Final Target

by John Gilstrap

  Randy pointed toward the shade thrown by the trees around the little pond. “Let’s go down there, where it’s a little cooler,” he said. “Yeah, Nicole made it clear that I would be taking my orders from Overwatch.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “I have no idea. Are you catching the pattern here? I was the hired help and nothing more. The sheer weight of shit that I did not know could have kept my chopper from taking off. Whoever he was—he was just a voice, as far as I could tell—had access to satellite imagery that I did not have. I guess it was the command and control center. But like I said, my orders were clear. What Overwatch said was what Overwatch got.”

  “So, what happened on that night?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  “From what you saw,” Gail prompted.

  They’d reached the trees, and Randy leaned his back against one, then stretched his feet out in front and crossed his arms. The posture looked to Gail as more appropriate for sitting than standing. She wondered how the rough bark of the tree didn’t hurt the bare flesh of his back.

  “The infil went fine. Your guys were good guys. Not very talkative, but they looked like they really knew what they were doing. I dropped them off and then went airborne again, just as I was supposed to. They were on the same coms net as me, and so was Overwatch, who guided them right into the hot zone. It went way faster than I thought it would. There was a firefight, the tangos all went down, and then it was time to go home. I was orbiting, watching the world on FLIR. Alpha named the exfil site, and I thought we were ready to go.”

  “And yet . . .” Gail said.

  “Yeah, exactly. And yet it didn’t go that way at all. I was coming out of a low orbit to find my LZ when I saw a lot of movement through the trees. Before I could say anything, Overwatch instructed me over a different net to stay silent. I did, but while I watched, these trucks stopped and disgorged a bunch of operator types. I couldn’t tell faces from where I was, but it was the same number of operators as I flew in with from the world. I got the sense that your guys somehow knew that something was wrong, and when they asked about it over the ops net, Overwatch lied to them. Said everything was okay, and then the same guy gave me orders to leave.”

  “That was over a different net?” Gail asked.

  “Exactly. I tried—”

  Randy made a barking sound as Gail heard a heavy, wet impact. Half a second later, the air pulsed with the sound of a gunshot. Reflexively, she dropped to one knee and drew her pistol, but she didn’t duck for cover, because she wasn’t sure where the shot had come from.

  Blood smeared the bare flesh of Randy’s chest as he fell sideways onto the grass. He hadn’t yet made impact when a second shot ripped a chunk of bark out of the tree he’d been leaning against.

  Gail saw the muzzle flash that time, coming from up on the crest of the hill between her and the house. A figure dressed in black—it looked like a woman—had a rifle to her shoulder. It flashed again, and Randy howled as a bullet avulsed a fist-sized section of his thigh.

  Gail brought her weapon up, settled the front sight on the shooter, and squeezed off three rounds. At that range, with her gun, luck played more of a role than marksmanship, but all she had to do was get close enough to make the shooter duck. And it worked.

  Gail grabbed Randy by the waistband of his shorts and pulled him along the ground less than three feet to get him behind a tree. She’d nearly made it when another shot sent a bullet into his belly, just below his navel, and out his ass cheek.

  “God damn it!” he yelled. That he could speak at all was a great sign.

  Gail fired four more shots, and when her slide locked, she spun back behind the cover of the tree. She dropped the magazine from the pistol’s grip, snatched her only spare from her belt, and ran it home. She thumbed the release, and with the new bullet in battery, she was six shots away from being defenseless. Holding the weapon in close, she dared a peek from behind her cover, but there was no target to shoot. The spot where the woman had been standing was empty now.

  Gail’s survival instincts screamed at her to go up the hill to investigate, to determine if the shooter was merely angling for position or if she’d truly moved on.

  But the soul-searing moans issued from Randy brought her to her senses. She holstered her Glock and kneeled on the ground next to the wounded young man, whose hands were pressed tightly against his belly wound, as if to keep the blood from pumping past his fingers.

  “It was her,” he said.

