by Jim Heskett
Serena whipped around, looking to find her rescuer. On the other end of that muzzle flash stood Harry Boukadakis—K-Books himself—arms locked, pistol extended. His eyes were as big as dinner plates, and his chest heaved up and down. A look of total panic and disbelief on his face. The gun jiggled in his hands. Eyes locked onto Serena as if looking through her. A purple bruise covered part of his face. He looked like he’d been beaten severely.
"Harry? Harry?"
Her teammate seemed to snap into attention, his head twitching a little as his eyes focused on hers. "Serena? Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Harry. Please don’t point the gun at me.”
"Oh," he said as his arms went slack and he lowered the gun to his side. He stared down at the man he’d shot, who was now in a pool of his own blood on the floor.
"Harry,” she said, but it didn’t seem to get through to him. Serena had never seen Harry even hold a gun before as far back as she could remember. "Harry, don’t look at him. Look at me."
But his eyes seemed transfixed. They were locked in place, with Harry in a dream state. Like he might sway on his feet and topple over at any second.
"I shot him," Harry said.
"Yes, Harry. You did. Thank you for finding me and helping me. But, you need to snap out of it. You’re going to go into shock.“
Without looking at her, he nodded. "You're welcome. I thought I heard you. I came around the corner and saw those guys. I thought they were going to kill you.“
"Harry, we have to go. Now. Look at me, damn it.“
He nodded again and rolled his shoulders a few times, but still, his eyes stayed pointed at the man on the floor. "I can't believe that actually happened."
From around the corner of the hallway emerged Layne, shotgun raised. His eyes were almost closed in a wince, looking like he couldn’t stand the light. But, he skidded to a stop when he saw the two of them. Time seemed to slow when this reunion happened, the three of them forming a triangle in the wide hallway.
Harry now finally did look up at his friend, and the tears began to flow from his eyes. A wash of relief and panic. His lower lip trembled, and breath shuddered from his lips.
Layne eyed the gun and then the dying man on the floor. Disbelief on his face, looking from Harry and the gun to the dead man. Serena didn’t know how to explain what had happened here in the last minute.
But, it didn’t matter. Harry limped across the hall. He threw his arms around Layne, and Layne hugged his friend.
"It's good to see you,” Layne said as he looked Serena up and down. He frowned at the blood dripping along her palm, but Serena waved him off. It looked a lot worse than it felt.
Layne pulled back and held Harry at arm’s length. “We have to go, now, though."
Harry wiped his eyes and handed the pistol to Layne. His hand shook as he passed the weapon, holding it by the grip as if it were drenched in bees. He acted like he hadn’t pulled the trigger and killed someone a few moments ago.
Layne stuck the weapon in his waistband. He seemed to have acquired a shotgun somehow since entering the house. She’d been a little too busy on this floor to hear his activities upstairs. Given that they weren’t still being assailed by lackeys she had to assume he’d taken out a few.
"The front door is right over this way," Serena said. She turned in that direction but didn’t have time to take a step.
From somewhere behind her, Serena heard a beep. Then, without further warning, an explosion rocked the house. The hallway seemed to bend, and the walls around them collapsed. Fire pushed out from an open door fifty feet away. The sudden change in air pressure made her shut her eyes.
Above their heads, a series of boards came loose and sank to the floor. Bits of plaster and wood and metal freed from their homes and rocketed around the hallway. Serena watched a light fixture soar across her vision.
Something smacked Harry in the head, and Serena saw him crumple. On her other side, Layne went sideways as the force of the explosion knocked him across the hallway. He smacked face-first into a small table along the wall.
In an instant, smoke filled the room, clouding her vision.
Serena staggered and bumped her head on something hanging down from the ceiling, but the blast hadn’t injured her. At least, not as far as she could tell. She was sitting, a chunk of ceiling plaster covering her legs.
Her thoughts raced. Had to move, quick. Might be more explosions coming. Had that been a bomb? An RPG blast from outside the house?
She found Harry, eyes open, pinned underneath a wooden beam, ten feet to her right. He looked at her, still alive. Serena pushed herself to her feet. Coughing, smoke in her lungs and stinging her eyes.
Across the hall, Layne righted himself, and they both ran toward Harry. Layne was pasty white with drywall powder all over his face and arms.
They stood on either side of Harry, and they both lifted the board pinning him. Harry grunted as it came free, and he heaved a breath, his face a blur of pain.
With the noise of the house collapsing, she had to shout. “Harry, can you walk?"
Harry nodded, grimacing against the pain as he lumbered to his feet. "I'll be fine,” he yelled back. “Just get me out of here, please."
From her peripheral, a person emerged. It took her a second to recognize the figure staggering down the hall. The sniper from the rooftop, barely staying upright. Half his face bloodied, missing his left arm. The sniper rifle was still clutched in his right arm. Dazed, reeling, he fell face-first onto the floor. No movement after he collapsed.
At least they didn’t have to worry about him taking shots at them from the roof as they escaped. The house probably no longer had a roof.
Fire raged back from the room where the explosion had originated. Smoke billowed, now up to their knees.
