Satisfied, Bic grabbed a burner phone, sat down on the bed, and dialed.
“Hello?” said Gracie.
“It’s so good to hear your voice.”
Her sweet laugh came back at him. “What, did you get a new number?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to alarm you,” he said, gathering his thoughts.
“What’s wrong?” she asked quickly, “Oh no, please don’t tell me the investors took their money back. I just signed a ten-year lease on that building in Chicago I told you about.”
Bic laughed, “Don’t worry, the money’s already in your account—they can’t take it back.”
“Silly, I mean are you okay.”
“I’m fine, sweetie, but we do have a slight problem.”
“You know I can’t handle the unknown! What is it?”
“One of our potential investors that I showed your thesis to might be trying to steal your idea,” he said, his eyes closed. He hated lying to her, but the truth was not an option.
“Oh my goodness!”
“Don’t worry, this is part of the pharmaceutical business. A cancer-curing drug is the crown jewel to these people, so it’s no surprise someone might be coming after it.”
“What should I do?”
“You need to be very secure with all of your information. I have a friend who can help us out—he’s going to give you a secure new phone number and internet access. But until then, I need you to go completely off the grid for a few days—maybe even stay with a friend.”
“Unc, you’re scaring me,” Gracie said.
“I’ll have it sorted out in a week. We’ve worked hard for this. I just want to be extra careful.”
“Okay.”
“One last thing,” Bic paused. “I need you to put your phone in the microwave and destroy it, then go buy a phone off the shelf—with a new number. Then call me at this number, and I’ll have your number.”
“You serious?”
“I’m afraid so. Don’t take chances with security when it comes to something this big.”
They said their goodbyes and hung up.
Bic lay on his back on the soft silk sheets with his eyes closed. Not enough, he thought. But enough for now.
93
Mack glanced at his watch: 8:10 PM. He and Caroline had spent the last two hours in the back of a surveillance van watching over Colin Shepard’s ranch. The van was parked to the far-right side of the long driveway that led up to the six-car garage on the right edge of the main house. The ranch consisted of a large horse farm surrounded by neat white wooden fencing, with several new red-and-white barns sprawled across the acreage. The main house was elevated on a hill overlooking two lakes.
Sighing, Mack rubbed his eyes and opened the curtain separating the cargo area from the driver’s compartment to look outside through the front windshield. The sun was just dipping below the horizon. Mack figured there would be no action until after dark, but he still had his doubts about parking the van in the driveway of the main house. The white Ford E250 surveillance van resembled a contractor’s service van, with a red fiberglass ladder resting on the rack on top. So that the surveillance van didn’t stick out, they had another white box van parked directly in front of their own, and a grey sedan parked next to that.
The surveillance van was parked on the outside of the driveway. On its right side was a steep, graded hill that led to the first of two lakes—large ponds, really. To the left was an expansive yard sprawling in front of the main house.
Mack glanced over at the two LCD monitors mounted on the desk built into the cargo wall. Each monitor had two video camera feeds, so the screens were split into equal halves to show two images each.
“I’m not feeling too good about this,” he muttered to Caroline.
“We’re in a good spot. Don’t worry.”
Using a joystick control, Mack rotated the roof camera toward the lake. “I wonder if anyone has ever had a little too much to drink and driven off into the lake.”
Caroline, taking a seat next to Mack, grinned. “Falling off that little cliff would sober someone up real fast.”
Mack laughed, then suddenly turned serious. “You need to put on your vest.”
“Relax. This van is a tank. We can’t be shot, and no one can get in.”
He opened the curtain separating the cargo area from the driver's compartment and pointed at the windshield.
She replied, “What of it? That windshield is layered with polycarbonate and is completely bulletproof.”
“Famous last words,” Mack said. “And who was it that badgered me for years about my vest until it finally saved my life?”
“Fine,” she said.
Mack scowled skeptically.
“I said I’ll put it on.”
He smiled, then opened the curtain and looked out the windshield again.
He looked at his watch: 12:05 AM. He squeezed a blue racquetball to help maintain his alertness.
Caroline reached across him to grab a pencil off the desk, leaving sweet jasmine smell of her perfume in her wake. The last six hours had been torture, as she moved around him in the confined space, and he fought the urge to kiss her.
“You’re looking tired,” she said, opening a crossword puzzle book. “Go ahead and take a nap.”
“I guess one of us has to be first to get some sleep.” He shifted in his chair, trying to get comfortable.
The monitor light flickered before Caroline’s face, drawing Mack’s attention to it. A man dressed in dark clothes stood in front of the van.
Mack lunged toward the driver’s compartment and yanked open the curtain. Gabriel’s eyes widened as they peered at Mack through the windshield. Mack froze as he stared at two handguns as big as cannons that he hadn’t noticed on the video feed—pointed toward his head.
The guns flashed bright as twin bullets simultaneously exploded toward Mack. The polycarbonate-layered windshield spider-webbed but remained intact.
Gabriel dropped down, invisible behind the van hood, but as quick as he disappeared, he had jumped up onto the hood of the van and swung a huge ax into the windshield.
