Home Port (A Deep State, Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller) (Long Haul Home Book 4)

by Dana Fraser

  McFadden turned his attention to the piles he had made from some of the items in Thomas’ pack. He fanned out the thirteen plastic cards taken from among the men Thomas had killed.

  He picked a few at random, reading the name embossed on each before flinging it across the table at Thomas.

  “Roy Sparks, William Harris Howard, Paul Gentry…”

  Trailing off, he made a show of looking at each of the remaining cards. “There are a lot of IDs here. None of them are for a Thomas Sand.”

  “I told you I’m on a kill list,” Thomas sniped. “I dumped my identification at the visitor center at the George Washington & Jefferson National Park.”

  “Oh,” Nunez interrupted with an eye roll. “Let me go run that down for you. Trash collection has probably been a bit behind schedule at the parks.”

  Cheeks heating, Thomas took a slow breath and forced himself to think. He scanned the piles and pointed his chin at the journal.

  “Why the hell would I be carrying Gavin DeBerg’s journal that talks about my—”

  “You could be DeBerg,” McFadden said, his smile sharp as he lobbed the accusation at Thomas.

  Thomas jerked against his restraints. Seriously? Was the warrant officer fucking with him?

  He glared at McFadden, waiting patiently for a few seconds for a punch line that wasn’t forthcoming.

  “Look,” he growled and leaned forward, one foot kicking a table leg and making the contents on the table jump.

  His gaze picked through the pile. The Ziploc bag filled with jewelry had been dumped in a heap. He nodded at it at the same time he twisted his hands around to the right side of his body.

  “The watch on my wrist is inscribed with my name. And that Ziploc bag with items the mercs stole—that’s my medal in there, with my name.”

  Other personal items were in the pile, the contents of the wall safe at the Evansville house rescued before the group of scavengers had returned with their power tools.

  McFadden pulled the medal out while one of the guards slid the dive watch off Thomas’ wrist. Fingering the distinguished service medal, McFadden’s mouth flattened.

  When their gazes met, Thomas thought he saw a measure of retreat in the warrant officer’s gaze, but it was erased with a simple blink.

  Dismissing the argument, McFadden returned the medal to the pile with a short toss. “As you said, stolen items.”

  “That bracelet,” Thomas went on. “With the single strand of diamonds. Becca’s grandmother smuggled that out of Nazi Germany. Ask her.”

  “Not much of a test, Colonel,” McFadden said before whispering something to Nunez.

  The ranger left the room and returned a few minutes later with a pad of paper and a felt tip pen.

  “Left hand or right?” McFadden asked.

  “Right.”

  One of the guard’s freed Thomas’ right hand then secured the handcuff to the folding metal chair to keep his left hand restricted.

  “I’m going to ask you some questions,” McFadden began. “You’re going to write detailed answers. Then we are going to ask Dr. Sand the same questions.”

  Thomas nodded.

  Putting the pad and pencil in front of Thomas, Nunez smiled.

  “Pray she gets them right.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

 

  MCFADDEN’S INQUISITION started with softball questions. Family names, important dates, where Becca earned her degrees, duty stations for Thomas.

  Rushing toward the moment of truth when it would be Becca’s turn, Thomas wrote each answer down quickly in a tight script.

  As Nunez suggested, he also prayed with each reply recorded. Thomas remembered everything. He worried that Becca, exhausted and still sick, might get some of the details wrong. And she had always been the one who needed reminders about upcoming birthdays, graduations and anniversaries.

  Hell, she had been three weeks late in getting him his present for their tenth anniversary. She fibbed and said it was late because of the inscription on the watch, but he knew better because he saw it in her gaze—and on the date recorded on the jeweler’s receipt.

  He added that detail next to their anniversary. Not the fibbing part, just that she had given him the dive watch for their tenth but that he had to wait because of the inscription.

  As McFadden worked on thinking up more questions, Thomas kept writing.

