“And the odd behavior your teammates reported, all that was an act, too.”
“Carrington wanted to make sure you couldn’t say no, but that was more to manipulate Raveis than you. It was important that Raveis didn’t doubt you for a second, both before you went and after you got back.”
Tom thought about that, then said, “You took a terrible risk. I don’t mean just coming back to work like you did. Trusting Carrington was a huge gamble.”
“I know. When he showed up at the farm, I almost killed him right there.”
“What stopped you?”
“You would have wanted to hear him out. So I decided to do what you’d do.”
Tom nodded in appreciation.
“If Carrington is right, Tom, if there is a shadow agent high up in the organization, and if the lives of everyone you and I care about are in danger, then how could I not want to help him reach out to you? And considering what just happened, I’d say the ‘if’ has been removed from that equation. Now it’s a matter of finding the ‘who.’ And then killing that motherfucker.”
Tom heard vehicle doors being closed.
The transfer of the prisoner from the Bronco to the Blazer had been completed.
Lyman was inside and seated next to the woman. Rickerson, Torres, and Durand were standing by outside the vehicle, watching Tom and Grunn.
Tom said to her, “Are there any tracking devices on either of those vehicles?”
“No.”
“You’re positive?”
“Yes, we sweep them daily.”
“Good. I’ll need the Bronco.”
“Yeah, of course. But where are you going?”
“To see a friend of ours.”
He could tell by Grunn’s reaction that she had a good idea which friend he was talking about.
After all, Tom only had a few.
And there were fewer still whom he’d seek out in a time of need.
“No one knows where he is.”
“I do.”
“I’ll go with you. Safety in numbers.”
“No, I have something else for you to do.”
“What?”
“I need you to deliver a message for me. I’m guessing the next train into the city isn’t till dawn, but you should be able to find a cab near the station that will take you in. Once you’re there, grab another cab and have it take you to 166 Delancey Street.”
“What’s at 166 Delancey Street?”
Tom looked toward the vehicle. Torres, Durand, and Rickerson were still watching him.
He shifted his position, putting Grunn between the team and him, then mouthed a single word.
Hammerton.
Grunn nodded. “What’s the message?”
“That I need him to stay out of this.”
“You really think he’ll listen to me?”
“It’s your job to make sure he does. Get him to Shelter Island, drag him out there if that’s what it takes.”
“Then what?”
“Wait there with him till you hear from me.”
“And if we don’t?”
Tom didn’t respond.
“I can do more than babysit, Tom. Let me come with you, let me help you. I didn’t come this far just to sit out the rest of the game.”
“This is what I need from you, Grunn. Please. And anyway, if things go bad, that’s where a lot of us will be heading. It’ll be good to have you already there.”
She looked at him, then nodded and said, “Do you need anything other than the vehicle?”
“Tell Torres that once they reach their destination I need her to take a photo of our prisoner and text it to me. And I’d given her a job to do before we left New York, but I want her to hold off for now, stay put till I get back to them.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Someone should stay behind and keep an eye on this place. If we need to come back to it, we’ll want to know it wasn’t compromised.”
“It’s Rickerson’s safe house. He’ll stay. Anything else?”
Tom’s clothes were caked with cold mud, and he was without a sidearm, but he would be able to take care of both problems where he was going.
He would also have access to a computer there, which he needed to view the contents of the flash drive in his pocket.
“No,” he said. “Thanks, Sarah. For everything.”
She smiled warmly.
Tom remembered the time they had all spent together at the Cahill compound.
He and Stella, Grunn and Krista, Cahill and Sandy Montrose, and Valena Nakash.
Each had been wounded in one way or another, but more than just the initial recovery from their respective injuries had occurred in the week they’d stayed there.
Tom had found himself, suddenly, to be a part of a family.
He’d lost his first family to violence, but it was the collective act of finally ending the Algerian that had deepened this newly found bond during their stay at Shelter Island.
There were moments during that week, in fact, when Tom entertained fleeting thoughts of never leaving—an odd thought for a wanderer like him.
But the outside world had come crashing back in when Raveis and the Colonel had visited, bearing the news of James Carrington’s betrayal.
After that, there was no staying put, and no safety to be found in numbers.
The only choice left was for that family to scatter.
The same choice Tom faced now.
All he wanted from those he cared about was for them to run and hide and stay out of harm’s way.
As long as he remained the target, they would be safe.
And as long as he kept moving, maybe he could do what needed to be done.
“I’ll see you,” Tom said to Grunn.
“Good luck, Tom.”
He nodded. “You, too.”
Tom was the first to leave, backing the Bronco out of the garage and turning around in the small lot while Rickerson unlocked and opened the gate.
Driving away, Tom looked into the rearview mirror and watched as the Blazer pulled out, too, with Torres behind the wheel.
