Cold Red

by Fiona Quinn

  “Drones is my best guess. I’d forgotten until last night that they liked to play with drones. The commanders’ thinking was that when the grid goes down, they’d need to do surveillance on any interlopers and scout out survivors, so they could steal their supplies, not so they can go rescue them. SIC could easily search for us with drones now that the wind has died down. They have a big drone force thanks to Johnathan and his infusion of money.”

  “Eventually, I want to hear about Johnathan’s money, and why he’d invest in SIC. But let’s start with your thoughts last night. You were reminded of drones because…”

  “The first day, I considered them then rejected the idea. The weather wouldn’t have allowed the militia to fly drones what with the winds gusting. I figured that when the storm died down, we’d still be okay if we’d stayed hunkered down in the creek bed, with the thick copse of trees, they might have picked up the heat signature of the fire, but from a distance, they’d probably read it as an animal since it was in a pit with our clothes hung over it.”

  “Then you discovered Bella was on her way.”

  “Lucky for us, yeah. She would have been on us like flies on honey.”

  “Heat signature? The drones are equipped with heat sensing technology?”

  “Forward Looking Infrared capabilities that can easily pick us up from our body heat both day and night. The FLIR is high quality on their drones. Before I could think of a way around that, the snow gave way, and you hit the ice. I wasn’t thinking much of anything afterwards, until you got me stabilized.”

  “We were pretty safe from drones last night,” Finley said. “New moon, cloud cover, I wouldn’t think the drone operators would chance flying around the trees on such a dark night.” He stopped and listened. “This morning though, sounds like the wind’s subsided. If they have their drones, you’re right, that could mean trouble.”

  “Even without the drones, we could still be in trouble. I think there’s a ham radio tower up there. They could be staring through a telescope at our fire right now.”

  “You think? Have you ever been to that cabin before?”

  “No. Let’s back up. A while back, I overheard a conversation when Cal Turner, SIC commander, was on the phone. He was talking to someone about a cabin on that ridge.” She pulled the map from the plastic bag. “They needed help setting up the tower and checking to see if they had visuals from one tower to the next for easy light-signaling.” She spread the map on the ground and shook her phone to activate the flashlight.

  Finley slit his eyes and tipped his head like he was trying to focus.

  A splash of fear doused her system. She wondered if she was going to be able to get him to medical care. And if she did, would the damage be permanent? With an exhale, Anna put her finger on the map. “This is the SIC compound. So the cabin guy would have to be somewhere in this arc, which lines up with where they laid their trap.”

  “Okay, I agree that that’s a p—” He stopped and shot her an assessing. “What was that? The thought that flashed through your mind just then?”

  “Look.” Anna traced her finger along a highway and stopped at a dirt road. “The original directions you were supposed to follow back to Washington DC passes by the fire road that runs parallel to the back perimeter of the SIC compound.”

  “Where’s the compound?”

  “Here.” She circled a spot on the map.

  He took the map from her hand and angled it to see better. “When you say compound, what are we talking here?”

  “Military compound ready to crush advancing federal interventions when the tyranny of the government tries to take away our God given freedoms. Think of it like an old fiefdom with the castle ready to defend against invading armies. In a siege, they can hunker down and sustain for a long time. A year easy, two to three years with smaller rations. They’re prepping for the next civil war or natural disaster, zombie apocalypse, what have you.” Anna tipped back to straighten out her leg releasing it from its strange position. She blew out a puff of air as pain shot up her thigh into her back. She wished like hell they had another bottle of pain meds. A bottle of whiskey. Pretty much anything at this point.

  “Are you okay, Anna?” Finley slid his hand down her bare leg in squeezing pulses. “Can I help?”

  “Anna,” she whispered back as soon as she caught her breath. “Why did you call me that name?” Her mind flew through different scenarios – he was a Zoric plant testing her loyalty; he was sent by the AWG to protect her along this trek; he was a mind reader; he was a—

  He’d shifted to the side, so they were looking at each other when he said, “You told me that you weren’t Zelda but Anna when I was pulling you out of the swamp.”

  Oh. Okay, she’d given up her real name on an undercover assignment, that’s one she hadn’t considered. She held out her hand for a shake. “Anastasia Senko.”

  “Glad to know you, Anastasia Senko.”

  The handshake, her go to calibration for how to categorize a person, sent her system on a loop. The sheer intimacy of the contact was unexpected and unwelcomed. Anna didn’t have a place in her life for anything as selfish as a romantic impulse. And this was hardly the ideal set of circumstances. Their association was going to come to an end very soon. It’s not a problem, she told herself. It was a momentary distraction, that was all. She pulled her hand away.

  “You’re with the AWG.” He sounded like he was testing a theory.

  She gave him a flat smile. “And you’re Steve Finley with the DC FBI, you were integral in taking down the East Coast Zoric family last year. Can we take a second here to put some cards on the table?” She pushed herself into a crouch and waddled over to where she found their clothes neatly folded and stacked. “I need to know how you got involved with this case. How did the FBI make the Zoric connection to the SIC group?” Anna had laid the phone on the ground, the flashlight beam bounced off the reflective emergency blanket roof, doing a fair job of illuminating the inside of their hut.

