by Juno Rushdan
No one in the DOJ thought it possible. Why would Edgar?
It was one thing when a person entered the program, preparing to testify. All newbies understood the risks and gambled that the government would protect them, since the alternative was far worse.
Edgar’s story was a cruel anomaly. He’d crossed the threshold into a brand-new life, spent the past two years establishing roots and had finally stopped looking over his shoulder.
Believed he was safe only to find that he had to start all over again.
“I can’t bear the thought of never seeing my family again,” Sharon said, tears flowing down her cheeks. “My children. My grandchildren.”
Family. Children. Grandchildren. Charlie’s heart ached at the phantom pang inside her body. After suffering from endometriosis and failed rounds of medication therapy, she’d found herself unable to take the agony anymore. She’d been recommended a full hysterectomy by the doctor.
When Charlie woke up in the recovery room, she’d been surprised to find her mother had made the five-hour drive to the Naval Medical Center at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Charlie had been even more surprised at how glad she’d been to see her, clean and sober at her side.
Then her mother spoke, and the little miracle turned into a nightmare. “The doctor says you’re going to be fine. Surgery went well. I can’t believe you let them take out your lady bits. You should’ve held out until you had children. Now you’ll never be a real woman.”
The bruising reality of those callous words had seared Charlie’s heart like acid, scarred her soul in a way that she had never recovered from.
What Sharon had, four children, six grandkids, the love and warmth and security of a big, happy family, Charlie never would.
The unhealed wound she carried inside had grown bigger, deeper over the years as she tried to fill the emptiness with her career and ambition. With SOG. A unit that demanded the very best from her and the ability to drop everything and respond in six hours.
Old pain, still very sharp, sliced through Charlie. She gritted her teeth, cursing this assignment.
Being shot at and almost killed was part of the professional package, and she could handle it. But facing her personal demons was the worst torture. She’d choose waterboarding over this, no contest.
“You still haven’t given me an explanation about how my new identity was blown,” Edgar said, keeping an arm wrapped around Sharon. “I have a right to know.”
“I’m afraid that’s classified,” Aiden said. “We’re not authorized to share specifics.”
“Then what guarantee do I have that it won’t happen again?” Edgar asked.
Giving reassurances while holding their hand wasn’t in their lane. At the SSPC, the other marshals would make it clear that he’d be relocated to a region in the program that was still secure and should never have to look over his shoulder again. More or less.
“You’ll be briefed at the—”
Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop! The jarring sounds came from under the car. Tires exploding. A deep rumble. The slapping thud of rubber as the vehicle swerved. The shriek of metal grinding against asphalt.
Torres swung the car on the wide shoulder of the road near the river and brought the SUV to a stop.
Charlie’s pulse skyrocketed as she gained her bearings. One flat tire might be an ill-timed accident. Two, possibly shot. But not all four decimated down to the rims.
Two black vans raced up to the shoulder. Ground to a screeching halt in front and behind them, bracketing the SUV, kicking dust in the air.
They were blocked in, sitting on rims, with nowhere to go besides the river.
Charlie pulled her 9 mm. Torres and Aiden did likewise. The Potters’ panicked cries filled the cabin.
“Stay quiet!” Charlie said. The more noise they made, the more they were adding to the chaos and inadvertently helping their attackers.
The front doors of both vans opened. Four men wearing dark utility uniforms, bulletproof vests, balaclavas with skull faces, tinted goggles and tactical helmets jumped out. Each had a gun with a suppressor in their left hand. In their right hand was something else.
Something she never would’ve expected in a million years. Her brain cramped to make sense of it.
They surrounded the SUV, holding up paint sprayers. Cordless and high-powered. Ones you could easily pick up at any large home improvement store.
At the exact same time, all four men began spraying the bulletproof windows pitch-black, obscuring their vision. Blinding them. They couldn’t even shoot out the windows.
Paint fumes flooded the car.
The Potters clung to each other. Edgar hyperventilated.
Sharon was hyperventilating. “God! We’re going to die!”
The men had worked fast in a fluid, coordinated effort like they jacked marshals on the side of the road all the time as a hobby.
If it hadn’t chilled her to the marrow of her bone, she would’ve been impressed.
The windows and both windshields were completely blacked out except for a four-by-eight-inch space on Edgar’s windowpane. Where they taped something brick-shaped, covered in plastic wrap and attached to a timer.
“A bomb! Plastic explosives!” Edgar said, driving Sharon’s screams to a fever pitch.
The countdown was at one minute.
They had to get out of the vehicle. There was no choice about that, but if they didn’t go as a synchronized unit through the same exit point, firing simultaneously, they’d be hosed.
Everything transpired in only seconds. Gut-wrenching, terrifying seconds that made adrenaline course through her veins. In her mind, it all unfolded in slow motion.
Torres grabbed his door handle and pulled.
“Wait!” Charlie reached to stop him, but it was too late.
The driver’s door opened. Torres hopped out and fired.
