by Dan Ames
Kate was dead.
Killed by Michael Tallon.
June continued to study his phone and watch the messages roll in. In a way, it was hard to believe that both William and Kate were dead. They had done a lot of wet work for him over the years.
It wasn’t a profession with a very long shelf life and those who chose to enter it, had to know they were dancing with the devil.
June was just glad there was one less thing for him to worry about.
On the other hand, Tallon was still alive and now he had joined forces with Pauling.
Even worse, June had been alerted to the news that Pauling had received a message from Holly Johnson, a detail that came to light after an alert that someone had snooped through his CIA profile.
It was easy to put two and two together.
Holly Johnson had discovered June was CIA, and now Pauling knew.
If Pauling and Tallon were as good as he feared, they might be able to put the rest of it together. Maybe Kate had even talked before she died, although he doubted it. That woman was a true psychopath.
Now, he watched the team prepare the ‘runway’ such as it was. A narrow ribbon of country road, blocked off at both ends by official-looking roadblocks. A local cop had stopped by and been convinced by the team’s paperwork. It was a decision that trooper would eventually deeply regret.
At long last, and with great anticipation, the camouflage netting was removed from the drone. It was a modified Reaper, one of the mainstay weapons in the war on terror. It had a top speed of over three hundred miles per hour and cost about fifteen million dollars each.
It wasn’t a particularly intimidating looking aircraft.
But the Hellfire missiles it carried certainly qualified.
There would be plenty of death and destruction delivered by this little beauty, June thought.
It would be controlled by the young man from Montana, who had been trained for years in this technology and who was one hundred percent committed.
Unlike Carl Fackrell, who had been pegged as a key member of the launch team, until he found out the true targets.
And then he’d panicked and run.
Bad decision on his part.
The operator was in a special vehicle, a modified Humvee equipped with a vast array of satellite-based technology. The equipment used to fly the drone, and deliver its payload, had been meticulously installed with expert supervision supplied by the men in the wine cellar. June couldn’t have done it without them.
As the drone was pulled into place by one of the men driving an ATV, June saw the name emblazoned upon its side.
Reacher.
It had been June’s idea to rename the Reaper, Reacher, in honor of the man who’d killed the brilliant Beau Borken.
But once Fackrell realized who the target really was, he’d bailed.
And left June with no choice.
Now, the ATV unhooked from the drone and when it was clear, the drone’s engine came to life.
It was a high-pitched sound and it quickly began to increase in volume.
June stood well away from the aircraft, watching with almost paternal pride. Logan was stationed at one end of the runway, Gina at the other.
They couldn’t afford any interruptions.
When the systems were checked, the high-pitched engine began to increase in volume. The drone began to move forward and barreled down the road. It picked up speed and after an agonizing wait for June, the drone finally lifted off from the ground.
At last, it was airborne and Borken’s legacy was assured, June thought.
He watched Reacher slowly turn and begin to climb, carrying its two very special passengers.
One bound for Wall Street.
The other, the White House.
46
“Kitty Hawk,” Tallon said. He was studying his phone as Pauling drove. “That’s where the first flight actually took place. It’s just north of Kill Devil Hills.”
Since they were coming from the north, it helped their cause that it was closer.
Pauling barreled down the highway that paralleled the ocean. It was flat, and the sky was a clear blue.
“There!” she said, pointing with a finger toward the west. Just above the horizon, she’d spotted what she thought at first was a small plane.
“Up there,” Tallon said, pointing to a side street. Pauling took the turn hard, and veered left. A nature preserve was dead ahead, with an empty field behind it. Pauling spotted a Humvee sporting a huge aerial antenna, along with a pair of smaller vehicles nearby.
“Shit, it’s airborne. We’ve got to take it out,” Tallon said.
Pauling gunned the car ahead, swerving around a truck carrying a set of propane tanks. She raced ahead, looking for a way to get off the main road for a cross street that would lead to the Humvee.
Finally, she saw an unmarked side street, braked hard, and swung the car into a hard turn. Unfortunately, it ran into a dead end. She slammed on the brakes, put the car in reverse, and cut through an alley behind a furniture store.
“That’s it!” Tallon shouted, pointing toward a narrow street leading to the open expanse of land where the Humvee was parked.
Pauling flew into the street and the tires squealed as she brought the car into line. Dead ahead was the Humvee, facing them.
She glanced over at Tallon.
“Are you buckled in?” she said.
“Ready,” he answered. He hadn’t made a peep as the car had rocked and rolled through all of the turns, and Pauling knew the severe motion wasn’t doing any favors for his newly sutured incisions.
