The 3rd Cycle of the Betrayed Series Collection: Extremely Controversial Historical Thrillers (Betrayed Series Boxed set)

by Carolyn McCray

The sniper climbed aboard the only other two-seater.

  Bridget didn’t put up a single fuss, as she put her helmet on.

  That was one brave young woman. Svengurd would be so proud.

  Rebecca got in next to her husband, securing her lap belt nice and low and tight. She mentally apologized to the baby. This was going to be a bumpy ride, but the fetus might as well get used to what it was like to be born into the Brandt family.

  Brandt popped them up and out of the little rut they were sitting in. It was so odd to have so much thrust under them, yet barely a sound.

  The ATVs ahead of them didn’t have their lights on, so they had to stay close to keep the team together.

  The desert flowed by. Tumble weeds, scraggly shrubs and lots and lots of sand.

  They crossed the distance quickly. Not far to the north there was a border control tower. It looked so close, but no one seemed to notice or care about their passage.

  Apparently, this was the change of the guard. Plus Stark was working his magic, trying to keep them off of the patrol’s radar, literally.

  Something must have happened up ahead, as the ATV silently veered, nearly tipping over as it turned so abruptly.

  Brandt had to swerve sharply to avoid a lopsided drone. They went up and over a boulder, falling on their side, skidding to a stop.

  Rebecca blinked a few times, as she realized she was nearly nose-to-nose with a coyote. They were so quiet that they had fooled even a real, live coyote.

  It gave a little yelp, then ran off into the desert.

  “You okay?” Brandt asked.

  Rebecca took a moment to catalog all of her major body parts. “I seem to be.”

  Brandt unhooked her restraint and helped her up.

  “Let’s go see what this is all about.”

  They climbed back over the boulder to find a surveillance drone turning in slow, lazy circles.

  “Sorry about that,” Stark said. “I gave them all a virus to keep them from reporting your position.”

  “No worries,” Brandt said turning to the other men. “I need a little help righting our ATV.”

  The men were out of theirs and helping quicker than that coyote ran off. It wasn’t until then that Rebecca realized something. Their human coyote had driven off in the confusion.

  “What are we going to do now?” Rebecca asked her husband.

  Brandt turned to Ki while speaking into his mic. “Stark can you guide us in from here?”

  “Should be pretty straight forward,” the IT guy stated.

  “Then let’s do it,” Brandt ordered.

  * * *

  Stark watched as the team made their way across the desert. So far, so smooth.

  They were almost over. Luckily the border wall didn’t come this far west

  Then several blooms of gasoline-powered engines flared to life. From the size, they were more than likely trucks.

  Not good.

  They headed out of the parking lot, going off road, making a beeline to Brandt’s team.

  This was not happening.

  “Brandt, you’ve got incoming.”

  “How soon?”

  Stark had to give it to the man. He didn’t waste any breath on worry or dismay.

  “Five minutes, maybe four.”

  “Any way for us to avoid intersection?”

  “Not if you want to cross the border tonight,” Stark explained.

  “Find a way,” Brandt said. “I am not firing on any of my own.”

  Yah, Stark got that concept, but he wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to keep three trucks from overtaking the team.

  “The drones,” Bunny said next to him.

  “I don’t understand,” Stark responded.

  “You have control of them, don’t you?” Bunny asked.

  “Well, I wouldn’t say control necessarily.”

  He’d had to get over three Homeland security firewalls to even access the drone’s main operating system, then there had been the task of devising a virus that would be undetectable, but still disable the flying surveillance drones.

  “Stark!” Bunny snapped.

  “Yes, I guess I do.”

  “Then use them,” Bunny encouraged.

  “How?”

  “Harass those trucks.”

  Stark shook his head. “These a surveillance drones. They don’t have any fire power.”

  “They don’t need it,” Bunny stated, pushing her chair closer to his. She knew how that affected him. “We just need to slow them down for a few minutes, then the team will be over the border and into the outskirts of El Paso, where they can disappear.”