Serena and Layne put their arms around Harry, and they all pointed toward the entry room. The three of them walked, Serena on the left, Layne on the right, Harry sandwiched between. The former prisoner was limping, his face bruised, one eye shut. As they rounded the corner into the main living room, a man jumped up from behind a table he’d knocked over to create cover. A short and squat man with long dreadlocks like coils of snakes sprouting from the top of his head.
“Drop your guns,” the man said as he struggled to insert a magazine in the bottom of an H&K MP7.
Layne and Serena both raised their weapons, but she pulled the trigger first. She shot the man in the chest and stomach to clear a path. The man tumbled forward over his makeshift barricade, the gun slipping from his grasp and clattering on the floor.
They all three went out the front door. The heat inside had almost matched the heat outside, but she could breathe again in the open air.
Weapons up, they crossed the front yard, to the gate. She looked back at the house, now a shell of framework, missing most of the roof. The eastern side of the house had completely collapsed. Fire raged on the lower floor.
"Shit," Layne said. "The car is gone."
"What?" Harry asked. "What do we do?"
Serena surveyed the area, and there didn’t seem to be another vehicle they could take. Not one they could easily hot-wire, at least. She pointed across an open grassy field. "The main road is just over there.”
The three of them left the front of the property, out into the grassy fields, toward freedom.
INTERLUDE #9
Washington, D.C. | Eight years ago
Daphne Kurek wonders if anyone will notice she’s wearing her backup shoes. The pair she keeps in the trunk of her car in case of emergencies. This morning was an emergency, no doubt about it. She only wears heels for work, and only then to make a certain impression. The impression that, combined with a sharp suit, she can be both sexy and professional in one ensemble. But an errant step outside the building led to a broken heel. Sexy or not, she can’t walk with one heel, so she’s in the backup pair.
She’s standing outside a nondescript building on 9th Street, briefcase in one hand. The brief
case is mostly empty, but it will soon contain one of the most important collections of pages in United States history. Not important like the Declaration of Independence. Important like the Pentagon Papers. Important in a way that, if she does her job correctly, no one will ever know.
And, she’s used to that. Of all the things she’s done for this country, the general population knows about almost none of them. She’s been at dinner parties with decorated four-star generals who have been swamped by the press and adoring fans. She’s stood next to these men and women, knowing they haven’t done half of what she’s done to keep America safe. Nowhere close to her level of sacrifice.
That’s okay with her. She doesn’t need glory.
Daphne enters the brick building and then inserts her key into the conference room on the right. Like the outside of the building, it’s an unmarked brown door. Unassuming and anonymous.
She walks in to see Layne Parrish sitting alone at the conference table, staring out the window. The half-open blinds send slashes of light across his handsome face. At least a dozen cuts and bruises mark his head, adding to the frown burned onto his lips. He’s blank-eyed, as if deep in thought.
“Hello, Control,” he says without looking at her.
Daphne crosses the room and closes the blinds. “I know we picked this spot carefully, but we still can’t be visible.” She waits for him, but he only stares at the floor. “Go ahead. I’m sure you have questions.”
“Is Vixen even a real person, or was she some bait-and-switch the NSA dropped on us? We never saw her in town, and she wasn’t at that underground complex.”
“We’re working on it. All the intel is a big soup right now, but the important thing is we have the report.”
“I’m never doing one of these NSA ops again. I don’t care what you promise them. I’m done.”
“Fair enough. I understand why you feel the way you do. Nothing in this operation went the way it was supposed to.”
Now, he gives her an intense stare. “Jules is dead.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Boy Scout.”
“All of this could have been avoided if they’d given us the right intel. If we’d had support in the field and maybe a remote person or two. If they had told us what the hell we were walking into.”
“I agree. But it doesn’t matter now.”
He pauses, appearing to mull over his words. “How come she never got an operational handle?”
“Oh,” Daphne says, sighing, “I thought of several. Firecracker. Scotch. Snapper. But, none of them seemed to fit in the moment, so she was always only 'Jules.'"
“Any word on recovering her body?”
Daphne shakes her head. “That explosion let out some nasty chemicals at the site. NSA has taken over since we don’t want locals involved. It’s slow going, and they’ve mostly shut me out of the loop. You know how they can be.”
“I do.” He lifts a messenger bag from the ground and opens it. Bruised and scabbed hands take the pages and set them on the conference table. Then, he stands. “I hope it was worth it.”
The pain on his face is difficult for her to bear. “Why don’t you take a few weeks? Go on a trip. Spend time with family, or go to a beach halfway across the world. Have a meaningless fling with a pretty local in Bali. Take as long as you need.”
“Okay,” he says, then he glances at the pages.
“You want to say hi to Avery? He’s down the hall.”
“No thanks. I’m just stopping by.” He pauses, rubbing his hands together. “You know, she had a job offer in California. This was supposed to be her last op.”
“I know.”
He cocks his head. “You did?”
“Of course I did.”
“And you were going to let her go?”
“Yes. You’re not indentured servants.”
Layne tamps his lips together a few times as if he might express a different opinion, but he says nothing. He gives her a little nod before leaving the room. Without saying goodbye, he’s gone.
