But his nerves crackled like live wires.
Setting aside the gun but keeping it within reach, he backed out of the parking space and took the ramp to the lower level. He exited the lot via a rear entrance. Hitting a side road, he fed the gas and blew through the night.
Trouble was on the way, the nature of which he didn’t yet fully understand. But he had to get home, and quickly.
14
Outside The Varsity, Cutty and Valdez searched for the Judas, with no luck. The traitor had escaped.
“He is gone,” Valdez said, wind tossing strands of hair across her face. “What do we do?”
“Follow me,” Cutty said.
He marched across the parking lot to the Suburban. Protocol required that he contact the dispatcher and notify him that he had lost the Judas, to allow them to use their awesome resources to relocate him. But placing that call would be the equivalent of admitting failure, of telling his superior that he was not as capable as they believed him to be, and that they’d erred in giving him the task.
He had never failed, and he would not this time. God hated losers.
Ensconced in the driver’s seat, he powered on the mobile data terminal, which was mounted in the console beneath the stereo. Much like the computers with which police cars were outfitted, the MDT was a customization to the truck, connected via satellite to their organization’s servers. All of the vehicles in their division’s fleet were similarly equipped.
A small, removable keyboard was slotted beneath the screen. He slid it out and placed it on his lap.
The greeting, “Welcome to the Genesis Network” filled the display, white text floating on an ocean-blue background.
“The man I asked you to follow,” he said to Valdez, “you got the plates from his vehicle like I asked you to?”
“Si.”
“God bless you, Valdez,” he said. “You rock.”
She smiled. “Gracias.”
He returned his attention to the screen, and entered his username and password to sign on to the network.
The Genesis Network was the brains of their division, a cutting-edge system of servers and software designed and administered by techies. Gen, as it was casually known amongst them, was linked—sometimes secretly—to public and private databases across the globe. He’d once toured the underground core data center where the network was housed, and had been awed by the vast chamber of servers taller than him, the giant monitors streaming rivers of data, and the gimlet-eyed programmers who spoke in such geek-speak they were nearly incomprehensible. He was not a techie. He was a field guy who went out and got his hands dirty. But he appreciated the value of high-tech tools; we lived in an age when information was worth more than money, and Gen made his job immeasurably easier.
Ironically, he had been reared in a household that lacked a television set, radio, and even a telephone. The devil, he’d been taught as a child, was skilled at using the wonders of modern technology to deceive you, and out of concern for the spiritual health of the family, Father had banned those devices from the home. It was not until his late teen years that he learned God’s most valiant warriors were using technology to wage their war against the wicked.
After entering a series of keystrokes, he arrived at a menu that offered access to the State of Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles records. A blank field requested license plates data.
“And his plates are?” he asked.
She told him in her halting English, and he typed in the combination of letters and digits. Almost immediately, Gen had a hit.
The results included the license registrant’s name, vehicle make, model, and VIN, registrant’s date of birth, height, weight, current street address, and a photo from his most recently issued driver’s license.
It was the same man he’d witnessed talking to the Judas in the grease joint.
“Anthony Thorne, Junior,” Cutty said. “Thirty years old. Resides at 522 Cherokee Avenue, in Atlanta.”
At the bottom of the screen, a command allowed you to request a full background check on any given individual. It could take up to an hour or two for Gen to compile a complete personal profile, so he went ahead and requested the comprehensive report. It might prove useful later.
As were all fleet vehicles, the Suburban was equipped with a GPS navigation system. He entered Thorne’s address. The estimated drive time was thirteen minutes.
“Let’s go talk to this guy,” he said.
15
From outside, home appeared as Anthony had left it. Soft light glowed at the windows, and the porch lamp was on, fat moths batting against the fixture.
Anthony parked in the garage, but left the door up. He’d left the driveway gate open, too. Planning ahead.
Before going inside, he looked toward the front of the house. There was nothing out of the ordinary, just sporadic traffic breezing past on a Friday night.
Driving back, he hadn’t noticed a tail. But if these people had the technological resources that Bob claimed, they wouldn’t have needed to trail him. A run against his license plates, which he was increasingly convinced was why the Latina woman had followed him to his truck, would give up his street address.
Gun drawn, he rushed inside. No signs of forced entry downstairs. Good.
Upstairs in the master bedroom, Lisa lay atop a blue exercise ball, mechanically burning through the set of three hundred crunches she performed each night before hitting the sack. She was something of a fitness fanatic, doing her Pilates and running on the treadmill and working out on the exercise ball, determined to beat back the inevitable pull of gravity and age.
He hoped she had some gas left in her tank, because tonight might get hairy.
He holstered his gun. “Lisa, we’ve gotta talk.”
Fingers interlaced behind her head, she twisted around to look at him, short of breath. “Hey. Heard you come in. How’d it go?”
He hadn’t called her during his drive home. He’d driven so fast that speaking on the phone might’ve distracted him, led to him wrapping the SUV around a tree. Besides, this was the kind of conversation they needed to have face-to-face.