  “Be quiet,” Gail said. “Save your strength. I’ll call an ambulance.” She reached for her phone but realized that she’d left it in her car.

  “We both know I’m dead,” Randy said. “Listen to me. That was her. That was Nicole—”

  And he was gone. The lights went out behind his eyes, and his face went slack.

  Gail’s brain screamed. This was all too much. It had been too long since she’d been in the field. The procedures for what to do in what order no longer flowed easily to her.

  “Think,” she told herself aloud. “Settle down and think.” She needed to prioritize. Randy Goodman was dead, and that meant he was no longer a factor.

  “Nicole Alvarez,” she told herself. Randy’s dying words were that she was the shooter, so she had to take that fact at face value. But who the hell was Nicole Alvarez? Who was she really? In the covert world, one of the inviolable rules was that you could never trust anyone to be the person they said they were.

  But Nicole was the key. If Gail could figure out who Nicole Alvarez truly was, she would have a clue as to who she worked for. With that, she’d have a shot at unraveling—

  The cash.

  Randy had been very specific that he hadn’t yet spent any of the cash—the folding money, as he’d put it—and he’d said nothing about Nicole wearing gloves when she handed the banded bills to him. That meant Nicole’s fingerprints would still be on the money. Yes, probably with a lot of other people’s, but at least it was a start. Something for Venice to work on.

  While Gail paid a visit to someone named Raúl.

  But what to do with Randy’s body? It was obscene to leave a corpse to Mother Nature’s scavengers, but if she touched or moved anything she would leave trace evidence behind, and no one in her food chain needed that.

  “He’s not your responsibility,” she told herself aloud. If he had not abandoned Jonathan in the first place, then none of what followed would have happened. Nicole Alvarez—his coconspirator—was the one who shot him, and it was she who needed to pay the price.

  Gail had already exposed herself enough. The old man at the shop had seen her, could give a description. Security cameras had captured her car, but the car didn’t belong to her in the first place and would soon be at Jonathan’s favorite chop shop, being turned into scrap metal.

  She stooped closer to Randy and opened the Velcro closure of his thigh pocket. Keeping her fingers at the edges of the banded bills, she pulled the stack of hundreds out of his pocket and transferred it to her own. When she was done, she stood to her full height and surveyed the area. As far as she could tell, she was still alone.

  She needed to get the hell out of here. Shots had been fired, and even in a backwater place like New Baltimore, Virginia, the sound of sustained gunfire attracted attention.

  “I’m sorry,” Gail said to Randy’s corpse. Only one day back into Jonathan’s world, and she was already reliving the nightmare. She collected her brass and slipped the empty magazine into her pocket.

  Turning away from the body, Gail drew her Glock from its holster and brought it to low ready as she covered the real estate back to the house.

  The shooter was gone. And she’d taken her spent shell casings with her. At least Gail couldn’t see any empties on the worn gravel of the skeletal front yard. In a few hours (days?) this yard would be filled with crime-scene technicians. Maybe they’d find a casing; maybe they wouldn’t.

  But they wouldn’t find hers. This was the par
t of Jonathan’s world that she hated most—the need to think like a criminal, even when performing good deeds.

  She tried to put that thought out of her mind as she climbed into her car and dropped the transmission into gear. She needed to get the car to the chop shop in the next hour or two if she was going to maximize her chances.

  CHAPTER 17

  Jonathan had been walking through the rain in silence for so long that when the bud in his right ear broke squelch, he jumped. “Scorpion, Mother Hen.”

  He pressed the TRANSMIT button on his chest. “Go ahead,” he said softly. In English.

  “How’s progress?”

  “Slower than I’d like, thanks. I figure we’ve gone about six miles. The team is holding up better than I had hoped.” He used the word team on the remote chance that their secure communications had been hacked by the bad guys. Best that they not use the word kids.

  “Do you think you have another three miles in you?” Venice asked.

