The Buried

by Brett Battles

  His partner had an arm around his ribs and blood on his face.

  “You okay?” Quinn asked, not worried about what he could see, but what he couldn’t.

  “I’ll be fine,” Nate grunted. “Where’s Dani?”

  “She’s okay. I sent her down the road.”

  They heard a thup, back closer to the helicopter.

  The woman, Quinn thought. Though he would have loved to deal with her, with the smoke and the condition Nate was in, they needed to get away.

  “Come on,” he said, and headed after Dani.

  __________

  BIANCA TOUCHED HER thigh again. The bullet had passed a half inch under her skin, hitting only meat before exiting the other side. It had been a while since she’d been shot, and it didn’t make her happy.

  The girl and her friends could wait. With their car wrecked, they weren’t going to get very far.

  Morse’s men, however…well, she’d already taken out all four men behind the car. Now she wanted nothing more than to deal with the rest.

  The first was easy. It was logical that one man would be tasked with staying at the helicopter.

  Slinking through the smoke and ignoring the pain from her wound, she moved along the edge of the road until she reached the aircraft’s tail section. There wasn’t as much smoke here, but enough to limit visibility. She ducked under the tail and headed forward until she reached the main body. Peeking around the edge, she saw the shadow of the man standing right next to the floodlight.

  She raised her gun, aimed for his exposed ear, and thup—one down.

  She almost blew it with number two. As the first one dropped to the ground, she started to step out from under the helicopter. That’s when a different shadow rushed at her.

  He’d been standing next to his friend. Apparently two had been left behind.

  She took him down when he was ten feet away, silencing him just as he started to yell for help. She expected to hear the third man running over to help, but the only steps were faint in the distance—the girl and her friends thinking they could get away.

  She waited several more seconds to be sure, and then crawled the rest of the way out from under the aircraft.

  The smoke was finally starting to lift. She could see the Lexus now, and the body lying beside it. She hadn’t been responsible for that one. Whoever it was had lost the fight she’d heard.

  She sneaked over and saw he was one of Morse’s. She checked his pulse. He wasn’t dead, but from the slack look on his face he wouldn’t be waking very soon. She was deciding whether or not to waste a bullet on him when she heard a grunt coming from the other side of the car, near the hill.

  Peeking over the hood, she spotted another person lying on the ground. She approached cautiously, her gun pointed at him. He held a rifle loosely at his side. When he noticed her, he tried to sit up and lift the gun but was unable to do either.

  Blood covered his shirt from a bullet wound in his gut. More soaked his pants around his right knee.

  This was the guy who’d shot her, she realized. Two of her blind shots had caught him. Nice.

  She raised her gun to finish the job.

  “No! Don’t!” he begged.

  Thup.

  __________

  “WHAT THE HELL?” Orbits said as he neared the bend in the road.

  A bright light was shining on the other side, smoke rising through its halo. As he rolled to a stop, he spotted the outline of someone running toward him.

  “What the hell?” he repeated.

  The runner turned out to be a woman, and not just any woman.

  He toggled the window down as she neared. “Hey, something wrong?”

  She slowed, looked back toward the light, and then at Orbits. “There’s a-a robbery going on over there. Some men with guns. I barely got away.

  “Guns?” He pushed the button unlocking the car. “Get in!”

  One of his competitors had no doubt just blown it, and Orbits was in the right place to reap the benefits.

  She hesitated.

  “Come on,” he said. “Hurry. I’m not going to hang around here and get shot.”

  She looked back toward the corner again. The smoke was still the only thing there.

  “O-okay. Only for a little ways.”

  “Sure, sure. Just get in.”

  As soon as she was seated beside him, he executed a U-turn and headed east.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “I’m Ricky,” he said, extending his hand.

  She looked at it for a moment and then shook it. “Dani.”

  CHAPTER 26

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  NO MATTER HOW late Morse stayed up the night before, he was out of bed by 5:15 every morning. This one was no exception.

  He kissed his wife on the forehead and limped his long-ago damaged body into the bathroom. After closing the door, he turned on the wall-mounted TV, the channel preset to Prime Cable News. The volume was muted, not because he was afraid of waking his wife, but because he was interested in the images the network broadcasted, not the nonsense the on-air talent spewed.

  Television news these days was not news. It was bouts of stupidity wrapped in ridiculous suppositions and opinions disguised as facts. Not that he minded. On more than a few occasions, he’d been able to make use of the medium for his—and his country’s—benefit.

  He had just lathered his face for a shave when the only surviving landline in the house trilled. It was his work line and had extensions in every room.

  He wiped the foam from one side of his face and grabbed the receiver. “Yes?”

  “Good morning, Director.” Morse recognized the voice as that of Falcao, his assistant director of operations.

  “Morning,” Morse growled.

  “There’s been a complication.”

  “With?”

  “Red team, sir.”

  “What kind of complication?”

  “It’s developing so we don’t have all the details. Communications was lost with them approximately thirty minutes ago, and we just obtained satellite images from their last known position. Their helicopter’s in the middle of a highway, and there are eight bodies on the road.”

