by Matt Lincoln
“That means fewer cases for them, right?”
Holm snorted from across the aisle. “No such luck. We’ve been trying to help, but we keep getting pulled out on some crazy cases of our own.”
Tessa looked at her hands, which were palms-up on her lap. “Donald is right,” she murmured. “You need this story so voting citizens will tell their representatives to keep giving you money. They’ll see you keeping our nation safer, stronger, and then they’ll want to help.”
“That’s what it looks like.” I could not tell how upfront Farr had been about supposedly wanting to help, but I had no wish to get into an argument over it with Tessa. “For now, we are doing what we can to keep things rolling.”
A shadow crossed her face, and I had the feeling its name was Donald.
“We’re going out to taxi,” Muñoz announced over the speaker. “In four hours, we’ll be in Ponce, Puerto Rico. During the flight, my partner and I will take turns getting briefed on the raid plans.”
Those briefings and more discussion on the contingencies were about the only conversation for the entire flight. When we set down in Ponce, we were notified to contact Warner immediately.
“They found video of Charity Anderson in Ponce just last night,” he announced over the phone. “It’s hard to tell whether or not she was with them willingly. Diane had Tampa MBLIS agents go over to check out the home and this letter that Anderson supposedly left her mom.”
“What did they learn?”
“The letter she said Charity left her turns out to be a ransom of sorts,” Warner explained. “Kelley and Wilson will keep Charity alive as long as Marci does a few things to help them escape. Marci said she was too afraid to tell you the other day because of their threats.”
“Shit.” I rubbed the back of my head. “So we have to catch up to them and negotiate the release of a hostage. While we’re at it, let’s make sure no dirty bombs get into the hands of the more extreme militias. It gets better and better.”
“I’ll let you know if anything changes,” Warner promised.
San Juan MBLIS greeted us with a small caravan of dark Dodge Durangos and Chevy Traverses. As much as I wanted to stash Tessa somewhere safe, I kept her with me in the lead vehicle.
“Tell me the plan,” I ordered her.
“We stop at a farm to the south of the property,” she recited. “We’ll put on body armor, and you all will get your weapons ready. Once we get to the property, I’ll stay back with two agents and wait for you to scout it out.” She met my eye. “If things get hairy, they’re to get me to San Juan. If Kelley and Wilson are on scene, it will almost definitely get violent.”
“It will get violent,” I emphasized. I laid my hands on Tessa’s shoulders and spoke in a low voice just for her. “Please, Tessa, be careful. I wouldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to you.”
“I’ll stay away from Kelley, I swear.” The sun glinted in those emerald eyes, and she blinked. “I’m more worried about you. Please be okay.”
I nodded. “That’s the plan.”
She tilted her head. “And how often do things go according to plan?” She winced. “Sorry. I’m nervous, but I have faith in you all.”
I introduced her to the two agents who were going to stay back with her until we cleared the property we were to storm. Agents Wallace and Greer were in their second and third years with MBLIS in Miami. They showed a lot of promise, and I felt good leaving her with them. The three of them were the last vehicle in the caravan about to descend on the devil’s hill.
“Let’s roll out,” I hollered.
Kelley’s compound’s existence had been difficult for Warner to ferret out and more of a challenge to locate. Satellite imagery showed a large structure that appeared to be a house. Another structure with a metal roof was about fifty feet away. An access route wound almost a half-mile from the main road through a heavily forested area.
I pulled up to a deep-rutted drive in the middle of a shallow valley. We had to assume Kelley had the property rigged with sensors, cameras, and traps. To combat this, we had a special unit park behind us with a trailer, courtesy of the United States Navy.
“I can’t wait to see this guy in action,” Holm said with a huge grin as we got out of our vehicle.
“Yeah, this will be the cool part,” I agreed. “I’m telling you, Robbie, we lucked out.”
Two sailors were already at the back of their unmarked trailer undoing the locks to release Sasquatch, a new robot designed to detect the traps we worried about while sending a short-range jamming signal to derail camera systems and certain types of communications.