The ax blade cut a massive gash into the glass.
He hopped off the hood with tremendous speed, and when he landed, he had thrown the ax aside and had redrawn his two hand cannons.
“Say hello to God for me,” Gabriel slurred through a wicked grin.
Frozen in terror, Mack focused on Gabriel’s hands as he pulled the trigger.
94
Bic lay on the soft penthouse lawn next to the pool, dressed in green fatigues.
He had been lying there for hours. Deeds hadn’t been in his penthouse since 6:00 PM. He was an avid fan of Saturday Night Live, according to the intel, and almost never missed an episode. Deeds was evidently a man of habit, too—like most of these men were—and he always sat in the big leather chair in the center of the media room facing a massive wall-mounted plasma TV.
Bic shifted his position slightly. The shot would be good, clean. With the bullets he was using, the penthouse’s glass wall wouldn’t be a factor.
Bic checked his watch—11:30 PM—maybe Frank wouldn’t be watching his favorite show tonight. Bic felt a faint thrill of relief at the idea of not having to kill this man. But the soldier in him, who was trained to kill, knew he had to carry out his mission, or there were going to be consequences.
A sudden flare of light caught Bic’s eyes through his scope. He looked. The plasma was on now. He could see the top of Deeds’s shoulders and the back of his bald head over the chair.
Bic used the spotting scope to scan the room for any visitors. Deeds, a divorcee, usually slept alone—except for the occasional twenty-something showgirl. But there was no one else to deal with.
Bic reengaged his rifle. Peering steadily through his scope, he zeroed in on the back of Frank Deeds’ head. And with a shallow breath, silently, he squeezed the trigger. Deeds’s body pitch
ed forward. His blood painted the television.
Number eight, crossed off the list. Deeds was dead.
Bic grabbed his rifle, rising quickly. The shot he had just fired was like the shot fired at the start of a race. This death was no accident, and so the clock was ticking. Sometime, hopefully no earlier than tomorrow, Deeds’ body would be discovered, and there would be a manhunt for his killer.
Within minutes, Bic had put his Black Magic disguise back on and disassembled his sniper rifle. Within the next 24 hours, he would drive to Palo Alto to take out number nine, and then it was up to Seattle to finish the list.
And though he dismissed it, that thought, too, gave him an unwelcome thrill of relief.
95
Caroline yelled for Mack to get out of the way, before ramming him away with her shoulder.
Before Gabriel could fire again, she opened fire with an MP5 submachine gun seated against her shoulder. The gun spat fire, sounding like a hundred cannons exploding in the tight confines of the cargo box. The rapid stream of lead smashed the already-battered windshield into ruin, sending a fountain of safety glass and bullets spraying out into the darkness.
She ceased firing, keeping the gun at the ready.
“The safety door,” Caroline yelled as she pointed the MP5, ready to fire if Gabriel reappeared.
Mack sprang into action as he lunged forward and pulled the metal door shut.
He looked back at Caroline. “I froze again,” he said.
“I had your back this time,” she said.
“I felt the heat of that bullet as it zinged past my head. If you hadn’t pushed me—Jesus, my ears are ringing.” Mack looked at the door he had just shut. “I’m not sure we should have locked ourselves inside this box.”
Caroline straightened slowly and looked at the monitors. Everything appeared surreally peaceful, as it had only moments ago, only the intense reek of gunfire betrayed that serenity. What the monitors didn’t show was their assailant. He might be dead just beside the truck. Or he might not be dead at all.
“You think you hit him?” Mack asked.
“Ordinarily, I’d say yes. But the SOB’s pretty wily.”
“My ears are still messed up. Can you hear any movement outside?”
She shook her head. “I can hardly hear anything.”
“We have to go out and deal with this.”
Caroline nodded. As she reached for another clip for the MP5, she stopped, and her fearful expression drew Mack’s eyes to what she saw.
In the monitor. Gabriel had reappeared in front of the van. He paused, then threw a Molotov cocktail through the shattered windshield.
The bottle tumbled end over end like a flaming baton landing in the front section of the van. A solid thud against the steel partition door was followed immediately by the unmistakable roar of an explosion.
Half of the monitor screen went fuzzy.
Mack jumped back into the chair in front of the computer and grabbed the roof camera joystick. Caroline called 911, letting them know they were trapped in a burning vehicle, and a homicidal maniac was trying to coax them out.
Mack rotated the roof camera, trying to ignore the fiery hell outside as he attempted to locate Gabriel. “Hold still, you bastard!”
“The closest fire truck is fifteen minutes,” said Caroline.
“How about the closest morgue?”
“We have two ways out,” Caroline said, eyeing the van’s back doors doubtfully.
“He’s probably waiting for us to come out that way, plus it’s locked on the outside with a padlock.”
Caroline touched the steel partition door at the van’s front, but pulled her fingers away quickly. “Ouch, hot! Well, no way we’re going through that door.”
“Think we can wait it out until the fire department gets here?”
“We’ll be baked alive in minutes—” Caroline coughed, “or choked to death even faster.”