  Morse had fully expected to wake this morning to news that the girl had been captured, not his team wiped out. “A crash?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Do you have on-site confirmation of casualties?”

  “Not yet, sir. A containment team is en route. There is, however, already local law enforcement on the way to the scene now.”

  “No way to divert them?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Any sign of the girl?”

  “None.”

  “I’ll be there in forty-five minutes.”

  After Morse hung up, he wiped the rest of the foam from his face and picked up the phone again.

  “Clark residence,” the English butler answered.

  “This is Morse. I need to speak with Mr. Clark.”

  “I’m afraid Mr. Clark is still asleep.”

  “And I’m afraid you’re going to have to wake him up.”

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  ASSISTANT TRADE ATTACHÉ Komarov had just risen from his desk to leave for lunch when his phone rang.

  Annoyed, he hit the speaker button while pulling on his suit coat. “Komarov.”

  “Herr Komarov, it is Karl Schwartz.”

  He stopped, his arm half in the sleeve. “Herr Schwartz? What can I do for you?”

  Why would Schwartz be calling again? Komarov’s part in the operation was done. He’d already gone back to being what he really was—an agricultural trade expert.

  “I have a request, if I may.”

  “Of course.”

  “It is concerning the hotel project. There is a problem with the original blueprint. I need to know if we should make an adjustment, but I have not been able to reach our partners in Moscow and was wondering if maybe you could do that for me.”r />
  Komarov closed his eyes. It was exactly as he’d feared. He was being pulled back into the middle.

  Trying to keep dread out of his voice, he said, “I would be happy to help.”

  CHAPTER 27

  ROUTE 124, WASHINGTON

  QUINN HADN’T EXPECTED to see Dani when he came around the turn. He’d told her to hide and assumed she’d done exactly that. But he also hadn’t expected to see the taillights of a car driving away. It was likely someone scared off by the lights and the smoke and the gunfire.

  He cupped his hands around his mouth and said as loudly as he dared, “Dani?”

  No response.

  He tried again, knowing she couldn’t have gone very far. “Dani? It’s us.”

  Still nothing.

  “She’s probably too scared to come out,” Nate said.

  Quinn wasn’t so sure about that. Though she’d been afraid as they made their escape, she hadn’t come close to freezing up.

  “Dani!” he tried again.

  She didn’t answer.

  He looked behind them, knowing the woman with the gun would be coming soon. Dani would have to wait.

  “Can you make it up the hill?” he asked Nate.

  “I think so.”

  “Come on, then.”

  Up they went, Nate wincing with every step but keeping up with Quinn.

  “This should be high enough,” Quinn said.

  They lowered to the ground. Nate propped himself up a few inches so that his ribs didn’t touch anything.

  When the female shooter came around the bend, she stopped, looked down the road, and started walking again, scanning side to side. She was still at it three minutes later when, in the distance, Quinn caught sight of a pair of headlights slowly heading their way. Since the woman didn’t have the benefit of his higher vantage point, it was another thirty seconds before she saw them, too.

  She turned and walked back toward the curve, but stopped about a hundred feet from it at the base of the hill. Quinn couldn’t see what she was doing, but it became clear a moment later when he heard an engine kick on.

  Her motorcycle must have been the one-eyed car they’d seen outside Waitsburg, he realized. More troubling was the fact she hadn’t found Dani, either.

  “Stay here,” he told Nate.

  He hurried down the hill and back to the Lexus. The trunk refused to open until he used one of the rifles to pry the lid loose. He grabbed their bags and carried them up the hill.

  He was still several feet from Nate when the car he’d seen swung around the curve and skidded to a stop. He dropped down when he heard the door open, and watched the man who climbed out look around in surprise. A moment later, the guy jumped back in his car and reversed away.

  Quinn double-timed it the rest of the way up and set the bags down next to Nate. The car’s taillights were receding, but the driver, no matter how spooked he was, would soon be calling the authorities, if he hadn’t already done so. As much as Quinn and Nate needed to get out of there, there was still the question of Dani’s whereabouts.

  Quinn opened the tracking app on his phone and input the tracking ID number of the chip he’d hidden in Dani’s shoe. A map filled the screen, and then the dot representing Dani appeared. She was still on Route 124 but was over halfway back to Waitsburg, moving steadily away from them.

  “How did she get all the way over there?” Nate asked.

  Quinn glanced down the road. The taillights he’d seen, not of the car that had just left, but of the one that had been there as he’d first run around the corner. She had gotten into it. That was the only explanation.

  “It doesn’t matter right now,” he said. “We need to put some distance between ourselves and this place fast.”

  __________

  TRAFFIC ON 124 had picked up considerably since the discovery of the helicopter in the road and the bodies scattered around it. At first, the responders had been limited to police and fire department vehicles. In the last ten minutes, though, a convoy of a dozen military vehicles had passed Quinn and Nate’s position.