“Let’s see this bad boy, Captain,” I said in a cheerful tone.
“Aye-aye, sir.” Captain Renaldo gave a sharp nod to his assistant, who controlled the door to the trailer. The seaman disappeared into the trailer as soon as the door was open enough for him to fit in. “My CO said he got a message from Director Ramsey that I’m supposed to deliver last minute.”
“Okay…” I glanced at Holm and then back to Renaldo. “I don't know why she’d do that instead of calling me.”
“I only know that I’m supposed to tell you this: ‘Don’t scratch it, Ethan.’”
Holm bust up into quiet laughter, and I swore a sailor-blue streak. Rumbling laughter from behind announced Birn’s arrival, and Muñoz followed with a head shake.
“You sailors are easily entertained,” she observed. The scowl broke. “That said, you did scratch my plane.” She took a hand off the rifle she wore to point at me. “And if you do that again, I will hurt you.” She turned to the Navy Captain. “Come on, I gotta see this baby.”
“Yes, ma’am!”
That’s what I loved about Muñoz. Some people might think she was tiny, but that woman was fierceness cubed, and nobody better get in her way. Not even long-timers with seniority, like Holm and me.
The assistant emerged with a control board about the size of a tablet and only a little thicker and handed it to Renaldo. I heard a soft whir, and Sasquatch rolled out of the trailer. The five-foot-long robot had six tires with deep treads. It resembled the Mars rover Curiosity, but without the solar collectors. The head-like protrusion on the front had cameras and sensors to detect heat and movement. The back half had four arms, two small and two large. A pneumatic ram was attached to the near side of its body. An antenna rose up from the middle as we watched.
Captain Renaldo and his assistant went through all the checks to ensure all systems were operating. As it finally rolled forward, I saw that someone had painted a bone frog on one of its black fenders. Probably against regs, but who was going to remove it?
“I have it configured to allow our comms to work,” the sailor reported. “No guarantees that the target doesn’t have our frequencies, but we have new encryption that should help.”
I hoped so. Kelley was smart and knowledgeable. We still didn’t know how many contacts he had in the military and through whichever militias he might be supplying with weapons. We also had to assume he had conventional weapons at the ready.
Renaldo directed Sasquatch onto the long driveway. The camera feed was sent to a laptop screen as well as the control board so that we could observe its progress. He sent the robot forward at a slow pace, and I watched the robot itself until it disappeared around a curve.
“I keep feeling like we’re tipping them off,” Holm said in a hushed tone. “I have a bad feeling about this op, but there’s nothing I can base it on.”
“We got each other’s sixes,” I told him. “Nuke the worries, and we’ll see this through together.”
Holm nodded but still frowned. It hit me that I’d spent so much time with Tessa that Holm and I hadn’t hung out in our usual bachelor routine that week. I’d also taken his word for it that he was doing okay about his sister’s disappearance. Charity’s similar disappearance from Tampa couldn’t have helped.
I took Holm aside and let others take my place watching the robot’s feed. This had to be quick a
nd now.
“Robbie, are you good to go?” I got a good look into his eyes. They were their usual grey-blue, but there was a shadow there that I had not seen before. “If you aren’t, you gotta stay back. For you and everyone else.”
His eyes flashed, and he stepped back. “I’m fit for duty, Ethan. If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be here.” He stalked back to the small crowd around the screen.
I hung back and looked up the driveway and scanned the forest. Other members of the team had started patrolling the tree line to watch for breaches in the perimeter. The forest was quieter than I liked. Was it because of our presence, or were Kelley and Wilson out in the trees planning a slaughter? If they were, they’d find it more of a challenge than they could handle.
“Cameras,” Renaldo said. He focused on the camera and panned and zoomed to examine. “Appears to be wireless.”
“Okay, everyone, assume he knows we’re on his doorstep,” I announced into my throat mic. “Camera blackout will have him on alert even if he thinks he’s in the clear.” The responding clicks reassured me that our frequency wasn’t blocked.
