Red Cell Seven

by Stephen Frey

  “Jacob told us this morning that Kaashif is a front man for some very nasty factions in Syria and Afghanistan, some real hard-line extremists who are ultimately committed to destroying the United States. They’d make perfect partners for Daniel because—”

  Travers was interrupted by the sound of engines firing up somewhere in the distance ahead of them.

  They were jet engines, Troy realized as he rose from his knees, quickly climbed the tree they were beneath, and peered through the branches at the top. He recognized the sound instantly.

  “What you got?” Travers called up.

  “About five hundred yards west of us, there’s a Learjet coming out of a barn with guards all around it.” He recognized the distinctive shape of the aircraft’s sleek design immediately. “Somebody’s getting out of here.”

  Travers scanned the satellite images quickly. “There’s what looks like a runway on here. Maybe whoever it is got a heads-up about us. We’ve got to stop them.”

  Troy dropped to the ground, grabbed the MP5 leaning against the base of the tree, and the two of them took off together.

  “I saw at least five guys with guns around the plane as it was coming out of the barn. There were probably more. And it looked like they were carrying automatic weapons.”

  Travers nodded to Troy as they ran through the tightly spaced trees, raising their arms to protect their faces from low hanging branches. He was calling the special-forces commander, who was already heading their way. “Get the choppers in here fast,” he ordered as soon as the man at the other end picked up. “And come straight through the main gate with the troops. No need for anything but a direct assault at this point. We’re already headed at them. They’re pulling a plane out of a barn. What? No, we didn’t see it on the satellite pics because it was hidden in a barn. Look, I’m worried somebody important is hightailing it out of here. I know you got those Apaches inbound, but can you get someone else in the air fast who can keep up with a Learjet? Maybe somebody from MacDill or Patrick with an F-16 they can spare for a little while. Huh? Well, try, damn it. Okay, thanks. And hurry up with those choppers!”

  “How long?” Troy asked as Travers slipped the phone back into his pocket.

  “Six to seven minutes for the troops, two for the choppers.”

  “That might still be too late,” Troy muttered.

  As the barn took shape between the trees, a burst of automatic gunfire rang out, and bullets shredded branches and leaves around them. Both men tumbled to the ground and quickly crawled behind the narrow trunks of different trees for at least some protection.

  Troy glanced around, spotted the shooter, who was a hundred feet away along the same line of trees, and fired back as the man aimed. The guy tumbled backward violently before he could fire again.

  Troy looked around quickly for anyone else, saw no one, scrambled back to his feet, and sprinted ahead, aware that the roar of the jet engines was now close. The edge of the trees—the last line in the orchard before open ground—was only fifty feet away.

  As he raced around a large tree in the next-to-last row, he got a glimpse of the plane and the barn behind it. The jet was only a hundred feet away across the open ground and seemed to be parked even though the engines were whining and whistling loudly. He checked quickly left and right but didn’t see Travers.

  As he sprinted toward the last row of trees, a bullet grazed his upper left arm, and he tumbled into a clump of tall weeds between two trees. “Damn it,” he hissed, checking the wound. It burned like a nest of hornet stings, but it didn’t look deep. There was plenty of blood, but the round hadn’t hit anything critical. He still had full use of the arm.

  More fire from ahead that seemed to be coming from behind several pickup trucks parked near the plane. There was gunfire coming from the left as well, from down the tree line. That had to be Travers.

  As Troy rose to his knees and aimed at one of the guards standing behind the bed of a black pickup truck on the left, he spotted a man who resembled Jacob Gadanz climbing awkwardly out of a green sedan that had just skidded to a stop beside the plane. The man wore a white suit and was carrying a large briefcase, and when he finally made it out of the car, he labored toward the steps leading up to the fuselage.

