by Debra Webb
Smith had no choice at this point but to admit that his contact was either dead or he’d turned.
He had known the man who was his primary backup for a decade. He found it difficult to believe he could be turned. Odds were, he was dead. The mistake was Smith’s. He had insisted on only one person having knowledge of his egress options. He should have known better than to rely on only one man. Humans were not immortal. Accidents happened, health issues cropped up. One or both stealing lives at inopportune moments. Things happened, infusing desperation, weakening even the strongest man.
Choices at this juncture were extremely limited but at least they still had a couple.
Smith had decided that they would keep moving. Yesterday had been spent traveling in wide circles up and then down the mountain. No express routes. Today would be somewhat more direct. He would use a scatter pattern to prevent leaving a straightforward trail to follow. However hard he tried not to leave signs of their presence, it was impossible not to break the occasional small branch or trample plants.
Their path wouldn’t be difficult for a trained tracker to follow. The dogs wouldn’t need anything but their scent.
Frankly, Smith was surprised he hadn’t heard the dogs at some point yesterday. Particularly after Winters separated from them.
This, too, was cause for concern.
Was Prentiss so certain he would win that he didn’t bother sending a search party?
The idea hadn’t crossed Smith’s mind until his contact failed to come through and time had continued to lapse without trouble finding them.
Now that he considered the possibility, Prentiss had been the one to insist Smith take Buchanan and Winters to the others. If he’d discovered Smith’s secret, why not kill him at the compound? Was the old bastard’s intent to make an example out of him? Show his followers who their true protector was?
This was more wrong than he had realized.
There was a mole all right, but it wasn’t Buchanan. It was someone on Smith’s home team. Someone in the ATF with clearance to this mission. Only a handful of people knew about this cleanup and infiltration detail. Still, that didn’t mean someone with the opportunity hadn’t found a way to access the files. The world was one big electronic filing cabinet these days. Nothing was unattainable if one knew in which drawer to look and possessed the skill to open it.
Had Prentiss turned someone with that kind of know-how?
The only way to be sure was to get Buchanan to safety and then for him to return to the compound for Prentiss. This was a finale that required an up close encounter.
He had spent the past two years of his life digging deeply into the Resurrection. He was not going to walk away without eliminating the organization, even if that meant taking matters into his own hands.
The compound had been built into the mountainside. It was completely camouflaged and protected by the earth itself. Over and over he had mentally plotted where and how the explosives would need to be planted to destroy the place—to bring down the entire mountainside. The problem was, as gratifying as that result would be, it wouldn’t change anything. Some of the powers that be lived outside the compound. They hid themselves among the locals to stay aware of whatever was going on in the rest of the world. Having everyone with power, reach and contacts in the same place at the same time for elimination would be virtually impossible.
Smith had toyed with that scenario a thousand times.
Once the compound was destroyed, those who survived would go into hiding. He knew them all—every single one. But sending them to prison for their criminal activities required solid evidence, none of which he possessed outside that compound. Even lining them up for vigilante-style termination would require an army. The moment one was taken out, the rest would scatter like crows. Since he didn’t have an army prepared to commit cold-blooded murder, he needed a better plan.
A laugh tugged at his gut. In two years he hadn’t been able to come up with a workable strategy.
He could sever the head of the snake, Prentiss, but another one would sprout in his place.
Unless...he found a more lethal snake willing to swallow up the competition entirely.
A new plan started to form. Smith had a feeling this one might even work. But to make that happen he would need to enter the territory of that lethal snake.
It was a good plan. He thought of the woman right behind him. Rather than attempt to explain the intricate details and to persuade Sadie to go along, he decided to keep her in the dark. She would be mad as hell when she found out, but if he accomplished his ultimate goal, she would forgive him.
He hoped.
Altering his course, he headed for dangerous territory. He readied for trouble, exiling all distraction in order to focus fully on his surroundings, listening and watching. Within the hour they would cross into territory ruled by another group. They couldn’t really be called an organization since they weren’t technically organized. These people didn’t even have a name, much less a motto. Anyone who knew them merely called them the others. The one thing Smith knew for certain about them was that they were dangerous. Cunning and methodical.
Maybe clinically insane. Certainly crazy by anyone’s measure.
Crazy was what he needed at the moment.
All he had to do was find it without getting Buchanan or himself killed.
* * *
They were traveling in a different direction now. Yesterday he had done the same. Flynn had wound back and forth around this mountain. She’d figured his goal was to make their path more difficult to find and follow. With no response from his contact and no sign of Prentiss’s people or dogs, she had expected he would take a more direct route today.
Maybe not.
She wanted to ask him about his plan, but he’d reiterated that silence was particularly important today. Rather than risk making too much noise, she’d kept her questions to herself for now and followed his lead. If she had to find the way out of here they would likely end up bear bait in these damned woods.
Not that she’d spotted any bears or bear tracks but there could be bears, coyotes or wolves, to name a few predators who would present a problem.
