“HIDE.”
Tucker followed the paddling shepherd but he hung back a yard, staying in plain view. He searched the sky and spotted a shifting section of stars, marking the stealth-camouflaged drone’s passage. Ready to leap if it targeted him, he clutched the CUCS in one hand, trying to get it to protect him by sheer willpower.
As he held his breath, the drone whisked overhead—and away. It continued its search pattern, oblivious of its former target. He let out a long sigh of relief. He knew the smartest plan from here would be to make a beeline for that country club. But he knew he had a small window to gather some intelligence about his opponents. So instead he veered at an angle and circled back until he reached a section of bullet-riddled trees.
Using a penknife, he pried one of the rounds free and examined it.
The bullet appeared to be a standard NATO sniper round—7.62 by 51mm—but it sure hadn’t acted like any standard bullet. He examined the hole in the trunk, noting the angle of impact—then glanced up. The drone had always fired from above the canopy, but the round had entered the tree at a perfectly horizontal angle.
Suspicious, Tucker panned his flashlight over the water. After covering fifty feet, he spotted something floating in the water. It looked like a stick, but was too straight and too white for that.
He crossed over and retrieved it. The object—made of some kind of exotic polymer and roughly six inches long—was outfitted with tiny maneuvering fins and had a small bulge on the underside, which he imagined housed a guidance pod.
He glanced over to the tree.
Put that round with this cartridge, and he suspected what was shot from the drone.
“PGB,” he whispered to the night.
A precision guided bullet.
He turned and stared toward the sky.
What the hell have we stumbled into?
11:48 P.M.
Two hours later, Tucker was back at his motel room and stood under the spray of a blisteringly hot shower, happy to flush the filth and grime of the day away—and to clear his head.
After crossing the last half mile of swamp, he and Kane had slogged out onto the grounds of the country club. He could only imagine the sight they made as they skirted the parking lot: some swamp rat and his muddy dog. Once safely at the club’s valet station, he had called a taxi. From the way the late-night diners at the club’s restaurant had eyed him through the window, he half expected a squad car to come collect them. But a yellow cab had arrived, and the valet was kind enough to sneak them a few towels from the golf locker room to use as makeshift seat cushions.
Their path back to the motel took them past where the SUV had been ambushed. But there was no sign of his Ford Explorer.
Apparently someone had it towed away, likely covering their tracks.
So much for my rental deposit.
Still, Tucker wasn’t all that worried. As was his habit with rentals, he kept nothing inside that could trace back to him and had used one of three false driver’s licenses and a matching credit card to rent the vehicle. The room was booked under another alias and a different card.
As an extra precaution, before reaching the motel, Tucker had the driver stop at a nearby construction site and acquired a length of two-by-four that was now jammed beneath the door’s knob. Though there was no evidence that anyone had turned over his room, he would change motels tomorrow.
Still, questions nagged at him concerning this ambush.
How had this faceless enemy found him, how did he draw their attention, and how much did they know about why he was here?
The most obvious answer to these questions was one Tucker didn’t want to believe. Only one person knew about his presence here and the reason behind it.
Frank Ballenger.
Tucker reached back and twisted the shower knob from hot to cold. The freezing water jolted him, steeling him for what was to come.
Tomorrow I’ll settle that score.
10
October 14, 10:02 A.M. CDT
Huntsville, Alabama
The next morning, Tucker put his house in order. He cleared out of his motel, rented a new SUV—a silver Dodge Durango—under a false ID, and headed out to Athens, some twenty miles west of Huntsville. There, he checked into another motel, the Stone Hearth Inn. As Kane sniffed out every corner of the new room, Tucker called Frank Ballenger and arranged to meet for lunch a few miles from the Redstone Arsenal military base.
On his return to Huntsville, Tucker took a detour to the country club and retrieved the confiscated MP-5 rifle he had hidden in some hedges after exiting the swamp last night.