  Daniel Gadanz, Troy realized. Big, dark, and extremely heavyset, just like Jacob—exactly as Jacob had described his younger brother. It had to be Daniel, and they could not let him get away, so Troy made the decision. He aimed low, squeezed the trigger, and put the man down even though he wasn’t brandishing a weapon. Two guards raced for the man in the white suit even as he was still falling, picked him up roughly off the tarmac, and dragged his limp form up the jet’s steps as Troy laced the steps with another burst of fire. The two guards toppled from the stairs back onto the cement like bowling pins. But someone inside the plane reached out and dragged the big man in the bright white suit up the last two steps and into the plane. The twin engines roared, and the jet lurched forward.

  Troy jumped to his feet. He was going to try to shoot the jet’s tires out. But as he rose up he became aware of a man racing toward him through the trees from the right. He started to turn in the direction of the oncoming attacker, but he realized that the other man was going to have a clean shot before he could swing the MP5 far enough around.

  “HAVE YOU been through the townhouse completely?”

  “Yes.”

  Bill had sent another RCS agent to check out the townhome. “Were there any signs of a struggle?”

  “No.”

  He marveled at how the man simply followed orders and answered questions. He must have been intensely curious about what was going on, but he wasn’t giving that away at all. He was being a good soldier. “Did you find what we talked about?”

  “No.”

  “Have you heard anything about the woman?”

  “Nothing, and I checked everywhere. Her car’s here, it looks like all her clothes are here, and the dog’s hungry as hell. The thing wouldn’t leave me alone, so I fed it. I even called her kids and they hadn’t seen her. I told them I was an insurance guy following up on Roger’s death and that I must have had the wrong number. Nobody’s seen her.”

  Bill took a deep, aggravated breath. “Okay thanks. Talk to you later.”

  As he ended the call, Bill realized they had only one option at this point. They had to go to the peak.

  He had no idea if Nancy Carlson had given up the location of the Executive Order that Roger always kept. He wasn’t even certain Nancy knew where that original was located, if she even knew what Executive Order 1973 1-E was—Roger had never mentioned anything about telling her. But Bill felt he had to operate under the assumption that someone who was unfriendly to the cause now had that original, and he had to retrieve the second one. Without at least one of the originals, Red Cell Seven was in deep trouble.

  JUST AS Troy prepared for the awful sensation of bullets tearing into his body, the man racing toward him screamed, spun violently to one side, and then tumbled backward to the ground, throwing his gun into the air with his arms outstretched above his head as he went down into the weeds.

  Shane Maddux appeared from behind a tree and then sprinted to where the man lay. He calmly put another bullet into the man’s head and then jogged to where Troy was standing.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Maddux grinned. “Not even a thank you?”

  “Thank you. Now what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I broke Kaashif. He told me all about this place and what goes on here.”

  Travers had told Troy twice that he was convinced Kaashif would never break. But Maddux had proven that theory dead wrong. “Of course you did,” Troy said as he watched Travers sprint toward them from the left over Maddux’s shoulder. “You could break anyone.”

  “Given long enough.”

  “But how did yo
u know where—”

  “Your father told me.”

  Troy gazed at Maddux steadily as the three Apache helicopters roared overhead. They were no more than fifty feet off the ground, and the rotors created hurricane-force gales beneath them, whipping Troy’s long, dirty-blond hair about his face.

  Bill had released Maddux from that cell at the house and told him where to find Kaashif, Troy realized. Whatever Maddux had on his father had to be devastating, and Troy had a terrible feeling he knew what it was. It sickened him to think about it.

  As Travers got to where he and Maddux were standing, the choppers laid down an intense fire on the open ground around the barn in which the Learjet had been hidden, destroying the pickup trucks and killing the guards hiding behind them as the vehicles exploded violently. Then the Apaches moved on toward the outbuildings and the complex’s main house in the distance.