  First time we had dinner together with our kids was at Chuck E Cheese. I thought a fun environment would put the kids at ease meeting each other for the first time. I was wrong. Hannah was too old for the place. Ellis was too young.

  He would have written more, like how Ellis had refused to take a single bite of pizza because his birth mother told him Becca was a witch who poisoned little boys, but McFadden cocked a brow at the extra writing and Thomas stopped.

  “Fine,” the warrant officer grunted. “Tell me when and where the two of you met.”

  When? Where?

  It was so much more than that. Hadn’t McFadden ever fallen hopelessly in love? Or had the man simply forgotten what it was like?

  Thomas began to write. Ten minutes later, Nunez pried the pen from his hand and the cuffs were put on again. McFadden scanned what Thomas had written, looked at the guards then jerked his head toward the tent flap.

  “Time to visit Dr. Sand. Put the blindfold back on him.”

  Getting up from his chair, McFadden paused, one finger dancing in the air in a way that reminded Thomas of Becca.

  “And the gag. Can’t have him calling out hints.”

  JUST AS HE had during the walk from the Humvee to the interrogation tent, Thomas counted his steps, noting each turn and any sounds that he could hear in case he needed to find his way out with McFadden’s men chasing him.

  On step number seven hundred and thirty-eight, Thomas dug his heels in and threw his weight backwards when the guards tried to push him forward.

  Unseen hands loosened the gag and eased it down to his chin.

  “Give me a break, kidlets,” Thomas growled. “You want to waste your gas driving me in circles, fine, but I’m too old for you to play that game with me walking.”

  “We’re not walking you in circles,” Nunez said, the Latino’s voice coming from a location inches from Thomas’s face.

  “The hell you aren’t. Here’s a pro-tip, Junior, save your energy and just spin your prisoner in circles. Now take me to my wife!”

  Nunez shoved the gag back in Thomas’ mouth. Then the Latino grab him by the shoulders and, with the help of both guards, bounced Thomas around so many times he could barely stand up.

  “Now walk,” Nunez whispered in his ear.

  Sixty-three steps later, Thomas was pushed into another tent and the blindfold was removed.

  The space was half the size as the first tent and set up with medical supplies. Becca was there, sitting on a cot at the far end. Next to her was a female with a medic badge on her left bicep and a pistol on her right hip.

  With the gag forcing him to remain silent, Thomas stared at his wife and tried to mold his expression into something reassuring. Her mouth pulled back in a grimace and she looked at the woman then at McFadden.

  “You’re in charge?” she asked, voice rising to a high, trembling pitch. “Why is my husband handcuffed?”

  McFadden didn’t answer. He faded into one of the tent’s six corners as Nunez stepped forward, the sheet with Thomas’ answers in his hand.

  “We want to make sure we accurately identify our prisoners, Dr. Sand,” Nunez said, gesturing the medic out of her seat.

  Becca’s mouth went slack, her lower lip bloodless and quivering. “I was told I wasn’t a prisoner.”

  Her gaze went to the medic as she spoke, but the woman refused to make eye contact.

  “You aren’t,” Nunez responded as he reached one hand toward Becca. “But we need to make sure this man is who you say he is. That he isn’t using you to infiltrate our operations.”

  Becca retre
ated along the cot, her gaze darting at everyone present. Furious, Thomas took two quick steps forward and kicked a leg on Nunez’s chair then glared at the paper in the man’s hand as the guards yanked him away from the ranger.

  Nunez threw an icy glance at Thomas but cleared his throat and brought the paper up. “We just have some questions for you to answer. This will all be over in a few minutes.”

  Becca pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, her small form shrinking further. She stared at Thomas, avoiding his eyes and focusing on the gag in his mouth.

  He wondered how she saw him. Did she view him as helpless as she had felt when Thomas gagged her and threw her over his shoulder, her limp form a prop to lure Yardley into lowering his guard?

  Emasculated, perhaps?

