by Hawk, Nate
“We’re making decent time. Let’s live it up,” she said.
She looked around and took in the primitive options that were available near the interstate.
“I’m sure they’ve got a historic district from the early days. Wanna take a quick detour?”
Kelly thought about it.
“Yeah. It could be our last stop in civilization for a couple of days, depending how this unfolds,” Kelly said.
Brooke took a note pad and pen from the glove box and began filling in digits. It was a process that she clearly did each time she filled up.
“You calculating gallons per mile on this beast?” Kelly asked with a laugh. “Not that mine is much better,” he added.
“Yeah, you’d be surprised on these newer trucks. The mileage is way better than the old ones.”
Kelly was thinking about their foray into the Ozark Mountains, a few years before.
“You remember that piece that we were driving around then?” he asked.
“Hey,” she joked. “That Bronco has been in my family for years!”
“Still there?” he inquired.
“Not after what my brother did to it. They junked it right after we went back to Boston.”
The rattle coming from the gas pump stopped abruptly, for the second time. Kelly hung the gas pump up and then went inside to pay cash. They didn’t want a paper trail.
They drove on towards historic Fredericksburg. Each hundred yards, the billboards gave promise of some additional family activity. One sign suggested, “Walk in the Footsteps of Civil War Generals”. The next said, “Visit the home place of George Washington and his Family”. Kelly was beginning to wonder what he was getting into when they entered the downtown area. Geeze, he thought to himself.
It turned out that Fredericksburg had a modern, restored, forty-block historic district. The Rappahannock River meandered around the north and east boundaries of the old town district, directing the town’s original development to the south and west. The streets displayed a grid pattern but it was not based on traditional north and south markers. Instead, the streets were about forty-five degrees off. Kelly was heading northeast where he easily found a parking spot on William Street. He signaled and pulled over to the curb. The street was a one way and it wasn’t overly busy but it was carrying traffic. The area had an old town look with a twist of professional vibrancy running throughout the shops. No longer was there a livery or a blacksmith. The same buildings had been repurposed into business fulfilling more modern niches. There were cafés and coffee shops and high-end boutiques. It was just another average weekday to local standards. Conversations and traffic noises carried the length of the street. Brooke eyeballed a marquee that gave details on Fredericksburg’s ranking within the National Register of Historic Places.
“The architecture here is gorgeous,” she said. “It says here that there are 350 buildings. Some dating back three hundred years.”
“Hey, options are good,” he said. “I’m sure one of these here is a café. What’s that right there?”
They began walking towards the building with three or four sun umbrellas displayed out front. There was a metal sign mounted on the building that read, Bistro Bethem. It had wrought iron tables and chairs with teak slats for the seats. The furniture had a freshly stained finish on it for the upcoming summer season. The weather was nice that day but they decided to opt for more privacy and less road noise inside. As they walked in, Kelly noticed a newspaper lying on the counter. “Record Breaking Precipitation and Wide Spread Flooding in Europe,” it proclaimed. Kelly thought about Niko’s presence within Europe and wondered what he was doing at that exact moment.
Despite the temperature pattern in Europe, it was hard for either of them to picture epic rainfall that day. They couldn’t have asked for nicer weather. They were seated and the waitress listed their lunch specials. They ordered fairly standard lunch items and snacked on fried oysters. They enjoyed their food and the atmosphere of the old building. Their minds were miles away, though, as they knew they would be crawling through the underbrush soon enough.
Knowing it was time to get moving, Brooke settled up with the waitress. Before leaving the town, Kelly drove around so they could acquire a representative sampling of the city. Both of them felt part of themselves wishing they could spend the week there.
That wasn’t to be, though. Kelly temporarily turned off his Garmin. He pulled a book of detailed maps out from his gear on the back seat. Previously, he had marked a couple of remote State Forest areas in Virginia where they could finish sighting in the rifles and double-checking them for function. Making sure that he had memorized the route, he bent the book backwards on its spine and placed it between them.
They drove away from Fredericksburg, back on interstate 95, going south. Their heart rates were beginning to involuntarily increase as they felt the action growing nearer. They changed interstates and then drove on a state highway. The city buzz quickly gave way to the industrial atmosphere of recycling plants, automotive ‘pick a part’ yards and logistics facilities filled with parked semis and presumably empty trailers. As they drove further down the state highway there was no more industrial economy. In fact, there didn’t seem to be much of an economy at all. They had entered Appalachia.
They drove on making a few more turns. Kelly was confident he was going the right way. They came to a painted wooden sign, welcoming them to State Forest property. The trailer homes and settling shacks that were displayed along the road, became more dispersed as they drove deeper into the forest. Many of the houses had an unimaginable amount of filth and debris scattered around them. Kelly didn’t understand how anybody could live like that.
Brooke did. But she hated being surrounded by poverty and the all too common lazy life that she had found often went with it. She had chosen to leave it all behind in exchange for the vibrancy of the city. The only thing she hadn’t left behind was a slight accent that was half cute and half you-ain’t-from-aroun’-these-parts-are-ya.