He said, “I need you to do something, right this second, and we don’t have time to go over lots of questions.”
“Huh?” She bounced off the ball. “What’re you talking about? What happened at The Varsity?”
“I need you to get dressed and pack a suitcase with enough clothes for a couple of days, stuff for the both of us. Pack only the necessities. Light clothes we can move fast in.”
“What?”
“Bob is legit, Lisa. Some big, extremist religious organization, a cult or whatever, is at the bottom of things. I noticed two of the members there—they saw me, and I think they’re coming here.”
“Baby, please, slow down—”
“We don’t have time! Don’t argue with me, okay, just trust me and do what I say. I’ll explain everything later, but we have to get the hell out of here.”
She stared at him, as if convinced that he was playing a joke and she was waiting for the punch line. When he didn’t laugh or smile, her gaze faltered.
“You aren’t kidding,” she said.
“No. We’ve gotta get moving. Now. Please.”
“This is nuts.” But she made a beeline to the walk-in closet.
He opened the nightstand drawer on his side of the bed and dug out the Smith & Wesson .357 he kept stored inside. He swung open the cylinder; the five-shooter was already loaded with hollow-points. As Lisa came back into the bedroom dragging a piece of carry-on luggage, he handed the gun to her.
She hesitated. “Is this necessary?”
“It might be. Take it.”
Reluctantly, she accepted the revolver. She knew how to handle firearms—at his insistence, she accompanied him to the firing range every month—but she’d never been a big fan of them. She seemed offended by the idea that ordinary civilians would want to keep guns in their house, and she merely tolerated his preoccupation wi
th them.
“Keep it close while you pack,” he said. “I’m going to the basement to grab a few more things.”
“Okay.”
He could read from her eyes and voice that she didn’t believe they were in danger, that she might have even worried that he’d finally gone over the deep end. That was fine with him, so long as she did what he asked.
On the way downstairs, he looked outside a front window. The only person on the street was a neighbor of theirs who liked to walk with his German Shepherd at late-night hours.
He turned a dial beside the doorway to brighten the porch light. Anyone creeping outdoors would be caught in the glare, might be less likely to boldly approach the house.
In his office, he unplugged the laptop, wrapped the power cord around the machine, and thrust them both into a large canvas satchel that hung on the back of the door. He dropped the satchel on the floor and he went to the electronically secured door at the far end of the office.
He punched a six-digit code into the keypad. There was a beep, and the lock disengaged with a click.
The custom made oak door, reinforced with a steel core, was heavy. When he pushed it open, the familiar fumes of metal, oil, and gunpowder met his nostrils.
He switched on the overhead fluorescents. The room was about the size of the walk-in closet in the master suite. It contained a few items of clothing, but mostly it contained guns.
A stainless steel rack on the left held a collection of six rifles and shotguns: two Winchester rifles, a Mossberg twelve-gauge shotgun, a Remington, a Weatherby Athena, a Springfield tactical rifle.
On the right, six handguns hung from hooks, an assortment of revolvers and semi-autos: a Glock 19, a Walther PPK, a Beretta M9 like the one he kept in his car, a Colt .45, a Heckler & Koch 9mm, a .50 caliber Desert Eagle.
Assorted Ka-Bar knives were arrayed on a stand beneath the handguns. A large metal cabinet in the corner of the space housed ammunition for every firearm.
His Marine Corps saber, sheathed in its leather scabbard, occupied a prominent spot on the far wall.
Another metal case contained night vision binoculars, a utility flashlight, and other accessories. The pieces of clothing, dangling from hangers, included his Marine dress blues, concealable body armor, and a camouflage outfit. His olive-green duffel bag lay on the concrete floor, beside a pair of well-worn combat boots.
He’d only ever allowed Lisa and his closest friends into the room. Only those in his inner circle understood his interest—perhaps it had become his obsession—in amassing weaponry like a survivalist living in a remote mountain-top cabin and awaiting Armageddon.
Although Bob had warned him to keep moving, he could have opted to load all his weapons and turn his house into a fighting hole. But he didn’t know enough about who he was dealing with, and if they were as well-equipped and ruthless as Bob had suggested, they might drop a nerve agent in the ventilation system and render him helpless, cut the power to the house and break in under cover of darkness, or flush him out with a series of hand grenades.
Going on the run was, at the moment, the only strategy that made sense.
He selected three different handguns, shoved them into the duffel, and dragged the bag to the ammo cabinet. He unlocked the doors and pulled out dozens of rounds of ammo for each firearm, dumped them in, too.
From the accessories bin, he took night vision binoculars, a flashlight, and other equipment that might come in handy. He grabbed the body armor vest off the hanger.
Lastly, at the far end of the closet, beneath his saber, he knelt to what appeared to be a large air filter grille set in the wall near the floor.
The aluminum grille was actually the front of a wall safe, and opened like a hinged door when he pulled a miniature lever at the bottom edge.
He swung out the front panel, did three quick twists on the combination lock, and opened the safe.