Daphne sits alone in the room for several seconds, breathing. Losing a shadow is always an unpleasant reality. So much energy and effort spent to make them feel like family. It works great in the field because they always watch out for each other. But then, when one dies, it takes even more energy to put the pieces back together.
Yes, the NSA hosed them on this op. Poor planning, poor communication, poor cooperation.
With a sigh, Daphne collects the pages and leaves the room. She walks down the hall, toward Avery’s office. As she passes an open door, something catches her eye. Harry Boukadakis, sitting in an office, hunched over a laptop.
“Hey, K-Books,” she says, tilting her head. “I didn’t know you were in town.”
“Flight landed last night. I know I’m not officially back on the clock until Monday, but I wanted to get a jump on my email. I tried to connect at home, but the VPN was being twitchy.”
“I see.”
Harry frowns. “I heard about Juliana. It’s awful.”
“She will be missed. Not one of our best-run ops, that’s for sure. According to our mission directives, it was a success, and Layne is back with us, so I’m trying to look at the positives.”
“He’ll be alright,” Harry says. “I talked to him for a minute before you got here.”
Daphne leans toward the next room, Avery’s office. The door is open, but there’s no one there. “Have you seen Avery?”
“Out for coffee. He said he’d be back in an hour.”
Daphne checks her watch. She’s due at Quantico in two hours, and the traffic won’t be kind. “I’m going to leave something for him, then I’ll come back this afternoon to confirm. Can you make sure he gets it as soon as he’s back? It’s incredibly important.”
“No problem, boss,” Harry says.
Daphne walks into Avery’s office and drops the report on his desk.
40
Garret Robinson started up the rental car parked beyond the fence line. He assumed this was the car driven here by Layne Parrish, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t in charge of watching and cataloging those sorts of things. Cornelius was, but Garret had to assume Corn was dead. He hadn’t made contact in a couple of hours.
Ashleigh was dead, too. Hopefully, the explosion at the house obliterated her corpse to buy him a little time. For some reason, it was easier to think of her in little pieces torn apart by a bomb than a complete person, on the floor of his office. Torn apart, she was only meat, not a terrible mistake Garret had made in the heat of the moment.
The whole operation was as dead as Ashleigh. From the start, it had been doomed. Trying to pass himself off as Ronald Gaynor. Trying to deceive his boss and thinking he could get away with it. Using the money and resources to plan his own escape with the report. Thinking he could manage all these moving pieces and personnel and kill actual government employees, all in the name of avenging a death. Avery’s death.
A death that Garret wasn’t even a hundred percent sure had been caused by the government.
But, that didn’t matter. Garret had started on this path and then convinced himself it was the right thing to do. At a certain point, there was a place where he could have turned back and undone the steps he’d taken. Probably, the first shadow he had killed. Mark Roth, snatched in California, then killed in Nevada. Corn had tortured him for a full day before Garret had decided he wouldn’t give up the location of the NSA report. Garret had slit the man’s throat himself. That had been the moment. The choice he couldn’t have come back from.
Garret’s hands squeezed the steering wheel, the ache spreading up his arms and into his shoulders. He had to take a few deep breaths to steady himself.
Then, his eyes traveled to the right. Layne, Harry, and Serena Rojas were leaving the house, venturing out into the wide open yard behind it. They had their sights set on a hill to the west. With Harry limping, and Serena clutching an injured hand to her chest, they were moving slowly. All three of them covered in de
tritus from the house, broken and bruised and weary. The mere fact that they had survived the bomb made Garret clench his teeth and have to suck in breaths to ward off a panic attack.
They were alive, free to go, almost at the edge of the property. Harry had seen his face. Harry had probably figured out his true identity, too.
Garret put the car into gear.
This wasn’t over. Maybe they didn’t know where the report was, but he didn’t have to allow them to leave, scot free. He didn’t have to allow Harry Boukadakis to recount what he’d seen here and identify him to the authorities. With the plastic surgery, he wouldn’t look like any photos on file, but they would track him down, eventually. Harry could sit down with a sketch artist, and they’d have a workable likeness of him within ten minutes.
But, not if the last remaining witnesses were dead.
Garret turned the wheel toward the open space behind the house and hit the gas. He broke through the small fence, and then entered the flat area filled with brush. With mostly flat land between here and there, this sedan could cross it with no trouble.
On a collision course with the three of them.
He would mow them down. The easiest way to take out all three at once. No way could they run. Even if they split up, he could still catch the three of them individually. Killing them one at a time was fine with him if it came to that.
Layne’s eyes first tracked the approaching car. His mouth dropped as he turned in Garret’s direction, then the other two took notice. Layne raised his shotgun, and Garret readied himself to duck down. The engine block would protect him long enough to accomplish his task.
But then, Layne lowered his weapon and cocked his head. The three of them were looking to the right, at something. Their eyes tracked it.
Garret looked in that direction to see an oncoming pickup truck, zooming across the open space. A cloud of dust churning into the air behind it. Perpendicular to Garret, increasing in speed.
And inside that truck were three people, one of whom was his boss. Two men on either side of her. In the blink of an eye, the truck narrowed the distance. Headed straight for him.