Double Crossfire

by Anthony J. Tata

  Cassie fired two rounds, clipping the rear rider in the shoulder, causing him to lay his bike flat as if trying to slide beneath a semitrailer. She shot twice more, both times aiming at the legs.

  “Always shoot to kill, Bagwell,” Rax said.

  “Not when you want to take a prisoner. You’ve got overwatch,” Cassie replied. She got up, moved down the ladder, lifted the bar from the barn doors, and shot out toward the attackers.

  First she knelt next to the man whom she had shot and disarmed him of a knife and pistol, tossing them aside.

  “Bitch,” the man mumbled. He was bleeding from the upper right pectoral area. Two shots to the outer thigh had hamstrung him as well. The man threw a lame roundhouse at her, which Cassie avoided. She snatched his wrist, spun his arm, and yanked the flex-cuffs from his belt. She zip-tied his hands together and immediately checked the man Rax had shot.

  He was dying. Two shots, center mass, sucking chest wounds aspirating blood into the air like small geysers. She removed the helmet from the man and, despite the weak moonlight, immediately recognized the ruddy, pockmarked face and slicked-back black hair. He was one of the guards at the facility. Ridley. The man was well known for taking liberties with the other women. He had only tried once with Cassie and she had successfully rebuffed him. Perhaps that was why he was so aggressively pursuing her tonight. Their eyes locked. Cassie grinned.

  “Just accept it,” she whispered, giving him back the phrase he used every time he showed up with the handcuffs and the K-Y. Just accept it, he would say as he violated the woman of his choice.

  She pinched his nose and covered his mouth, hastening the irreversible arrival of death.

  “You’re a hard woman,” Rax said. He was standing to her left, watching the man she had cuffed, rifle aimed in his direction.

  Cassie looked over her shoulder and nodded.

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what he did. I just avenged about ten women. Now, shut off both of those bikes, then help me drag him into the barn, but first pick up that knife over there,” Cassie said.

  “How is it all of a sudden you’re giving me the orders?”

  “Teamwork,” she said.

  Rax grabbed the knife that she had tossed to the side, pushed the kill switch on both dirt bikes, and then lifted the flex-cuffed man onto his shoulders. They jogged into the barn, Rax dumping the wounded man on a surgical table, where he immediately began to work on the more serious wound in the man’s chest.

  Cassie looked around the small alcove she had failed to assess earlier. Hanging from the wall were IV bags, scalpels, liquid petroleum, large work gloves, and other instruments.

  “You’re a vet?”

  He turned toward her.

  “Was a medic in the Army. Always liked dogs more than people. Went to vet school at Virginia Tech, using my GI Bill. Now I work mostly on farm animals, but here I am, doing the same shit I did in Iraq.”

  “Before you work on him, I need you to remove this tracker from my back or else they’ll keep coming,” Cassie said. She turned and parted her gown near her middle back.

  “That red spot is the GPS tracker?” Rax asked.

  “Has to be. They drugged me. Felt a pinch when I woke up later.”

  His fingers pressed lightly around the red welt she had seen in the mirror prior to her escape.

  “Right by your spine. If I miss, I can kill you,” he said.

  “If you don’t get it out, we can die, too,” she snapped.

  “Lean on the table,” he said.

  Cassie placed her forearms on the table as Rax swabbed her back with disinfectant. She felt a sharp tweak as he shot some anesthesia into her back. He quickly followed suit with a scalpel, digging into her back.

  “Damn,” he said.

  He reached in with tweezers and removed a small silicon-encased beacon, which he showed to her. It was covered in blood.

  “Great, thanks,” she said. “Sew me up and destroy that thing.”

  The tugging on her skin told her that he had already begun the suture process. As he was finishing, he said, “I probably don’t want to see what you’re doing with this guy here, so I’m going to bring you some clothes.”

  He finished, wiped his hands on a towel, then retrieved a farrier’s nailing hammer and smashed the tracking device with force, causing the chip to explode into multiple fragments. He added two more blows and swept the remnants into a small baggie, which he handed to Cassie.

  “Don’t want any of this on my property. They can make stuff so small now it’s hard to completely destroy.”

