JAMES RIGEL REACHED his car, slid the Smith and Wesson tactical rifle he had stolen from the teen’s father into the footwell of the front passenger seat, then dropped to his knees and examined the underside of the vehicle for the presence of a tracking device. He checked inside the engine compartment, under the wheel wells, inspected the trunk, looked under the seats, opened the glove box, and discarded its contents onto the floor.
Nothing. As far as he could tell the car was clean. He could find no unusual devices of any kind.
He considered leaving the car on the street and stealing a new set of wheels, thereby being assured his new ride would be free of tracking devices. But that might bring with it a new problem. It was now ten o’clock in the evening. Although most individuals had retired for the night and no longer had an immediate use for their vehicles until morning, it was possible that the car he chose to steal could belong to a shift worker who, upon heading out the door for work and finding their car missing, would call the police right away. Rigel couldn’t take the chance of calling unwanted attention to himself. It was best to stay with the vehicle he was driving and hope it was bug free. He started the car and drove down the street. One block over, Angel of Mercy Hospital rose above the rooflines of the houses. Red and blue lights danced off the medical facility’s concrete walls and mirrored glass windows. The police were still on site. Rigel removed the Glock from his waistband and placed it between the seats for quick access.
He was careful to avoid parking in the same lot he had used on his previous trip to the hospital. Instead, he turned into the parking lot of a nearby apartment complex and viewed the activity taking place at the front entrance from an inconspicuous distance.
Two black Chevy Suburban’s, unmarked FBI S.W.A.T. vehicles, were pulling out. Rigel watched the men assigned to the third and last vehicle converse with an FBI agent dressed in full tactical gear. The neck of one of the men was wrapped in white medical gauze. Rigel recognized him as the agent who had pursued him into the mechanical room earlier in the evening after his attempt to kill Jordan Quest had failed and with whom he had struggled until the ill-timed intervention of the maintenance engineer. Zippy must have done an effective job after all. Too bad he hadn’t had another few minutes. He could have saved the hospital the cost of a few feet of sterilized dressing. The fed would be in the morgue. One less cop in the world to worry about.
The agent stepped into the vehicle. The Suburban’s brake lights glared. This must be the detail assigned to protect his target. They were moving her.
Change of plan. There would be no need to try to kill her in the hospital. He would follow the motorcade from a safe distance, watch where they took her, plan his next attack carefully, then strike when they least expected it, hard and fast, and take out the woman and her family.
As the third SUV rolled down the ramp, an unmarked LAPD sedan took its place at the rear of the motorcade. Rigel waited until the vehicles had traveled a dozen car lengths past him before pulling out of the apartment complex and merging into the traffic flow.
He fell back and followed the motorcade.
39
HARRISON TASKER SLOWED as he approached Angel of Mercy Hospital. The black and white LAPD units which had earlier been inspecting vehicles at the staff parking exit in search of the assailant had since left the hospital and returned to patrol. A convoy of three black SUV’s, escorted front and back by two unmarked LAPD sedans, pulled out of the main entrance. He had seen these same vehicles earlier in the evening when he had come to the hospital in search of Rigel and Jordan Quest and been informed by security about the attack on the FBI agent. He suspected Rigel had been the attacker. The guard told him Jordan was upstairs being treated for her injuries. Miraculously, she had survived the horrific jet crash of which he’d been the architect. But any opportunity for him to kill the woman and her surviving family members had been rendered impossible by the sheer police presence. It was in his best interest to leave the hospital before being detained and questioned by authorities.
Once again, Tasker opened the GPS tracking software and waited for Rigel’s location to appear on the screen. Perhaps a simple technical glitch had been responsible for the previous loss of signal. No luck. The bastard had figured out he was being tracked and either disposed of his phone or found a way to jam the signal.
