Niki leaped from the wall, somersaulted in mid-air and sticking the landing, her weapons in both hands as she opened fire on the shooters hidden among the landscaping, aiming for the places where armor didn’t cover. This was where Victor always underestimated her.
Hearing the sharp distinctive cracks of Niki’s guns, Ty saw a shooter go down, falling out of concealment even as Niki raced out of the darkness to dive over and behind a cement bench in the patch of garden at the front of the house. Those outside now had an entirely different problem.
Cement chips flew as gunfire sprayed in her direction.
Mitch was in the house, throwing the ram away as he drew his weapons, Ty behind him for cover. Ty’s heart was in his throat for Niki, but as she’d pointed out more than once, this was what she was good at, what she’d been created for and trained to do.
Even as the chips flew, Niki rolled to her feet, firing as she ran. She thrust her guns into their holsters as she leaped for the hood of the SUV. A handspring took her over it. She dropped instantly into a crouch on the other side, both hands on the pavement, spun around toward the front of the SUV. If they used infrared or heat detecting goggles, the heat of the engine might be enough to mask her presence, and from here she could cover the door.
Once more she drew her weapons, quickly ejected the clips to slam two more in place, knowing the members of the Unit would be circling.
She saw a hint of movement. It didn’t matter. Timing was everything.
Ty had Byron’s phone number on voice dial.
The phone was ringing even as Mitch hit the doorway.
“Byron,” Ty said.
With his arms over and around Melody at the sound of the gunfire, Melody crying out softly and involuntarily at the sound – she was a brave woman, but this was a bit much –Byron braced himself, tightening his arm around his wife and on his hand on his weapon. Someone was here; something was going on outside. Who? Cops? Ty?
The lights had gone out just moments before. Shortly after that the alarms had gone off. Someone was inside the house. Not long after that the shooting had started.
The sound of his cell phone ringing was startling.
Pulling it out, he stared at the display incredulously. Ty.
So soon?
“Where are you?” Ty said.
“Lower bath,” Byron said. “I’m armed.”
“Good. We’re in the house. Be ready to move fast and stay low.”
Mitch caught signs of movement at the top of the stairs and opened fire even as Ty went past him to guard the other side of the downstairs bathroom door.
“Now,” Ty said.
The door to the bath flew open and Byron came out with his wife Melody huddled against him, his arm, his body around hers.
“Go, go,” Ty snapped, his voice low.
Listening over her radio headset, Nike nodded. That was what she’d been waiting to hear.
Holstering her weapons, she slid open the door to the SUV to draw out the M-16 that waited for her. A cold satisfaction filled her. She fired a short burst behind her toward the movement she’d seen, just in case and as a distraction, before rolling around to the back of the SUV to provide cover for those coming out.
She had the location of a distant sign of motion – another shooter - just as she saw Mitch come out the door in her peripheral vision. She opened fire on the distant assailant.
His arm around Melody Hood, Byron was on the other side of his wife with Mitch in front for cover and Ty their rear as they came out the door.
In the distance, Niki could hear sirens – the local police responding to the security alarm. That would help. Victor wouldn’t want a confrontation with the local police; it would draw unwanted attention and more questions.
Niki opened fire on the distant bushes and then sent another burst raking through the landscaping. Victor wouldn’t have expected them to be so well armed, but Tony Ormand had trained with them. He’d come prepared. There was a certain justice in that, an irony she could appreciate. She thought she heard a muffled cry, but she couldn’t be sure as Mitch and Ty hustled the Hoods into the vehicle.
Rolling back around the SUV, she sent another burst into the shadows of the garage and driveway as Mitch swung into the driver’s seat and Ty tumbled into the vehicle. Niki dove inside, covering Melody Hood with her body as Ty slammed the door shut behind her before scrambling over her to reach the front passenger side seat.
“Go,” Ty said, although Mitch had already slammed the SUV into gear and spun it around in the driveway.
