by L. T. Ryan
She knew little about the area and wildlife that lived in the woods. It couldn’t be all that different from North Carolina, or any more dangerous that the urban jungle of New York City. Out here, a black bear, bobcat, wolf or coyote would pose the biggest threat. But, for the most part, they’d keep their distance. A bear might come up if given the opportunity to root through trash, and an encounter would be less than ideal.
“Nice night.”
She spun, ready to attack, and saw Beck standing in the open doorway. She hadn’t heard him approach.
“You okay?”
She pulled in a cool breath and allowed her chest time to relax. “Fine. You surprised me.”
He dipped his head and stepped outside, brushing past her. Looking up, he said, “A few times I’ve witnessed as many as a dozen deer come out of the woods and feed on the front lawn here. Usually happens later in summer.”
Perhaps that was what the dogs were barking at, she thought. And at that moment, a series of barks erupted from below them and echoed up the mountainside.
“They’ve been doing that since I came out here,” she said.
He spun around and headed right at her. “Get inside.”
“What? Why?”
“The only dogs on this side of the mountain belong to an old coot down by the river. I’ve never heard them bark at anything. And even if they were barking, we wouldn’t hear it quite like that.”
Her heart pounded against her chest as she stepped inside. Beck pushed her another foot further, then slammed the door shut and drew the blinds closed.
“Who’d you call?” he asked.
“Call? No one, Beck. I’ve been around you all day.”
He walked past her as though he hadn’t heard a thing she said. When he returned, he had three cell phones. He powered each on and tapped at the screens. She assumed he was checking the call history on each. Not that it mattered, because if she had used them she surely would have deleted any records.
Beck set the phones on the table and pulled his pistol from his waistband. “You promise me you didn’t call anyone and tell them our location?”
“For Christ’s sake, Beck. I didn’t tell anyone. Why would I?”
The door rattled. They both turned toward it. Clarissa waited for it to either burst open or for it to be shredded in a hail of gunfire.
“Wind,” Beck said, rubbing the side of his head with his palm.
“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”
He shook his head. “If anything, I’m under reacting. I ought to have you tied to a chair until I get this thing figured out.”
She fought back the urge to run. “Do you think it’s the dogs reacting to something foreign in their environment, or another set of dogs?”
He cut the lights, then walked past her to the door. A cool gust of wind hit her in the face as he cracked the door open. Beck leaned forward, his forehead resting on the jamb.
“Something’s wrong. Go to the bedroom and get that MP7. But stay low.”
“What is it?” she asked.
He took a deep breath, looked back at her. “It’s nothing. And that’s a problem.”
She said nothing.
He continued, “Not a sound, not even crickets or cicadas. There’s something out there.”
“You see anything?”
“No.” He took a deep breath, then added, “Look, it might just be a bear. But let’s be safe about it. Okay?”
Leaning over, she darted toward the bedroom. Beck had closed the door. She stopped in front of it, knelt down and turned the knob. As the door groaned open, she heard the first bullets slam into the front window, spraying shards of glass across the room.
“You okay?” she shouted.
“Get the damn gun,” Beck called back.
She glanced back. Unable to visibly verify Beck’s state, she threw herself into the room. Rounds pelted the front of the house, slamming into the thick wood siding with a thud or shattering windows. Glass continued to rain down from above. Clarissa kept her body on the ground and used her arms to brush broken glass aside.
She had stashed the MP7 under the bed where she slept. If something would have happened while she slept, all she would have had to do was roll over and retrieve it. Though the room was small, it felt like a distance wider than the Grand Canyon separated her from the weapon. Her only objective was to reach it.
The assault tapered off. Whoever was out there would either approach and take over the house, or burn it to the ground. She strained to hear voices, but they faced either a single man, or a team who didn’t need to communicate verbally.
As she reached for her weapon, the lights cut off. Clarissa stifled herself from calling out for Beck. With the windows shattered, saying anything could give her position away.
She rose to her knees and wrapped the MP7’s strap around her neck and shoulder. Instinct told her to remain low. The men they faced were more than likely equipped with night vision. The only thing she had on her side was faint moonlight once her eyes adjusted to the dark.
“Find it?”
She spun, aiming the gun in front of her.
“Easy,” Beck said.
“You can see me?”
“Don’t move. I’ll come to you.” Glass clinked as he shuffled across the room toward her. He told her to hold out her hand. After she compiled, he placed something cold and heavy in her palm.
“What is it?”
“Night vision. Only a monocular, but it’ll have to do.”
She let the MP7 hang on its strap and fit the monocular over her left eye. Beck appeared in front of her in hazy green.
“You see anyone out there?” she asked.
“No. But I didn’t try too hard either.”
“So you’re pinning your hopes on us winning a standoff in the bedroom?”
Beck pointed to his left. “The closet, actually.”
Chapter 32
Clarissa hadn’t noticed the trap door in the closet floor. As she lowered herself into the hole, she hoped that the men assaulting the house wouldn’t either. Beck followed her down and moved past her toward the center of the structure. She followed him, only pausing to wipe thick strands of a spider’s web from her face.
