Intruders (A Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Book 1)

by Gary Winston Brown

  Dunn considered Jordan’s proposal. “I don’t know about this. We haven’t vetted the location.”

  “You can send an advance team there right now,” Jordan replied. “Agent Carnevale knows the address. But regardless, that is where we’re going.”

  Dunn looked at Chris Hanover.

  Hanover didn’t wait to be asked for his opinion. “Sounds solid to me, sir.”

  Dunn agreed. “All right, Mrs. Quest. We’ll take your family to the estate. But on one condition.”

  “And that would be?” Jordan asked.

  “That my men maintain overwatch,” Dunn insisted. “I understand your father uses a private security team?”

  “Yes. All ex-police or military. They’ve been part of my father’s personal detail for years.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Dunn said. “They’re to stand down. Only FBI personnel are to be on the grounds.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And if there’s even a hint of trouble you and your family are to follow our extraction protocol to the letter. Deal?”

  Jordan nodded. “Thank you, Director.”

  Dunn nodded. “You can thank me when this thing is over.”

  The Director turned to Hanover. “Find Carnevale. Arrange tactical team transportation. Prepare to move the family to Farrow Estate.”

  “Copy that,” Chris replied.

  CHAPTER 30

  HARRISON TASKER yanked open the secret passenger seat compartment, grabbed a second fully loaded magazine, stepped out of the car, shoved the clip into his waistband, and took a few seconds to observe the activity on the street. All quiet. No lights had come on in the neighboring houses. The street was empty. The Tec-9’s sound suppressor had done its job. No one knew that the inhabitants of the charming two-story bungalow had come under siege.

  It shouldn’t have come to this, he thought. If he’d been able to catch up to Rigel a split-second earlier the man would be dead now or wounded at the very least. He could have walked up to him as he lay on the lawn, dying and bleeding out, and finished him off with a double-tap; one bullet to the heart, the second to his brain. Standard operating procedure. Clean and simple. Problem solved. Easy as taking out the trash.

  The irony of that analogy was not lost on him. In New York’s opinion, that was precisely what he was being contracted to do.

  But the kid had heard the rounds pierce the Wagoneer, ricochet off the front of the house and come to the front door to investigate. If Rigel had been hit, he would have seen him lying on the front lawn and tried to help him. He would have yelled for help and gotten the attention of his neighbors or ran back into the house and called 9-1-1. He wouldn’t have made it more than a foot. Tasker would have been forced to cut him down with a dozen rounds from the Tec-9. Which would have presented him with a whole new set of circumstances to deal with. He wasn’t fond of killing the teen. But the kid’s death would be necessary if he was to avoid a police response. New York might be free of Rigel, but a family would be without its child. But instead of standing his ground, Rigel had forced his way into the kid’s home and taken refuge there. Tasker decided he would take every precaution to preserve the boy’s life, so long as it didn’t interfere with his primary objective of terminating the contractor.

  Tasker approached the house with caution, staying low, using the bullet-riddled Jeep for cover. He crept forward, back pressed to the wall. He peered into the front window through a slight part in the drapes. No lights were on inside the house. Pieces of a bullet-shattered mirror hung on the wall but reflected no movement. One of the rounds had taken out the porch light and plunged the front of the house into darkness. Tasker considered returning to the Mustang to retrieve his night-vision monocular. The ability to see in the dark would have been advantageous. But at this moment, time and the element of surprise supplanted his requirement for the device. He knew Rigel would already have swept the house, bound, gagged, or murdered its occupants, committed its layout to memory, and established a fortification point somewhere inside that would provide him with a clear line of sight to both the street and the front and rear entrances. To take Rigel down quickly, he would need to breach the premises hard and fast, blister the place with gunfire, and force him into a position of retreat. It would be just like Rigel to use the kid for cover, thinking that might cause Tasker to hesitate or avoid taking the shot. He wouldn’t. He had orders. New York wanted Rigel dead, and the Farrow contract was his now. That was all that mattered.

