The sharp explosive concussion of the grenades reached his ears a few seconds later, followed by a stark silence. He carefully surveyed the property for several seconds. A few random heads peeked through door frames deep inside the house. A small group cautiously edged its way toward the lieutenant governor’s body. Infrared flashlight beams stabbed into the night on the unobserved side of the house.
Unsurprisingly, little else stirred inside or outside of the former lieutenant governor’s house. The 25mm smart grenade launcher was a devastatingly evil weapon to use against soft targets, and it apparently deterred whoever was still alive.
“All teams withdraw to the primary rally point,” said Leeds, continuing his vigil over the house.
Olmos reloaded his rifle before jamming the torn thermal blanket into his rucksack. “Ready when you’re ready,” he said, lifting the sniper rifle off the ground.
Leeds grabbed the spotting scope and folded its mini-tripod before swinging his assault rifle into the ready position. He lowered the night-vision goggles attached to his head mount and tapped a button on his wrist tablet. The muted infrared screen gave him four easily accessible preset options. He pressed his gloved index finger against “EXTRACT NAV,” activating the internal navigation Heads-Up Display in his night-vision device. He could now follow the icons displayed in his goggles to navigate toward the team’s extract point.
He headed northeast, pressing the “Banshee” button a few minutes later. The display indicated a connection moments later.
“Banshee, this is Wraith,” said Leeds. “Two has been flushed. I say again. Two has been flushed. ETA primary extract point in one-eight minutes.”
“This is Banshee, copy your transmission,” replied Flagg’s voice. “Spectre en route to primary extract point. Contact Spectre on separate channel to coordinate pickup.”
“Copy. Wraith out.”
Twenty minutes later, Leeds and his team of nine Cerberus special operators sat crammed together inside the sparse cabin of a first-generation military stealth helicopter. Flying nap-of-earth to ensure radar invisibility, the helicopter headed due west for the California coast, a forty-minute flight taking them over the sparsely populated areas just north of California’s wine country. Once over the Pacific Ocean, the helicopter would turn south, seeking its launch pad on a Sentinel Corporation–owned offshore oil platform outside of Morrow Bay. The two-hour trip would give Leeds a much-needed rest. Flagg had him running on fumes for the past twenty-four hours.
He leaned his head back against the vibrating metal interior. Just after he’d closed his eyes, an annoying earpiece chirp alerted him to an incoming satellite call. His night-vision HUD confirmed what he already knew: Flagg had no intention of letting him sleep tonight. He accepted the call with his wrist tablet, increasing the volume so he could hear over the helicopter engine’s perpetual whine.
“Leeds,” he said.
“I hope I didn’t wake you,” said Flagg.
Leeds broke into a laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of taking a nap on the job.”
“Good. I pay you too much as it is,” said Flagg. “Any problems tonight?”
“Not really. Either the first or second bullet removed the target’s head. The rest just amplified the message,” said Leeds. “Approximately eight private security contractors engaged from the pool area. I doubt any of them survived. No apparent casualties in the house beyond what I just reported.”
“You said ‘not really’ any problems. I assume you’re not feeling guilty about the security contractors? Am I missing something?”
“They had a concealed sniper on the roof. Gave us a close shave,” said Leeds. “Satellite pictures should have picked that up. Unless the intelligence team used outdated imagery.”
“Correct,” said Flagg. “I’ll address that with our people shortly. Anything else?”
“Negative. It was a clean operation—if you consider the use of high-explosive projectiles clean.”
“I consider the use of high explosives a bonus,” replied Flagg. “Tonight’s operation will guarantee that all eyes remain focused on California—and the brutal tactics the California Liberation Movement will employ to get what they want.”
“I wouldn’t get in that group’s way,” said Leeds, hoping Flagg was done.
“Speaking of getting in the way,” said Flagg, pausing. “I’ve been thinking about our beach witness.”
“That doesn’t sound good for his health.”