The rear end fishtailed on the slick black pavement before the wheels caught, smoking, and sent them shooting for the shattered gates.
Another SUV tried to intercept them, but momentum and surprise gave them the advantage. They clipped the other vehicle, sent it spinning as they shot for the end of the street. Anticipating a block, Mitch steered them for the sidewalk and the grassy verge, shooting past the cars that closed to intercept.
They hit the rear quarter panel of one as they shot through the narrow gap, shoving that vehicle into the next and then they were clear.
Chapter Thirty Six
The hospital smelled as hospitals always did, of antiseptic and flowers with a faint undertone of other less savory odors, and an atmosphere of fear and hope, despair and resignation. Monitors beeped endlessly everywhere.
They rushed inside, Ty with his arm around Niki, Mitch in tow, and Byron and Melody Hood tense and shaken
Brad was in the waiting room when they arrived, accompanied by Jerry and Delia. And Anita.
“Buck’s in surgery,” Brad told them, his eyes worried. “They haven’t said much yet.”
“Toby’s got communications, Ty,” Delia said. “There’s nothing major to report.”
Ty looked to Brad, who clearly didn’t know where to start.
“The bullet tore him up some, and he lost some blood,” Jerry said on Brad’s behalf. “It hit at an angle, clipped a couple ribs, looked worse than it was, but missed almost everything major, clean in and out. He was lucky, there’s only a few places on the human body where you can do that.” With a little shrug, Jerry tilted his handheld a little. “Hacked into the hospital computers.”
Letting out a breath, Ty nodded, his hand tight in Niki’s. Buck was still alive. He could be grateful for that.
Bowing her head against Ty’s chest, Niki nearly wept with relief. Turning to Mitch and Brad, fighting tears, she reached for them, mourning for quiet Andy, who’d been with her and them for so long and wasn’t any more.
Anita didn’t stay long. Seeing Niki was bad enough, but the look of fury in Ty’s brilliant blue eyes when he looked at her and the grief in Mitch’s eyes was more than enough as he walked away to inform Andy’s parents of his death.
Neither Ty, Niki, or Mitch noticed or cared when Anita left.
Then it was just waiting until the doctors came to talk to them. Niki stayed close as Ty called Buck’s parents, to let them know he’d been wounded.
Byron and Melody Hood remained with them, both because Byron was concerned for Buck and it was the safest place for them to be until they could find a safer place for them to go.
Byron was on his cell phone, arranging for someone to inform Buck’s family and to transport them to Washington.
To Ty and Byron’s surprise, Secretary Bonham arrived, her pleasant face with its sharp eyes concerned, to hug Melody Hood and squeeze Byron’s arm in sympathy before turning to Ty.
“How is he?” the Secretary asked, looking at Ty.
“It’s not as bad as we feared,” Ty said.
Her eyes sympathetic, she touched his arm. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Andy.
Quiet, unassuming Andy. Grief stung. Ty hadn’t known him long, but he’d liked him.
He struggled with it, but Niki was there, threading her fingers through his, a matching grief and understanding in her eyes.
Closing his hand over hers, Ty took a breath.
> She’d known Andy far longer than he had, and her grief was visible. Tears glimmered in her eyes.
Ty looked at Elizabeth Bonham and said, simply, “Thank you.”
Elizabeth watched the exchange between Ty and Nike Tallent with an interest she kept carefully concealed.
“I can’t stay,” she said, “but you will keep me informed, Ty?”
She looked from Ty to Byron. Both nodded acquiescence.
“Byron, our people are looking for an adequate safe house for you and Melody. The children are safe, being taken into safety even now.”
With a weary dip of his head, Byron acknowledged her words. It was good to know.
In the meantime, there was still Victor Torrance.
Ty was talking to the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., to keep the former informed and to let the latter know they had a rogue operation going on within their shop.