  As Troy, Travers, and Maddux broke from the trees, Troy headed toward the briefcase on the tarmac. The one Daniel Gadanz had dropped when he’d been shot. After grabbing it, Troy followed Travers and Maddux past the barn toward the main house. As he ran, he glanced up into the sky to the south. He could still barely see the jet’s far-off silver shape against the clear blue sky as it streaked away toward the Keys. He wondered if Daniel Gadanz was alive up there. He’d aimed low on purpose, for the legs, not to kill but to wound, because Daniel was worth infinitely more to the DEA alive than dead. Interrogated correctly, Gadanz could convey priceless information that would significantly interrupt U.S. cocaine traffic.

  But he’d escaped—for now, anyway.

  The two-story mansion was ripped and burning from Apache fire as Troy, Travers, and Maddux approached. Still, someone opened fire from an upstairs window, and they dove for cover behind several large live oaks growing in the front yard.

  “No reason to be heroes!” Travers yelled from behind his tree. “We’ve got two hundred special-forces madmen heading this way. And I’m thinking those Apache flyboys are about to do more damage to the mansion. I don’t want to get in their way.”

  “Agreed,” Troy yelled back as the choppers circled back for another pass.

  As they maneuvered, Troy and Travers quickly donned bright yellow jerseys they had stowed in their backpacks. They hadn’t worn them during the initial assault because they didn’t want to make easy targets for the defenders. But now they didn’t want to be shot by friendly fire—from the choppers or the troops. The Apache pilots and the special-forces soldiers knew not to fire on anyone wearing yellow. Maddux would be safe as long as he was near one of them.

  As Troy finished pulling the shirt over his head, he spotted someone sprinting away from the back of the mansion toward the orange grove. “Major!”

  Travers glanced over from behind the tree he was using to shield himself from the sniper on the mansion’s second floor. “Yeah?”

  “Keep this with you,” Troy yelled, tossing the suitcase to Travers from behind the tree he was using. “Do not lose it.” Then he turned and took off after whoever was fleeing.

  Bullets spanked the dry ground around Troy as he ran, but stopped when he made it to the side of the mansion.

  As he raced into the orange grove, Troy picked up the prey’s trail quickly. Troy was an expert tracker, and he spotted broken twigs and trampled grass most people wouldn’t notice. He could see the trail leading away through the trees ahead of him as clearly as if the person had left footprints in a field of virgin snow.

  As he jogged ahead, he noticed the trail of broken flora ending at a tree thirty yards up. So he ducked right, sprinted three rows of trees over, went left, and then headed up this tree line, keeping track of the tree at which the trail had ended by counting trees in this row.

  As soon as they’d gotten here to the plantation, he and Travers had noticed that the orange grove was perfectly and symmetrically laid out. Trees were planted in seemingly never-ending straight lines spaced twenty feet apart. And each tree in the line was planted exactly parallel to the tree in the line on either side of it.

  Troy moved well past the tree the path had ended under, turned left, counted three rows, turned left again, and moved carefully ahead with his MP5 leading the way. His eyes narrowed as he focused in on the tree. The bottom branches of this one fell almost to the ground, and it was loaded down with fruit. But he could still make out the form of someone hiding in the lower branches—someone wearing a dress. It looked like she was, anyway.

  The woman was facing in the opposite direction, in the direction he’d been coming before he’d detoured around this tree. Troy was coming up behind her, and he noticed a blood trail coming down her leg. She’d been hit by Apache fire inside the mansion and taken off. She was holding a gun, he could see as he closed in. Aiming it back the way she’d come from.

  Could he shoot a woman? It would be as bad as shooting a child. She was no doubt terrified, perhaps even innocent. But she was aiming a gun, trying to ambush him.

  The doubts churned through Troy’s mind as he moved forward deliberately, step by soundless step. Had he lost his edge? Would he hesitate at the critical moment? Could he really do this?

  The figure in the tree whipped around suddenly—and Troy pulled the trigger, nailing the would-be assassin in the chest. The figure dropped heavily to the ground with a loud groan, and Troy raced the last few yards, burst through the branches, and kicked the gun away from the person’s quivering hands.