A flurry of gunshots from weapons with suppressors pinged. Torres caught a bullet in the throat and dropped.
Charlie trained her gun on the opening, not letting panic poison her. Air punched from her lungs. Her heart pounded in her throat. But she stayed sharp. Laser-focused. Ready for someone to shove the barrel inside, while keeping out of range and taking a potshot.
A loud champagne-cork sound echoed, and something was launched into the car, landing on the driver’s seat. The door was kicked shut.
It was a familiar-looking canister. “Smoke grenade!”
Charlie dived into the back seat while Aiden leaped into action, climbing past Sharon and Edgar into the trunk.
“Sinaloa,” he said, referring to a dicey mission in Mexico, where they had apprehended a fugitive. The circumstances had been much different, but a tactic they’d used would work for them now.
They were on the same wavelength. A single exit point for them both, but his idea was better. Smarter. She cracked a grin.
He was the best partner. The best outside-the-box thinker. The best friend.
The best everything.
“Stay put,” Charlie said to the Potters, following Aiden into the rear of the vehicle.
“No!” Edgar grabbed hold of her leg as she maneuvered over the seat, and she had to knock his hands off.
The timer hit thirty seconds when the ballistic smoke grenade went off.
She held her breath, pressed up against Aiden in the sixteen cubic feet of space.
Red smoke suffused the tight quarters.
“Don’t leave us!” Edgar coughed out the words.
Aiden hit the emergency latch, opening the trunk door. They rolled out, landing low on their feet. Smoke billowed around them, providing perfect camouflage to conceal their movements. Staying crouched low, Aiden broke to the left and Charlie went right.
As expected, each of the four gunmen was trained on one of the four doors, anticipating someone to leave from t
here. Not the trunk.
Charlie and Aiden had to press hard and fast to get the Potters safely out of the car and clear from the explosion within the next fifteen seconds.
Then the driver’s-side rear door burst open.
Edgar jumped out and it all went to hell in a handbasket.
Chapter Five
Frank Devlin’s plan was working without a hitch. Better than expected.
Eugene Potter, formerly known as Edgar Plinski, or The Package—as Devlin’s team simply referred to him, removing the element of humanity—jumped out of the car, choking and gasping, right within arm’s reach.
Thick red smoke blew from the trunk and rear door. No one had a clear, clean line of sight—most important, not the marshals.
Devlin didn’t need one. He had The Package by the back of his shirt collar, holding him in front of himself like a shield with his Beretta 92FS against the base of the captive’s skull.
But just because you didn’t need something, it didn’t mean you wouldn’t be better off with it. Devlin and his team seized every advantage available, flipping down the thermal monocular strapped to their helmets, which allowed them to see through the smoke.
The wife stumbled out of the vehicle next, falling to the ground on her hands and knees. Tate, his buddy behind him, grabbed her and hauled her up onto her feet.
Devlin considered putting a bullet in The Package now and collecting two million dollars, split four ways, but why settle for two when you could have eleven? And at such a close range, it would make one hell of a mess all over him.
“We’ve got to move!” Edgar said, his arms flailing. “The bomb. Five seconds.”
Devlin smiled behind his mask, so pleased with himself. “Three. Two. One.”
Edgar covered his head with his hands, cowering, but there was no explosion.
Instead of using an expensive, volatile brick of C-4—that quite frankly wasn’t so easy to come by—Devlin had covered basic silicone putty in colored plastic wrap. The timer sold the gambit. Made it imperative for the marshals to leave the vehicle. The smoke dialed up the pressure, fueled the chaos, stoked the panic.
“Package secure,” Devlin said over the wireless communications devices his guys wore, keeping his gun pressed to The Package’s head and his full attention on the blonde female marshal.
She was holding her position, using the rear of the vehicle as cover, gun raised. There was little else she could do, given the situation.
Layers of smoke rolling through the air obscured essential details, offering only glimpses. The Package was in his grasp. The wife was frosting on the cake.
Neither marshal would risk the shot.
The two others on his team came around the front of the SUV, their weapons aimed in the direction of the male marshal.
A silent, single tap on his shoulder told him his team had formed up and they were ready to move.
They backed away from the SUV toward the vans, quickly but steadily, sure-footedly, out of the protection of the smoke.
A random passing police cruiser switched on flashing red and blue lights. Whipped around and stopped.
Without a word, Devlin’s team changed their formation. They went from a horizontal line, trained only on the marshals, and shifted back-to-back, moving in a circle as one efficient unit. All the threats were covered before the patrol officer even left the car. It was second nature to them.
One of his guys popped more smoke toward the police car to cover their retreat.
“Freeze!” the cop said, crouched behind the door, his sidearm drawn.
The marshals hung back, using the cover of the SUV, but the smoke still put them at a huge disadvantage, clouding their field of view.
“Stop! Release the hostages,” the officer said. “Lower your weapons and put your hands in the air!”
Devlin saw where this was going. Instinctively, he knew his guys did, as well. This wasn’t their first rodeo.