He was taking no chances with this meeting.
As an additional precaution, Tucker arrived at the restaurant an hour early. He canvassed the immediate area: searched the parking lot, noted all the exits and entrances to the establishment, and mapped out the surrounding streets. He then spied upon their meeting location from a Starbucks across the street.
The Cotton Row Restaurant stood on the southwest corner of the city’s courthouse square, occupying a former cotton exchange building. It was a three-story brick structure with patio seating under taupe-colored awnings and a second-floor balcony lined by black iron railings.
Frank Ballenger arrived promptly at noon and sat at one of the outside tables shaded by an awning. Tucker kept watch for a full fifteen minutes, making sure the man hadn’t been followed. Only then did he walk across the street with Kane.
Frank stood up, shook his hand, and smiled down at the shepherd. “I thought maybe you two were standing me up.” He then frowned at Tucker’s arms, which were crisscrossed with scratches and pointed to the small bandage on Tucker’s ear, where a round had nicked him. “What in God’s name happened to you?”
“Got lost in a swamp,” Tucker replied stone-faced.
“What are you talking about? How?”
The man’s shock seemed genuine. Tucker normally trusted his snap judgment of people’s reactions, leaning on his innate talent to read people, but after last night, he remained wary.
“Frank, did you burn me?”
“What?”
Tucker sat down, drawing Frank with him. “After leaving the pub, I got ambushed near the swamp.”
“Ambushed?” Frank leaned back, his eyes rounder. “And you think I . . . Tucker, I wouldn’t do that. Not on my life.”
Tucker stared into the man’s eyes. The other’s gaze didn’t waver.
“First of all, I’d never betray a brother,” Frank insisted. “Never. Second, even if I wanted to, who would I call? I don’t know anybody like that.”
“Could you have inadvertently alerted someone, said something out of hand?”
Frank thought for a moment, then slowly shook his head. “I can’t see how. I didn’t even make any calls about Sandy Conlon until this morning.”
So he couldn’t have accidentally tipped someone off.
None of this made any sense.
Frank leaned forward. “You gotta believe me.”
Tucker sighed, reading nothing but a sincere genuineness. “I do believe you.”
“Then we’re good here?”
“We’re good.”
Frank let out a long breath, then settled back. “Tell me what happened.”
Tucker recounted the electrical malfunction that had stopped his Ford Explorer on the empty road and the subsequent firefight that drove him into the swamps.
“Hmm,” Frank murmured. “I’m guessing they must have used some sort of remote kill switch to incapacitate your vehicle. Nice.”
“It wasn’t nice from where I was sitting. But is such a thing doable?”
“Easy enough. It’s just a matter of wirelessly hacking into a vehicle’s CAN bus.” Frank read Tucker’s wrinkled brow. “Stands for controller area network. Everything on modern cars is digital nowadays, meaning they’re hackable.”
The waitress appeared and took their orders.
Once she left, Frank continued. “I now get why you suspect
ed me. Occam’s Razor: the simplest solution is usually right. But I know it wasn’t me, so how did they get on to you?”
“And who are they?”
“Exactly. Who else knew you were down here?”
Tucker wasn’t comfortable mentioning Jane, even to Frank, at least not yet. “Just the person who sent me,” he offered lamely.
Frank seemed to understand his reticence. “And you trust this person.”
Tucker nodded.
“Then they must be tracking you somehow. Maybe your phone.”
“I doubt it. It’s deeply encrypted.” His satellite phone was a gift, courtesy of Ruth Harper at Sigma Force . . . in case she ever needed to reach him or vice versa.
“Let me see it.” Frank held out his palm.
Tucker considered for a moment, then handed it over.
Frank proceeded to efficiently examine the phone: pushing a series of buttons, studying the screen, even opening the back panel and removing the SIM card. He spent a full minute poking around the innards with a plastic pick from a ridiculously complex Swiss Army knife—then he finally reassembled the phone and returned it with a low whistle of appreciation.