Sitting behind the wheel of the Mustang, every part of Tasker’s body felt as though it was on fire. The glass shards and metal debris embedded in his hands and body from the shrapnel bombs were a part of him now. They poked out at jagged angles beneath the surface of his fire-ravaged skin, the result of his direct exposure to the inferno in the hallway and were now impossible to remove by any means other than surgery. Pain ravaged him. Tasker desperately wanted to pull the car over, rip open the medical kit, down another dose of pain killers and rest. But his priority now was not to lose visual on the motorcade. Jordan Quest was in one of the cars. He had a contract to fulfill, which he now figured would likely be his last. The damage to his body from the makeshift bombs and the fire was irreparable and severely restricted his mobility. He was having difficulty maintaining a grip on the steering wheel. It slipped in his hands as he changed lanes. The damage to the nerves in his body was severe. His left hand felt heavy, cold, and numb. He tried to lift the Tec-9 with his right hand but instead fumbled with the weapon. His melted skin had congealed around the shrapnel, and with even the slightest amount of exertion, pulled against the bits and pieces of embedded foreign matter. The accompanying grating action felt as though a thousand razor blades were slicing away at his body from beneath his skin. He would not be able to lift the weapon while driving, much less fire it. The pain from the kickback alone would result in a loss of control over the gun and trying to aim it with any degree of precision would be damn near impossible. Bullets would spray everywhere but in the direction of their intended target and leave him vulnerable to taking return fire. Tasker remembered Tim’s last words when he’d left him standing in front of his burning home: When you find him, set fire to the bastard. He looked at his hands. He wanted to scream in anger. His career as a professional assassin was over and he knew it. He would see to it that Rigel suffered a long-lasting death when at last he located him, partly to satisfy New York’s wishes, but also because he simply despised the man. But now in his depleted state, granting young Tim Crawford his wish seemed as satisfying a battle plan as any.
The motorcade sped up, opening the gap between them. Tasker maintained his speed and distance behind the vehicles so as not to arouse suspicion or give the police a reason to believe they were being followed. Only a few vehicles shared the road. Perhaps the city’s residents had been dissuaded from venturing outside by weather reports that warned of the severity of the storm that threatened to sweep across Los Angeles, bringing with it heavy rain, thunder and lightning. The rain had begun. Flashes of lightning serrated the night, followed by the low rumble of thunder. Rigel groaned as he raised his hand and engaged the windshield wipers. The rubber blades swept back and forth intermittently.
Ahead, a car pulled out of an apartment complex and merged into traffic. Tasker watched it fall in behind the unmarked LAPD sedan.
40
ZOE TOOK CHARGE. “Stay on those monitors, Lily. Let us know if you see anything we need to be concerned about. Shay, you and I will go through the cupboards. There are a couple of backpacks hanging on the wall beside the ladder. Grab anything you think we’ll need, especially if it can be used as a weapon. After that, we’re out of here.”
“Got it,” Shannon said. Lily nodded.
Together the women divided the items and filled the packs. Shannon’s contained knives and forks, a safety lighter, two packs of matches, candles, three canisters of bear spray, two small cans of Sterno camping fuel, a flashlight, spare batteries, several packets of dehydrated food, and two bottles of water. Zoe’s pack contained the same items plus a kerosene lamp, a bottle of fuel, and the hand crank radio. Lily’s contained food, water, a flashlight, t
he medical kit, and a map of the region.
“That should do it,” Zoe said. She unhooked the climbing ropes from the wall, gave one to Shannon. “Here’s the plan: If we run into trouble outside, we separate. It’ll be harder for them to catch us if we split off in separate directions. Lily will stay with you. If those assholes should catch up to you, don’t think twice. You pull out that Walther, point it, and unload every last round into them. Getting Lily out of this hellhole is priority one. Deal?”
“Deal,” Shannon replied.
Zoe hugged her sister. “Shay, I know you’re way out of your comfort zone here. But we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.” She pointed to the infrared camera monitors. “Those guys are drug dealers and murderers. We know for a fact they’ve killed Lily’s parents. God knows how many more lives they’ve taken. We’re not going to give them the chance to take ours. Okay?”
Shannon’s voice was unsteady. Her body trembled. “Okay,” she said.
