Maggie sat beside her on the sofa and Jessica put an arm around her.
“What exactly did she say, do you remember?”
“She said they told her that she has a leaky valve, something that starts with a T.”
“It’s probably her tricuspid valve; the tricuspid valve regulates the opening between the right atrium and the right ventricle.”
“Is the operation serious?”
“Not usually, no, not these days, and it sounds like they caught the problem early.”
“That’s what Mom said, but I thought she was trying not to worry me.”
“I know it sounds scary, but really, once your mom has the operation she’ll be like her old self.”
Maggie sat up.
“Thanks, I feel better about it now, but I’d like to go see her, if it’s okay?”
“Of course honey, I’m sure that when your brother gets home he’ll be happy to take you.”
“When will he be back?”
“Oh, it should be pretty soon.”
***
The sound of the car jouncing along behind him became deafening and he reasoned that the expanse separating them must have been reduced dramatically. However, when he turned his head to look, he found that the car was still a good distance away. He saw why the sound had increased, there was a second car bouncing along behind the first one, and whoever was controlling it was more insane than the first driver, because they were going even faster.
A hundred yards ahead lay a stretch of leafless oak trees and he moved as fast as he dared across the rutted land. At fifty yards, a shot rang out, a great booming noise that he took to be a shotgun blast.
The sound caused him to slow, as he prudently abandoned running in a straight line and began weaving randomly, knowing that if even one pellet struck him, it would likely send him tumbling to the ground.
Another shot, but from a different gun and barely heard over the tumult of the cars, then, the sound of metal hitting metal as the two cars collided.
The second car rammed the first again as he watched over his shoulder, and as he returned to watching the placement of his feet, he heard the tremendous crashing begin, as the first car began tumbling sideways.
Ten yards from the trees, the ruts ended, and he took a moment to stop and look behind him, and as he did so, a front tire on the second car blew out. The driver nearly lost control, but he cut his speed just enough to keep the car steady, that is, until a second tire came flying off the rear axle, then, the car flipped once, twice, and landed on its roof.
The sudden silence was jarring, but short-lived, as screams came from the first vehicle. He shielded his eyes against the sun and saw a figure thrashing, trapped beneath a fender on the overturned car, as its weight slowly crushed the man to death. Lying nearby was another man, and he was surely dead, because after being thrown from the vehicle he landed in such a way that his shoulder blades were resting against the backs of his knees.
As the screaming from the first car subsided, the door on the other car flew open and he watched a man crawl free of it. The man was blond, bleeding from a cut on his chin, and in his right hand was a gun.
The man leaned against the side of the car, and while getting his bearings, he reached into a pocket and brought out what looked like a black box of some sort.
The man stared down at it as if he were watching something move upon it, and when his eyes rose, he looked directly at him.
Apparently, the box was a tracking device for the flash drive.
As the gun came up and the muzzle flashed, he dived into the trees, and just before he did, he spotted a third car rumbling across the winter earth.
***
After his meeting with Jessica’s husband, Jace was escorted back to his cell. He was on the second tier of a three-tier cellblock, and he and the other convicts were allowed to walk about the area when they weren’t working or on lockdown.
As he lay on his bunk, thinking, two men entered, both men had full-sleeve tattoos up each arm, along with shaved heads and piercings. Among the tattoos were many swastikas, and both men were heavily muscled.
Jace sat up and stared at them.
“Is it Halloween already?”
The older of the two, the one with a graying moustache chuckled.
“I should have known you’d be a smart ass, you’ve got the look,”
Jace stood, partly sideways with one foot facing forward and the other braced to kick.
“Speaking of ass, Homey don’t play that,”
“Relax, that’s not why we’re here. We just want to tell you how things run. Titus and me, we’re officers in the WBR, that’s our gang, our brotherhood, and we take care of each other.”
“Cool, now tell me, how many blacks and Latinos are members?”
“No niggers and no spics, just real people, white people,”
Jace looked back and forth at them.
“Are you dudes for real?”
The younger one pointed at him.
“Them that don’t join, die, those are your choices.”
“Fuck you! I ain’t no racist yo, and you two are a joke.”
The man removed a sharpened piece of metal from his belt.
“We do it the hard way then, and after I carve a swastika on your face we’ll see how you feel about joining.”
From somewhere outside the cell, a voice called out, “Fire on the line,” It was a warning, telling the men that a guard was approaching.
The younger tough slid the shiv back in its hiding place.
“This ain’t over, punk.”
“What’s going on here?”
The question came from a guard with a deep voice, a black man named Tate. His head was shaved and gleaming, and his muscular arms strained the sleeves of his gray uniform.
“We were just saying hi,” the older thug said, and he and the other man left the cell.
The guard spoke to Jace.
“I know what was happening here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and if you’re smart, you’ll join them.”
“What?”