“I’m not even going to bother asking where you got it. It’s damned sophisticated, but even this device could be tracked. Though I’ll admit that it’d take some serious know-how.”
“Even if you’re right, it doesn’t explain how I got on these hunters’ radar in the first place. They’d have to know about me to think to track me.”
“True. Which brings us full circle back to who else knew you were down here. Could this person who sent you to Huntsville have told someone else?”
Tucker couldn’t imagine Jane doing that. Her level of paranoia when they met in Montana had been sky high. “I don’t think so.”
“Then what about after you got down here? Who besides me have you run into? Could someone have tagged you locally?”
Tucker pictured the two-man team that had waylaid him outside of Sandy’s house. Had they somehow identified him after that encounter? And then there was Edith Lozier, the caretaker of the storage facility . . .
Maybe I haven’t been as cautious as I thought I was.
“It’s possible,” Tucker admitted.
“Okay, then let’s set aside that mystery for now. As a precaution, I suggest you keep your phone powered off with the battery pulled out. I might be able to rig some new components down the line that’ll make it harder to track, but it’ll take a few hours to get everything I need.”
Tucker lifted an eyebrow. “You can do that?”
“It wasn’t my good looks that got me promoted to a cryptologic network warfare specialist.”
Tucker recognized the amused glint in Frank’s eye from back in Afghanistan, when the man had tried to clarify the finer points of communication interception.
“As a soldier in this new era of cyber warfare,” Frank explained, “I’ve had to hone a few new skills since back in my field days. Like hacking into systems. I’ll gather up the components I need for your phone and see if I can batten down its hatches more securely. I can bring what I need to your motel tonight. Hopefully by then I’ll have some more information about Sandy from the feelers I sent out this morning.”
“Good.”
Tucker realized one other task that might be best suited to Frank’s new skill set. He pictured the remote-control device for the attack drone. As a precaution, he had powered the CUCS unit off and buried it a mile from his old motel. If anyone could glean any clues from that device, it would be Frank.
“Before you come to my motel,” Tucker said, “there’s something else you might want to take a look at.”
“What is it?”
Tucker hadn’t gone into great length about the unique nature of the drone that had hunted him through the swamps. He decided to get Frank’s unbiased take on the operating system running the drone before filling in those details.
“I think I’ll let you be surprised,” Tucker said.
Frank cocked his head slightly. “Sounds to me like I’m getting an early Christmas present.”
6:17 P.M.
As the sun set on another warm Alabama day, Tucker returned to the Stone Hearth Inn in Athens. He had spent the remainder of the afternoon with Kane out in the local parks, where the shepherd had demolished three tennis balls and trudged through five more streams. Maybe it would’ve been wiser to hole up out of sight, but he doubted the enemy would be bold enough to strike in broad daylight with witnesses all around.
Besides, Kane had needed to stretch his legs, to work through some of the tension from last night.
And so did I . . .
As pleasant as the day was, Tucker kept glancing to the sky, one ear always listening for a telltale buzz. He recognized such wariness was triggered in no small part from his own PTSD. Though he had suffered only a few scrapes, the attack at the swamp had affected him, stirring older wounds, those that had scarred over but never fully healed. After leaving Afghanistan, Tucker had been plagued by flashbacks, nightmares, and insomnia, leaving him emotionally numb. While he had gone through mandatory counseling with psychologists who specialized in treating vets, he had found greater peace out in the open, on the road, with Kane by his side.
Still, he knew those nightmares remained, just under his skin.
Maybe that was why he still kept accepting such high-risk jobs, to challenge that enemy within. One psychologist suggested he was perhaps suicidal, but Tucker knew deep down that wasn’t the case. He wanted to live, and if he ever doubted it, he only had to look to the shepherd at his side. At his bedrock core, Tucker knew he would never recklessly endanger Kane in some veiled attempt at ending his life.