  Tasker evaluated his options. Entering the premises through the front door would certainly put him directly in Rigel’s line of fire. He would need to find another way into the home. He took a step back. Quietly, he lifted the gate latch and entered the back yard, stopping every few feet, listening for sounds of movement within the home that would give away Rigel’s location. He heard nothing. He proceeded to the back of the house. From the ground floor basement window, a flash of light appeared, followed by the sound of muted voices, one urgent and demanding, the other fearful and pleading. The rain fell harder. Droplets splattered on the in-ground pool cover with loud thwacking sounds. Past the window well a set of sliding glass doors offered a possible point of ingress. Tasker tried the handle. Locked. He moved further along the back wall, checking each window as he went. Outside the kitchen entrance he found what he was looking for - a crank-style window, slightly ajar. Tasker eased the window open, removed a knife from his back pocket, cut the bug screen out of its frame, and slipped inside. He raised the Tec-9 to eye level and listened. No sounds came from beyond the kitchen or the second floor. A narrow shaft of light emanated from beneath a closed door in the hallway ahead, probably the entrance to the basement. Tasker walked along the kitchen floor to the edge of the hall. He could hear the voices clearly now. The boy was terrified, no doubt believing his life would end tonight, that he would die soon, alone and afraid in the basement of the home that was his sanctuary from the outside world and the evil that dwelled within it. But that evil had introduced itself to him tonight, forced its way into his world, his life, his home. Tasker knew that after tonight the teen would never be the same again.

  Anger welled in him.

  He would not let the bastard get away with it. He would see to it that tonight James Rigel took his last breath.

  Tasker advanced through the kitchen. He stopped suddenly when a floorboard squeaked under his weight.

  The dim light beneath the doorway suddenly vanished. The voices in the basement fell silent.

  He had made his presence known.

  CHAPTER 31

  ZOE AND Shannon explored the rest of the fully equipped, self-contained dwelling. The hexagon-shaped nuclear fallout shelter was unlike anything they ever had seen before. Six rooms branched off the main corridor. The first, the master bedroom, was fully furnished, with a king-size bed and en suite bath. The second room was Lily’s, clearly defined by the sign on the door which read, “Lily’s Room, Keep Out!” The third room was an open-concept design that combined the living room with the kitchen and featured a wall-mounted television, shelves filled with technical manuals, dozens of books and magazines, a sofa, three easy chairs, a wet bar, wine rack, and a desk. The fourth room was the main bathroom with a tub, shower and toilet, the fifth the laundry room. The sixth, a maintenance room, housed two Honda generators which provided the place with light and power, as well as equipment and devices to control heating, ventilation, and air conditioning.

  “This place is incredible,” Zoe said.

  Lily smiled. “I know. My dad built it.”

  “For your Uncle Emmett?”

  The girl shook her head. “For mom and me.”

  “I’m confused,” Shannon said. “I thought this was your Uncle Emmett’s property.”

  Lily shook her head. “This is our home. Uncle Emmett stole it from us.”

  “How is that possible?” Zoe asked.

  The girl curled up in one of the chairs and told her story. “He showed up on our doorstep one day with my cou
sins, Ben and Basil. That was them on the ATV’s. Uncle Emmett’s nephew, Denny, was also with them. He’s the one you killed.”

  “The clown.”