“Stop!” the cop yelled again. “Or I’ll shoot.”
Unlike the marshals—highly trained, tactically skilled and wise enough to use a bulletproof vehicle for cover—the patrol officer was going to make a bad judgment call and would indeed shoot.
So one of his guys fired first.
A single bullet blew out the cruiser window and took the cop out of the game.
They reached the vans that they’d left running and peeled off into two groups. Devlin opened the sliding door and backed into the bed of the lead van with The Package while Tate did the same at the other van with the wife.
Nothing like a solid day’s work to energize Devlin. A mission like this always got the blood flowing.
The vans sped off, heading to the theme park. It was a twenty-minute drive or less from most parts of the city, making it a good spot to pinpoint in advance. From this part of town, it was less than fifteen minutes. They’d dump the vans and have their pick of vehicles to choose from, and it wouldn’t be reported stolen for hours.
Devlin lowered to a knee beside Edgar. “You’re going to die. Slowly. Painfully. There’s nothing you can do about that.”
“Please, no, no. Please.”
He hated it when they begged. It never changed anything. Why not die with a little dignity?
“What you do have control over,” Devlin said, “is whether or not you have to watch your wife get tortured first.”
“Oh, God! She didn’t do anything. She doesn’t know anything.”
“Like I said. Her fate is in your hands.”
“What do you want?”
“Big Bill is under the impression you have incriminating evidence on him and his associates that you didn’t turn over to the Department of Justice.”
“Yes.” The Package nodded emphatically. “Yes, on a flash drive. I protected Big Bill. I didn’t rat him out. Please, don’t hurt Sharon.”
“Bill wants it.” More like needed it. The noose was tightening around Bill’s throat. It was the only thing that could save him from Enzo and the others. Maybe Devlin would sell it for double to the competition. It was the golden ticket. “Where is the drive?”
“If I tell you where it is, do you promise not to hurt Sharon?”
“How about this? I promise that if you don’t tell me, I guaran-damn-tee I will kill her. Where is it?”
“I don’t have it.” The Package lowered his head and wept like a baby. “The marshal, uh, the big guy with the bandage on his arm, took it. He’s got it.”
Devlin cursed and slammed his fist against the side of the van near The Package’s head, making him cringe.
They had to turn around and go back. It was worth too much to leave the flash drive behind. They could pop more smoke, surround them and take them out.
“Hey, D,” Tate said over comms. “We’ve got a serious problem.”
Make that two problems. “What is it?”
“Those two marshals are following us in the cop car. Lights flashing.”
Then the siren started blaring.
Fury pooled in Devlin’s gut. It burned him to the bone that those two were in possession of the flash drive and would soon have every cop in the city chasing after them. With that kind of heat, they’d never make it out of San Diego.
They needed to find an alternate place to ditch the vans sooner than planned. In five minutes, SDPD would have a helicopter in the air and over their position.
First, he’d take care of those marshals. Teach them both a lesson they’d never forget.
“T, we no longer need the wife,” Devlin said. “Injure her. Make it critical and toss her.”
The Package’s eyes flared wide in horror. “No! You can’t. You promised you wouldn’t kill her.”
Devlin sighed. “I told him to wound her, didn’t I? Not kill her.”
Chapter Six
“Nice touch with the siren,�
�� Aiden said to Charlie.
He was kicking himself about losing two colleagues, plus Edgar and his wife, but it wasn’t over. Not yet.
Charlie had been the first to make a beeline to the cruiser. When others might buckle and concede defeat, she bucked up and dug in for the fight.
She was relentless.
God, he loved her. Always had. Always would.
After they checked the patrol officer and saw he was dead, they took off in pursuit. Charlie had radioed in the incident to the police, giving the make and model of the vans, but there were no license plates. The cops’ response would be faster and more widespread than the Marshals’—hot and heavy with one of their own gunned down. No mercy would be shown.
Aiden was closing the distance up to the rear van.
Only a few hundred yards separated them.
The sliding door slashed open. A face covered in a skull mask peered out, and then the man threw Sharon from the van.
Panic seized Aiden as her body slammed to the blacktop, bounced violently several times and rolled to a stop on her back.
Those heartless bastards.
Aiden stomped on the brakes in front of the woman.
They both hustled out of the car and to her side. There were scrapes and bruises all over her, but her left thigh was covered in blood.
It didn’t look like it had been caused by the fall out of the van.
Aiden peeled back the fabric where her pants had been torn. A fountain of blood spurted.
Jeez. The femoral artery had been sliced. This wasn’t like the cut on his arm, something within their power to control. In three to five minutes she would bleed out. It could take that long or longer for an ambulance to reach them.
If they didn’t get her medical help right away, she’d die here on this road.
That was what those men were counting on. Marshals giving up the chase to save a life.
“We’ve got to get her to a hospital or she’s as good as dead,” Aiden said.
He swore under his breath as they lifted Sharon up and carried her to the squad car.
“I think the closest hospital is off I-8,” Charlie said. “Maybe ten minutes away.”