“I don’t suspect it will be,” said Flagg. “Surveillance suggests he might flee California in the next few days. I believe tonight’s news might expedite his departure.”
“Accidents are fairly common on the high-desert roads leading out of California. The sooner he gets on the road, the better, I say.”
“I think Mr. Fisher will better serve our needs here in Southern California,” said Flagg. “I have something special in mind for him.”
“And you’d like to work out the details right now?” asked Leeds, his interest oddly piqued despite his state of exhaustion.
“Not unless you have more important plans.”
“You have my undivided attention—as always.”
A half hour later, Flagg disconnected the call and Leeds closed his eyes, replaying the conversation. Flagg’s latest plan was devilishly depraved, giving Leeds a rare glimpse into the man’s deepest thought processes. He could see with full clarity why Cerberus had put Flagg in charge of the group’s most important operations. The man gave zero fucks about anything but getting the job done. Leeds needed to remember that when he woke up, because Flagg wouldn’t hesitate to burn him if it benefited one of Cerberus’s clients.
CHAPTER 20
Nathan tried to pretend he was dead asleep—a nearly impossible ruse with his wife’s hands throttling his upturned shoulder. What time was it? He peered beneath one of his eyelids, glimpsing the wall-mounted screen, which read 6:05 a.m. Why was she doing this? It was still early.
“I can see you looking at the clock,” she said, hitting him harder. “I need you awake. Now. We’re leaving.”
“What the ffffuh?” he grumbled.
“You want to know what the fuck is going on? Try this,” she said, letting go of his arm. “TV activate. Lieutenant Governor McDaid assassination. Replay latest broadcast.”
McDaid’s assassination? The monitor flashed, displaying the smart cable logo. A female digitized voice replied to his wife’s request. “Replaying KGTV broadcast. Six o’clock a.m., pacific standard time.”
“You better be watching,” said Keira.
“Can’t I have my coffee first?” he said, meekly testing the waters.
“You won’t need coffee after this,” she said, just as the broadcast started.
“This is KGTV anchor Natalie Ruiz broadcasting live from our studios with the latest update in this unbelievable overnight development. For the viewers just waking up to the news, Lieutenant Governor Gareth McDaid was assassinated last night at his Sacramento residence, in what the governor’s office calls the most brazen and deplorable act of violence ever perpetrated against a public official in the United States.”
“Jesus,” Nathan muttered, squeezing his wife’s hand.
“Details of the attack are still unconfirmed, but we do know that Sacramento County Police dispatchers received a frantic call from a state trooper assigned to the lieutenant governor’s security detail at 11:35 p.m., reporting that the residence was under heavy attack and requesting armed drone support. With the investigation ongoing, neither the police nor the governor’s office have provided additional details, but neighbors confirmed the sound of multiple explosions and automatic gunfire coming from the direction of the lieutenant governor’s vast property on the northern edge of the exclusive Sacramento foothills community.
“Let’s go to Brett Abrahams, who is on the scene outside of El Dorado Ranch Estates. Brett, what can you tell us?”
“Natalie, the scene has been surreal, with armed police drones b
uzzing overhead and tactical vehicles roaming the streets inside the gated community. The few residents willing to speak with us painted a grim picture of the evening’s attack.
“Explosions rocked the tranquil community just after eleven, setting off home alarms and waking residents to what one neighbor described as a ‘Fourth of July light show.’ Whatever happened at the lieutenant governor’s mansion was short-lived, according to residents; the streets quieting again a few minutes later.”
“Has anyone seen the lieutenant governor’s house?” asked Ruiz. “Do we have any idea what happened?”
“The lieutenant governor’s property is a private twenty-acre estate at the northern tip of the community. The house can’t be seen from streets, or viewed from any of the neighbors’ properties, and all efforts to bring a media helicopter or drone into the foothills have been thwarted by authorities. We do know that the lieutenant governor was pronounced dead on the scene by the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office, a fact confirmed by the governor’s press secretary.”