Beck stopped and pointed toward the back. “We’re going to come out next to the shower. From there, I want you to stay low and run straight back. It’s less than thirty feet to the trees. Get in there and wait for me.”
She glanced up, wondering if the noise she heard had been one of their attackers walking through the house. She considered firing around through the floorboards, but decided against it, knowing it would give their position away.
Beck freed the crawlspace access and surveyed the area behind the house. He looked back at her, said, “It’s clear.”
“What are you going to do while I’m waiting back there?”
“Take care of our visitors.”
“No, not alone.”
“It has to be alone. Together, we’re liabilities to each other.”
She tried not to take it as a demeaning comment. Fact was, Clarissa didn’t work well in a group or team setting. Her time with Sinclair had been spent as a solo operator, and she performed best that way. Still, she couldn’t fathom the idea of Beck taking on whoever was out there alone.
“I don’t care,” she said. “We have to stick together.”
Beck pulled her forward by her elbow. “There’s no time to argue about this. Now go.”
Clarissa emerged from the dark hole into the chilled night air. She expected to look up and see the magnificent country sky above the tree line. Instead, wispy gray clouds raced by. The crickets and cicadas were nowhere to be found, either. Their rhythmic bellowing had been replaced with a crackling sound. Clarissa became rooted to the ground, as, at that moment, she realized what was happening.
“Go,” Beck said, emerging from the crawlspace.
“Fire,” Clarissa whispered. “They’re burning the house down.”
> She expected to see Beck’s face grow more concerned than it already was. He surprised her by smiling.
“What?” she asked.
“They obviously think we’re inside, because they are giving their positions up if they are anywhere near the house.” He rose and looked left then right. He pointed past her. “You head that way. Shoot anyone you see.”
She took off running toward the end of the house, glancing back once to determine Beck’s actions. He had gone the other way, running just as she did. Cautiously, she approached the corner and whipped around it with the gun aimed in front of her and the monocular over her left eye. It was clear. The area beyond the house was lit up as though it were a mall parking lot. Staying in the shadows, she moved forward and away from the burning structure. The air was thick with smoke, but it did not hamper her vision.
She saw three men standing in front of the house. They held their weapons loosely, aiming at the building or ground in front of them. The blaze lit their faces up, making them look like kids in front of a Christmas tree the night before the big morning.
Clarissa figured that Beck had reached about the same point on the opposite side of the house. He wouldn’t wait, and neither should she. Raising the MP7, she secured the butt to her shoulder and wrapped her left hand around the barrel. She verified the weapon was set to three-round burst shots. Firing three 9mm rounds almost simultaneously would increase her chances of inflicting a fatal wound on her first target. She sighted her target, the man closest to her and exhaled slowly.
Before Clarissa depressed the trigger, the man in her sights fell to the ground. She heard the crack of Beck’s non-suppressed weapon at the same time. Without hesitating, she adjusted and aimed at the next man, who had crouched into a defensive position. Less than three seconds passed from the time her first target fell to the moment she squeezed the trigger and hit the next man in the shoulder, neck and head, nearly a straight line.
The third man fell a moment later.
Clarissa waited in the shadows, watching where the front lawn met the trees. Was there anyone waiting in the woods? Three seemed to be an odd number of assailants. She had expected up to four men, but in a grouping of one, two or four. Where had the fourth man gone?
Beck must have been thinking the same thing because she had yet to see him. She glanced back on the off chance that he had circled back around. They hadn’t discussed tactics, and the things he’d been taught had likely been different than those she’d learned. His job entailed protecting a single target. Hers was all about destroying a single target. Perhaps, she thought, that would make them the perfect team.
After several seconds of no movement, she saw Beck step into the light of the fire. She began to notice the intensity of the blaze and moved further to the side, not yet ready to step into view.
Beck approached the group of men. He knelt down next to the first one and checked for a pulse. He slid over to the other men and did the same. Then he checked them, presumably for identification or communications equipment.
As she started to approach him, Clarissa caught something out of the corner of her eye from just beyond the tree line. She spun toward the movement and called out, “Beck!” In her peripheral vision, she saw Beck look up at her, then follow her gaze away from the house.
Her yell had startled whoever it was hiding in the woods. The man panned left and right with his rifle, stopping when he reached Beck a second time.
Beck dove to his left, taking up behind one of the men they had killed.
Clarissa let him go and focused on the fourth member of the kill team. She dropped to one knee, brought the MP7 up again and aimed. Before she could fire, the man did. She hesitated, waiting for Beck to scream out in pain. The fact that he didn’t left her fearing the worst.
She brushed her concerns aside and squeezed the trigger. At least one round hit. The man behind the trees fell backward.
Emerging from the shadows, Clarissa glanced toward Beck. He was up on his feet and heading in the same direction as her. They stopped at the base of the lawn and stared down at the man gasping for air.
“Randy,” Clarissa said.