  He felt that way knowing she was frightened and there was little he could do at that moment to ease her fear.

  “I need you to look at me, Dr. Sand,” Nunez said. “Not at the prisoner.”

  “Thomas,” she whispered. “His name is Thomas Sand. Colonel Thomas Sand.”

  A sigh left Nunez but then he turned hard again. Reaching forward and gripping her chin, he forced her gaze back to him. Thomas struggled against the guards’ grip, willing himself to relax as he realized he was only making the situation more terrifying for Becca.

  “Only look at me,” Nunez repeated, then asked the first question. “What did you buy your husband for your tenth anniversary?”

  “Tenth?” she whispered, her gaze cutting to Thomas.

  His right arm involuntarily flexed in answer, the gesture too discreet to reach her but immediately picked up by the ranger.

  “I’m going to have to mark that as unanswered, Dr. Sand,” Nunez said and drew a line through Thomas’ reply. “Please know that unanswered questions are counted as incorrect.”

  The grimace returned, her lips peeling back as her eyes widened. She looked at the medic again, but the woman was staring at her nails, inspecting each one in turn.

  “He’s my husband,” Becca said, addressing no one in particular. “You said you know who I am…he’s my husband.”

  “And where did your husband attend undergraduate studies?”

  Becca closed her eyes as she answered, but her body listed toward Thomas.

  “You mean West Point?”

  Nunez hesitated, but then he placed a small check mark next to the answer. “What did he study there?”

  She hugged her knees a little tighter, the wedge of her chin filling the space between her knees.

  “Engineering.”

  “How did you meet your husband?”

  Thomas stiffened at the question. He had gotten carried away in his answer, started from what was, in his mind, the beginning of falling in love with Becca.

  She didn’t answer Nunez right away. Her face disappeared behind her knees and Thomas’ heart skipped erratically for three entire beats before Becca replied.

  “He emailed me a question about a paper I had written.”

  Thomas stopped breathing as Nunez pressed the tip of the pen to the paper then froze.

  “Out of the blue?” Nunez asked. “Just ‘hey, I read your paper’?”

  Becca lifted her head, breaking Nunez’s rule as she looked at Thomas.

  Her mouth quivered.

  “I’m sorry…”

  “At me,” Nunez corrected, his voice surprisingly gentle. “Did he email you out of the blue, Dr. Sand?”

  She shook her head. “He had attended a conference where I gave a talk on target-recognition algorithms. He said he was in the audience.”

  Thomas had been more than just a member of the audience. He had made a point of tracking her down at the meet and greet that night. But when he had finally managed to schedule a coffee with her a dozen emails and six months later, his pride had been too dented to mention the earlier meeting when Becca didn’t recognize him.

  “Where was the conference?” Nunez asked after scanning through the small treatise Thomas had written.

  “D.C.” she answered, her attention sharply focused on the back of the paper.

  Was she hoping that if she stared hard enough, she’d be able to see the answers on the other side?

  “You flew there from somewhere else?”

  Her brow cocked at the question, her head moving in a circle that signaled confusion.

  “New York.”

  “What section of the plane?”

  Becca blinked, head moving side to side in slow motion. She stopped, her face angled away from Thomas, her entire body twisting. “Thomas wouldn’t know that answer. Are you trying to trick me?”

  Thomas did know the answer—perfectly. She had been sitting in first class, in an aisle seat on the right side of the plane. That placed her two rows up from where he sat in an aisle seat on the left side of the plane.

  Becca started to shake, her head vibrating as she seemed to fight the urge to turn and look at him.

  “Only at me,” Nunez reminded her and moved his chair closer to the cot.

  Becca pried her hand away from where she clutched at the fabric of her pants. She extended her arm, fingers trembling as she reached toward the paper with Thomas’ answers.

  Slow, shaking, she gave Nunez plenty of time to pull the sheet out of reach, but he didn’t. He let her slide the paper from his loose grip without protest.