Renaldo sent Sasquatch forward again. There were no tripwires across the drive, but the robot detected motion sensors, also wireless, at even intervals along the way.
“Fall in,” I ordered everyone. “Bot is almost to the end of the drive.”
Vehicle doors opened and slammed as people got out of their vehicles. Other units, some with CGIS, had already penetrated the perimeter to the sides of the property while our caravan sat on our thumbs. With luck, Sasquatch’s jamming would cover their approach as well. They’d started out as soon as the jammer went live. They were some of the best personnel at detecting tripwires and other traps.
On the monitor, Sasquatch showed the edge of the house in question. It looked like a cabin-style ranch home. Through the trees, we saw patches of the blue metal outbuilding. Renaldo made Sasquatch go in reverse and then crawled up to park between a couple of trees to await further orders.
We got to the tree line at the end of the drive without event. Whether it was because Holm was already spooked or some other cue, that bad feeling had a hold of me now. The approach felt too easy. There was no way Kelley would leave his flank exposed like this. He was too savvy to depend on this paltry set-up of a few cameras and a line of motion detectors.
I looked through my binocs. The windows were blacked out, and there were three deadbolts on the front door. A hum from somewhere near the house sounded like an air-conditioning unit and kicked out. The faint strains of classic rock came from an indefinite source. I got a guy with a parabolic microphone to the front. He checked the closest windows and shook his head.
“Radio,” he whispered. “That’s all.”
Check-ins with guys on the other sides of the building came back the same. It was too quiet. Way too quiet. I had Renaldo join us at the tree line with Sasquatch’s control board.
“We’re going to ease the bot up to the porch and test the door,” I directed the captain. “I don’t like this, and I want to take it slow.”
“Aye, sir.”
The robot rolled to the porch and up all three steps. It paused at the top. Everything looked fine, so it rolled toward the door. No traces of trouble. It extended an arm to touch the door. Nothing.
“Sasquatch entering,” I announced over the mic.
The robot rolled back several inches so it could deploy the battering ram, and the house went up as if a damned missile hit it. Debris hit like shrapnel in every direction, and the trees swayed back from the shockwave. My ears rang even through my protective headset.
“Birn, CGIS Blue, get back from the outbuilding,” I shouted. “Everyone else, check in.”
Within moments, everyone was accounted for. We were damned lucky we had that robot, but we had another building to clear, and clear fast.
“Sassy hit a pressure plate, sir,” Captain Renaldo reported. “She’s out of commission.”
I turned to the smoking pile that had been a house moments earlier. The outbuilding was a good hundred feet from the house, and the siding was pockmarked by parts of the house that had punched through the metal. I grabbed Holm and ran toward where Birn’s team was covering the outbuilding. They were along the edge of the tree line on the opposite side of the property.
“No movement, nothing,” Birn informed us. “Burly dude over there tied a rope onto the sliding door.” At my pointed look, Birn frowned in the guy’s direction. “We’ll have words later about following orders, but he did do us a solid with that door.”
The rope was barely long enough for the team to have cover if the building blew like the other one. A pair of grunts took up the end and, on my order, heaved.
The door creaked open. When it did not explode, they pulled a little more, and this went on until they got it all the way open. A whole lot of nothing happened. Holm and I went along as Birn led his team on a cautious approach to the outbuilding. Several neon-green drums were lined along the far wall in the dim, yellow light. Two heavy-duty work tables took up the middle of the building’s space. Remnants of lab equipment lay scattered across the tables, and boot and dolly cart tracks led out across the threshold. Whatever they’d been putting together, and however they’d been doing it, all the important stuff was gone.
“Weak radiation,” someone reported. “It doesn’t go past the door.”
“Seal it,” I directed. “We’ll bring in crews to clear and clean the building.”
“Ethan!”