  “Don’t be coy, Mother Hen. I’m hot and wet, and Big Guy is hungry. Fuses are kinda short. If you have something, just give it to me.”

  “I think I have a place for you to stash your team for a few hours,” Venice said. “I’ve sent the coordinates to your GPS.”

  Jonathan held up his hand to halt the group. “Take a break,” he said in Spanish. Then he wandered ten paces ahead of them and took a knee. Adjusting his M27 to get it out of the way, he pulled the waterproof map from his thigh pocket, and his GPS from its spot on the side of his vest. He keyed the mike and transmitted in English, “Hey, Big Guy. Come up to the front with me.”

  “On my way,” Boxers said. “Once I get the little darlings settled.”

  “Are you periodically inventorying the elements of your unit that are under Big Guy’s control?” Venice asked with a smile in her voice.

  “You know I’m on the net, right?” Boxers growled.

  “She wants you to know that there’ll be witnesses,” Jonathan said.

  He spread the map out onto the mulchy jungle floor and placed the GPS on top of it. He preferred the larger perspective provided by a map, yet appreciated the precision of the electronic toy. Yet another vivid reminder that he was an analog man in a digital world.

  The coordinates were more or less in line with where he wanted to go, but it was pretty punishing terrain. “Okay, I’ve got it,” he said over the air. Boxers materialized next to him and squatted to see the map. “What’s special about this place?”

  “Caves,” she said. “Lots and lots of them.”

  “Ah, shit,” Boxers growled. He was famously unnerved by tight, dark places. Perhaps a side effect of displacing so much volume himself.

  Jonathan winked at him.

  Venice explained, “I figure the caves will provide both shelter and cover for your solo hike.”

  Jonathan looked to Boxers for input, got nothing. How the hell was he going to sell the notion of spending twelve hours or more in a cave to a bunch of traumatized children? It was going to be hard enough selling it to Big Guy, and he was what you called a seasoned war fighter.

  “If we drop them there, are they still going to be around when we come back with the bus?” Boxers whispered.

  “God, I hope so,” Jonathan said. “Be a big waste of time and lots of unnecessary risk if they weren’t.”

  Dawkins wandered up. “Private meeting?”

  Boxers was quick and unequivocal with his yes.

  Jonathan went a little softer. “We need a moment alone.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “Only that you’re still standing there,” Big Guy said.

  Nothing happened and no words were spoken until Dawkins wandered away.

  “That boy thinks he’s a bigger deal than he really is,” Boxers grumbled.

  “He’s the reason we’re here,” Jonathan said. “Like it or not, I think that makes him a pretty big deal.” He keyed his TRANSMIT button. “Do we know anything about these caves? Do we know that they’re not the origin of eighty percent of all rabid bats?”

  “There are some touristy caves within a few miles of the ones I’m sending you to,” Venice said. “I could send you pictures of those if you’d like. One might even have a rock organ you can play.”

  Jonathan chuckled. “Remember when you used to be shy and a little afraid of me?” he said over the air. “I miss those days.” He turned serious again. “Stand by one, Mother Hen.”

  He leaned in closer to Boxers. “I need an opinion, Big Guy.”

  Boxers inhaled deeply and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m trying real hard to think of an alternative plan, but I’m coming up empty.”

  Jonathan bobbed his head from side to side, as if trying to shake loose a better plan. Fact was, Venice’s idea was a good one, creepiness notwithstanding. If they picked their cave carefully—if it wasn’t too small or too wet—then the kids could take a break from the weather, and from the pressure of staying concealed. If they parked them there during the day, they could even afford some illumination. Not at night, of course, because even a burning match could serve as a beacon in the absolute blackness of the jungle. Combine that with the beyond absolute blackness of a cave, and his doubts returned.

  “I don’t think we have a reasonable choice,” Jonathan said.

  “I think you’re right,” Boxers concurred. “When are you going to tell the team?” Big Guy had an odd relationship with childhood and its practitioners. Jonathan had never seen him more motivated than when it came to protecting kids, but Boxers deeply did not enjoy their company. The way he leaned on the word team dripped of disapproval.