  Cassie held the baggie full of splintered black plastic and frayed copper wires and said, “I’ll take it with me and dump it somewhere.”

  “I’d appreciate it. Now I’m going to get those clothes I mentioned.”

  “Thanks,” she said, turning her attention to the wounded man on the table behind her.

  Rax walked through the barn doors as Cassie grabbed the scalpel he’d left there . . . on purpose?

  “Nice ass, bitch,” the man said.

  “You’d like some of this, I know. What’s your name? Sharpton, right?”

  The look on his face told her she’d surprised him with her insight.

  “You and your dead buddy out there have raped all the women several times, right?”

  “How’d you get my name, bitch?”

  She slapped the scalpel across her open palm and grimaced, shaking her head.

  “I have to admire your hutzpah. You’re going to die and yet you’re getting in all the worthless verbal shots you can.”

  The man laughed. “Bitch, please. You’re not going to last another minute.”

  Her mind cycled with all of the possibilities. Did he have a tracker also? Certainly Franklin Broome’s security force at the compound had her last-known location. The motorcycles most likely had GPS devices as well. She listened. No motorcycle engines wailed, but there were other means of attack, via car or even airborne. The compound used helicopters often to ferry people and supplies into and out of the tight valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

  “Who have you trained and released from the program?” she asked. The blade from the scalpel rested lightly in between his larynx and carotid artery. She turned her wrist and the scalpel’s razor-edged point drew blood.

  “There were twenty women when I got there,” Cassie said. “There were eighteen when I escaped. I saw them training. I know what you’re doing in there.”

  The man coughed, turned his head.

  “You move, you die,” she whispered. “I know your guys are coming for me. I’ve killed two already. You’re next. You know it. You’re a dead man. Make it right with your god. Tell me so I can stop what you’ve unleashed.”

  The man’s face sagged with the realization that he would be dead soon. Did he have a god with whom to make anything right? Cassie didn’t know. What she did know was that the security force was likely in a helicopter right now, smoothing along, nap-of-the-earth, staying off the radar, and keeping the noise signature as low as possible. She wondered what was taking Rax so long to bring her some decent fighting clothes.

  “He drugs them. You. All of them. A little bit at first. It’s rehab. Physical therapy. Hundreds of world-class athletes come there every year for treatment. Some are a bit . . . off. Into their personal bests and all of that. Not a stretch to get them hooked into the next level of . . . performance. But the others? The convicts? Those are new.”

  The man’s words were rushed, jumbled, pained. He must have known one of two things: either he was giving away secrets for which Zara would have him killed, or Cassie was already amped up on the testosterone-booster shots and was hell-bent on killing him anyway. She believed she had escaped before the treatment took full effect, but couldn’t deny that she was feeling a newfound primal rage.

  Two muffled shots sounded outside. A thumping noise echoed from the barn roof. Cassie looked up to see a rifle poking through the hayloft window she had previo
usly used to shoot the motorcyclists. Scooping up the pistol, she dropped the scalpel and fired suppressive shots, attempting to gain some time and space and to maneuver.

  She was too late.

  The first shot found the wounded man’s head, which kicked sideways with a splash of blood on her robe. Between the mud stripes on her back and the blood splatter on her front, she looked like a piece of contemporary art, swirling and dashing as she avoided the succession of sniper fire from the window.

  After another two muffled shots from outside, the sniper tumbled through the window onto the hayloft ledge. Cassie quickly closed the distance, climbed the ladder, and found a dark-haired man wearing a state-of-the-art night vision device and still rigged in his parachute harness, sans parachute. Skydivers.

  Rax came in the barn door, checked the dead captive, and then locked eyes with her.

  “He’s dead. Others?”

  “Two jumpers. Both dead, now.”

  “Thanks,” Cassie said. “No identification here. Completely sanitized.” She turned the man over, checking all of his cargo pockets and outer tactical vest. He carried an SR-25 sniper rifle and had two extra magazines of 7.62 mm ammunition in his OTV.

  “I need to get you out of here, Cassie,” Rax said.