There was the gun he’d had hidden in the cave. But she didn’t have any idea how much ammunition Flynn had on him. Maybe only what was in the weapon. Maybe not enough to survive if they were attacked by man or beast.
But they had their wits, no shortage of determination and Flynn’s extensive knowledge of the area.
The situation could be a lot worse.
A muzzle jammed into the back of her skull. Before her brain had time to analyze how it happened so fast without her noticing someone was closing in on her, her body instinctively froze.
“Don’t move.”
Somehow she had known the person—man obviously—on the other end of that barrel was going to say those two words.
Smith spun around, his weapon leveled on the threat. “Back off,” he warned.
Before his growled words stopped reverberating in the air, three more men stepped forward, rifles aimed at him.
Sadie blinked, startled when she’d thought nothing else could shock her. The men wore paint, like body paint—nothing else as far as she could tell. They had melted into the landscape and only when they moved had their presence become visible. She blinked again to ensure she wasn’t seeing things.
“Back off,” Flynn repeated. “Aikman is expecting me.”
If these were more of his friends, it would have been nice if he’d given her a heads-up before the one behind her startled the hell out of her.
One of the three fanned out around Flynn stepped forward, moving closer to him. “Drop the gun.”
Sadie held her breath. Agents were trained never to relinquish their weapons but sometimes there simply was no other choice. An agent learned through experience when it was time to forget
the classroom training and do what had to be done.
Flynn tossed the weapon to the ground and raised his hands. “My name is Smith Flynn. Take me to Aikman.”
The guy behind Sadie shoved a bag at her. “Put this on.”
Sadie took the bag and tugged it onto her head. The last thing she saw before the black fabric fell over her eyes was Flynn with the business end of a rifle stuck to his forehead.
The nearest muzzle nudged her back. “Start walking.”
She did as she was told, hoping like hell she didn’t trip over a tree root or a rock. No one talked but she heard the faint sounds of their new friends moving through the underbrush. She suddenly wondered if the painted guys wore shoes or boots or something on their feet. She hadn’t noticed. The guy behind her was probably painted, too. He was, she decided as she recalled the arm that had thrust the bag at her.
The only good thing was that Flynn appeared to know who these people were. This Aikman, she assumed, was someone in charge. Hopefully someone high enough up the food chain to keep them from becoming “emergency supplies.”
Her toe snagged on a root or a rock and she almost face-planted. Thankfully, she managed to grab back her balance. Her sudden stop to capture her equilibrium won her another nudge from the muzzle.
Sadie counted off the seconds and minutes. By her estimate, they walked for half an hour. The terrain didn’t change much. Brush, rocks, moving sometimes up, sometimes down. The scent of food cooking told her they had reached a camp of some sort. She doubted it was noon yet but it was past midmorning. No matter that she’d had a protein bar very early that morning, her stomach sent her a warning that she needed to eat again soon.
And coffee. What she would give for a big, steaming cup of coffee.
She wondered if this group would have a compound built into the mountainside like the Resurrection. She had to admit, the idea had been ingenious. A hand suddenly rested on her left shoulder. She stopped, braced to either fight or run like hell. The bag whipped up and off her head.
She blinked twice, three times, and surveyed the area. There was a canopy of green overhead. A combination of trees and vines and other plant life she couldn’t readily identify. Sunlight filtered through, making her blink with its brightness after wearing the bag. There were shacks made of branches, twigs and brush. This didn’t look anything like a compound. These were like primitive huts that flowed seamlessly with the brush and trees. She looked upward again, spotted similar builds in the trees. The tree houses were also constructed with limbs and other pieces of the surrounding natural resources, making them almost like an extension of the trees.
Another nudge in the back and she started walking again. Flynn walked ahead of her, a painted man on either side of him. They moved deeper into the trees. Finally they reached an area that looked very much like the place against the mountainside where they’d slept last night. Brush and branches hid a narrow cave opening. They were escorted inside where two more men, these wearing dark clothes similar to SWAT gear, took over escort duty. The man who’d been behind Sadie all that time and his friends slipped back out the way they had come.
Beyond the opening, the cave widened into a room. There were lights in the cave but not electric lights. The lanterns looked like the old oil type. The cave floor was rocky. Water trickled from the walls here and there. Smelled musty. No more food smells. Whoever had been cooking, they were outside in the rustic camp they’d passed through.
This cave was far larger than the one they’d called home last night. The ceiling zoomed several feet overhead and the width of the space was five or so yards. They moved downward from there. Maybe a more elaborate compound had been built deeper in the cave.
The wide tunnel divided and they took the left fork. A few yards in they passed another wide room-size section on the left. Rows of rustic tables filled that space. Dozens of oil lamps lit the area. People dressed in white coveralls like painters and wearing paper face masks were frantically packing some sort of product.
Oh hell.
Drugs.