“Brett, has there been any on-scene speculation about who might have been behind the attack?”
“Here we go,” said Nathan.
“Official sources have been surprisingly quiet, including the governor’s office, but it’s no secret that Gareth McDaid was a tireless supporter of the One Nation Coalition, publicly opposing the secessionist efforts,” said Abrahams.
“With recent rumors about Congresswoman Almeda’s connection to One Nation racing across social media, is it too early to link the two assassinations?” asked Ruiz.
“It’s too early to tell, but McDaid clearly stood in One Nation’s corner. Almeda’s position on the secession issue remained unclear up until and after her death, though she had just left a dinner meeting with congressmen linked to the ONC.”
“Two high-profile assassinations of public officials linked to the One Nation Coalition within a twenty-four-hour period will undoubtedly raise a lot of questions,” said Ruiz.
“Mute the television,” said Keira, deactivating the broadcast’s sound. “Unless you need to hear more.”
“No,” said Nathan. “We leave tonight. Late. Everything is staged and ready to be loaded. We’ll have dinner—”
“We need to leave now,” she insisted.
“I’m probably under police surveillance,” he said. “And I’m definitely subject to a court-mandated geographic restriction. I need to show up to work, like they expect.”
“Until they escort you to one of those camps on the border,” said Keira. “Where you’ll disappear.”
“That’s not going to happen,” said Nathan, his thoughts flashing to the black boats and SUV.
“Are you sure?” she said. “We can be in Arizona by nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Arizona is not a viable option, for a lot of reasons. We’ll head north on Interstate 15 tonight. It’s four and a half hours to the Nevada border. It’s a safer route.”
She ran a hand through her sandy-blonde hair. “We leave no later than nine tonight.”
“All right,” he muttered.
“Really?” she insisted.
“Really,” he said, still trying to wrap his uncaffeinated brain around the big picture.
It all felt disturbingly connected now. Two brazen assassinations. Stealth boats retrieving divers near the Del Mar Triad Station minutes before the reactor cooling pump fails. A black heavy-duty SUV scanning the beach for witnesses. Jesus. Why hadn’t he put that together earlier?
But the police didn’t mention the SUV. Why? Something was off.
Nathan lowered his head to the pillow and stared at the popcorn ceiling.
Keira was right. The sooner they left, the better—but they had to do it smartly, though he wasn’t sure what that meant anymore. He had absolutely no idea how closely the police might be watching him, especially in light of the lieutenant governor’s murder. Had he already missed his window of opportunity by not listening to Keira last night and leaving immediately?
If the San Diego County PD had him under tight surveillance, the police would likely stop them at the county border. Even worse, they could claim Keira had helped him violate a court order, and throw both of them in a detention center and toss their son into the Child Protective Services system. Nathan’s parents would have to fight to extract Owen from that mess. Maybe they should leave separately and rendezvous outside of California, in case the police nabbed him along the way.
“You all right?” she said, kissing him on the forehead.
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his face. “I’ll … uh … call my dad a little later. Give him a heads-up that we’re heading his way. Maybe I can convince him to grab a few of his survivalist friends and meet us halfway. The stretch between Las Vegas and Salt Lake City can get a little rough.”
“I thought the I-15 was safe.”
“It is, between here and Vegas. Nevada does everything it can to keep the route safe,” said Nathan, getting out of bed. “Beyond that … things go to shit again until Salt Lake City.”
“Worse than Arizona and New Mexico?”
“Probably not,” he said, stretching his arms and yawning.
She nodded, smiling nervously before glancing in the direction of Owen’s room. “We could go north and head for Reno if you think it won’t be safe,” she said. “I haven’t heard of any problems that far north in Nevada or Utah. Your dad wouldn’t have to drive as far.”
“It’ll take us another five hours to get out of California that way,” said Nathan. “I think our best bet is to get out of the state as fast as possible. If we really feel unsafe about driving past Vegas, I wouldn’t be opposed to hopping on a flight at that point.”
