by Michael Todd
“Where could they be going?” Savage asked. “And what kind of situation would call for a small arsenal and a fleet of SUVs?”
“Well, I assume that the cars are because they can’t actually check a…fifty caliber sniper rifle onto a commercial flight.” Anja sounded nervous. “And from what I can tell, it’s enough fuel to get them to and from Virginia.”
“What’s in Virginia?” Jessica asked.
“Anderson’s house out in the country,” she replied. “The house he went to visit last night because he wanted to check in on his family, who are staying there.”
“Shit.” Jeremiah tensed as his mind clicked into overdrive. “What about Monroe?”
“Well, I wouldn’t worry about her,” Anja replied. “She’s staying in the penthouse of a veritable fortress building in Philly. Even if Carlson sent anyone after her, I would bet against them every day of the week. That woman was in the Zoo. She can handle herself.”
“How about Anderson?” he asked. “He’s…well, he was Special Forces too, right?”
“Yes, but he’s in an isolated position and has his family to protect. With the amount of firepower that is apparently headed his way, all his training might not amount to much.”
He wanted to argue that someone with special forces training shouldn’t be underestimated either, but he was aware that they didn’t have time to waste on his silly pride. They needed to stay focused.
“Look, this might be a wild goose chase, but it can’t hurt to go over there and make sure he’s in a secure location. And if he’s not, to obviously get him and his family out to somewhere that’s easier to defend, right?” Anja asked abruptly.
“Yes, but we still have to deliver the documents to Monroe. We haven’t had time to scan them.”
“I can do that,” Jessica interjected. “If Carlson’s goons aren’t looking for us anymore, I could probably reach an airport and fly out to your location to hand all these documents over to you without too much trouble, right?”
“Right,” the Russian said. “Although it needs to be said that I don’t fully trust you yet, and I’ll track your movements all the way through, understood?”
“I understand.” She nodded, apparently unfazed by the other woman’s bluntness.
“What?” Jeremiah protested. “Are you crazy? I’m responsible for your safety, and you’re nuts if you think I’ll let you take a plane on your own.”
“It’s the best plan, Savage, and you know it,” Anja said firmly. “We need someone to cover all our bases, and while I think that your duty to protect Dr. Coleman is awesome, we need all hands on deck for this. There is no more time for hand-holding. I’ll buy the tickets and make sure her way to the airport is secure. I’ll sign off here.”
He glared at Jessica. “If you think that—”
“I’ll stop you right there.” She moved closer, her posture calm and determined. “You were the one who said you needed to stay aloof to keep from making the wrong call in situations exactly like this one. You know that if there’s any fighting where you’re headed, you won’t be able to cover me and help Anderson to protect his family. You know that it’s the best move to send me with the documents while we have this opening in Carlson’s security. It’s the right move, like Anja said. You said you needed to be able to make the right decision with your priorities, right? Well, that still applies.”
Jeremiah opened his mouth to argue but he realized that he had no moral high ground to stand on. She was right. Checking to make sure that Anderson didn’t need his help was the right move to make, and he couldn’t go there with Jessica. To leave her twiddling her thumbs wasn’t the smart play either. It still felt wrong to leave her alone, and if he thought about it, the reason why was obvious. His priorities had already shifted.
The truth gave him pause, but he chose not to think about it too hard.
“Try not to get killed in Virginia,” she said. After a second, she stood on her tiptoes to press a light kiss to his lips. “I still want to have that talk with you.”
He nodded. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Jeremiah made sure to drop Jessica off at the airport. It seemed like the smart tactic to make sure she had everything she needed. He doubted that Carlson would try to make a move in such a busy and open place, especially one so crowded with cameras and security. It would be a nightmare to conduct, which was the precise reason why most of the assassinations he’d run himself were always performed en route to the airport, and not inside. There was simply no way to get in and out without a hundred police officers and security people determined to be a hero.
It still felt wrong to both leave her and send her. And, he reasoned belligerently, it was wrong that it did. He didn’t like the sensation that nagged at the back of his mind and told him constantly that he’d made the wrong decision. It made him doubt himself and his decisions, and he really couldn’t afford to do that at this juncture. He needed to be focused.
It was annoying how she was in his thoughts now. All he needed was to enter that state of mind in which he could be of use to Anderson if their adversaries did come and put his family in danger. It irked him that all he could think about was the fact that he’d had to leave Jessica at the airport. She’d told him to be safe and reminded him again that he needed to survive if they wanted to finish that talk of theirs.
For the first hour of his trip, he couldn’t get that out of his head. Anja had told him that she’d boarded the plane safely, which assured him that at least she hadn’t tried to screw them over. He wasn’t the trusting type, but there was something in him that really wanted her to not be the kind of person who would betray them like that. With the hacker’s eye on her, he was sure that any attempts to double-cross them would be caught and quickly corrected.
