by CJ Lyons
She was only a few feet away from the safety of solid ground when Whitney lunged forward and grabbed her arm, wrenching it from its safe hold. Vinnie tried to shove him away, but was hopelessly off balance.
“Vinnie!” Lucky shouted, racing toward the bridge. He was powerless to do anything as Whitney slipped from the bottom cable and fell, pulling Vinnie down as well.
CHAPTER 17
Lucky’s pulse caught in his throat as Vinnie fell through the gap between the support cables, her arms flailing. The safety line stopped her. She dangled, a marionette spinning helpless as the wind shrieked through the canyon.
Whitney clung to her back like a grotesque parasite, one arm clutching at her backpack strap, the other encircled around her throat, choking her as he tried to climb over her body to scramble up the safety rope.
Could the rope hold both their weight? Lucky raised his Glock, tried to aim at Whitney. Vinnie’s face turned red as she fought Whitney’s chokehold. The storm buffeted both of them and left Lucky virtually blind. He couldn’t get a clear shot.
Abandoning any semblance of cover, he plowed through the snow to the edge of the gyrating remnants of the bridge, hoping for a better angle.
Whitney shifted his weight, straightened to grab onto the safety line, and Lucky had his chance. He shot twice, aiming at Whitney’s exposed chest, and was rewarded when the man released his hold on Vinnie’s throat.
Whitney flailed, clawing at Vinnie, struggling to find purchase. Then he was gone, his body careening down into the abyss, quickly swallowed by the mist of swirling snow.
Lucky didn’t waste any time. He shoved his gun into his pocket, clawed out of his makeshift sling, and reached out for the remaining guide wire. Then he stepped out onto the bottom cable, dangling over the abyss once more.
As he shuffled his way to Vinnie, she used her weight to swing forward far enough to grab the bottom cable with one hand. Strain chiseled the muscles of her face as her weight was torn between gravity’s pull and her handhold. She hauled her body close enough for her other hand to close on the cable.
She couldn’t hold on for long. Blood seeped from between her fingers as the metal cable sliced into her flesh. Lucky clung to the higher cable, his bad arm wrapped around over top of it, ignoring the pain that wrenched through his shoulder. He leaned forward as far as he could without losing his balance and lowered his good hand to her.
“Grab it!” he called to her. She looked up at him, and he saw that she was very close to losing her grip. “Trust me, Vinnie. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
A grimace of pain crossed her face as she loosened one hand and reached out to him. For a gut wrenching moment, Lucky thought he wasn’t going to be able to stretch far enough. Then their fingers connected.
He grabbed her arm in a trapeze grip and, clenching his teeth against the pain screaming through his left shoulder, he pulled as hard as he could.
She dangled for a moment. Finally, with the grace of a ballerina, she set her feet on the bottom cable, and they both balanced against the support cable.
“Let’s get off this E-ride,” he told her, intertwining his arm in hers.
Together they inched their way across the few feet that separated them from solid ground. Vinnie’s hands shook as she released the carabineer from the cable. They collapsed onto the rock he’d taken cover behind, both gasping for air.
“Thought you said you came out here for the peace and quiet,” he said once he caught his breath.
Vinnie looked at him with a face as white as the snow that had settled in her hair. Fear widened her eyes and her lips were trembling.
He couldn’t resist, he bundled her into his good arm, pulling her tight against him, kissing her with a strength he didn’t feel.
“Hey now,” he crooned as he stroked her hair with his good arm. “Everything’s going to be all right.”
He didn’t want to make promises he couldn’t keep, but he was desperate to offer her some comfort. “I have a friend, Chase—big guy, former Marine—he does the same thing. Once the bullets stop, he gets the shakes, cries like a baby. Says it’s the adrenalin.”
She sniffed loudly and raised her head. “Thanks.” He followed her gaze back to the bridge swinging across the chasm. “Thanks for everything.”
“Without me, you wouldn’t be in this mess,” he reminded her.
That earned him a wry, half smile. She straightened and he released her, missing her warmth immediately. “Don’t you forget it, city boy.”
“Even a city boy like me knows better than to sit around in the snow.” Lucky raised her hands, inspecting the damage as he peeled off her shredded gloves. She winced as he rubbed snow over the wounds. “I’m not as good at this as you are.”
She flexed her hands. They were cut up from the cable, but everything seemed to be working all right.
Lucky tried to ignore the wetness seeping down the inside of his shirt. They didn’t have time to waste on redressing his wound. Vinnie bent over to retrieve the walking stick and his discarded shoulder holster.
“Where to?” she asked the question that had been plaguing Lucky ever since he saw The Preacher’s helicopter.
The only way off the mountain lay on this side of the gorge, so crossing that nightmare of a bridge had been inevitable. But it was also a certainty that The Preacher would have found her cabin by now.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said.
She groaned. “Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?”
“Is there someplace out of the weather where we can hole up for an hour or so? Regroup? ‘Cause I think I might be able to fashion a few surprises for The Preacher and his men.” He nodded to her pack which held the flares and white gas canister.
“Cavanaugh, please tell me you’re not planning to blow up my cabin.” He started to answer, but she shook her head. “No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. C’mon, follow me.”