“I wonder if we should fly out of San Diego,” said Keira. “On the next available flight.”
“We’ll be fine driving,” said Nathan, not entirely convinced he was right.
CHAPTER 21
Mason Flagg removed a pair of wireless headphones and placed them on the table next to his keyboard, waiting for Leeds to do the same before speaking.
“That conversation between Fisher and his wife was recorded about thirty minutes ago,” said Flagg. “We’ll obviously have to bump up the timeline. I’ve already spoken with our technical support about creating a custom-upload file for Detective Peck at the Virtual Investigative Division. She’ll dump that into the system late this afternoon. All of the electronic crumbs will be in place for your grand finale tonight.”
“It’s an ambitious plan. I’ll give you that,” said Leeds, taking a sip of steaming coffee from a Styrofoam cup.
Flagg glared at him for a moment, dismissing the skeptical, borderline-insolent comment as a function of the man’s exhaustion level. Leeds hadn’t slept more than five or six hours in the past two days, a recipe for testiness. Still, Flagg didn’t like it.
“As long as the pieces of this puzzle somewhat fit together,” Flagg said, “the bigger picture will be inescapable—the conclusion inevitable. Public support will sway so far away from the California Liberation Movement, its founders will need a telescope to find it again.”
“What do we know about Fisher?” asked Leeds.
“I presume you have a reason for asking a question easily answered by reading his file.”
“Fisher is too much of a Boy Scout on the surface. Comes from a career Marine family. Engineering type. Family guy. No criminal record. Clean credit. No bank-account anomalies—”
“Not yet,” said Flagg. “We can always dump money into an overseas account and point investigators in the right direction.”
“Killing Fisher and his family effectively ends the story,” said Leeds. “I can’t see the upside to letting them live. If he saw the boats and somehow managed to describe them accurately, there’s no way we can blame the reactor sabotage on the CLM. Someone will poke around and make the connection between the scrapped General Dynamics program and Sentinel’s purchase—which leads to One Nation. Fisher has to go, sooner than la
ter.”
Flagg examined him, shaking his head. “I think you need more sleep. This will be the biggest story of the year. A midlevel county-employed water engineer in up to his neck with known CLM contacts, and a corrupt detective. Recently questioned by police about his bizarre early-morning trips to the beach next to a recently failed nuclear reactor. Found slain with his family a day later, along with the detective and a power-plant engineer, who happens to have access to the cooling-pump unit at the Del Mar station. I’m not exactly sure how I can improve that story,” said Flagg. “You don’t even have to pack Mr. Fisher’s car to make it look like he was preparing to flee. He’s very conveniently taking care of that for us.”
“Why Fisher, though?” asked Leeds. “The engineer and detective make sense. Why would the CLM use Fisher?”
“Let the police and feds rack their brains trying to figure it out. The damage will be done.”
Leeds sipped his coffee.
“I hate when you do this,” said Flagg. “What do you suggest?”
“We pin Detective Peck’s murder on Fisher,” said Leeds. “Cop killer shoots corrupt cop. Nobody will dig too deep into Fisher’s connection with the California Liberation Movement. Everybody hates a cop killer.”
Flagg slowly grinned. “An interesting twist.”
“What about the father?” asked Leeds.
“You want to get rid of him, too?”
“No,” said Leeds. “But a former senior enlisted Marine with a combination of infantry and counterintelligence experience shouldn’t be dismissed. Depending on how much Fisher shares with his father, the man could pose a problem. Especially if he gets vocal—and still has friends within the intelligence community.”
“Tech support is working on that, too,” said Flagg. “Expedited surveillance package.”
“Should I position one of our Northern California teams in Idaho?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary at this point,” said Flagg. “We’ll have plenty of time to deal with him.”
Fractured State (Fractured State Series Book 1) Page 10