About halfway through the second hour of his four-hour drive to Virginia, he wasn’t sure which mental attitude he would have preferred. He had a history of putting people out of his mind. Whether they were actually dead or simply dead to him, he was always good at keeping his mind compartmentalized and being able to deal with emotional problems when he was ready to deal with them. Sometimes, they took a little longer, which was why he had stayed away from his family for all this time.
Of course, he now had more reasons to avoid them, but that was another compartment that he would dig into another time.
For now, he needed to keep his mind on what was happening. Yet, despite his need to enter that detached, killing-machine separation, the novelty of his response to Jessica presented an oddly tempting alternative. He sighed and refocused his thoughts on the mission.
Anja gave him regular updates of what was happening with the rest of their team. Monroe had sent a security contingent to meet Jessica at the airport and escort her all the way to the Pegasus building. After he and Anja had unwittingly exposed a horde of security flaws in the place, they had put a lot of effort into making it all but impenetrable, electronically or physically. Jeremiah wasn’t sure what they’d achieved in the physical aspects, but he had to assume that with Anja’s help, the electronic security would be top-of-the-line.
He gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white. The driving didn’t require much focus. The car that he’d rented had one of those self-driving features that you could turn on once you reached a highway. It allowed him to simply let the car cruise without much effort from his side. Of course, he had to remain seated in the vehicle, and occasionally, it would remind him to put his hands on the wheel to make sure that he was still awake. Other than that, all he had to do was stare out into the admittedly gorgeous landscape and think.
As it turned out, being stuck in a car with his own thoughts wasn’t as pleasant as he thought it might be, even though he now drove a spanking new Cadillac Escalade. Turning the local radio on was a bust. A couple of films on the big, heads-up display allowed him to pass the time watching what looked like a fictionalized version of wha
t was happening in the Zoo. They were already making films about it.
Some of the larger budget movies would take a couple more years to be released, but those with the smaller budgets, minor directors, and lesser-known cast members were already available around the world. Of course, the fact that they were already being publicly played on an open radio broadcast didn’t augur well for their ratings on the more prestigious streaming platforms.
They offered only brainless action, terrible one-liners, and all the tropes that Savage usually needed in the films he watched when he wanted to turn his brain off. But he was too distracted to enjoy it. His mind already worked in overdrive as he watched the napalm-infused explosions and people firing massive guns without ear protection. Despite all that, the characters were able to grumble and growl through their lines a few seconds later, and he couldn’t help but mentally dissect everything to the point where there was no enjoyment in the finish. He was almost glad for the silence that came to him once it was over. Almost. It wasn’t exactly an improvement, but it also was no worse.
Jeremiah eased his fingers around the steering wheel and adjusted his grip a little.
“You should be coming up to the road that turns off to Anderson’s home right about now,” Anja said. “The GPS in that car of yours should show that. Let me know if you see anything in the area that tells you that an attack on Anderson is incoming.”
“I assume you’ve at least warned him about it?” he asked as he approached a road that peeled away from the highway. He assumed that this was the one she meant, and he switched the car out of self-drive mode, took over himself, and eased into the right lane and off the highway.
“Well, yes, but as it turns out, getting your family out of a country estate isn’t exactly easy. And he said that his home is actually a lot easier to defend than a car out in the middle of the road, especially since he has a Suburban. He doesn’t like his chances against what will probably be four SUVs out in the open. Carlson has dropped the gloves by now, so I doubt that a carjacking is out of the question. I didn’t agree, but he seemed adamant.”
“You should have insisted,” he said. “Being on the move makes you a lot harder to track and attack than if you stay in one place. I think he’s made a mistake.”
“I’ll send the message along,” she replied dryly.
“Well, it’s a moot point right now,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“I think they’re already here.” Jeremiah tensed and slowed his approach. “That, or a bunch of guys decided to have a big hunting party only three miles away from Anderson’s home and to bring all their SUVs with them.”
“Shit.”
“Yep, that about sums it up,” he grumbled as he pulled his car over behind the other vehicles. He took a moment to scrutinize them while he considered the options. They wouldn’t have left their vehicles unattended, especially out there in the boonies. He would have someone to deal with there.
All he needed to do was make sure that the men were actually headed toward Anderson’s house while he waited in his car. He had to risk letting the ex-colonel take care of these men on his own and not charge in himself. If he had any chance to make it there, he needed to be cautious. Slow, and methodical would keep him and, hopefully, his boss alive. For now, there would be at least one man he could deal with.
Sure enough, the door of the SUV parked at the back opened and a man in fatigues stepped out, a hand on his weapon as he walked over to the SUV Jeremiah had rented. His face wore a look of confusion, but he was being cautious. The operative pulled his phone out and assumed an expression of frustration, although his hand clasped the suppressed Colt that he’d taken from the men who had tried to kidnap Jessica. He’d kept the weapons since the serial numbers had already been filed off and he could never have enough guns.