“Just like home,” she said with some embarrassment in her voice.
“Don’t go getting all nostalgic on me,” Kelly joked. “We’ll pull off up here.”
“I’m ready,” Brooke said assuredly.
“Me too. Let’s move quickly.”
They did. They moved fast and with purpose. Kelly pulled off to the side of the road as if he was going to make a turn on a road that wasn’t there. Then he clambered down from the cab and dropped the tailgate. There was a large shipping crate in the bed that he repositioned to one side. Brooke was still curious why he had insisted on bringing the heavy box but she let the thought pass. One more time, he looked one way down the road and then the other. There was nothing nearby to make him nervous about shooting there. Further out, there was a rise, maybe two hundred yards out that he knew would act as a great backstop. He knew his pace count for a hundred yards so he walked off the distance. He stapled two torso and head targets on nearby trees and hustled back. In the meantime, Brooke had both long guns out of the guitar case. She knew Kelly would want to shoot from a prone position in the truck bed so she laid everything out accordingly. Brooke shot first. She looked through the scope and saw a guy with a revolver holding it to a young girl’s head. Kelly liked realistic targets but they weren’t the best for sighting in. He had taped three big orange shooting stickers on each target.
“Shoot a three round group at the bottom target first.”
“Like deja vu all over again,” she quipped.
For once, Kelly didn’t laugh. Usually, it was hard for him to be serious. Right then, he knew it was the rare occasion that he must be so. Their lives depended on it.
“You know how to do it. Use the top of the chevron for your aiming point.”
“Got it.”
She did as he instructed. There was no need to give her a lot of details on how to shoot since she’d been doing it all of her life. Besides, they’d been through all of this before. She hadn’t lost her edg
e. She fired once and the sound of the shot echoed loudly off of the surrounding hills. She retrained her eyes on the target again and repeated two more times. The noise continued its boomerang effect all around them. Kelly pulled up his Swarovski binoculars and focused in on the target. He was impressed. The group was tight but right and high. He bent down with a sight tool and counted off the appropriate number of clicks to bring her in line.
“You should be zeroed,” he assured. “Fire another group at the top circle.”
She was quicker this round. She took enough time to shoot her best but she didn’t dawdle in between. She knew the prone position well and she used the bipod for extra muzzle support. Her second group was tight and one of the holes in her target was in the edge of the one-inch bull’s-eye.
“That’s good. You’re right on.”
He knew better than to adjust any more once a shooter was that close at that distance. He motioned for her to put the rifle back into the case so she did so. Both were well aware they needed to hurry. How would they explain their actions to law enforcement if some Barney Fife character moseyed on over and saw what they were up to? For starters, Kelly was sure shooting across a road was illegal in all fifty states, no matter who you were.
Even if you’d made the cover of Newsweek.
But especially if you happened to be an out-of-towner.
That’s just where the questions would begin. They would probably continue until they were locked up in some backwater jail, experiencing some local justice. Neither one of them wanted that so they kept the pace up.
He repeated the process that Brooke had begun a few minutes before. Initially, his rifle was about as accurate as Brooke’s had been. He checked the targets with his glasses and repeated. By the third group he had sent two of the 77-grain match bullets right through the bull’s-eye. That would do.
He said, “Let’s pack up quickly. The compound is about 10 miles away. We’ll position the truck at the rally-point and move in.”
They didn’t want to be there any longer than they had to be. Both knew that the hills around them had eyes and ears. They had to keep moving to pull this off. He removed his phone from his cargo pants and checked it for a signal. It wasn’t great but he had coverage. He dialed Steven.
“Kelly,” he said. “Is it time?”
“Yeah, I know your Cessna is fueled up. Get down to FBI headquarters in Quantico. I think the trip will be very worthwhile for you. I’ve come across something additional to what we have discussed. In fact, I will have something to give you.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” the ASAC asked hesitantly.
“Your career back,” Kelly said bluntly.
“Maybe we should talk about this one last time, Kelly,” Steven stated apprehensively.
Steven’s mind was spinning like a blender. In fact, his head ached like it was in a blender. What exactly was Kelly talking about? How could he help Steven’s career? Was there some unrealized flaw in Kelly’s plan that would cause everyone involved an inordinate amount of trouble? Steven would have liked a few more details. In fact, he almost expected them. He waited tensely for Kelly to provide just a bit more info and assurance.
Kelly terminated the call. Then, he powered down his device, backed the truck out on the road and drove on to the awaiting stronghold.
***
Chapter 44
Steven’s arm moved away from his ear and he stared at his beeping phone. He found himself contemplating a piece of advice that had proven true more than once. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Steven didn’t like the sound of whatever it was that his friend was up to. In fact, he didn’t like it at all.
What exactly has Kelly decided to do? he wondered. Obviously, he was headed to the Red House compound that they had spoken about. Steven found a small amount of comfort in the fact that he knew Kelly well. Kelly had made his way home in one piece from the world’s armpit: Iraq. That in itself was an accomplishment. Lots of good Marines couldn’t say that. In fact, lots of military men and women couldn’t say anything at all.
