French Silk

Home > Other > French Silk > Page 46
French Silk Page 46

by Sandra Brown


  The Rangers of Righteousness had an inexhaustible arsenal. Or so it seemed that wet and dreary morning. The second casualty was a redheaded, twenty-four-year-old deputy sheriff. A puff of his breath in the cold air gave away his position. Six shots were fired. Five found the target. Any one of three would have killed him.

  The team had planned to take the group by surprise, serve their arrest warrants for a laundry list of felonies, and take them into custody, engaging in a firefight only if necessary. But the vehemence with which they were fired upon indicated that the criminals had taken a fight-to-the-death stance.

  After all, they had nothing to lose except their lives. Capture meant imprisonment for life or the death penalty for each of the seven members of the domestic terrorist group. Collectively the six men and one woman had chalked up twelve murders and millions of dollars’ worth of destruction, most of it inflicted on federal government buildings or military installations. Despite the religious overtone of their name, they were wholly without conscience or constraint. Over the relatively short period of two years, they had made themselves notorious, a scourge to law enforcement agencies at every level.

  Other such groups imitated the Rangers, but none had achieved their level of effectiveness. In the criminal community, they were revered for their audacity and unmatched violence. To many who harbored antigovernment sentiments, they had become folk heroes. They were sheltered and were provided with weapons and ammunition as well as with leaked classified information. This underground support allowed them to strike hard and fast and then to disappear and remain well hidden while they planned their next assault. In communiqués sent to newspapers and television networks, they’d vowed never to be taken alive.

  It had been a stroke of sheer luck that had brought the law down on them in Golden Branch.

  One of their arms suppliers, who was well-known to the authorities for his criminal history, had been placed under surveillance for suspicion of an arms deal unrelated to the Rangers of Righteousness. He had made three trips to the abandoned house in Golden Branch over the course of that many weeks. A telephoto lens had caught him talking to a man later identified as Carl Wingert, leader of the Rangers.

  When this was reported to the FBI, ATF, and U.S. Marshals Service, the agencies immediately sent personnel, who continued to monitor the illegal weapons dealer, and, upon his return from a visit to Golden Branch, he was arrested.

  It took three days of persuasion, but, under advice of counsel, he made a deal with the authorities and gave up what he knew about the people holed up inside the abandoned house. He’d only met with Carl Wingert. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say who was sequestered with Wingert or how long they planned to harbor there.

  Fearing that if they didn’t move swiftly, they’d miss their opportunity to capture one of the FBI’s Most Wanted, the federal agents enlisted help from the local authorities who also had outstanding warrants for members of the group and were more familiar with the rugged terrain. The team was assembled and the operation planned.

  But it became immediately obvious to each member of the team that Wingert’s band had meant what they’d said about choosing death over capture. The Rangers of Righteousness wanted to secure their place in history. There would be no laying down of arms, no hands raised, no peaceful surrender.

  The lawmen were pinned down behind trees or vehicles, and all were vulnerable. Even a flicker of motion drew gunfire, and members of the Rangers had proven themselves to be excellent shots.

  The team commander radioed the operations post, requesting that a helicopter be sent to provide them air cover, but that idea was nixed because of the inclement weather.

  Special Ops teams from local, state, and federal agencies were mobilized, but they would be driving to Golden Branch, and the roads weren’t ideal even in good weather. The team was told to stand by and to fire only in self-defense while men in safe, warm offices debated changing the rules of engagement to include using deadly force.

  “They’re playing patty-cake because one of them is a woman,” the commander groused. “And God forbid we violate these killers’ civil rights. Nobody admires or respects us, you know,” he muttered to Headly, who was the rookie of the team.

  “We’re feds, and even before Watergate, ‘government’ had become a dirty word. The whole damn country is going to hell in a handbasket, and we’re out here freezing our balls off, waiting for some bureaucrat to tell us it’s okay to blast these murdering thugs to hell and back.”

  He had a military background and a decidedly hawkish viewpoint, but nobody, especially not he, wanted a bloodbath that morning.

  Nobody got what they wanted.

  While the reinforcements were still en route, the Rangers amped up their firepower. An ATF agent took a bullet in the thigh, and from the way it was bleeding it was feared his femoral artery had suffered damage, the extent of which was unknown, but on any scale that was life-threatening.