  This was doable. Maybe.

  He looked to his mother.

  “I’ll keep the backdoor shut while you work on the coding for the drones.”

  “Thanks,” Stark replied.

  “I can help you with the primary breach,” Cama noted.

  Stark’s instinct was to thank her as well, then he saw the glare in Bunny’s eyes.

  “You know what? I think I’ve got it,” Stark said instead. These two redheads really shouldn’t be in the same room.

  “How is this getting us closer to the answer?” Rojas grumbled from behind Stark.

  “Because the team can’t head to the coordinates until they are free to get a plane.” Stark wanted to add, “you moron,” but thought that might be a little much.

  For now he had to be content with moving the drones around like his own little puppets.

  * * *

  Bunny watched as Stark got control of the drones. It wasn’t easy and he was under a constant counter-hack. Over all, for a bunch of typing, it was pretty epic.

  Her cyber hero stopped the drone’s lazy circles and got them back into the game. On their side this time.

  He cranked those puppies up, racing from their varied locations and honing in on the truck that was headed straight for Brandt’s position. They could figure out later how the border patrol had found them.

  Just because the drones didn’t have any payload, didn’t mean they couldn’t be used aggressively. Stark drove one of the drones straight at the truck. A little game of chicken. Apparently the border patrol agents didn’t get the memo not to wimp out. They cranked the wheel over, driving off the road and skidding out into the sand.

  Their very specific orders were to not injure any of the border agents. It wasn’t their fault they were going after Brandt’s team.

  The driver of the truck regained control and pulled the truck back onto the road. The next time Stark tried the chicken maneuver, the truck held steady, forcing Stark to wave off first. They were learning.

  “We need the slow them down way more than this,” Bunny reminded Stark.

  “Working on it.”

  And that Stark was. His fingers flew over the keys. Jaguars be damned, the man shined in this attic. Suddenly one of the drone’s lights went on. It was really more like a spot light. Stark slowed the drone, putting that spot light right into the truck’s windshield.

  The driver swerved, trying to get out of the blinding light, but Stark was relentless. Once that drone passed the truck, there was another drone in position to replace it.

  This driver turned out to be a little smarter than he had seemed at first. Despite being nearly blinded, he sped up. The road was pretty darned straight and the driver must have known that, flying under the drone then speeding up even more, trying to make up lost time.

  “Stark…”

  “I know, I know,” Stark said, looking between three screens.

  This time as the drone went over the truck. Stark cut the engines. The drone dropped right into the bed of the truck. He then slammed the drone into the tailgate, trying to counteract the truck’s forward momentum. The engine was heating up the back window of the truck as well.

  Stark brought the other drones to bear. Three in the air, sending that glaring light into the driver.

  In the end, the driver stopped, turning off the truck. Stark let the drone d
rop back into the bed, its engines going cold.

  “You are good to go,” Bunny informed Brandt.

  * * *

  Davidson got off his ATV in a deserted section of El Paso. The rest of the team did the same. He patted the seat after he got off. Now he could kind of see why Lopez got so attached to his machinery.

  This little electric ATV had done a great job. It was so quiet, yet had such acceleration. And such a well-padded seat.

  Dear God, he was waxing as poetic as Lopez did. As a matter of fact, Lopez was walking around his ATV, stroking the chrome, muttering to the vehicle. Davidson’s hand fell off the seat. He did not want to get the look that Ki and Bridget were giving to Lopez.

  Brandt helped Rebecca out of the vehicle. She was only a few weeks pregnant, but Brandt was already treating her delicately. Well, maybe not that delicately, since they’d just illegally crossed the border in ATVs, but way more delicately then he normally did.

  Rebecca accepted his help and stepped by Davidson.

  Brandt turned to his wife. “Any direction?”

  “Bunny?”

  There was a slight delay.

