information." Zinsser stopped at a red light and looked at Brianne. "Play the numbers. Let's say there is one person in ten thousand willing to betray his or her country. Between military and government employees that leaves something like three hundred people."

  "Ever the optimist, aren't you? By the way, the light is green."

  Zinsser frowned. "You wanna drive?"

  "Yep."

  "Too bad." He pulled through the intersection. "You get my point. I have no idea how many people can or would spy on their own government or sell information, but history shows there are plenty who will."

  "That part of the story is someone else's problem for now. Gina is our pressing concern." A second later she asked, "What would you do? If you were the black hats, I mean."

  "I've been thinking about that. If we were dealing with your typical gravel-for-brains crook, things would be easier, but everything we've seen tells us these guys are several rungs up the intelligence ladder. If I was running the operation, I'd ditch the Tacoma as soon as I unloaded it." He paused. "I'd also choose a spot where I could carry a fourteen-year-old girl into a building without being se
en. That's not something you can do in an apartment building or a hotel."

  "Agreed. What about security cameras? Would you worry about those?"

  "Absolutely. We saw how cautious they were in the home-improvement store. They did their best to keep their faces turned away."

  "Which is impossible to do in a store with fifty cameras."

  "Right. They have no reason to believe we'd be tracking down that kind of lead." Zinsser pulled to the side of the road. His brain had just hit the afterburners. "Okay, we know it's an older building because of the old-style, wood-frame, double-hung window. We know they built the holding room to conceal the rest of the building's interior. They even covered the glass in the window."

  Brianne was nodding. "And we assume they would do this in a building where no one would notice someone carting building material around and banging nails."

  "And the place has to be away from prying eyes and security cameras."

  "An abandoned building."

  "An old abandoned building, away from security cameras or traffic lights."

  Brianne snatched her cell the way a gunslinger snatches his six-shooter from its holster. She punched a single button. "Operator, this is Special Agent Brianne Lazzaro." She followed that with her badge number. "I need the number for the central police station for Fairfield, South Carolina." She paused. "Yes, I know I could call information, but I called you. What part of 'FBI' and 'emergency' don't you understand?" Another second. "Thanks." She dialed another number and waited. Zinsser admired her straightforward approach to everything. She put it on speaker.

  "Fairfield Police. Sergeant Presley speaking." He sounded bored.

  Again, Brianne identified herself by name and badge number. "I'm in your city with Special Agent Jerry Zinsser of Army CID. We believe a young girl has been abducted and may be in your city."

  "How can I help?"

  "I'm going to tell you what we're looking for. I don't have time to answer questions, just give me your best answer."