  “My God,” he whispered, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolling quickly to the pictures he’d been sent by the DEA while he and Travers were flying down here this morning.

  He gazed at one of the photos for several moments, then down at the face of the person on the ground. He’d just shot Emilio Vasquez. The coward had tried to escape dressed as a woman.

  CHAPTER 33

  “CONGRATULATIONS, TROY. You risked everything, and you won. The country will never know what a hero you are.” Bill hesitated. “But I do.”

  “I don’t care about the country knowing. I care about it being safe.”

  Troy and Bill were sitting alone in Bill’s big study at the house in Connecticut. Bill was behind the large platform desk, and Troy was relaxing in a leather wingback chair before it. The walls were made of dark-wood paneling, it was night, and the only light was coming from a dim bulb in a floor lamp in one corner of the room.

  The tables and credenzas were littered with financial tombstones—Lucite-encased announcements of the many Wall Street deals Bill had done during his career—as well as photographs of Bill shaking hands with politicians and sports stars.

  It was like a shrine in here, Troy figured as he looked around. “How many of the death squad members have been arrested so far?” he asked as he glanced at a photo of a young Bill Jensen wearing his Marine uniform and shaking hands with President Reagan. He promised himself that if he ever had an office like this, there wouldn’t be a single self-portrait in it.

  “Thirty-three,” Bill answered. “According to the information that was in that briefcase of Daniel Gadanz’s you grabbed off the tarmac in Florida, there were a total of forty-four death squad members. Four of them died in Minneapolis the first day of the attacks, and as I said, thirty-three more have been arrested in the last twelve hours. That leaves seven of them still unaccounted for. But with the data from the briefcase and the pictures of those seven men being flashed constantly on TV, they won’t be at large for long.” Bill grinned proudly. “The country’s breathing a sigh of relief, son. There have been no more attacks, and I don’t think there will be. You and Wilson Travers are the reasons why. Red Cell Seven came through again.”

  “There were lots of people involved, Dad. Those special-forces guys with us today in Florida were studs. So were the Apache pilots. They deserve the credit.”

  “Not like you and Travers.”

  “How did Daniel know it was time to run?” Bil
l was being too effusive with his praise, and it made Troy uncomfortable. It felt forced, like his father was trying to make up for something. “Did Jacob send him a message?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Fear. Jacob knew Daniel would find out sooner or later who the rat was. Maybe he figured his brother would go easier on him if he had at least sent a warning. Maybe he wasn’t really trying to save himself. Maybe he was just hoping Daniel would spare his girls, that he wouldn’t take revenge on them thanks to the message at the last minute.”

  “We’re going to protect them, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Bill confirmed. “They are already deep into the program, along with their mother.”

  “And Jacob’s in custody? He’s not going free, is he? I sure hope not,” Troy said firmly.

  “Jacob’s dead.”

  Troy had been gazing at the antlered head of an elk, which was mounted on the wall to his left. That elk had been there ever since Troy could remember, and its presence had always irritated him. It wasn’t right to kill animals just to hang them on a wall. He’d known that by the time he was ten years old. Why didn’t Bill?

  “Dead?”

  “He jumped out of a van the Feds were transporting him in from the townhouse in Manassas,” Bill explained. “It happened on the Dulles Toll Road outside DC. The van was doing seventy at the time.”

  It occurred to Troy that perhaps Jacob had help jumping out of the van, but he didn’t care. “Jacob got what he deserved. And I’m assuming Daniel got away.”

  “He did. I understand we tracked the Learjet all the way to Paraguay by satellite. We scrambled two fighters from a base in Tampa, but the Lear was out of U.S. airspace too fast to do anything.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And too far away.”

  “Too bad.”

  “You got Emilio Vasquez. That was a great catch.”

  “Is he going to live?” Troy asked.

  “You got him good through the right lung, but the doctors say he’ll survive. The information he has should prove very helpful.”