“Who?” Beck said, not looking away from the dying man.
“He’s a cleaner. Works for Sinclair.”
Beck took a step to the side, using a thick oak for cover. He lowered his night vision goggles and scanned the woods. Clarissa did the same.
“How many does he normally work with?” Beck asked.
“He works alone.”
Beck pointed at the pile of bodies in front of the blazing house. “That doesn’t look like alone.” He looked back at the man gasping for air. “We’re running out of time here.”
Trusting Beck to watch out for her, Clarissa stepped forward and knelt next to Randy. “What are you doing out here? Why’d you shoot up the house then set it on fire?”
The dying man’s lips curled into a smile. The flames that danced behind Clarissa cast insidious shadows across Randy’s face. It looked as though he tried to say something. She leaned forward to listen. All that she heard was his choking on his own blood.
“What’d he say?” Beck asked.
Shaking her head, Clarissa replied, “Nothing. He’s dying. There’s no incentive for him to tell us a thing.”
Beck stepped out from behind the tree. He joined Clarissa by Randy’s side.
“Answer her,” Beck shouted, presumably convinced that there were no more agents in the area.
Randy said nothing.
Beck pressed the barrel of his gun into one of the bullet wounds on Randy’s torso. A guttural scream erupted from the man.
Clarissa felt nothing for the man lying on the ground in front of her, but she reached out for Beck and attempted to pull his arm back. Beck jerked away from her, rose and walked toward the house. She got up and chased after him.
“He’s not going to say anything, Beck. He knows he’s dying. There’s nothing in it for him.”
Beck looked up, shook his head. “Four of them.”
“Sinclair knows me, and I suppose he knows enough about you.” She looked back. Randy’s unmoving eyes and unheaving chest indicated he had expired. “How did they find us?”
“You got rid of your phone, right?”
“Stripped the SIM card and battery and disposed of it using three different trashcans.”
“There’s no way they could have traced this back to me.”
Clarissa’s stomach knotted. “The pin.”
“What pin?”
“The one given to me to wear in the White House. Could they have tracked us here using that?”
Beck shook his head. “The technology isn’t there. To communicate with satellites, that pin would need to be close to the size of a cell phone.”
She grabbed her wrist, still sore from the possible dislocation she suffered when jumping rooftops. Her fingertip grazed the chip that had been inserted when she started working for Sinclair. “What about this?” she asked, offering him her hand.
He looked from her hand to her eyes. “This some sort of game? I’m not in the mood.”
“They put a chip in me.”
Again, he shook his head. “Same thing as with the pin. That’s good for accessing an area of a building. In your case, I’m assuming Langley or some other CIA owned or sponsored facility. But tracking you through GPS? Impossible with today’s technology.”
They walked over to Randy’s corpse. Beck searched the body and found nothing other than a cell phone. Clarissa reached for it.
“I’d like to make a call with that.”
Handing it over, he nodded and said, “Not here, though. Not until we figure out how they tracked us.”
She directed her gaze past the smoldering cabin, toward the barn that, fortunately, was set far enough back that the flames had not reached it. Then she realized how Sinclair had tracked the two of them.
Chapter 33
Clarissa pushed past Beck and headed toward the barn. The fire’s in
tense heat caused her to widen her path past the house. She squinted against the blaze as she raced by.
Beck joined her in front of the barn door. Together, they tugged it open.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“The Jeep. That’s how they found us.”
“I disabled the GPS. There’s no way.”
“Unless he had an anti-theft system installed.”
Beck raised his arms and grabbed fistfuls of hair while cursing under his breath. A few seconds passed, then he lurched into action, popping the hood and practically climbing on top of the engine block.
Clarissa rounded the front of the vehicle in time to see him yanking wires and a device away from the Jeep.
The device dangled from Beck’s left hand. “You were right. How could I not have considered that?”
Shrugging and shaking her head, Clarissa said, “I didn’t either.” She took a step forward, stopping in front of him. “But how did they know? Of all the vehicles stolen, how could they have known we took this one?”
Beck seemed to consider this. “They must have based it on our last known location. Something like that. We should have switched vehicles. Dammit, I was so stupid.”
“That’s a hell of a risk, don’t you think? To come out here, guns blazing, setting fire to a house, all on guesswork?”
“Says a lot about your boss, doesn’t it?”
She didn’t know if he meant it as an insult to her, but Clarissa took it as such. She jerked back as though he’d slapped her across the face. “For all we know he’s working with your people. For all I know, you might be working with him.”
Now Beck looked like the one who’d been slapped. “Don’t you ever insinuate that I did anything to violate the oath that I took to protect this nation’s leaders. Do you know what I can do to you? What I can have done to you?” He lifted his weapon for a second, held it mid-air, then tucked it behind his back.
She shuffled on her feet, readying herself to turn and sprint through the opening. The woods were close. In the dark, he had no advantage over her.
The redness drained from his face. His eyebrows relaxed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have shouted or threatened you like that. I don’t like not knowing what’s going on.”