  “Babe, everything okay?” Davidson asked. They hadn’t had a lot of time to talk. Especially to discuss this quasi-kidnapping thing. He didn’t like Bunny put in danger when he wasn’t there to protect her. Stark and he were going to have a long talk when he got home.

  “Yes, it is fine. I think for now you just need to know you need to go northwest.”

  Brandt shrugged. “Fine by me.”

  Davidson grinned. Brandt trusted Bunny’s instincts as much as Davidson did.

  * * *

  Brandt turned to Ki. “So what are our next steps?”

  “Steal a car. Lopez steals a plane and we are out of here within the hour.”

  Brandt nodded. “Then so be it.”

  The beefy Asian turned on his heel, thumbed Lopez over and set out into the night.

  Brandt leaned back onto his ATV and opened his arm. Rebecca knew exactly what he meant and curled up next to him. “So where do you think we’re going?”

  “I think I have a pretty good idea, but I want Bunny to have her surprise.”

  Kissing the top of Rebecca’s head, Brandt looked around at the pretty desolate El Paso warehouse district. These areas looked pretty much the same worldwide. Warehouses stacked on top of warehouses. Newspapers drifting on the wind. Oil and grease ground into the street from all the trucks that drove up and down during the day.

  There was a stale, uninviting smell to these places. Its own protection system he supposed.

  Bridget came over. “I would like to join you heading north.”

  Brandt looked the young woman up and down. She was an enigma just like her uncle. So stoic. That icy stare.

  “It won’t be any problem to drop you off at the FBI office in downtown El Paso.”

  “I know, but I’ve made it this far. I’d just like to see it through.”

  Again, just like her uncle.

  “I don’t see any reason why not,” Rebecca said.

  He looked to his wife. They weren’t in the habit of taking civilians along for the ride, unless there was a very compelling reason. Like Bunny and Rebecca’s knowledge of ancient artifacts.

  Beyond regulations, Brandt couldn’t think of any real reason to not bring her though. Because, get real, they had broken about a hundred regulations and a thousand laws in the past twenty-four hours.

  What was one more?

  CHAPTER 19

  Cristoval settled into his plane seat. The team’s pilot had secured them a little Cessna private jet. While not fancy, it was comfortable and would do the job. Dr. Monroe had stated it should take them between an hour and a half and two hours to get to their final mystery destination.

  Judging by the way the pilot had flown before, Cristoval believed they would land within an hour and a half.

  He had a vague inclination where they were going, but found it hard to believe. They must be wrong. He wished that he could speak directly, privately with Rojas. Cristoval feared that Rojas was leading them on a wild goose chase. There was no way the Brotherhood’s sacred artifacts, the Gospel of Christ had ended up in North America.

  It made no sense, but he really shouldn’t eliminate any possibility, since there had been very little possibility that one of the sacred pendants would have landed in the hands of a Special Forces soldier either.

  The flight was going to provide Cristoval with some much needed quiet time. Time to reflect. Time to ask God the answers to some of his most urgent questions. He could only hope that Rojas had enough latitude to alert the Brotherhood to their destination and rally enough troops to secure the artifacts, if in fact they were at the end of the odd rainbow.

  He only felt comfortable trusting in his Lord and Savior, not so much on other people. He found them frail, unreliable, and self-serving.

  Take these soldiers. The only reason they were seeing this quest through was because of the terrorist alert on their names. If not for that, they would have gone back to their mundane lives.

  The Brotherhood’s mole had done an excellent job of keeping the team on track. Without them, Cristoval would probably already be incarcerated, mourning the loss of their most sacred artifacts.

  Artifacts that could turn the world on its head.

  But with the way the world was going, it deserved it. Jesus’s word would finally get out to his followers.

  Cristoval felt a warmth in his belly.

  Closing his eyes, Cristoval relished the feeling, praying for a quick resolution to their quest.

  He hoped to not have to harm the team he was traveling with, but if push came to shove, he had the means to dispatch them in the name of Christ.