  The commander reported this with a spate of obscenities about their being picked off one by effing one unless…

  He was given the authorization to engage. With their assault rifles and one submachine gun, in the hands of the wounded ATF agent, they went on the offensive. The barrage lasted for seven minutes.

  Return fire from the house decreased, then became sporadic. The commander ordered a cease-fire. They waited.

  Suddenly, a man bleeding from several wounds, including a head wound, charged through the front door, screaming invectives and spraying rounds from his own submachine gun. It was a suicidal move, and he knew it. His reason for doing it would soon become apparent.

  When the agents ceased firing, and their ears stopped ringing, they realized that the house had fallen eerily silent except for a loose shutter that clapped against an exterior wall whenever the wind caught it.

  After a tense sixty seconds, the commander said, “I’m going in.” He levered himself up into a crouch as he replaced his spent cartridge with a fresh one.

  Headly did the same. “I’m with you.”

  Other team members stayed in place. After checking to see that they were loaded and ready, the commander crept from behind his cover and began running toward the house. Headly, with his heart tightly lodged in his throat, followed.

  They ran past the body sprawled on the wet earth, took the steps up to the sagging porch, and then stood on either side of the gaping doorway, weapons raised. They waited, listening. Hearing nothing, the commander hitched his head and Headly barged in.

  Bodies. Blood on every surface, the stench of it strong. Nothing was moving.

  “Clear,” he shouted and stepped over a body on his way into an adjacent room, a bedroom with only a ratty mattress on the floor. In the center of it, the ticking was still wet with a nasty stain.

  In less than sixty seconds from the time Headly had breached the door, they confirmed that five people were dead. Four bodies were found inside the house. The fifth was the man who’d died in the yard. They were visually identified as known members of the Rangers of Righteousness.

  Conspicuously missing from the body count were Carl Wingert and his lover, Flora Stimel, the only woman of the group. There was no sign of the two of them except for a trail of blood leading away from the back of the house into the dense woods where tire tracks were found in the undergrowth. They had managed to escape, probably because their mortally wounded confederate had sacrificed himself, taking fire at the front of the house while they sneaked out the back.

  Emergency and official vehicles quickly converged on the area. With them came the inevitable news vans, which were halted a mile away at the turnoff from the main road. The house and the area immediately surrounding it were sealed off so evidence could be collected, photos and measurements taken, and diagrams drawn before the bodies were removed.

  Those involved realized that a thorough investigation of the incident would follow. Every action they’d taken would have to be explained and justified, not only to their superiors but also to a
cynical and judgmental public.

  Soon the derelict house was filled with people, each doing a specialized job. Headly found himself back in the bedroom, standing beside the coroner, who was sniffing at the stain on the soiled mattress. To Headly, it appeared that someone had peed in addition to bleeding profusely. “Urine?”

  The coroner shook his head. “I believe it’s amniotic fluid.”

  Headly thought surely he’d misheard him. “Amniotic fluid? Are you saying that Flora Stimel—”

  “Gave birth.”

  Look for These Thrilling Sandra Brown Novels!

  Low Pressure

  Lethal

  Mirror Image

  Where There’s Smoke

  Charade

  Exclusive

  Envy

  The Switch

  The Crush

  Fat Tuesday

  Unspeakable

  The Witness

  The Alibi

  Standoff

  Best Kept Secrets

  Breath of Scandal

  French Silk

  LOOK FOR SANDRA BROWN’S THRILLERS

  Thank you for buying this e-book, published by Hachette Digital.

  To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest e-books and apps, sign up for our newsletters.

  Sign Up

  Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters

  Contents

  Title Page

  Welcome Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  About the Author

  A Preview of Deadline

  Also by Sandra Brown

  You Might Also Like…

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 1992 by Sandra Brown

  Excerpt from Deadline copyright © 2013 by Sandra Brown Management, Ltd.

  Cover design by SOS Creative. Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  www.hachettebookgroup.com

  www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  Originally published in mass market paperback by Warner Books

  First ebook edition: April 2013

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  ISBN 978-1-4555-4631-2

 

 

 


‹ Prev