Lucky trailed behind her as she broke a path through the freshly fallen snow. He couldn’t help but smile as she grumbled, “Man isn’t happy unless he’s blowing something up.”
What could he say? After all, he was a demo man.
CHAPTER 18
The STR conference room was as noisy as a family reunion when Rose entered. She stood inside the door for a short moment, watching her team, her people.
KC was doing a good job of keeping Chase grounded, she saw as the former FBI agent wiped some pizza sauce from her almost-husband’s chin.
Billy, Hollywood, and Theresa gathered around the smaller monitor watching something intently, each speaking, finishing each other’s sentences.
EZ and Marion munched pizza while typing on their computers, speculating on the Redskin’s chances in the Super Bowl and whether The Preacher had the game rigged as part of his master plan to take over the country.
Rose smiled. This was her family. They would get the job done, or die trying. She hated putting any of them at risk, wouldn’t ask them to do anything she wouldn’t do herself if she could, but stopping The Preacher was going to take everything they had.
“This isn’t about taking over the country,” she said in a quiet voice.
Silence as everyone turned to stare at her. She reached for a slice of pizza, the only kind left was Billy’s damned vegetarian style, and when she turned back, everyone was seated, watching her attentively as if they expected her to pull a rabbit from her hat.
“Billy, wipe the map clean, will you?” Her second responded with a flick of his finger that erased all the stars and indicators on the computerized global map that filled the wall.
“This isn’t about politics or money or even running the country,” she continued, easing her way past Hollywood and Marion until she stood in front of the map. “It’s about chaos and the power that comes from controlling it.”
Billy stood beside her, and she felt his gaze on her, knew he was waiting to punch a hole in her logic. She hoped he found something, hoped she wa
s wrong about all this. But she knew she wasn’t.
“Put up all the yellow flags,” she instructed him. Several dozen yellow stars began to blink at her. “Any that I point to, turn them black. Tell me about this one,” she pointed to a star in the Pacific.
“The Kristobel,” Theresa answered. “Departed from Jakarta, headed to LA. We asked Customs to pay extra attention because several of her cargo containers were routed from Turkey through Razgravia. They’re going to gamma-scan them all.”
“When does she dock?”
“Tomorrow morning. Really, Rose, it’s low priority, if it weren’t for the Razgravia connection we wouldn’t have even flagged it.”
Rose nodded, continued pacing in front of the projection. “And these?” She pointed to a cluster of stars in Idaho, Oregon and Montana.
“Those have been there for months,” Hollywood protested. “Militia enclaves that we haven’t been able to get anyone inside of. Bunch of rednecks spouting hot air.” He stopped when KC shot him a glare.
“A bunch of rednecks armed to the teeth, thanks to The Preacher,” Rose said. “The same here, here, and here,” she swept her hand over similar groups in Texas, Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York and South Carolina.
“Rose,” Billy put in as she continued to indicate over a dozen locations. “Those don’t belong to The Preacher. The one in Colorado is ELF, California is PETA, Buffalo and Miami are suspected Al-Qaeda—”
“Turn them all black, Billy,” she interrupted him. A vast majority of the yellow flags in the US flickered to blinking black against the bright green of the background. She felt Billy straighten beside her and knew he was beginning to see the light.
“Tell us about this one,” she pointed to the one he had added yesterday morning after an evening spent with Senator Susan Payne, hobnobbing with the elite of Capitol Hill.
“Just rumors,” he protested. “Someone said something about glitches in the IRS’s computer security. I wanted to see if it was the same problem we’ve had with the Justice and Treasury computers.”
“Was it?”
“No. They weren’t even sure it was a glitch, everything worked fine when they looked.”
“What do you think about that, EZ?” she asked their resident computer guru.
He shrugged. “System that big, hard to say. Could be nothing,” he paused, “could be someone running a test, seeing where the weak points were.”
“What if I told you that Dominion Power, the Stock Exchange and the FAA had similar glitches in the past two weeks?”
EZ pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “Big trouble.”
Rose nodded. She had everyone’s attention now. “Hollywood, tell us about your CDC doctor.”
The Navy Intelligence man climbed to his feet, cleared his throat. “I don’t see where she ties into all this.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“Dr. Celeste Rayburn, thirty-two, single, lives alone,” he began. “Former director of the CDC’s avian flu research project, working on developing a vaccine to protect our commercial poultry supply from a type of influenza that ducks and chickens get. She was the first one to cry wolf about avian flu spreading to humans. Went public without CDC approval and panicked everyone about a so-called pandemic that never happened.”
He rolled his eyes. “The CDC moved her off her project and revoked her security clearance. She also claims to be the victim of an unknown stalker, has filed several police reports but there are no other witnesses, no evidence and her accounts are inconsistent. And she has a history of mental instability, is under the care of a psychologist, being treated for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
“What stress?” Rose asked, her fingers drumming on the table until Billy lay a quieting hand over top of them. Hollywood’s assumptions about women in general and Dr. Rayburn in particular were beginning to irritate her. He was most likely quoting verbatim from the Atlanta Police Department’s reports and the FBI’s investigation, but she’d hoped he would look beyond the surface.