Durand followed on foot as the Blazer cleared the gate and came to a stop on the street. Grunn was walking beside her and talking, likely telling her to relay to Torres what it was Tom wanted her to do.
Then Durand climbed into the vehicle as Rickerson locked the gate and returned to the building.
The last Tom saw of the group, Grunn was walking toward the train station three blocks away, and the Blazer was heading in the direction of the on-ramp to I-95 south.
Tom’s route was a different one—up Route 8 north to a town called Thomaston. There he would get off the highway and follow familiar roads to Litchfield, after which it was a straight run up through Goshen and Sharon to Route 7, a winding ride that would take him past farms that predated the American Revolution.
For Tom, this journey into the past was more than just scenic.
Eighteen
His destination was the small town of Canaan, in the northwest corner of Connecticut.
It was here that Tom had first met Stella.
He had wandered into town on a cold spring day, spotted the old railcar diner, and, being a history buff, stopped there for an early lunch.
Stella was waiting tables.
One look at her, and he’d decided to stick around for a few days.
After a few days of quiet recon, he had finally offered to buy her dinner.
It wasn’t long before she asked him to move into her apartment, located above a building she owned on Main Street.
It was the last of the multiple real estate holdings she’d once had—the only one she hadn’t lost during the recession.
Heading back to that town now, Tom couldn’t help but think of the life he and Stella had built together—the two of them working hard to pay the bills, spending their precious time off together, indulging in the luxury of Friday night takeout.
To each, all that mattered was being wit
h the other.
More than that, the bad luck that they had endured prior to their meeting had started suddenly to look a little more like good fortune.
Without that series of setbacks and struggles, they never would have crossed paths.
It was this life that had been disrupted by Tom’s first encounter with Raveis and the Colonel, via Carrington. Another op for the Colonel a year and a half later had the same effect on the new life that Tom and Stella had built in Vermont.
A second life, a hard life, but one that they’d hoped was theirs to live in peace.
It was that second op that revealed a dangerous truth—that Tom was considered a high-value target by a man known only as the Benefactor, and had been for all of his adult life.
For Tom and Stella, outsiders up to that point, the only safe place for them was deep inside the Colonel’s organization.
Their only hope for survival was to learn all that Raveis and his men had to teach.
But the sanctuary they had sought was a false one, Tom saw that now.
If he could come under attack while waiting in deep cover for his work to begin, then how safe was Stella?
Wherever she was, whatever was being done to her at this moment in the name of training, she was in danger.
Ten minutes after leaving Bridgeport, Tom was passing the exit for the Merritt.
Five minutes after that he was passing Ansonia.
From the elevated highway he could see down into the valley floor the city occupied, and for an instant he glimpsed the factory where he’d hidden the Colt.
He considered exiting the highway, making his way to the factory, and retrieving the weapon, but he decided against it.
There were no bodies of water deep enough between here and Canaan for him to dispose of it.
And anyway, his destination was still an hour away, and time wasn’t on his side.
He didn’t dare speed, but he pushed the sixty-five-mile-an-hour limit whenever he could, his eyes always scanning ahead for state police cruisers lying in wait on the side of the road.
It was almost two a.m. by the time he reached Thomaston, which meant he would reach Canaan at quarter to three.
The moment he exited the highway, he pulled over and removed his burner phone from his pocket, manually entered a phone number from memory, then composed a brief, coded text and sent it off.
The reply came through less than a minute later.
He was already driving again when he sent his response, which included the photo he’d taken of the man he had killed—the designated marksman armed with an M14.
The text also included a request to submit that photo for facial recognition.
Canaan was as he remembered it, though he really hadn’t expected it to change.
Towns like that didn’t.
He passed the railcar diner, turned right at the light. A half block down on the left, just prior to the second-run movie theater, was Stella’s building.
The storefront windows were covered with sheets of brown paper held in place by masking tape, but the windows of the apartment above were open to the cool night air.
They were also lit.
Tom pulled into the narrow alley between the building and the theater, steered around to the small back lot, and parked.
He had once parked there every night for six months.
There were two vehicles there now, both with New York state plates—a Ford Mustang 5000 and a Ford Ranger. Neither vehicle was less than ten years old.
Walking through the alley to the street, he remembered those nights he’d come home, spent from work but eager for his shower and his time with Stella.
Mere hours before sleep took them both.
He surveyed the empty Main Street as he walked to the door, pausing when the phone in his pocket vibrated.
Removing it, he glanced at the display and saw the photo he’d been waiting for.
It showed the woman with the dark hair, wide face, and high cheekbones who was now their captive looking straight into the camera.
She still had the look of determination Tom had seen as they’d fled the scene of the crash in the Bronco.
The photo was an indication that Torres and the others had arrived at the safe house, its location still unknown to Tom.
And that soon Lyman would begin the process of “softening” their captive in preparation for interrogation.