I turned to find Tessa running up the drive with her camera bag bouncing against her hip with every stride. As she darted around the splintered remains of the house’s outer walls, I saw that she had dirt all up and down the front of her clothes.
“Tessa?”
“Ethan, they killed Greer and Wallace and then took off in the Durango.” She leaned over to gasp for air.
“Are you okay?” I looked her over for injuries, but all I saw was sweat and dirt.
“I’m fine.” She shifted her bag to the other shoulder. “There aren’t toilets, so I went behind a tree on the other side of the road. They didn’t see me.”
“Was Charity there?” There hadn’t been signs of her since the video of her in Ponce.
Tessa’s brow wrinkled, and she met my eyes.
“Charity is with them,” she told me. “She’s the one who killed Greer.”
34
Tessa’s stomach fluttered when she saw the MBLIS and CGIS agents ahead of her gather at the mouth of the access route to the compound, even though the raid hadn’t even started yet. Ethan was in there, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It wasn’t her place, she felt, to have an opinion on his job. Even so, her stomach didn’t just flutter. It shook and trembled.
“They’ll be fine,” Agent Wallace predicted. “These guys do this stuff all the time, and the only people who get hurt are the idiots who resist.”
“Dude,” Agent Greer responded. “These are the guys who killed the Tampa agent, remember? And that was the ‘nice’ one of the crew. The other guy gutted two people.”
“Yeah, but those people weren’t SEALs, man. We have a bunch of badasses up there.” Wallace leaned back against the Durango. “Those asshats don’t have a chance against our guys.”
“Thanks, fellas,” Tessa said in a sharper tone than she intended. “I’m aware of all this.”
Wallace straightened. “Sorry, ma’am. We were out of line.”
Down the road, the mass of people in battle gear moved onto the property. Tessa said a prayer to a god she wasn’t sure she believed in. Maybe there was something in the air, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of something about to happen. She suddenly wished that she hadn’t had that tall coffee on the way to the raid.
“I’ll be right back, guys,” she said as she grabbed a portable toilet.
Greer saw what she was about to do and pointed across the road. “It’ll be safer over there. They scouted it out before going onto Kelley’s
land.”
Since she’d heard a coquí and noticed a small waterfall in the creek they’d parked near, she also took her camera bag. A quick diversion wouldn’t hurt.
She finished the first task quickly and got her camera out with the longer zoom lens in hopes of spying a coquí, a melodic frog endemic to the Puerto Rican jungle. They were nocturnal, so she hadn’t expected a chance to find one singing during the day.
A loud rustling came from the direction of the road, and then she heard Wallace’s voice.
“Who goes there?” he called out. “Hands up and show yourself.”
“Please…” A young woman’s voice rang out. “Please, I need help.”
That sounded like Charity. Tessa made her way back to the tree where she’d left the portable toilet. She wandered further than she’d planned and had to be careful where she stepped to avoid tripping over roots and undergrowth.
“Hey, aren’t you Charity Anderson?” Greer asked in a surprised tone.
Tessa reached the wide tree she’d used. She thought about leaving the toilet for a few minutes to go help, but everyone sounded fine, and she was the one who always preached about leaving no traces of your presence in the wild.
“Yes, I am,” the girl announced. “These bad men took me from home.” The fear left Charity’s voice. “Really, really bad men.”
Tessa heard a grunt and froze.
“That was amazing,” Charity gushed. “I finally did it!”
“Yes, you did.” That was Kelley’s voice, the one that set Tessa on edge when she first heard it in Tampa. “You could’ve been quieter. Mine didn’t make a sound. Stealth is critical to your operation.”
Tessa set her camera to its quietest mode and dared a peek between a thick patch of ferns to the side of the tree. All the agents along the road in front of the Durango must have gone onto the property because Charity and Kelley stood in the middle of the road in broad daylight. They’d pulled the bodies of Greer and Wallace to a slight ditch on her side of the road, and Charity pulled a black knife out of one of the dead men’s backs. She wiped it on his clothes and put it into a sheath she wore strapped to her leg.