“Last year Rayburn’s house was trashed. She called the police, told them her boyfriend had disappeared as well as all her money. At first she filed a missing persons report. Several weeks later, she asked them to investigate it as an identity theft case. By this time, the insurance company was refusing to pay her homeowner’s claim, accused her of fraud. The police told her they would add charges of filing a false report because they had no evidence that her boyfriend even existed and had her own signature on the paperwork authorizing the money transfers. The DA decided he didn’t have enough to take to court and dropped it. When this new stalking stuff came up, APD passed it onto the FBI. They were worried maybe Rayburn was a security threat or maybe working some kind of scam.”
“Did they find any evidence one way or the other?”
“No.” He sat back down.
“What do you think?”
“I think she’s a sick lady crying out for help and attention.”
Rose pursed her lips, thought about pursuing the matter, but let it go. She wasn’t quite certain where Rayburn fit into the big picture. Not yet, anyway. “Who’s got the security briefing on the State of the Union?”
Theresa looked up. “Same protocol as last year. No-fly zone widened, being patrolled by F-sixteens, all hazardous material shipments have been re-routed, ATF and FBI sweeping the building for explosives and bio-chemical agents before it opens, and all LEA’s are on full alert.”
“Billy, add in the orange flag we had on that Chechen who slipped away from the CIA last month.” A man’s face appeared to the side of the map. “Mohammed Zaki, his wife was one of the terrorists killed in the Moscow theater attack. He was in prison at the time, since escaped and was last seen in Marseilles.” She resumed her pacing. “There was a red flag from the UK about six, seven weeks ago.”
“The pharmaceutical thefts,” Billy supplied. “UNSUB hijacked a truck with almost a ton of high grade cocaine, opiates and stimulants. DEA tracked it to the Netherlands.”
“And lost it afterward.” Rose traced her finger across Europe from Amsterdam to Marseilles. Then she kept moving it across the Atlantic to the East Coast.
“You think a Chechen rebel smuggled drugs here?” EZ asked. “Why? To finance an operation?”
Hollywood interrupted him. “Opiates? What kind of opiates?” he asked. Rose almost smiled. Maybe there was hope for the California boy after all. “NCIS is investigating a theft of a large supply of Narcan from a warehouse at Bethesda last week.”
That got everyone’s attention. Theresa, the only member of the team without formal law enforcement or military training looked up. “What’s Narcan?”
“The antidote to Fentanyl poisoning,” KC told her. “Fentanyl is the opiate the Russians used at the Moscow theater.”
Theresa blanched. “The gas that killed all the hostages?”
Billy rose to his feet and joined Rose, their strides matched for a few steps as he looked over the blossom of black that now smothered the map. He stopped, rocked back on his heels and gave her a small nod. “We’d best get moving. This is probably only the tip of the iceberg.”
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. The Preacher isn’t the crackpot everyone’s labeled him. He’s a puppet master, controlling the strings, hiding behind the curtain, waiting for the right time to put everything in motion.”
“When is that?” Chase asked.
Rose tore her eyes away from Billy’s, surprised by the warmth that flooded over her by his approval of her theory, and turned back to her team.
Chase was already half out of his seat, ready for action. KC furiously scribbled on a notepad, making a list, while Marion, EZ and Theresa were all tapping at their computers. Only Hollywood sat still, motionless, deep in thought.
Rose tapped DC on the map. “Tomorrow night during the State of the Union. That’s when they’re going to hit.”
“Already started running Zaki on a facial recognition program through ev
ery camera we have access to,” EZ said. Then he smiled. “And some we don’t.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Billy said. “For the next twenty-four hours we’re using everything we have to stop these bastards before innocent people get hurt. I mean everything.”
That included breaking a host of federal and state laws not to mention several provisions of the Constitution, namely the Fourth Amendment. He looked around, his gaze taking in everyone on the team. “Anyone have any problems with that, speak now.”
Rose watched as the team brushed off his suggestion that upholding the law came before protecting their fellow countrymen. Everyone began to talk at once, ideas and questions overlapping but nothing getting lost in the maelstrom.
“Anyone know if there’s a way to detect this Fentanyl?”
“Someone pull up the full plans for the Capitol Building.”
“There’s got to be a money trail.”
Billy put a hand on Rose’s back, ushered her outside as her people went to work. “How’d you do that?”
She shrugged, leaned against the wall across from him, watching the team through the glass in the door. Their faces were animated, excited, as if the challenge of saving the world, or at least their small part of it, far outweighed the very real possibility that they might fail.
Stifling a yawn, she looked up at Billy. “Magic.”
He shook his head, an insubordinate lock of hair leaving its perfect formation and falling into his eyes. Rose shoved her hands deep into the back pockets of her jeans to keep from reaching up and brushing it back. One of these days she was going to be too tired to resist and then—
“I couldn’t have done that,” Billy’s voice pulled her attention away from the lustful turn her thoughts were taking. “I don’t know anyone who could have taken a random set of events and see the meaning behind them. Nice work, boss.”
His words brought a flush to her face. Billy Price wasn’t one to lavish praise, and never lightly.