Zoe held her firmly by the shoulders “Promise me, Shannon.”
Shannon took a deep breath. “I do. I promise.”
“Good,” Zoe said. She pointed to the top of the ladderway. “You’ll need to keep it together up there. Once we leave here, we’re not coming back. Like Lily said, releasing the leaf-net camouflage over the hatch cover was a one-shot deal. We can’t re-enter the shelter and cover up the hatch. Which means if they search the forest a second time, they’ll find it. It won’t matter that we’ve locked ourselves in. They’ll trap us inside, and with no secondary exit this place won’t be a shelter anymore. It’ll be a crypt.”
“How do you figure that?” Lily asked.
“For starters,” Zoe said, “the hatch cover is made of steel. They could weld it shut and trap us down here with absolutely no way of getting out. Sure, we might have fresh air. But eventually our food and water supplies would run out and we’d starve to death. Or the generators will die. That means no heat, ventilation, or air conditioning. Or maybe they drill a hole in the hatch cover, hook a hose up to the ATV’s exhaust, feed it through, fill the place with carbon monoxide until they figure we’re dead, then blow it up. Or they skip the gas because they realize an explosion could probably be seen or heard and instead pump the place full of water and drown us like trapped rats.”
“You’re giving this way too much thought,” Shannon said.
“I’m just keeping it real,” Zoe said. “This is a one-way trip. We leave and don’t come back. Agreed?”
Shannon looked at Lily. The girl nodded.
“All right,” Zoe said. “It’s settled. Grab your packs. I’ll leave first. Shannon, you follow. Lily, you’ll stay three rungs below Shannon. We’ll wave you up when it’s clear.”
“Why can’t I come up right behind you?” Lily protested.
“Because if for some reason the cameras have malfunctioned, and Emmett and his sons are still out there in the forest looking for us, we’ll have enough time to drop the hatch, brush enough leaves over it so it can’t be seen, and make a run for it. Which means they won’t find you. If they catch us, we’ll just tell them you’re long gone. You’ll still be safe down here, at least for the time being.”
“But…”
“No buts, Lily!” Zoe warned. “The topic isn’t open for discussion. You may be the kid genius here, but I’ve been in a situation like this before and lived to tell about it. You’ll do what I say to the letter. Because all our lives depend on it, not just yours. Am I clear?”
Lily stared at the floor. “Clear.”
“Good,” Zoe said. She placed her foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and looked up at the hatch.
Fight or flight.
Life or death.
Live.
She turned to Shannon. “Ready?”
Shannon nodded. “Ready.”
Zoe let out a long breath. “Okay,” she said. “Here we go.”
At the top of the ladder, Zoe removed the Walther PPK from her waistband, raised the handgun to eye level, released the lock, pushed open the hatch, and scrambled up and out of the shelter. She knelt on the wet ground and swung the weapon left to right.
The light drizzle that had fallen when they had first escaped the stables had since transitioned to a hard rain. It felt cold and quickly soaked her to the skin.
The forest air carried with it the sounds of the night.
Horses whinnied in the distant stables. In the house that had been Lily’s prison for the last year, men argued.
“Clear,” Zoe said.
Shannon and Lily scrambled out of the shelter and joined her at the surface.
“Now what?” Shannon asked.
“I have a plan,” Zoe said. “Follow me. Stay close.”
“What are you going to do?” Lily asked.
“What should have been done a year ago,” Zoe replied as she walked in the direction of the house. “I’m going to chop the head off the snake.”
41
THE FIVE VEHICLES merged into the right lane, rounded the corner, and headed for the Interstate. Two turns later they entered the highway. Rigel slipped in behind them, changing lanes frequently to avoid detection, and followed them for several miles until they reached their exit and stopped at the light. Each of the Suburban’s had taken a separate lane. The first prepared to turn left, the second maintained the center lane, intending to continue straight through the intersection, while the third signaled a right turn. Both LAPD sedans sat behind the center lane vehicle. When the light turned green, the cars sped up and changed lanes, the center car switching with the left, the left with the right; a tactical evasive maneuver, like a Las Vegas street hustle of find-the-pea-under-the-shell but with cars traveling at high speed.