  In his corner, watching, McFadden said nothing.

  The paper danced as Becca started to read, the vibrations growing stronger with each paragraph scanned until Thomas tensed with the knowledge the sheet would soon be torn in half.

  I met my wife on a flight from New York to DC. We were sitting in first class on opposite sides of the plane, two rows apart. We didn’t talk. I didn’t exist. She was reading a paper and marking it up, notes perhaps on the presentation she would give the next day at a conference I was attending.

  I didn’t see her face until we landed and she stood to disembark. But I watched her almost the entire flight, memorizing the lines of her hand.

  Her hand and the curve of her shoulder covered in a gray knit sweater.

  And the fall of pale blond hair over her shoulder.

  I stood directly behind her when we disembarked. One short, failed marriage already in my past, sixteen years serving in the Army, twelve of them ordering soldiers around…and I couldn’t think of anything to say that would get her to look at me.

  When I got to my hotel room, I sat at the desk and wrote on the cheap stationary next to the phone: I met my soul mate today and watched her walk away without saying a single word.

  There was more to what Thomas had written, but the paper bounced violently in Becca’s hands as tears slid down her cheeks.

  Thomas couldn’t remember seeing his wife cry—not when he proposed, not at their wedding, not when her father died seven months after walking her down the aisle. He had long ago realized and accepted that Becca’s mind and emotions didn’t work like those of everyone else.

  But she was crying now.

  Becca turned her watery gaze on McFadden.

  “We’re just trying to reach our children.”

  The words were pained, her throat tight and stretching each letter.

  “It’s improbable that they made it—that we made it.”

  She looked at Thomas, a quivering frown on her face fighting to shape itself into a comforting smile.

  “But we have to keep trying until we know what happened to them.”

  Thomas nodded as McFadden finally stepped out of his corner.

  “Uncuff him,” he ordered. “And release the other two. Then deliver all of them to Mae on the next run out.”

  McFadden looked at Thomas as the guard fished out the key for the handcuffs.

  “If your son and daughter made it to Dover alive, Mae will know who is sheltering them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

 

  CASH BISHOP STOOD at the bottom of a ladder, his gaze unapologetically fixed on the pert bottom
bouncing along the roof line until a snowball hit his shoulder and disintegrated in a cloud of white. He glanced a few feet to the right of where Hannah was placing a solar panel to find her brother manufacturing another icy projectile, a warning grin on his smug young face.

  “Jace, buddy,” Cash called and his nephew came running over, Grub dancing around the boy’s ankles.

  “Do I get to help Hannah?” Jace asked, the question prompting a smile on Cash’s face.

  For the time being, the only thing Jace liked more than Hannah Carter was the puppy chewing on his bootlaces.

  “No, but you get to help me,” he said and kneeled next to the boy.

  A small wave of dizziness washed over Cash. He planted a palm against the ground to steady himself until it passed. His left lung wasn’t fully functioning after getting nicked a few weeks back and his mother didn’t want him leaving the house. But he didn’t want to push all the work onto the people he had welcomed onto the homestead—especially Hannah.

  With a tilt of his head, Cash drew the boy close enough that he could whisper in the small, pink shell of his ear. “I need you to make me some snowballs and—”

  “Ellis Andrew Sand!” Hannah growled as she caught her brother lining up a shot. “You are not starting a snow fight on the same roof I’m crawling around.”

  Ellis made a show of tossing the three snowballs he had packed off the other side of the outbuilding. “Just defending your honor, sis. Someone was ogling your backside.”

  She looked down on Cash with a mock glare. Her cheeks were too rosy from the cold for him to tell if she was blushing. But she was definitely fighting a smile, her eyes glittering playfully.

  Cash grinned, his chest tightening at the same time. He was two weeks into recovering from the gunshot wound and he hadn’t seen many smiles on Hannah’s face. When she did crack one, it was the best medicine he could possibly imagine.