Putting that out of his mind, Tom slipped inside the building and started climbing the narrow stairs. He was midway up when the apartment door at the top opened and Charlie Cahill appeared.
Sandy Montrose was standing behind him.
Tom strode to the last step, greeted his friends, and entered his erstwhile home.
Nineteen
The quick shower and change of clothes were restorative, and a cup of coffee was waiting for Tom on the kitchen table when he walked in.
Sandy was leaning against the counter, a mug in her hand.
Tom noted a bottle of Irish whiskey, its cap removed, on the countertop beside her.
In the sink were Tom’s boots, which had been cleaned of mud. Next to the sink was a carving knife.
Sandy handed the boots to Tom. “Charlie’s clothes fit you okay enough, but we don’t have any shoes in your size, so I sliced up the soles of your boots a little bit, in case you left usable footprints back in the mud.”
Tom sat down at the table and glanced at the bottom of his boots, both of which had several crude star patterns cut into the hard rubber tread. He thanked her, then pulled the boots on one at a time.
Though the attack had occurred less than three hours ago, Tom felt as if time were slipping away.
Driving to Canaan, then briefing Cahill and Sandy on everything that had happened, followed by the necessary shower—every minute counted, and he’d lost so many minutes already.
“Where’s Cahill?”
“Downstairs.”
Tom had emptied his pockets prior to the shower, placing the few items they’d contained on the table.
He’d had with him his cell phone, pocketknife, wallet, Surefire penlight, and the flash drive Carrington had given him. Attached to his rigger’s belt had been the Kydex holster for his HK45c and the double-mag carrier containing his two backup mags.
Looking at the pile of items now, Tom saw that everything was present except the flash drive and cell phone.
Sandy saw him studying his belongings.
“Cahill has the cell phone and the flash drive,” she explained. “Once I check you out, you can go down and talk to him.”
She turned and opened a cupboard above the kitchen counter, removing from it a leather doctor’s bag, then stepped to the table and pulled out the chair next to Tom’s.
“I’m fine,” Tom said.
“You were in a car crash and a gunfight, Tom.” She placed the bag on the table. “Anyway, I have my orders.”
Tom finished tying his boots as Sandy readied a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope. Her eyes went to the cut on his forehead.
“Any dizziness, nausea, vomiting?”
“No.”
“Blurred vision, ringing in your ears?”
“No,” Tom lied.
His ears rang, but he was confident that was from him being exposed to small-arms fire without the benefit of hearing protection.
And anyway, if it were something more than that, he didn’t want to know.
“That Kevlar vest you’re wearing under your shirt, did it take any shots?”
Tom shook his head. “No.”
“So just the cut on your forehead, then.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember when your last tetanus shot was?”
“I don’t.”
“I’m guessing probably back when you were on active duty.”
“That sounds right.”
As she worked on Tom, first checking his vital signs and then tending to the cut on his head, he was keenly aware of the fact that he was in the presence of some
one who had just months ago suffered a tremendous loss.
Her husband, Kevin, a veterinarian, had been shot dead in front of her as they were both rushing to lend aid to whom they had believed at the time to be a comrade in need.
After that Sandy had been used as a human shield by the man who had gunned down her husband as he attempted to kill others, Stella among them.
Tom hadn’t witnessed that event, only heard about it from those who had been there.
But the horror was something he knew full well.
This made Sandy Montrose the very personification of the pain he sought to avoid—now and always.
She also reminded him of another terrible fact: Garrick’s wife, too, was now a widow and likely didn’t even know it yet.
Sandy prepared a syringe, then injected Tom’s left shoulder.
“I can make you some food,” she said.
Tom shook his head. “No, thanks.”
She was watching him closely, studying his eyes. “How long since you last slept, Tom?”
He lied again. “Not too long.”
“Seventy-two hours with no sleep is pretty much all the brain can handle. After that, cognitive function decays dramatically. So does reaction time. And it only gets worse from there.”
Tom was nearly twenty-four hours into that countdown, but he couldn’t think about that now.
Again, he assured her that he was fine.
“You and Charlie are cut from the same cloth,” she said. “Why is it you Type A personalities refuse to listen to your doctor?”
Tom half smiled at the joke but said nothing. He could smell the whiskey on her breath now.
Sandy had first met Cahill when they were both teenagers—he a troubled prep-school student, she the daughter of the school’s resident physician, a man who would become Cahill’s mentor.
The man who single-handedly had set him on his life’s course.
Dartmouth, enlistment in the marines, three tours of duty before joining Force Reconnaissance, the corps’ elite special operations unit.
Upon his medical discharge for grave wounds sustained on the night he’d saved Tom’s life, Cahill had been recruited by James Carrington into the Colonel’s private-sector Special Activities Division—a nongovernmental equivalent to the CIA’s black ops group.
The Shadow Agent Page 11