  “You need to stay with your animals,” she said. “I can take care of myself. If you’ve got some gas, I can fill up the bike and head south.”

  She climbed down the ladder and snagged the folded clothes from Rax’s hands. Stepping behind one of the stalls, she changed while talking to him.

  “What’s the quickest way to Raleigh, North Carolina?”

  “I’ll lead you,” he said. There was something in his voice. Disappointment?

  “That’s mighty large of you, but if you just tell me, I’ll be good to go.”

  “I’m going to the sheriff’s office and your route is on the way,” he said.

  “Okay, good idea. Get backup. Promise me this,” she said, stepping around the corner in dungarees, polypro shirt, and running shoes. “You’ll never make fun of the way I look right now.”

  He smiled. “You got it. I’ll also say I’ve never met you and that you weren’t here.”

  “Might want to burn this, then,” she said, pointing at the hospital gown on the dirt floor.

  He bent over and picked it up. “Might make a good souvenir. Maybe I’ll eBay this puppy someday. World-famous Cassie Bagwell. Muddy and bloody. Save me a role in the movie.”

  “You can’t be the leading man, but you can be the great guy that the girl missed out on,” she said.

  Rax nodded in the weak light.

  “Mahegan?”

  “You know Jake?”

  “Anyone who served in Afghanistan, Iraq, or Syria knew of Jake. Very few know him. I read something about you guys in Iran.”

  Cassie nodded.

  “Yeah, Mahegan.”

  “Total respect,” he said.

  “Back at you,” she said. “Now we better get moving ASAP.”

  “Roger that.”

  After filling her motorcycle with gas, she secured the medical cooler to the back of the seat with a bungee cord. In the palm of her left hand, she held the wadded baggie with the bits of the demolished tracking device, which she presumed was inactive. Rax led her in his pickup truck along a winding, dark county road, which dumped onto a two-lane road that fed into the small town of Jasper, which Cassie guessed was the county seat. They passed several stores that seemed common on every main street in America: diners, boutique clothing shops, insurance and law offices, and a local pharmacy. After passing through the town, she saw the sign for Highway 29, which would take her south. He braked and she pulled even with him, lifted her helmet off, and said, “Thanks.”

  “I put some stuff under your seat. You might need it. Be safe and be in touch if you need me.”

  “You’re pretty awesome, Rax.”

  “We both know that.” He smiled.

  Cassie nodded, tossed the baggie with the smashed tracker into a stream full of tumbling water that ran away from the mountains, to the east, shook her hair back, and slipped the helmet on. She revved the engine and sped onto Highway 29 South.

  After two hours of winding along the road, she had passed three state troopers, none of whom had stopped her. She had no license plate on the motorcycle, nor did it appear to be street legal. Were they an escort? Had Rax or someone else called ahead to pave the way for her? She had just assumed he was going to get police help for the situation at the farm. Broome’s commandos might still be pouring into the area.

  She passed into North Carolina, skirted Martinsville, slid around Eden, and headed south of Greensboro toward High Point. She hadn’t spent much time in this part of the state, but was familiar with the general layout.

  As she was looking for a gas station, a police officer sped behind her, blue lights spinning like a strobe. Against her better judgment, Cassie slowed and stopped the motorcycle. Her heart pumped. Not sure where Mahegan was, she was heading to the only place she knew: General Savage’s Southern Pines estate.

  The bump of the pistol rubbed against her thigh from inside the oversized cargo pocket of the jeans. She was carrying an unlicensed gun in a state where she had spent much of her adult life. She knew the cops were tough on gun laws, though she was a soldier and sometimes that carried some weight with the locals.

  “Hand me your license and registration,” a deep voice said. “Slowly.” The man stayed two steps to her left rear. The lights continued to bounce.

  “Under the seat,” she said.

  “Step off the motorcycle and slowly retrieve the materials,” the voice boomed. She sensed movement, and as she was dismounting, he drew his pistol and aimed it at her, using a respectable shooter’s stance.

  She lifted the seat, which opened toward her and away from the police officer, thankfully. Inside were a pistol, a passport, a license, and registration. She lifted the license and the registration, studied them briefly before handing them to the officer. She closed the seat lid and turned toward the officer.