  * * *

  Bunny sat back. It had been a pretty quick hour and few minutes. Stark and his mother were hard at work on some kind of reverse hack on a North Korean computer farm, while the team was traveling northwest.

  The shaman and Rojas sat cross-legged at the back of the attic. Both in deep mediation. The shaman absently drew figures on the floor in soot. Bunny hoped that mopped up easily otherwise Stark’s mother was going to be pissed.

  Bunny tried to make sense of the drawings, but they seemed like nonsensical scribbles. Like a bored child might make while waiting for the dentist.

  The flight was going as planned. Lopez was already making his descent into the South Valley Regional Airport. Since they were flying a stolen plane, they really didn’t want the increased scrutiny of an international airport.

  Besides the regional airport was only about thirty miles from the destination. Lopez would cover that distance in a flash.

  It would be early morning out there, so very little traffic, and, hopefully, very little security.

  Bunny glanced down at the shaman’s scribbling. But it didn’t seem to be scribbling anymore. Was an image emerging from the curved lines?

  It took her a moment to realize the man had created an Incan influenced portrait of a jaguar. These men had not given up. They were still on the hunt and couldn’t be trusted.

  Stark and his mother had scanned the men, because, of course, they had a full body scanner at the back of the attic. It had revealed no metallic objects. No weapons. That didn’t mean they weren’t a danger.

  These religious cultists were hard core. They weren’t going to let the team out West just walk in, find their sacred cache, and let them walk out again.

  But what was the Brotherhood’s end game?

  She’d better figure it out before it all blew up in their faces.

  * * *

  Davidson read the highway sign.

  Salt Lake City.

  Interesting. And they weren’t going to any random building in the city, but to the Mormon Tabernacle, which was famous for its choir.

  The Tabernacle sat in the Temple center. The huge Mormon Temple dominated the skyline. The Tabernacle was a smaller building off to the side with a domed roof.

&n
bsp; Lopez pulled up to the curb before he turned into the parking structure.

  “I think this is where you get off,” Lopez stated with a smile.

  Of course it was. Davidson had to find a nest, and that temple was looking awfully ripe for the taking.

  Davidson exited the car and watched it pull away. Snipers were a unique lot. They had to work well as a team, yet had to relish the solitude of heading off into the wilds by themselves.

  Okay, maybe not so much wilds in Salt Lake City, but he still had to strike off on his own. He headed across the nicely landscaped square. Each and every corner had a Mormon this or a Mormon that sign. This was ground zero for the religion.

  His only concern was the Temple, which reminded Davidson of the old school Ivy League buildings. There were three main towers, each peaked with more than enough room for a sniper to hide. It was like Davidson had won the sniper’s lottery. There were so many spots to set up a nest that it was going to be hard to decide.

  Davidson passed a sparkling fountain on his way to the Temple. It was still early morning. The sun had risen, but hadn’t gotten much past the horizon. The square was empty of people. The water was splashing just for its own amusement.

  As he approached the building, Davidson veered left. There was an electrical box. He could climb up onto that to reach the lower level eves, and from there free climb up the Temple’s exterior. Thank goodness for all that rich, thick decorative architecture.

  Still, it wasn’t going to be an easy climb.

  By the time he reached his nest, the others should be breaking into the Tabernacle.

  With any luck, that was.

  * * *

  Brandt stood perfectly still, trying not to exude exactly how annoyed he was. Stark, Bunny and Ki were cross-talking, trying to get around the Tabernacle’s security. The team back East had over two hours to crack this system, yet they were stymied at the back door.

  It was early still, but a security guard could come around at any time, and wonder why a bunch of people were hovering around the back door.

  “Stark,” Brandt growled. The man seemed to perform better under stress, and Brandt knew how the man hated being growled at.

  “Almost there.”

  Of course, that was what they’d been saying for the last five minutes. It was something about a rival of Stark’s had upgraded the security system and all their specs were wrong, or something like that. Brandt really didn’t care at this point.