“No,” Ty said, catching the last part of their conversation. “We don’t know how far or how deep this goes. Victor Torrance planted a man on us. He’s had years to put in place people who are loyal to him, to his point of view. We don’t know who we can trust.”
He looked at Jerry.
“Find me options, but don’t leave a trail,” he said. “Someplace with no connections to the government, but a place we can keep secure.”
Jerry gave him a tight grin. “Don’t insult me, Ty. Leave a trail…? Please! I’m on it, Ty.”
“Delia,” Ty said, “call up the other teams. I want them here ASAP, in unmarked vehicles, wearing civilian clothes with vests underneath.” He wasn’t losing anyone else because they were unprepared. “Then get me the NIO team in NY. I need Mark Foster and Miri Cochran here in D.C. ASAP. Fill them in and arrange for one of the choppers to bring them.”
Delia moved quickly away to a cell-phone safe zone.
Elizabeth looked at him warily. “But it’s over.”
Taking a breath, Ty glanced at Niki, who met his gaze evenly.
“Right now,” he said, “there are questions being asked, but Torrance has powerful friends in high places. They can silence those questions as long as the loudest voices go silent.”
He looked at the Secretary and waited for her to make the connection.
Elizabeth Bonham took a breath, following the implications. She hadn’t been a bureaucrat that long.
“You’re saying I have to be concerned about my own safety?”
It was Niki who answered. “You’re as easy a target as Byron. Easier perhaps, since you move in public all the time. It would look like a mugging perhaps – as with one of the Supreme Court Justices – or a carjacking. The attack on Byron would likely have been made to look like a home invasion robbery if we hadn’t intervened. If anything happens to you, some people might suspect it was more than that, but there’d be no proof. With you and Byron gone, our two big guns, Ty and I would be dead in the water. Giving Victor time to pick us off.”
Shaking her head, Elizabeth said, “I can’t leave, not with this going on.”
“That’s why I’ve called Foster and Cochran in. I’ll put Mark Foster in charge of keeping Byron safe while Miri Cochran covers you. No one knows them here.”
A doctor appeared at the doorway.
The room went silent. Ty and Nike turned toward the man.
“Mr. Parker is stable now,” the doctor said. “Barring infection, he’ll be fine. You’ll be able to see him shortly, although he’s still sedated.”
Unfortunately, the situation wasn’t over.
Jerry handed Ty a printout with the list of the available ‘safe houses’
Beta and Delta teams arrived.
“I need a watch on all entries,” Ty said to Beta and Delta, “but not openly. Pair up, no one watches alone.”
Niki returned with coffee for everyone, her green eyes tired. Taking a cup gratefully, Ty brushed her mahogany hair back from her face as she looked up at him.
Both of them were scraped up and bruised, but one of the doctors cleaned them up and treated the worst of the cuts.
Two agents each from the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. as well as the D.C.P.D. arrived to ask questions. Byron helped run interference while Ty and Niki answered and directed inquiries as necessity demanded.
Neither man from the C.I.A. was familiar to Ty. That was probably for the best.
To no one’s surprise, they were informed that Victor Torrance had disappeared. He’d gone into hiding.
“He’s off the reservation. We suspect he’s out of the country,” one of the agents, Paul Fredericks, said.
Shaking her head, Niki said, “No, he isn’t. He wouldn’t. He’s still here. Victor sees himself as a true patriot. He went overseas to work, to do what he does so well in those hidden prisons or Guantanamo, but he wouldn’t live anywhere except the U.S. He’d never leave. There’s no place else for him. No other country is this one. He’d die before he’d be an exile, an expatriate, and that’s how he’d see it. Besides, he has powerful friends here, people with money who support his beliefs. They’ll be more than glad to hide him.”
Fredericks looked at her, unable to keep the skepticism from his face. In his eyes she wasn’t and had never been officially an agent. Given that look, she had a good guess he’d read a part of her file. In fact, she was certain Victor would have made sure as many people as possible read a carefully edited version of it. Discrediting her.