The heat was climbing rapidly as a fine gray haze, and an awful burning plastic smell thickened in the van. Mack pointed the MP5 at the rear door. “Cover your ears.”
He was on the verge of squeezing the trigger when a voice spoke through the walkie-talkie, they had set up with the Shepards. “Are you guys alright? The whole front of your van’s on fire!”
Mack grabbed the two-way radio from the desk. “Mr. Shepard, this is Agent Maddox. Gabriel is still on the loose. Do not come out of your safe room.”
The billionaire answered urgently, “He’s just shoved a piece of cloth into the gas tank and is trying to light it.”
Mack pointed the MP5 at where he thought Gabriel was standing outside the van, and fired four quick shots. The bullets clanked right through the sheet metal.
He picked up the radio. “Can you still see him?”
“He backed away real fast.”
Three shots clanked into the rear of the van. Mack and Caroline dropped to the floor for cover.
“Is he shooting at us?” Mack asked
“No,” Shepard said. “He just ducked, then ran.”
“Police?”
“The cloth is lit! It’s going to blow! Get the hell outta there!” Shepard yelled.
Suddenly a new voice came over the two-way radio. “Hang on, rookies.”
“Moretto!” Mack shouted. “Where are you?”
“Coming down this long-ass driveway.”
“Just step on it, will you? This maniac just shoved a cloth fuse into our gas tank and lit it.”
“Relax, kid, the van’s not gonna blow up.”
“Thank God.”
“At least I’m 75% sure it won’t.”
“Seventy-five percent?”
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” Mack heard Moretto say, just as a thud sounded against the rear door of the van. Given the explosion that immediately followed, Mack knew Gabriel had just hit the back of the van with another Molotov cocktail. Flames began to lick through the bullet holes in the sheet metal.
Parts of the interior near the bullet holes caught fire immediately. Cursing, Mack and Caroline grabbed whatever they could to smother the flames. They succeeded, but the cargo area had filled with acrid smoke.
96
“They’re gonna be burned alive in that holocaust,” Moretto growled, as he turned sharply to the left, off the driveway and onto the front yard, in a military-style Hummer.
TJ, his 9mm ready, scanned for Gabriel out his open passenger window. Moretto broke sharply, almost spinning the Hummer out before stopping about thirty yards from the burning van.
“Kid, hang tight, I’m gonna push you into the lake,” Moretto shouted into his two-way radio.
Mack didn’t respond. The van was engulfed in flames.
“I got you covered,” TJ said, as he jumped out of the Hummer and took up position behind the vehicle. Moretto hit the gas hard and closed the gap rapidly between his Hummer and the driver’s side of van.
Despite the size of his vehicle, the heavy, parked armored van didn’t move easily. Moretto cursed and fought with his truck to get the van to move.
Taking this time was making him a sitting duck, so Moretto reached for the gun he had put on the seat beside him. Oh no! Where the heck was it? It must have been tossed onto the floorboards during the collision. He didn’t see TJ or Gabriel anywhere, but knew both were playing cat and mouse too close to his vehicle.
The flames from the van now consumed the front end of the Hummer.
With the accelerator pedal buried, he continued to push. The Hummer hadn’t been designed as a bulldozer, but it was doing a fine job. Soon the van began to slide down the hill toward the lake. When the grade grew steep enough, the van tipped and began to roll into the water.
The flaming van tumbled down the hill out of sight and into the water with a splash. Satisfied, Moretto scanned the floorboard frantically, but couldn’t see his gun.
He checked his perimeter. Neither Gabriel or TJ were in sight. He felt around
in earnest for his gun, reaching deep into the floorboard areas of both the driver’s and passenger’s sides. Then he heard two shots fired, and TJ screamed his name.
Moretto sat up and looked out the driver’s side window. Gabriel was standing fifteen feet away from the Hummer, engaged in a firefight with TJ, who was pinned down in front of the second van.
Gabriel must have had eyes in the back of his head, Moretto thought, because the instant his head rose above the window frame, Gabriel extended his other arm behind him and loosed several bullets in Moretto’s direction.
Moretto reacted quickly, jamming the Hummer into reverse and hitting the gas as Gabriel fired. The bullets cracked through the window. Two zinged by Moretto, but a third caught him in the left arm. Cursing, he put the Hummer in drive.
As he drove, Moretto turned left to get a bead on Gabriel.
Moretto then turned back to the right. If he didn’t have a gun, he would have to use the only weapon he had to smash the psychotic scumbag.
Moretto crashed the flaming front end of the Hummer into the gray sedan in the last spot he saw Gabriel. Metal scrunched sickeningly as the Hummer lurched to a dead stop.
97
The surveillance van lay on its passenger side at the bottom of the lake. Small streams of water came through several bullet holes, but flowed heavily through a one-inch gap in the front steel partition door. Mack’s greater concern was Caroline. She had hit her head during the fall and was now unconscious.
The crash had also warped the partition door frame, preventing escape in that direction. The cargo area was already half-full of water. Mack stood holding Caroline. He wasn’t sure what happened; all he could recall was their mingled screams as they were tossed around like rag dolls while the van tumbled down the hill.
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