Pauling focused on the Humvee dead ahead and she knew exactly what she was going to do. She floored the rental car and it shot forward, as best as its non-performance engine could muster.
A shot rang out and the rear window of the rental car shattered. Pauling glanced behind her and saw Gina Brody standing with her feet wide, a picture-perfect shooting stance, pistol in hand.
More shots rang about but Pauling ignored them. Ahead in the Humvee, she saw the flash of a pale, white face in the windshield.
Pauling gripped the steering wheel and rammed the rental car into the front of the Humvee.
The air bags exploded but Pauling was already out of the car, gun in hand.
Tallon had retrieved a weapon from his bag from the hospital, and he too hit the ground running, albeit a bit more slowly than Pauling.
Ahead, she saw Logan Brody running fast toward them, fifty feet down from the big truck.
Pauling dropped to one knee and shot Logan Brody. He stumbled, and went to the ground, hard. He fell on his face, and didn’t move.
Behind her, more shots popped off and Pauling dove and rolled, knowing that Gina was behind her. Pauling turned, ready to fire, but Gina had run to the side, and approached the Humvee from the opposite direction.
Pauling dropped to the ground as an automatic weapon fired overhead. Maybe someone from the truck firing through the windshield, she figured. Of course, the men inside were armed. But at least one had to be flying the drone. Which possibly meant only one person armed inside.
From her vantage point, she could see Gina trying to flank her. Pauling took careful aim and waited for her to turn the corner at the other end of the Humvee.
Pauling didn’t know where Tallon was.
Pauling could just make out Gina’s black shoes.
There wasn’t time to wait. Every second the drone was flying in the air was a disaster. There would be missiles on board and she didn’t know at what point the missiles had to be fired.
Just then, Pauling saw the woman’s feet shift ever so slightly.
Pauling raised her gun and when Gina’s face peeked around the corner, Pauling fired. It was an instinctive shot, fired reflexively.
A pop of red mist flew from the back of Gina’s head and then the woman fell backward, falling into the weeds next to the road.
Pauling jumped to her feet and raced forward.
More gunfire erupt
ed overhead, and she knew Tallon was inside the Humvee.
47
Tallon knew that the Reaper drone, which is what he believed he’d seen just taking off, was capable of firing missiles. Most likely, Hellfire missiles.
Time was almost up.
He also knew that Pauling’s ramming of the vehicle probably hadn’t affected the drone’s flight. It had probably scared the shit out of the people inside, but they had most likely kept at what they were doing.
So the only thing to do was to go in.
He shot the door’s hinge with his pistol until it swung open and he ducked his head inside, immediately withdrawing it as a burst of automatic fire came from inside. His glimpse had shown him one man at the controls, another with a rifle, covering him.
Tallon eased forward, reached around the open door and fired blindly inside and then, without waiting for a response, he dove upward, landing on his right side, and winced as he felt his wounds split open.
The man with the rifle was down, but still alive. It looked like one of his legs had been shot out from beneath him. He had dropped the rifle and was now trying to regain control of it, until Tallon shot him in the head.
The man sitting in front of the navigation screen was wearing a pair of headphones. He had a gun strapped to his waist, but he hadn’t taken his hands from the controls, one of which was a joystick.
“Dude, I’ve got two Hellfire missiles twenty miles away,” he said calmly. “Either drop the gun, or I obliterate the first city I see. According to my calculations, that would be Richmond–”
Tallon shot him in the head. Twice.
He slumped forward, and Tallon quickly freed the joystick from the dead man’s hand and pushed him out of the chair onto the floor, where he landed next to his comrade.
Tallon took the dead man’s place and studied the screen in front of him. He took his time, hoping that Pauling was in control of the situation outside. At this point, he was extremely vulnerable.
He’d flown multiple drones in Afghanistan and knew the basics of how they worked. Those had been Predators, though, not Reapers.
Quit making excuses, he told himself.
Quickly, he made sense of the navigation screen and controls in front of him. It was like riding a bike…that was equipped with two of the most dangerous missiles known to man.
Tallon knew he wouldn’t be able to land the drone and he also realized he didn’t need to. Missiles needed to be armed. Until that happened, they weren’t particularly dangerous. They were no different than a bullet or a hand grenade.
So instead of trying anything tricky, he simply, gently, adjusted the flight path of the drone and watched it slowly bank and head on a new, directly eastward course.