Shaking her head, Niki leaned against Ty.
One of the F.B.I. agents had moved off to take a call. Now he returned.
“The body of Evan Halstead was just discovered in the woods by a creek where he used to run. He was shot. Right between the eyes.”
An execution.
Ty looked at Niki.
Her head lowered for a minute, and then she looked up at him with a sigh. There was grief in her eyes, a deep sorrow.
Niki remembered Evan’s hangdog face. His anger and frustration hadn’t always been with her, but with reconciling his conscience to what logic told him he should do and his orders. He’d always been at war with himself.
“He tried, Ty. In the end, he tried to make up for it,” she said, “An excess of conscience, Victor called it.”
She could grieve for him for that.
Cupping his hand around the back of her slender, fragile neck, Ty bent his head over hers, his arms around her so his lips were pressed against the top of her head.
A nurse appeared at the door. “Mr. Parker is sleeping, but you can see him if you’d like.”
Letting out a breath, Ty nodded and looked at Niki. Her expression was hesitant. He raised her knuckles to his mouth, kissed them lightly.
The room was dark, shadowed.
Buck was still asleep when they went in, but the heart monitor beeped regularly, reassuringly. In all their time together Ty had never seen Buck look so bad. His closed eyes were shadowed, his skin pale and drawn. A brief spurt of anger, of pain, moved through him. He had a good idea of how he must have looked after Qatar and understood Buck’s concern.
Niki tightened her fingers around his.
Ty touched Buck’s arm for just a second.
“We’re here, Buck,” he said, his mouth grim and tight.
Gently, Niki slipped a hand over his as the fingertips of her other hand drifted over the back of Buck’s.
Ty settled into the chair next to Buck’s bed as Niki took the chair beside him. He laid his head back, stroking her soft hair.
A nurse peered around the door. “Mr. Connor, Mr. Foster and Miss Cochran are here.”
“Call the team leaders in, would you, Niki?”
Niki smiled briefly at Mark Foster and Miri Cochran as Ty shook hands with them and went to fetch the others.
“Thanks to both of you for coming,” Ty said. “Did Delia fill you in?”
“Yes,” Mark Foster said.
“Good,” Ty said, and explained to both of them what he wanted as Erik and Michael, the team leaders of Beta and Delta arrived.
Looking at Mark Foster, t
hen his own people, he handed Foster the list of possible safe houses. One was circled. “This is need to know only. Radio silence. Nothing in. Nothing out.”
Chapter Thirty Seven
It was a wise man who prepared for a reversal of fortune. When he saw which way the electoral winds were blowing, Victor had prepared. Once the results of the election became clear, Victor set his plans into motion. Some of his people – the true patriots – remained in position within the Agency to feed him information and to control their people out in the field. As he’d been instructed, he had people in, at, or near, the highest positions of power, to work, act, or guard as necessary.
They wouldn’t leave this country undefended.
He’d made the appropriate arrangements, removing all evidence of his ‘extracurricular’ activities with the Unit, covering some of it with his highly classified work overseas. Most of which the new administration would not want revealed any more than the old had, if for different reasons.
More adjustments had yet to be made, more had to be done, but he was arranging for that. This wasn’t over…yet.
It was unlikely he’d be allowed to return to the CIA once this was over, but there were places within the private sector, think-tanks run by like-minded people, that would more than welcome him. He’d already been assured of that.
There were still a few loose ends to be tied up before he could settle into the new situation. A calming of the waters.
Calls were made, whispers sent out along the pipeline.
Given the current situation, he couldn’t work directly – undoubtedly there were people looking for him – but there were indirect ways to achieve his goals.
He’d always thought of himself as a spider in the middle of a web of his own weaving in any case. Pull this strand and people would move. Pull that one and connections would open… Remove this one, insert another. Tug here, tug there…
One of the things he had to do, though, was to make this situation go away.
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