  Lily nodded. “Denny was mentally challenged. His mom was killed in a car crash a few years ago. Uncle Emmett adopted him. He liked to dress up and loved anything to do with the circus. My Aunt Chris, Uncle Emmett’s sister, who died in the accident, had made half a dozen outfits for him. One day he’d dress up like a clown or a strongman, other days a lion tamer or big top announcer. The clown outfit was his favorite. But he was mean, I mean, real mean. He beat me up all the time just for fun. Dad said that when Aunt Chris died something broke in Uncle Emmett, my cousins too. We’d heard that the boys were always getting into trouble. Most of the time it had to do with drugs. When they showed up, I heard Uncle Emmett tell my Dad someone was after them. Ben and Basil had gotten in way over their heads with the wrong people, and that they had no place to go. When Dad asked Uncle Emmett what the boys had done, he said they’d ripped off some drug-dealers. That’s when Dad flat-out refused to let them stay with us. He told Uncle Emmett he didn’t want that kind of trouble showing up on our doorstep. He started yelling at him and told him he had a lot of nerve putting our lives in danger because of Ben and Basil’s stupidity. He closed the door in their faces. Uncle Emmett started banging on the door, saying they weren’t leaving, that we had plenty of room, and that as his brother Dad had a responsibility to him to let them stay. When Dad refused to open the door, Ben kicked it in. They walked into the house. He told Dad it was theirs now and that we’d better deal with it or he’d kill us. Dad lost it. He ran at him. That’s when Ben pulled out a gun. He shot my father four times in the stomach, then shot my Mom. He wanted to shoot me too but Uncle Emmett stopped him.”

  “Why didn’t he kill you?” Shannon asked. “You’re a witness.”

  “He said they needed someone to clean the house and take care of Denny.”

  “Motherf---,” Zoe started to say. She held her tongue. “How long have these losers been living here?”

  “A year, maybe longer.”

  “Jesus! You mean you’ve been their prisoner all that time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And they buried your parents in the horse stable?” Shannon asked.

  Lily nodded. “Made me help.”

  Zoe looked at the girl. How could she have made it through such a horrifying ordeal and remained so psychologically intact? Perhaps, like her, Lily was damaged inside, beyond repair, but refused to let the world see her pain. She thought of how she too had once been forced to put up the fight of her life, and how killing her father was the price she had to pay in order to preserve her sanity. She’d been only a few years older than Lily at the time of her ordeal. But at least she had a choice, such as it was, and opted to accept the outcome of her actions no matter what the cost. At least she hadn’t been forced to watch her parents die at the hands of maniacs, like Lily had, then cast into servitude. And she sure as hell had never been forced to bury her parents. What sort of animal could do that to a child?

  Finally, Zoe asked, “Did you ever hear them talk about us?”

  “Maybe,” Lily said.

  “What do you mean?” Shannon asked.

  The girl turned in her chair. “A couple of weeks ago they were sitting at the kitchen table. I was making lunch. They always ate the same thing.” She rolled her eyes. “Bologna sandwiches with mustard, ketchup, and mayo. Ben says he thinks he has a plan to get them out of trouble with the drug dealers. He tells Uncle Emmett and Basil about a conversation he’d overheard. A business associate of one of the drug dealers was asking if he knew anyone who could carry out a kidnapping. When the dealer asked who it was all he would say was that they were the daughters of someone important: an FBI agent. When the dealer said he didn’t know anyone who could do it the guy threatened him. He told him that if he ever breathed a word of their conversation to anyone he’d kill him and his family. Ben eventually found out who the guy was, contacted him, and told him that he and Basil could do the job. They were going to use the money the guy was offering to clear their debt with the dealers. Two days later I heard their car pull up and watched them pull you out of the trunk and drag you into the barn.”

  “You didn’t call the police?”

  “Do you think I’d still be here if I could have called the police?” Lily exclaimed. “I couldn’t. We have no phones anymore. The boys disconnected them. I looked everywhere but I couldn’t find them. They either threw them away or hid them. Guess they figured that’s exactly what I’d do the first time I had the chance. They have cell phones but they’re never out of their reach. Then there’s this...” Lily showed them her raw, chafed wrists. “They kept me chained up in the barn, just like they did to you. The only difference is they’d let me have a bath once a week. Uncle Emmett didn’t want me playing with Denny if I was dirty.”

  Zoe shook her head. “This is insane.”

  Shannon removed a hardcover book from the bookcase entitled, “The Coldest October.” It was one of several by the same author, a nuclear physicist by the name of Dr. Colton Maynard. She skimmed through its pages. “According to this guy we’ve continued to be on the brink of nuclear war since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.”

  Lily took the book from Shannon and turned it over. The author and his family were pictured on the back cover.

  Shannon recognized Lily from the photo. “That’s you,” she said.