“It’s the only way you’ll survive in here, kid. This isn’t the real world; in here, you don’t get to be egalitarian. White sticks with white, black with black, and Hispanic with Hispanic, it’s caveman time and if you want to survive you’ll pick up a club.”
Jace shook his head.
“I can’t live like that, hating people just because of their color? Hell man, that’s crazy.”
“If your appeal goes the wrong way, you’ll have to, but in the meantime, I’ll see what I can do about getting you moved into isolation.”
“Thanks Officer Tate,”
“Yeah, you hang in there,”
Jace leaned against the bars, as he watched Tate head off down the walkway.
He was someone who had rarely felt fear, but as he thought deeply about what losing his appeal would mean, what it could cost him, a cold shiver ran along his spine.
CHAPTER 4
He bolted between the trees as fast as he could, hoping to gather distance from his pursuers.
Stealth was impossible, as the ground beneath the trees was carpeted with dried leaves that crunched with every step. After ten minutes of hard running, he stopped behind a wide tree and looked back to see if he had lost the blond man.
To his astonishment, the man was only a short distance away and closing in fast. His pursuer was in excellent condition, and he had hoped to have the advantage there.
A moment later, he was off again, but when he spotted a stand of pine trees at the edge of a clearing to his left, he changed direction and ran to them, as a plan formed in his mind.
***
Reginald Carter watched the tall man dart to the left off in the distance and immediately knew what he was planning. It had to be a trap, because the only thing beyond the trees on that side was an open field.
The man would lie in wait behind a tree and hope to ambush him, a decent pla
n, except for the fact that Carter could predict the man’s every move by tracking the flash drive.
Behind him, the four men from the third vehicle worked their way towards him, stupidly shouting to each other as they ran along. He had to retrieve the drive quickly, before he found himself with enemies both forward and rear.
But was the man in the pines an enemy or an ally?
Carter knew the man had a weapon, but he had not as yet fired on him. He cursed under his breath. This mission had too many players and too many sides, and the only way to learn the truth was to retrieve the drive and root out the traitors.
Friend or foe, the man hiding among the trees would hand over the flash drive, or he would die.
The mission was too important to fail.
Once he neared the pine trees, he knew where he would find the man. Only three trees were wide enough to hide behind. The others were all too narrow, but the man must have seen that and formed another plan.
Carter grinned. Of course, it was the reason he ran towards the pines in the first place, because unlike their leafed counterparts, the pine trees could still offer shelter among their branches, even in winter.
The tracker told him that the man he sought was straight ahead, in the farthest of the wide trees. Carter slid the tracker back in his jacket pocket and crept towards the tree while keeping an eye on its branches.
But when he drew closer, he saw something that made him think he had given the man too much credit. It was the tip of a boot. The man was hiding behind the tree.
Carter moved stealthily across a carpet of fragrant, fallen pine needles until he was ten feet away, still checking the branches above, and finding them unoccupied. The boot was on the right of the tree, and so he approached from the left. He charged behind the tree, his finger on the trigger, his eyes begging for a target.
What he found however, was just a boot.
“Drop it or die!”
The voice came from behind, but the only thing back there were a pair of trees too narrow to offer shelter.
Carter spoke without turning. “Where were you hiding?”
Two shots rang out; their impact against the vest he wore caused him to stumble and he fell to his knees.
“Toss the gun away.”
This time Carter did as he was told and flicked the gun away to his right. A moment later, the man stood in front of him, then, reached down and gathered his boot; inside it was the flash drive, dangling from a silver chain, which then went around his neck.
“How did you know I was wearing a vest?”
“I didn’t.”
“What if we were on the same side?”
“You shot at me first. I simply returned the favor.”
“So, you’re one of them?”
“I’m not sure what that means. I got into this when I went to see if anyone survived the plane crash, and judging by that accent, you’re a long way from home.”
“Yes.”
“Give me the tracker... carefully,”
Carter reached in his pocket and handed over the tracker, and then winced as it was smashed against the tree and destroyed.
“There are two of those, and the men approaching have the other one.”
“Your men?”
“No, name’s Carter, I’m MI6, those men are renegade agents, and as you can hear, they’re approaching fast.”
The man stared at him as he decided his fate, and then quick as a flash he scooped up the discarded weapon and began moving again.
“We’ll cut across the clearing. If we hurry, we’ll make the other side before they reach us.”
Carter jumped up and followed alongside him, as they ran past the last tree he asked a question.
“Just where the hell were you hiding, mate?”
“Behind that tree, turned sideways on the balls of my feet with my arms held high,”
“And had I approached from any other angle than the one dictated by the sighting of the boot I would have spotted you, clever. I see Langley has trained you well.”
“I’m not CIA.”
“Then what are you?”
“I’m the man holding your gun.”
***
As they reached the other side of the wide clearing, a shot rang out from behind them and out of range. They turned to see five men running towards them.