  Jonathan allowed himself a laugh. “When am I going to tell them? At the last possible moment.”

  * * *

  Jesse Montgomery hadn’t been back to Nashville in, what? Five years? One of the things they don’t tell you in petty criminal school is that even after you’re let out of the cage, you’re still tethered to home. In his case, the rules of his probation were clear: He was not to leave the county without express permission in writing. To do so would be to surrender his freedom from the cage.

  And now that restriction had been lifted. Conditionally. All he had to do was risk his life while breaking the law again. In fact, if he survived his mission and was successful, he’d be free and clear forever. Only if he failed to break the law would his lawful yet restrictive punishment be reinstated. Better still, if he told anyone that he was doing what he was told to do by the people who told him to do it, not only would his punishment be reinstated, but people would see to it that he served every day in maximum security—not to be confused with the minimum security joint where he’d been treated like . . . well, where he’d been treated badly.

  Somewhere in the world, this madness made sense to someone. Hell, it made sense to his uncle Paul, who was one of the smartest people he’d ever met. The world was a very, very strange place.

  If Jesse could call anyplace a childhood home, it would be Nashville. When your father is a Navy chief, you move around a lot. And because Jesse’s mom took off before Jesse was old enough to remember her, he spent most of his boyhood years as somebody’s houseguest—a year here, eighteen months there—while Davey Montgomery was out floating somewhere. “Saving the world by spreading my seed,” as dear old Daddy Davey used to say. By the time he was in first or second grade, Jesse had heard the line so many times without knowing what it meant that he used the phrase to tell a teacher that that was what his father did for a living. The school administration went ape shit when the teacher ratted him out, but his guardians at the time—the Hewitt family, if he remembered right—thought it was hilarious.

  As a colorful guy, Davey attracted colorful friends, the kinds of people who saw lots of upside and little downside to letting a growing boy have a beer or a shot of bourbon at a yard party. They never let little Jesse get hammered, but a little alcohol-induced sleep made grownup time a lot easier for the adults.

  On balance, it wasn’t a bad
way to grow up. As the perpetual new kid in school, Jesse learned early on that fighting did not suit him, but that class clowning did. Of his twenty-seven years on the planet, he figured he’d dedicated at least twenty to his quest to learn the exact tipping point where he could push a bully with his smart-assery while avoiding physical confrontation. Fights happened from time to time, and that was when Davey’s Rules of Fisticuffs came in handy:

  1. Always cheat.

  2. Hit first.

  3. Hit fast.

  4. Hit dirty.

  5. Run like hell.

  Life, according to Davey and his friends, was less about victory than it was about survival. From day to day, it was unreasonable to expect any real high-five moments. A day was successful if you went from wake up to bedtime without a crisis. Those who expected little from life were rarely disappointed.

  As Jesse got older, he realized that there was more truth than falsehood in that worldview, but he also learned that without adrenaline rushes, life wasn’t really worth living. And that was the mind-set that had led him to do the stupid things that landed him in his cage.

  Built sometime in the midfifties, the house on Short Lane looked just like every other house on Short Lane. Jesse imagined that at one time, this was a neighborhood teeming with kids and brimming with hope. Now the Craftsman-style saltboxes, with their three pillars across the porch, just looked sad. Perhaps that was because the whole world was sad. So angry.

  Grass refused to grow on the lawns where it was wanted, but erupted in weedy displays through cracks in the sidewalk, which no one cared to repair.

  The house at 355 Short Lane had never been a place that Jesse considered home. Davey had bought it after Jesse emancipated himself, and while Jesse knew he was always welcome—and usually had a good time when he came—he could never be more than a visitor here. He didn’t want to be.

  As he climbed the four steps that led to the porch, the railing wobbled under his touch. This place hadn’t seen paint in a long, long time. Maybe this was a mistake.