Rubber-banded packets of cash, in denominations of twenties, fifties, and hundreds, lay stacked inside, totaling approximately twenty thousand dollars.
Every day that he left the cash in the safe, the relentless march of inflation nibbled away at its value. Keeping the money in a high-interest bearing savings account would have been the financially savvy move.
But in a desperate situation, he wouldn’t have immediate access to the money. In a world where computer viruses could sucker-punch financial systems, where Category Five hurricanes could tear through cities and send hordes of people swarming to banks to fund their escapes, you couldn’t count on an ATM or a financial institution to save you in a tight spot.
Paranoid? Yeah, he’d known that it was a bit crazy even as he was socking the money away. But now he was glad that he’d done it.
He removed five bundles, about five thousand dollars worth, and dropped them in the bottom of the duffel.
His watch read twenty past eleven. He’d been home for only fifteen minutes, but the seconds were advancing at hyper-speed.
After securing the closet door, he hustled across the office, grabbed the satchel off the floor, and ran upstairs.
16
In the bedroom, Lisa had dressed in a blue velour suit and running shoes, and tucked her hair underneath an Atlanta Braves cap. She was zipping shut the carry-on that lay on the bed.
“I’ll take this.” He grabbed the carry-on’s side handle. “You just bring your purse and the gun.”
“Thanks.” She glanced at the duffel bag hanging from his shoulder. “I don’t think I want to know what you’ve got in there.”
“Plenty of things I hope we don’t need. Let’s roll. Leave the lights on, so people think we’re home.”
“You haven’t said where we’re going.”
“That ‘cause I haven’t figured it out yet. We’ll get to that.”
The telephone rang. They stared at the phone as if it were a detonator on a ticking bomb.
“It’s almost eleven-thirty,” he said. “No friend or family would call this late, unless it’s an emergency.”
She read the Caller ID display. “It says unknown caller. Could it be a wrong number, you think?”
“I doubt it.”
She frowned. “Come on, Tony.”
“Listen, if it’s someone we know and it’s urgent, they can reach us on our cells.”
“You think it’s those people Bob warned you about?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense to me right now.”
“But our number is unlisted.” For the first time, a hint of true anxiety glinted in her eyes.
“That’s exactly why I’m worried. Let’s go.”
Outside in the garage, while she waited in the truck, he stored the duffel bag and carry-on in the cargo space. As he slammed the liftgate, he heard a vehicle rumbling at the mouth of the driveway.
He spun, hand on the pistol.
A black Chevy Suburban crawled past the house. The driver might have been innocently searching for a friend’s residence, but he doubted it. It moved too slowly, too deliberately. He scrambled behind the wheel.
“What’s wrong?” Lisa asked.
“A black Suburban drove by, real slowly, like the driver was casing the place.”
“How could they know where we live?” She looked in the side mirror.
“I think they got my plates when I was at The Varsity, ran them against a database, got our street address.”
“They can do that?” Her eyes were wide, disbelieving.
“Later.” He gunned the engine and strapped the seat harness across his chest. “Later, I promise, I’ll tell you everything I know. But first, I need you to buckle up. This might get rough.”
She muttered under her breath, but did as he asked.
He shifted into Reverse and hit the gas pedal, and they rocketed out of the garage. He spun the steering wheel, backing into the turnaround, and straightened out. Then hit the gas.
Apparently having doubled back, the Suburban rolled across the driveway, blocking their escape.
“Hang on.” He kept his foot on the gas pedal.
The Suburban’s driver’s side window slid down. The pale, stout man from The Varsity was perched behind the wheel, though he no longer wore the tinted glasses. Surrounded by the darkness of the vehicle’s cabin, his face looked as if it had been carved from ice.
He had a large pistol, and he was aiming it at them.
“I order you to stop!” he shouted.
Screaming, Lisa ducked in her seat.
“Hold on!” Anthony said.
He roared through the open gate and wrestled the wheel to the right. They tore across the front yard, divots of grass flying, narrowly avoided an oak tree, and catapulted over the curb and banged onto the street, the undercarriage crashing against the pavement.
“Jesus,” Lisa was saying over and over, as she huddled on the seat. “Oh, Jesus, Jesus.”
Anthony twisted the wheel, floored the accelerator. They surged down the dark street.
Behind them, gunfire erupted.
Lisa shrieked. Anthony glanced in the rearview mirror, saw that the guy had gotten out of the Suburban and was shooting at them. He wore a black tracksuit, as did his partner, the Latina woman. She was out of the vehicle, too, gun in her hands.
Sometimes, he hated when his instincts were right.
A bullet twanged off the rear bumper. Another round hit them, and something shattered. It sounded like a taillight.
“Stay down,” he said to Lisa, but he hadn’t needed to say it. She lay nearly flat against the seat, the harness twisted around her chest. Her eyes were squeezed shut, as if she were wishing this was all a nightmare that would soon end.
At a four-way intersection, he ran the Stop sign and swerved around the corner, tires wailing. He checked behind them.
The guy and the woman had climbed back in their truck, and were coming.
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