  They were approximately four and a half miles east of the crime scene, hiding in a copse of trees in the large front yard of a farmhouse along the road. A few more miles and they would have made it to Prescott, but Nate had been hurting too much, and carrying all the gear wasn’t doing Quinn any good, either.

  Another set of headlights appeared in the east at 4:12 a.m. As they neared the farm, the lights blinked twice. Quinn and Nate stepped out of their hiding place and Mr. Vo’s RV slowed to a stop.

  The side door popped open and Daeng leaned out. “Are you the ones who requested a ride?”

  Quinn handed him the duffels, then let Nate board first before climbing in himself.

  “Good to see you,” Daeng said.

  As they shook, Quinn said, “You, too.”

  “So, where do you want to go?”

  “East.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Daeng moved back into the driver’s seat and pulled them onto the road.

  “You hurt, too?” Mrs. Vo asked Quinn. She and her husband had helped Nate into the chaise longue.

  She scanned his face, looking for injuries.

  “No, I’m all right.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “What you do to Nate?”

  “I didn’t do anything to him. He, um, fell down.”

  Mr. Vo, in the process of cleaning the dry blood off Nate’s face, said, “Then he fall on pile of rocks, I think.”

  “You need to eat?” The way Mrs. Vo asked Quinn the question, it sounded almost like an accusation.

  “Only if there’s something handy,” he said.

  “Everything handy. Is mobile home. I get you pork chop.” She looked him over. “Two, maybe.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Vo.”

  She grunted and moved over to the kitchen.

  Quinn made his way past her to the back where Orlando was sitting at the table. “Hey,” he said softly. He leaned down and kissed her.

  “Sorry I didn’t get up,” she said.

  “I didn’t expect you to.”

  She sniffed the air around him. “You need a shower.”

  “I missed you, too.” He put a hand on her belly. “How’s the little one?”

  “Active,” she said. “Where’s Dani?”

  He pulled out his phone and showed her.

  “How long has she been stopped?” she asked.

  “About twenty minutes.”

  In the three-plus hours since he’d last seen Dani, her tracking chip had traveled the hundred and fifty miles to Spokane and then stopped—not just paused, but stopped dead.

  “Maybe she’s asleep,” Orlando said.

  “That’s what I was thinking. What I don’t understand is why she got someone to drive her that far. From what I could tell, her tracking chip made only one quick stop the whole time.”

  “I’ll double-check the data.” Orlando opened the laptop version of the software. “Chip number?”

  He gave it to her and sat down across the table. “Where’s Garrett?”

  Orlando nodded toward the bed above the cab. “He knocked out a few hours ago. I don’t expect him to stir again until lunchtime.”

  He scanned the rest of the interior. He’d never been in the RV before. “This place is…cozy.”

  “I was thinking we could start taking it on jobs and using it as a mobile office.”

  “You were?”

  She looked at him over the top of her computer. “Don’t be stupid.”

  She concentrated on her screen again. A minute later, she said, “You’re right. Whoever picked her up took her all the way to Spokane, with just one stop of two minutes and seventeen seconds.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Neither do I.” She paused. “What now?”

  “Go to Spokane,” he said without hesitation.

  “So we’re playing the white knight again.”

  “Is that a problem?”

&n
bsp; She squeezed his fingers. “When has that ever been the case?”

  She started to lean forward to kiss him, but her belly kept her from getting very far, so she yanked on his arm and pulled him across to her.

  CHAPTER 28

  EASTERN WASHINGTON

  DANI HADN’T REALIZED something was wrong until they reached Waitsburg.

  “You can leave me here,” she said. “Anywhere’s fine.”

  “Here? Nah. You don’t want to get out here,” Ricky said.

  He then raced straight through town, ignoring all traffic signs.

  When she had tried to open the door and jump out, he grabbed her arm, pulled her back, and punched her in the jaw. That had knocked her out. How long, she wasn’t sure, but when she woke, they were rambling down a highway, the sky still dark.

  “I suggest you not try that again or I’ll really hit you next time,” Ricky said.

  Dani scooted as far away from him as she could, biding her time until an opportunity to escape presented itself.

  One never came.

  As they neared Spokane, he grabbed her again and pulled to the side of the road. This time, instead of punching her, he manhandled her into the back.

  He flashed her a look at the gun in a holster under his arm. “Don’t try anything.”

  He climbed out of the car and retrieved something from the trunk. After opening the passenger-side rear door, he slid in next to her and held out a bottle of water.

  “Drink it.”

  “I’m not thirsty,” she said.

  He pulled out his gun and pointed it at her ribs. “Drink it.”

  “You won’t kill me.”

  He chuckled. “You know, you’re right.” He switched his aim to her thigh. “But I have no problem hurting you a little bit. Now drink.”

  She reluctantly took the bottle from him. As she unscrewed the top, she realized the seal had already been broken.

  “Go on,” he said.

  She pretended to take a sip.

  “That was very pretty. Now take a nice, big gulp, or in a few seconds I’ll put a new hole in your jeans.”