Steven knew Kelly to be the type to excel in the face of adversity. Steven found himself wondering if Kelly’s good luck, or combat strategies, or whatever the extra element that this man had, would ever run out. If the whole situation came unwound it could put Kelly and him on opposing sides of the law. What exactly did Kelly have planned? Steven knew if Kelly was going to call in the FBI in hopes of helping Steven’s career, there was another man that should be involved. Steven looked through his contact list and stopped at ‘H’. He knew Hands Wheeler could put one of his local teams on standby for contingencies.
“Hands… ASAC Steven Lynch here from the Boston Field Office. You wanna help me run down a lead?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s been a slow week.”
“It may be a late night if it pans out.”
“You’ve got my attention,” Hands said neutrally.
“Keep one of those Bell’s gassed up and tell your pilot to be ready at a moment’s notice. We may need to head out towards Red House.”
“Red House?” he asked. “I’ve been looking for a reason to go back to Red House!”
***
There was a good reason that Kelly hadn’t spent his time grocery shopping or conducting other domestic chores the preceding week. He had spent much of his time conducting exhaustive research as he thumbed through all of the files that Steven had given him. Kelly had carefully studied specific people and locations throughout Jamaat Al Fuqra. He’d made a real effort to figure out their leadership structure to determine his next step in finding Niko. Ultimately, Kelly zeroed in on the man believed to be running the compound that Steven had mentioned. He had traced the man calling himself Abbas Zaki back through all of the information law enforcement had on him, which wasn’t much. The FBI didn’t even seem to know who he really was. All of the information on the man began about ten years prior.
Before that there was no known address or credit card records. There were no income taxes that had been paid under the name. There was no high school diploma. Going back further, there were no shot records, no birth certificate and no family could be located. Modern, federal law enforcement files were generally full of this type of information. Something would have hit if the man had been around in the United States for that long. So then he’d looked internationally. He’d contacted Immigration and there was no current Visa issued for a man by the name of Abbas Zaki. He also didn’t seem to fit anybody that Immigration had inadvertently lost track of. There were a couple of photos of Abbas in the FBI’s dossier but one stuck out from the rest. The photo that caught Kelly’s eye was one of Abbas running a camp in America. It was the usual Rambo photograph that these types liked to have taken of themselves. He was equipped with a military rifle, no shirt and was flexing his biceps. It wasn’t any of that that had caught Kelly’s attention though. It was his ear. The man seemed to be missing a small part from the edge of his left ear.
Then Kelly had scoured wanted posters looking for anyone who fit Abbas’ profile. He eventually came across a man who was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. The other man’s dossier ended about the same time that Abbas Zaki’s had begun. The grainy picture on the Wanted poster also showed a damaged ear. It was grainy but possible to make out. Kelly was sure. Was the timing and the man’s head wound purely a coincidence? Kelly knew he had a good opportunity to find out.
The compound itself had one road in and the same road out. Like every other one of these training camps located in the US, it had an armed guard inside of a guardhouse with a gate blocking the road. This particular gate had been put back up after the FBI’s Bearcat had knocked it down months before. To make matters worse for law enforcement, the militants knew that no agency could come in and get them all. The ACLU would see that was a career ender for anyone that led a raid like that. So the crowd size and the mob mentality had continued to silently fester.
The sun was setting and the last eroding rays of the day ca
st eerie, long shadows. Kelly pulled the truck off of the road into a turnout. He reversed the vehicle so if someone wanted to check the plates, they’d have to go to the trouble of exiting their vehicle and walking behind his. Both of them quickly changed into camouflage clothing more suited for crawling around in the woods. The atmosphere in the truck was completely flat. They both knew this wasn’t a time for jokes or giggles. They looked around through the tinted glass while they were changing, careful to make sure nobody was watching. If someone did see them, they intended to look like nature lovers heading into the forest. The long guns were quickly broken down and placed into their packs alongside their load bearing vests. Adrenaline raced throughout the truck; it was go time.
The truck looked right at home in the State Forrest. It was a much better choice than Kelly’s sports car would have been. They slung their packs over their shoulders and walked towards the woods. Once inside the foliage, they walked parallel with the state road that they had come in on. When they were beyond the view of any prying eyes, they removed the rifles from the packs and quickly assembled them.
The walk was hilly and they made more noise walking through the leaves than they wanted to. Still, they knew it was the best approach. Kelly’s foot began a strange sensation. He had an incessant itch. He just ignored it and walked on. There were a couple of run down shacks and some other piles of useless junk and assorted trash. In those places, they made a significant adjustment to their course. A new path was plotted along a distant circumference of the obstacles. They heard some dogs barking far off but nothing close. They hadn’t seen any people. They could only hope that they hadn’t been seen themselves.
Kelly and Brooke wouldn’t be going in through the main gate. After studying the FBI’s topographical maps, Kelly had located a better place to gain access. There was a steep-walled ravine that opened out into a prairie. The ravine was like a large vein headed straight to the heart of the compound: the community center. As an added benefit, none of the nearby properties had a good vantage point to monitor the open field that they would use for access.