  Lily smiled. “And my mom and dad, Rose and Colton Maynard.”

  “Your dad was a nuclear physicist?” Shannon asked.

  “He was the nuclear physicist,” Lily replied. “Dad was the only civilian advisor to the Department of Defense in his field with top-secret clearance. Even had the ear of the President.”

  “What was his area of expertise?” Zoe asked.

  “The long-term effects of nuclear retaliation by a foreign power on American soil,” Lily answered.

  “He built this place to protect you and your mom in the event of a nuclear war?” Zoe said.

  “That’s right.”

  “And no one else but you know it exists?”

  “Nobody.”

  Shannon asked, “How long could we stay down here if we needed to?”

  Lily shrugged. “That depends on how far we are from ground zero - the origin of the blast site. The place is stocked with enough provisions to last about four months. But we probably wouldn’t have to stay in here any longer than one.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Eighty percent of nuclear fallout occurs on the first day. It starts to dissipate after that. We’d have to stay inside for at least three weeks until the outside radioactive contamination had dropped to a low enough level that it would be safe enough for us to leave.”

  “Some fathers build their kid a treehouse,” Zoe said. “Yours builds you a friggin’ nuclear shelter.”

  “And some kids get to play with their dad in that treehouse,” Lily replied. “I don’t.”

  Zoe realized the inappropriateness of her remark. “You’re right, Lily. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”

  Lily shrugged. “It’s okay.”

  Shannon said, “You’re quite a remarkable young lady for your age.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Lily replied.

  Zoe laughed. “And humble, too.”

  “I’m home-schooled,” Lily said. “I tend to take after my dad. Solving complex problems comes easily to me, especially when they involve the application of logic, science or math.” She pointed to the family’s framed MENSA Supervised Test Certificates on the bookshelf. “My parents were both geniuses. Dad’s IQ was 162, moms was 161. That level of intelligence is shared by less than one percent of the world’s population. And as far as being humble goes they raised me to be an independent thinker and say what’s on my mind.”

  “So, you’re a genius, too?” Shannon asked.

  “Yes. But I’m not as smart as my parents. I only sco
red 160. Guess I screwed up a little.”

  “You got two questions wrong on a test that confirms the intelligence level of some of the smartest people in the world,” Zoe said as she sorted through the bottles in the wine rack. “Yeah, I can see how scoring a measly 160 could be utterly devastating. Pu-leez.”

  All but one of the bottles were sealed. Its foil capsule had been cut away, exposing the cork. Zoe tried pulling the bottle out of the rack, but it wouldn’t budge. “Shay,” she called out. “Check this out.”

  Shannon walked over to the rack. She tried to remove the bottle as well, couldn’t. She examined it closely. “This stopper doesn’t even look like a cork. You don’t think…”

  “I’m already one step ahead of you,” Zoe said. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I think.” She pressed the faux cork with her finger.

  With a click the wine rack popped opened. Zoe eased open the false door.

  Clipped inside the cavity were two semi-automatic handguns. Three gas masks hung on hooks beside the weapons.

  “Holy shit,” Lily said.

  Zoe smiled at her. “Potty-mouth,” she teased.

  CHAPTER 32

  RIGEL KILLED the lights, clamped his hand over the teens mouth, dragged him across the basement floor, and whispered in his ear. “One sound and I’ll snap your neck like a toothpick. Got it?”

  The kid nodded.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Out,” came the muffled reply.

  “When will they be back?”

  “Dunno.”

  Rigel took out his cellphone and swept the room with the glow of the screen. The gun safe stood in the corner of the room.

  “You know the combo?”

  “Maybe,” the teen replied.

  Rigel wrapped his hand around the kids throat and squeezed. “Now is not the time to get smart with me, son. I’ll get out of this little predicament just fine. You, I’m not so sure about. Those rounds you heard tearing up the place? That’s a machine pistol our friend is carrying. It’ll cut you in half in a heartbeat. So if you want to live long enough to get over acne I suggest you tell me the fucking code.”