Anja, thankfully, had another contact who had met him at the first gas station and simply handed over the ammo he required for these, no questions asked on either side. One day, he’d have to ask her about those underground gun running contacts. Of course, if the police pulled him over at any point, he would have a lot of questions to answer, but in that moment, the problems he had to focus on didn’t include the local police.
The man narrowed his eyes as he tapped the window with the butt of his pistol. Jeremiah nodded brusquely like he hadn’t seen the weapon and fiddled with his phone. At another more insistent tap, he looked up with an annoyed expression and widened his eyes as any unsuspecting traveler would do when he saw the man’s weapon. Quickly, he depressed the button that would open his window.
“Sir, this is a restricted area,” the man said sternly.
“What?” He did his best to look confused. “No, I…my GPS told me to come down this road. I’m meeting my friends for a hunting trip, and they weren’t great with directions. They must have thought that it was funny to simply give me coordinates, but here I am, and I think I’m lost. Never trust technology, right?”
“Sir, you really have to leave,” the gunman said, a note of frustration in his tone.
“I want to leave but I won’t drive around these fucking boonies without any idea of where I’m going.” He rolled his eyes and looked at his phone. “Can you at least tell me where the nearest gas station is? I think I’ll find them there drinking beers and laughing at the idea of me being lost.”
The instinct to not be a terrible person and help someone in need overrode the orders to not let anyone approach the Anderson country house. The lookout glanced at the highway as he ordered his thoughts to relay directions and took his eye off the operative for barely a second.
He had no chance to tell him where the nearest gas station was. Savage drew his pistol clear and the loud pop of the suppressed shot drove the slug through the man’s right eye and out the other side with a spray of red.
With his weapon cradled in his right hand, he stepped out of the car and quickly inspected his target. He was dead, there was no doubt about that, but he crouched beside the body and searched beneath the man’s jacket to reveal a body armor vest. After a quick moment of thought, he decided to strip the man of it and donned it himself. You never knew when you would need something like that in these situations, and why turn his nose up at free equipment? He took in a deep breath and rummaged further. An encrypted radio was attached to a clip on the man’s hip.
“Anja, I have a radio here. Could you crack it and get me intel on what the people are up to?” He lost interest in the body and moved to open his burlap bag in the back of his car. At least he didn’t have to haul it out. His ribs and other injuries would already be a handicap, and he’d take whatever he could to avoid making it worse unnecessarily.
“Will do. Keep it in range of your earpiece, and I’ll be able to get a solid read on it,” she replied.
He nodded and slid the radio into his pocket before he removed his weapons from the bag. With swift but considered actions, he discarded the pistol and replaced it with his Glock, which he tucked into the back of his pants. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and gripped the sawed-off shotgun in his hands. It had a strap too if he needed it, but he preferred to hold it if he could.
Satisfied that he had what he needed, he locked the vehicle and hiked into the woods that surrounded the road. It felt good to have real firepower with him this time around. Pistols were decent enough weapons. They were small, had enough stopping power to be dependable, and were all around versatile firearms, but they weren’t the best at anything. They were Jacks of all trades that you could carry around easily.
But when the time came for a gunfight, he knew he would rather have a shotgun or a rifle in his hands. An assault rifle would have been better for the range, but unless he could get his hands on a weapon his enemies dropped, he wouldn’t have access to one. A shotgun, a knife, and a hunting rifle would have to do, for now.
As he pushed deeper into the woods, Savage scanned for tracks. He’d been trained in hunting the enemy in wilderness almost like this. B
oots were easy to identify in wet woodlands, which allowed him to follow their fairly direct route toward Anderson’s house.
“How close are you to cracking that encryption, Anja?” he asked and pitched his voice low while he swiveled his head constantly as he slowed his approach.
“I have it…now. Patching you in,” she replied. A touch of static crackled over his connection as a couple of men spoke.
“How’s that approach looking, Overwatch? Over.”
“Approach is clear, Ground Leader. I repeat, you are clear all the way to the house. Over.” Both voices used hushed tones, but he was able to hear them clearly.
“Overwatch,” Savage mumbled belligerently. “That means they have a sniper overlooking the house now. I need to find him. Anja, can you send me a topographical map of the area?”
“Come on, Savage,” the hacker complained. “Your phone doesn’t even have reception that deep in the woods. You’re lucky the satellite connection has kept us live, but at this point, I don’t have any visual aid on the area. You’re on your own.”
“Yeah, I was afraid that was the case.” He studied the area around him while his mind raced. Anyone who would set up in an overwatch position would have to be uphill and most likely at an angle to cover as much of the house from one spot as possible. It was a long shot, but he had to take it. He wouldn’t be able to assist Anderson if someone fired at him from behind. His first priority was definitely that sniper.
He slowed his approach even further, draped his shotgun over his shoulder, and retrieved the garotte from his pocket. The chances were that he wouldn’t be able to find the man in time, but he could always set up where he could slow their assault down. That might hopefully put himself in a position to pick the sniper off that way.