Instead, it was one counselor who offered Tucker his greatest insight, refining the diagnosis of PTSD to one born of moral injury, a wound where Tucker’s fundamental understanding of right and wrong had been deeply violated by his experiences in Afghanistan. Tucker suspected his recent path through life was an ongoing attempt to find his center again, to make amends—not so much for what he did, but for what he had failed to do. It was what gave his life purpose, to tilt at the injustices of the world.
In the meantime, there was pizza—yet another reason to live.
On his drive back to Athens, Tucker had picked up two pepperoni pies and a six-pack of Sam Adams lager. He had barely placed them on his room’s small dining table when there was a knock at the door.
As punctual as ever, Frank greeted him with a one-armed hug, carrying a small duffel in his other hand. He eyed the room as he entered and offered a halfhearted, “Great digs.”
Tucker didn’t miss the sarcasm in the man’s voice. The place certainly wasn’t the Ritz, but it was clean and cozy, with a decor that could be considered shabby-chic.
As they settled in, Frank helped himself to a slice of pizza and a beer, then plopped down on the bed next to a curled-up Kane, who gave Frank a single tail-wag hello. Tucker had already fed him a giant bowl of kibble.
“He looks happy,” Frank said.
“He’s now the king of Huntsville’s parks and waterways.”
“Damn, and here I forgot to bring him his crown.” Frank zipped open his duffel. “But I did bring some other goodies. Pass me that phone of yours and let me see if I can’t lock that baby up tight.”
Tucker handed the satellite phone over.
Between bites of pizza, Frank opened the back panel and began fiddling with it: unscrewing this and rearranging that before finally inserting a new SIM card. “That ought to do it. At least, until we find out what tracking gear the opposition is working with.”
“What do you mean we?”
Frank passed back the phone and smiled wryly. From his duffel, he pulled out the CUCS unit and placed it on the bedspread. He stared lovingly at it. “Such a beauty. Of course, even with your directions, I had a hell of a hard time finding where you buried this treasure. I’ve barely had time to do more than a cursory exam. Still, impressive sophist
ication . . .” Frank tore his gaze from the drone’s remote control to face Tucker. “Looks like you’re playing in my sandbox. You can’t kick me out now.”
“It could get ugly, Frank.”
“Judging by your condition, it already has.” Frank lifted his palms. “Listen, I’m more than happy to leave the rough stuff to you and Kane. I’ll be a strictly behind-the-scenes guy.”
Tucker sighed, weighing what to say. He knew Frank’s expertise could prove valuable in this search, but Tucker preferred to operate alone. Unable to decide, he said, “Tell me what you learned about Sandy, then I’ll consider your offer.”
“Fair enough.” Frank shrugged. “I know she comes from around these parts like me. Her only living relative is her mother, who lives up in the Appalachian high country, one of the poorest counties, where folks are notoriously wary of strangers.”
Tucker remembered Jane mentioning that Sandy’s mother was one of the last people to see the missing woman. He also remembered Edith Lozier, the caretaker of the storage facility, telling him that Sandy was headed to see her mother after making a hasty exit from her locker.
“It might be worth checking out,” Frank said.
“Why’s that?”
“The mountain people are a close-knit group, bound as equally by their traditions as by their suspicions. They know how to keep their secrets tight to their chest. If Sandy wanted to bury something away from prying eyes, that would be a good place to look.”
Tucker slowly nodded. Frank was right. It might be worth a day trip. “What did you learn about Sandy’s role closer at home, here at Redstone Arsenal?”
Frank frowned. “Not much. I learned she’s not attached to any official military command. She’s part of some quasi-private team—something called The Odisha Group.”
Tucker sat straighter. He remembered seeing that name—Odisha—circled on one of Sandy’s whiteboards in her makeshift command center. Frank was on the right track. It seemed the man’s skill set extended beyond motherboards and computer code.
“What was that group working on?” Tucker asked.
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