  Becky Raxler was the name on the license. Since Cassie was still wearing the helmet, there was a fifty-fifty chance she’d pass for the faded photo of either Raxler’s ex-wife or sister. The officer was a big man in a gray state trooper uniform, complete with the wide black belt, pistol, baton, and ammunition pouches. In the darkness, the name was not legible. Always looking for a hook or an angle, Cassie thought she might be able to start a conversation. Hey, I know a Sergeant Biggerstaff, any relation?

  “Doesn’t look like you, ma’am,” the officer said. “Do you have another form of identification?”

  “It’s a hair color thing, Officer,” Cassie said.

  The light blinded her briefly, then returned to the license.

  “Wrong eyes. Good try, though. Yours are green, whoever you are. Becky Raxler’s eyes are blue.”

  Cassie said nothing.

  “There’s an all points bulletin out from Virginia that someone escaped from a murder scene in Virginia. Cassie Bagwell. Like many law enforcement officials in North Carolina, I’m former military. If you’re Captain Cassie Bagwell, it’d be wise to tell me sooner rather than later. We have a dead man who ran the Valley Trauma Center, where Captain Bagwell was going through treatment. Now, I’m sure a judge will be very understanding, given the post-traumatic stress, and all.”

  Cassie processed her options. Doubtful he would shoot her, she considered spinning on one foot, throwing her leg over the motorcycle seat, and kick-starting it with one fluid motion. She’d be gone before the cop could fire. Her heart was beating fast. Fight or flight. The treatments that Zara had been administering her had sometimes made emotion rule over reason. She had found herself more aggressive in the hand-to-hand training, kicking and slashing at her sparring partners with combat efficiency. The increased heart rate made the drugs cycle faster through her system, nudging emotion beyond reason.

  “If you’re the Cassie Bagwell we’ve
all heard about, you’re probably considering your options right now. Sticking with me is probably the best one. I’ve got three state troopers at different intersections about a mile away in each cardinal direction. Each direction you can go in any way. So I just need to know. Need to hear it from you. Are you Captain Cassie Bagwell?”

  “I am,” she said.

  He handed her back the driver’s license.

  “If you are, and I believe that you are, then you’ve probably got at least one weapon, if not multiple weapons, on you. You understand that as an officer of the law, I have to ask you this, correct?”

  “Actually, I don’t. I’ve done nothing wrong. You have no reason to search,” she replied. Her argument was weak. She was evidently reported by someone in connection with the firefight at Raxler’s place.

  “You’ve got an all-points bulletin out for your arrest. I may be your last best chance at avoiding some serious issues.”

  The state trooper smiled thinly and nodded, as if he’d checkmated her. His voice was even and steady. There was no detectable malice at all. Just a good cop doing his duty. She finally caught the nametag from the moonlight: DOBBINS.

  Sirens wailed in the distance. The specter of emergency vehicle lights flashed on the horizon like distant lightning.

  “I may be your last best chance,” Dobbins emphasized. He glanced over her shoulder. “Get in the back of my car. I’ll secure the items under your seat. First, though, I have to make sure you’re unarmed.”

  “I’m armed, Officer,” Cassie said.

  “Okay. That right there is a good start. I noticed the bulge in your cargo pocket. Even money says you’ve got something under the seat of that bike.”

  Cassie slowly retrieved the pistol and handed it to the officer. The sirens grew louder. The lights more visible. She walked toward the back door of the cruiser. The cop watched and followed, opening the door for her with his right hand.

  Cassie swept her right arm down with a quick, powerful blow to the trooper’s left hand, which was carrying the pistol she had lifted from the guard at the compound after stabbing him in the neck with a syringe. A quick roundhouse from the oversized boot caught Officer Dobbins on the jaw, snapping his head to her left better than a Conor McGregor right cross. She pursued, punching him in the throat three times. When Dobbins came up with his hands to grab his throat, maybe rip it open so he could get some oxygen, she kneed him in the groin and then slammed his head into her knee, cracking his nose and for the second time tonight having a man’s blood on her clothes.