Her stomach sank. This was one of those things you couldn’t unsee. People in this business didn’t allow outsiders to see their work and walk away.
This was bad.
She hoped like hell Flynn knew what he was doing. She also hoped he knew these people really well—well enough to share dark secrets.
Otherwise they were goners.
Once they had moved beyond the workers in the white suits, they passed a number of large round stones that sat on either side of the corridor. The lead man stopped. With obvious effort he pushed one of the stones aside, revealing a hole in the rock wall, like a large round doggie door without the flap.
Not exactly a user-friendly entrance to wherever they were going next.
“Inside.” The man looked at Sadie as he said this.
She glanced from him to the hole. Was he serious? She shifted her gaze to Flynn. “I’m supposed to go in there?”
“For now. Don’t worry.”
He couldn’t be serious.
The man with the gun waved it as if he was running out of patience.
Great. She squatted, then dropped onto her hands and knees. She poked her head far enough through the opening to see what was inside. Nothing. As best she could determine it was just an empty, small, cube-like rock room. She crawled inside. Squinted to get a better look at the space. She shifted, scanning all the way around while there was still light filtering in from the open hole. In the corner to the left of the hole she’d just entered her gaze snagged on a form. She crawled closer, her eyes adjusting to the even dimmer light.
Bones.
Not just bones. An intact skeleton.
The rotting clothing suggested the owner of the bones had been male.
She swallowed back a sound, not exactly a scream but something on that order.
The noise from the stone rolling in front of the hole once more rumbled around her. She sat down on her bottom and stared at the only exit from this new prison. A dim outline of light from the lanterns in the corridor slipped in past the stone now blocking that exit.
Her gaze shifted back to the bones. She couldn’t really see them now but her brain filled in the details from the picture seared into her memory.
Whoever had been stuck in here before had died in this place.
Without water or food it wouldn’t take that long.
She thought of the lack of tissue on the bones. The person had been trapped in this place for a very long time. Years. Maybe as much as a decade considering the deteriorated state of the clothing he wore.
Sadie sat in the middle of that musty, dark space and replayed the past decade of her life. She had graduated with a master’s degree and some big plans. Two summer internships with the Bureau and she was accepted as soon as she reached the age requirement. Her parents had been so proud. Her mother had been a little concerned about her daughter going into law enforcement, but she’d come to terms with the decision after the first year. Maybe it had been Sadie’s excitement that had won over her mom.
Sadie had ended the relationship with her hometown boyfriend before entering training. The long-distance relationship had basically been over since undergrad school anyway. They were going in different directions with changing objectives. Why prolong the misery by watching the relationship they had once believed would go on forever shrivel up and die? Strange, she never once considered when the relationship ended that it would be her last one.
Dates, never more than three, maybe four with the same guy. Her social calendar consisted more of bridal showers, weddings and baby showers for friends than dates for herself.
If she died in this dark, dank place her parents would be devastated.
A life half lived.
Not true, she decided. If she died in this place, she would be dying young, for certain. But it wasn’t a li
fe half lived. She had lived every single day to its fullest. She had loved the hell out of her work. She had helped to bring down numerous bad guys and she had rescued more than her share of good guys.
“Get over it, Sadie. You are not going to die in this hole in the ground.”
She pulled up a knee and rested her chin there. She would find a way out of here. It was what she did. And she was really, really good at it...usually.
As soon as Flynn finished his meeting with this Aikman person and was brought here, they would put their heads together and come up with an escape plan.
Flynn had a contact with these people. He hadn’t appeared worried when they were captured. She shouldn’t be worried, either. Then again, Flynn’s record with his contacts hadn’t actually been a reassuring experience so far.
Maybe it was time to get worried.
Chapter 11
Smith had waited a half hour. The cuckoo clock on the wall counted off every second with a loud tick-tock. Any minute now the bird would slide past its door and count off the hour: 11:00 a.m.
He forced himself to relax. He possessed as good an understanding of these people as anyone. They did things their way in their time. Making him wait was a way of showing dominance. As long as he was still breathing there was reason to believe an arrangement could be reached.
This move had been a risk. A risk he was wagering everything would work out. Unfortunately, the wager involved Buchanan’s life as well as his own. If things didn’t work out as he intended, her death would be on him. That was the one part that didn’t sit well with him. But they were in a no-win situation. As a trained agent, she would understand the need to take drastic measures.
Smith drew in a deep breath and reminded himself to be patient. To play the game.
The tunnel where Buchanan had been secured had forked again, leading to the outside once more. Another campsite had been built against that side of the mountain. Again, using elements that blended in with the environment to keep them off the radar of reconnaissance flyovers.
Aikman’s office was like any other with a desk, chairs and electricity. The electricity was furnished by a generator. The primary difference between this place and that of the Resurrection as far as Smith could see was the absence of electronics. The others didn’t use electronics with the exception of burner phones, which they used sparingly. They stayed as far off the grid as possible.