Carter bit at his lower lip.
“I thought that there were only four of them. I heard four voices.”
He pointed at them.
“The fifth one stayed silent, he’s also keeping back a ways, using them as a shield. He’ll be difficult to kill.”
They plunged into the trees, but emerged a short time later to find a farmhouse, and nearby, a teenage boy was mucking out a stable.
The boy dropped his rake and came out to talk, but then froze when he spotted the gun.
He raised a hand and spoke to the boy.
“We’re not here to hurt you, but there are dangerous men coming, you need to run and hide.”
The boy pointed out towards a field.
“My dad’s out there on the digger pulling up tree stumps.”
He squinted and saw sunlight glint off yellow metal nearly a mile away.
“Is it just you and him?”
“Yeah.”
“Run to him and tell him to come back with the police, and hurry.”
The boy took one more look at the gun before sprinting towards his father.
Carter held out his hand.
“We might survive this, if I had my gun back.”
“Why don’t you use the one in that ankle holster?”
“You spotted it, when?”
“Back on the other side of the clearing,”
“Why didn’t you take it away?”
“I wanted to see if you would try and use it against me.”
“And if I had?”
“You’d be dead,”
“And now?”
He handed Carter back his gun, but held on to it as he raised an eyebrow and asked, “A Walther PPK?”
“It’s a fine weapon,”
“It is that, and what’s on your ankle?”
“A small Ruger,”
“I’ll let them track me to the stable while you snipe at them from the corner of the house, that should divide their numbers, and then it’s each man for himself.”
Carter smiled. “Isn’t it always?”
“Once they’re done, we’ll meet up and make a call to our people.”
“A solid plan, now let’s hope that they cooperate and die.”
Sounds came from the trees and so they split up and got into position.
The first four men came stumbling out into the open bunched together and looking as if they’d run a marathon, as they panted with their mouths open. The fifth man stayed back in the trees, watching, waiting.
He let them get within ten yards of the stable and then fired on them, as Carter sniped from the opposite side. One man went down screaming as another man took one in the arm.
As expected, the men split up, two dived behind an old pickup truck in front of the stable, while the man with the arm wound charged the house while firing back at Carter, he was joined by the fifth man, and so with one man down the odds were now two-to-one.
He moved into the stable and looked around. There were three horses inside, but a total of eight stalls. Through the open rear door, he spotted two mares in an area with a fence made from long, narrow logs. Along with the horses was a bale of hay and a wooden water trough. The horses seem restless, most likely caused by the sound of the shots, and they pranced about nervously. If they panicked, the simple wooden rails wouldn’t be enough to keep them in, and they’d likely trample anything in their path.
He moved inside one of the empty stalls and waited, knowing that the tracker the men carried would give away his location. As he heard them approaching, he hid himself as best as he could.
***
They came in slowly, eyes darting back and forth,
then, one man dropped down and searched beneath the small gap under the stall doors.
“I don’t see him. He must have run out the back.”
“Perhaps, but the tracker says the drive is in here somewhere, so maybe he’s still here too.”
The first whispered voice had a Midwest twang, the second, an English accent.
“He dropped the drive and ran for it, because he’s not in any of the stalls or I’d have seen his feet.”
“He could be hiding behind the horses or under the hay.”
“He can’t hide behind the horses, I’d still see his feet, and if he was under the hay there be a lump, he’s gone.”
“Let’s check the stalls, but by the numbers, hmm?”
“Have it your way, but I’m telling you, he’s gone.”
Five of the eight stalls were empty of horses, and so they started with those, as they checked, a mournful cry came from their wounded companion outside.
“Johnson sounds bad,” the American said.
“He’s done; he took two in the gut,”
They checked each stall by having one man ready to fire into it, as the other man ripped the door open. When they swung open the door on the fourth stall, they found him stretched out behind it, suspended between its walls, his feet pressed against the right side as a hand pushed against the wall on the left. In his free hand was a gun, and he fired two shots into the face of the Englishman.
The American was so flustered that he stumbled backwards and fell, but even as he did so, he fired off a shot. The shot went directly to where he had been suspended, but missed its target, because he had already dropped down onto the floor.
His next three shots hit the man in the foot and the calf of his right leg, but a fatal shot was difficult because the man was prone on the floor. That changed when the man sat up to fire at him, and he struck him in the chest, rupturing his heart.
The horses were frantic in their stalls, but even over the sound of that ruckus, he could hear gunshots coming from outside. After trading his gun for the Englishman’s Glock, he ventured out past the man lying in the dirt, the one they referred to as Johnson, who had died as predicted, and he headed for the house, and as he did so, the phone in his pocket vibrated.
***
Jessica put the phone down and smiled at Maggie.
“There’s no answer, but I’m sure he’ll be home soon.”
The TAKEN! Series - Books 9-12 (Taken! Box Set Book 3) Page 25