He waited, knowing that at full speed the drone could cover several hundred miles per hour. The good thing was, they had been flying it up along the coast, so in only a matter of minutes, it was well offshore.
Tallon simply let it cruise further and further out into the open ocean.
He pointed it toward Europe and waited until it was at least fifty miles offshore and then he sank it into the Atlantic Ocean.
With great satisfaction, he watched the green dot disappear from the screen.
48
There was a reason Charles June had focused on administration, as opposed to being a soldier in the field. It was a fact that he’d known all his life, really, and it had taken the last one-and-a-half minutes to verify what had been deep in his heart all of these years.
He was a coward.
It was why he had been so drawn to a man like Beau Borken and his ideology. It had appealed to him because of its strength and power, two characteristics that had always been lacking within him.
The final proof was before him.
June had done nothing besides watch helplessly as Lauren Pauling and Michael Tallon had rammed their car into his precious Humvee. The very vehicle he had put so much time and effort into acquiring. Inside, he was screaming at himself to do something but he couldn’t.
He was a coward.
It was why he’d had Logan and Gina kill the men in the wine cellar, while he stood by and watched.
Just like now.
He’d even seen Tallon break into the Humvee, stared as Pauling shot both Logan and Gina, like he was a spectator at a sporting event, watching his home team lose.
June stood in the middle of the road, a gun in his hand but pointing harmlessly at the ground, and watched as Lauren Pauling walked toward him.
She’s older than I imagined, he thought.
“Where’s Jack Reacher?” he asked her.
“I wish I knew,” Pauling said.
June put the gun in his mouth and fired.
49
The fireplace on the back patio was glowing with fresh firewood. The flames lit up the night sky, and shadows danced at its edges. Overhead, a canopy of stars paraded over the dark silhouettes of the mountains below.
Tallon sipped from a cold bottle of beer and resisted the urge to scratch his stitches. They’d been irritating him ever since his return from North Carolina two days ago and he still had at least a week and a half left before they could be safely removed.
It was going to be a long wait, unless he found a way to help pass the time. The thought made him glance over at the chair next to him.
Lauren Pauling was leaning back, her legs outstretched, a glass of wine in her hand.
“I’m so glad I convinced you to come home with me,” Tallon said. “The invitation was purely for medicinal reasons.”
She laughed. In the dim light, her white teeth flashed.
“Next, you’ll be asking me to wear a nurse’s uniform,” she said.
“Do you have one?”
Pauling laughed again. “This is nice,” she said. “I can see why you chose a place like this, after what we’ve just been through.”
There had been plenty of questions from the local cops, and the local FBI office got involved, too. Eventually, there were more men in dark suits in Whitman Beach, North Carolina, than tourists on the beach.
The drone and its missiles had been safely retrieved by the Navy, and Pauling’s ex-colleagues had given her the background on Charles June. He’d been a young man when Jack Reacher had killed Beau Borken. Turns out, he’d built his life around carrying on his crazy mentor’s plan, and getting some revenge in the process.
It hadn’t quite worked out that way.
“Thanks, I like it here,” Tallon said, responding to Pauling. “It does get a bit lonely at times, though,” he admitted.
“I know the feeling,” Pauling responded, with a frankness that surprised both of them.
A coyote howled in the distance.
“I’m still amazed we didn’t break open any of your stitches,” she said, referring to both the shootout in Kitty Hawk, as well as the time spent in his bedroom upon their return from North Carolina.
“Probably just a fluke,” he said. “Want to see if we can do it again?”
Pauling finished her glass of wine and licked her lips.
“Absolutely,” she said.
* * *
THE END
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Also by Dan Ames
The JACK REACHER Cases #1 (A Hard Man To Forget)
The JACK REACHER Cases #2 (The Right Man For Revenge)
The JACK REACHER Cases #3 (A Man Made For Killing)
The JACK REACHER Cases #4 (The Last Man To Murde
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The Jack Reacher Cases #5 (The Man With No Mercy)
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HARD ROCK (John Rockne Mystery #2)
COLD JADE (John Rockne Mystery #3)
LONG SHOT (John Rockne Mystery #4)
EASY PREY (John Rockne Mystery #5)
BODY BLOW (John Rockne Mystery #6)
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SUGAR (Wade Carver Thriller #2)
ANGEL (Wade Carver Thriller #3)
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THE KILLING LEAGUE (Wallace Mack Thriller #1)
THE MURDER STORE (Wallace Mack Thriller #2)
FINDERS KILLERS (Wallace Mack Thriller #3)
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DEATH BY SARCASM (Mary Cooper Mystery #1)
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