As a professional, Rigel was trained to pay attention to minute details. The SUV the injured agent had gotten into bore one subtle difference to the other vehicles: its running lights were marginally brighter than the other two Suburban’s. A problem with its electrical system perhaps, but nonetheless evident. To Rigel’s trained eye it wouldn’t have mattered if ten cars were assigned to the motorcade. The brighter lights of the vehicle gave it away. Rigel watched it race across the road from the right lane to the left and execute a hard-right turn at the next intersection.
He followed the car and pulled into the driveway of a home with an unobstructed view of the long road down which the vehicle had traveled. The car slowed, turned left, then proceeded up a steep hill to a stately stone mansion. Two men in business suits, accompanied by uniformed members of the LAPD, met the vehicle at the gates. Rigel observed the driver as he exited the car. It was the same FBI agent he had seen at the hospital dressed in full tactical gear. The passenger exited the vehicle and shook hands with the other police officers. In the harsh security perimeter lights of the mansion Rigel could make out the bandage around his neck.
Bingo.
He watched the Suburban proceed beyond the main gate and drive to the front entrance of the immense home.
Rigel put his car into gear and drove across the street. An estate home, similar in size and design to the one at which the agents had arrived, was under construction. He parked out of sight, pulled a protective plastic tarp off a bundle of clay roofing tiles, and went to work. He pulled the trunk release lever, stepped to the back of the car, removed a long narrow suitcase, released the thumb latches, clicked open the case and withdrew a sniper rifle. He attached its scope and inserted the clip. He removed his phony service technicians’ jacket, folded it neatly and placed it in the trunk. From a travel bag, Rigel removed a pair of bulletproof Kevlar pants and tactical jacket and put on the clothing. He placed the OC foggers, spare rifle clip and the Glock he had stolen from the teens home into the pockets of the vest, along with Zippy. Now well-armed and protected against assault from small-arms fire, Rigel walked through the wet, dark grounds of the construction site. The home shouldered into a large parcel of undeveloped hillside on the road opposite the mansion. Rigel ascended the hillside, found cover, and
rested the rifle barrel on a tree branch. He turned on the scope, adjusted the eyepiece and brought the mansion into sharp focus. A four-foot concrete wall surrounded the property. Built into the front gate was a bronze plaque bearing the name of the property: Farrow Estate.
Jackpot.
Rigel retracted the rifle and continued through the trees, keeping a close eye on the two agents patrolling the grounds.
Cloaked in the darkness, weapon in hand, enveloped in the powerful smell of geosmin rising from the ground beneath his feet, footfalls dampened by the falling rain, Rigel maneuvered cautiously through the hillside. Lightning flashed across the sky and lit up the night, followed seconds later by a giant boom. Rigel counted the seconds before the next bolt of electricity cut across the clouds and a second thunderclap shook the ground: one… two… three… boom!
The storm was rolling in, gaining momentum, intensity, and ferocity. It would be upon him any second. He would use it to his advantage.
Rigel identified his ideal vantage point. He settled himself into position at the foot of the tree, readjusted the scope, and sighted the two sentries.
42
SPECIAL AGENTS CARTER and Lehman met the motorcade at the front entrance of the Farrow Estate and conferred with Director Dunn as Chris Hanover and Jordan exited the lead vehicle.
“Mr. Farrow’s on-site security walked us through the estate, sir,” Carter said, raising his voice over the hammering rain. “The place is a fortress. Top of the line Crestor security system, cameras everywhere except for the bathrooms and bedrooms, external cams with thermal imaging heat sensors, you name it. The Bureau should be lucky enough to have a safe house as secure as this.”
Jordan smiled.
“Speaking of Farrow’s detail,” Dunn said. “Have they been relieved?”
The Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Series: Books 1-3: The Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Series Boxset Book 1 Page 17