  “Honestly?” he asked, reaching out to accept his clothes. “There’s a Zoric connection? Consider my mind blown.” He sat still for a minute. “Yeah, I don’t know that my office made that connection.” He ran a hand down his face until he caught his chin, studying the dirt in front of him. “I sincerely doubt we made that connection.” He focused back her way. “The team would have at least pulled me in for translations even if I couldn’t do undercover, and I’ve got nothing to do with this case. This wasn’t even in my wheelhouse. I volunteered to run chauffer duty for my buddy when his wife went into labor. I’m a desk jockey/analyst for now. The whole getting your face front and center on the news makes undercover hard to do.”

  “Oh my god, are you serious?” She paused, one leg in her pants. “This wasn’t even your case?” She chuckled as she stuck her other foot in and yanked the stiff fabric up over her hips. “That sucks so bad. Boy, does your friend owe you big.”

  “When you said Zoric, I was thinking that this was either serendipity or a cosmic joke my ending up here. Could be one and the same.”

  “Serendipity, huh? I guess serendipity doesn’t have to connote good things. You could have some terrible karma to burn off from a past life.” She pulled off Mulvaney’s t-shirt from last night and replaced it with her own.

  “Yeah, it’s surprising I didn’t come back as a possum this life time.”

  “Possum? They’re not bad creatures. Poor things are reviled for no particular reason.”

  “No apparent reason. The truth is they’re reviled because they’re the reincarnation of shitheads.”

  “Ah. So, you’re a shithead, are you?”

  “I’ve been told I fit that category on more than one occasion.”

  “Noted.” Anna shook out her shirt and tried to figure out which was the back and which the front before she pulled it over her head.

  “Small world,” Finley said under his breath.

  Anna plopped her butt on the mat with her socks in her hand.
>
  “So this case is more about the Zorics?” he asked. “Seems odd to find them in the mountains of West Virginia.”

  “I thought so all along, until Johnathan was freaking out in the back seat of the car. Honestly, next time you do transport ask about the prisoner’s medications.”

  “Lesson learned. Johnathan was speaking Slovak, and you were nodding as if you understood. He was saying something about money laundering.”

  “Right, and I didn’t know that piece. It might just be one of the answers I was after.”

  “How did you get involved in that in the first place? You were a Ranger.”

  Anna looked over at him. “Thanks for pointing out a major deficit. Looks like I become a chatty-Cathy when I’m approaching death.” She took a moment to weigh her answer. “I was recruited from my mission by the AWG for my language skills. I was raised by my Slovakian grandmother, so I’m close to a native speaker. I have family there. And that family is intermarried with the Zoric family. I was already primed to step in when they noticed some odd activity that was out of character with the Zorics’ usual patterns and got antennae waving.”

  He tapped the map where she’d pointed to the area of the SIC compound. “When you said, ‘Military compound ready to crush advancing federal interventions from the tyranny of the government,’ was that crushing a vision or a reality?”

  “Johnathan was the money bags. He was quickly turning the vision into a reality. That was one of his roles.”

  “With Zoric money.”

  “Money filtered through the Zorics from the Russian oligarchs.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “That’s the question I was supposed to answer.”

  “And your role as far as the SIC and the Zorics went?”

  “Comptroller for the Zorics. I made sure that the money was spent on arms and not trips to Las Vegas. They liked that I had a military background and knew my weapons and the weapons market.”

  “They knew you were military?”

  “Hard to hide that, Grandma wrote home to her cousins about me all the time. It took a little acting to make it look like I was willing to betray my government for money. I participated in a few drug events to help them out.”

  “That wouldn’t be enough to have them trust you.”

  She shrugged. “I lost a couple friends in a fight. Someone who was very close to me.” She stopped and clenched her jaw. “As terrible as it sounds, we used my loss to show how angry I was with the US government for tragically wasting the lives of young Americans when we had no reason or right to be in that area of the world.” She put air quotes up to show that she didn’t really believe those words.

  “That sucks. I’m sorry.” Finley reached out for her hand.

  Anna found understanding in the contact and some relief from the emotional swell that flooded her. Logan had been on that mission and, to tell truth, her raw emotions at losing her boyfriend to a clusterfuck meant she didn’t have much acting to do for the Zoric family. Her fury was real. Her pain readily visible. When Anna met Medved’ Zoric, the papa bear of the Zoric family, he had invited her into his office, and they’d had a heart to heart. Anna was absolutely sure that he believed her, believed that she’d do anything to get back at the US government. She even believed herself in that moment.

  The pain of Logan’s loss still stung, even two years out. Anna fully expected to carry that loss always. But she and Logan had made promises to each other. If anything happened, they’d embrace the suck and get on with life. Anna had done her best to do that for him. To keep on living her best life. Pushing herself to her full potential. That promise was the reason she’d signed her name on the Ranger roster.

  Anna squeezed then released Finley’s hand.

  “Are you okay? Can I keep asking questions or is that enough for right now?” he asked.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked, pulling on her socks and trying to feign indifference.

  “Why have Johnathan in the picture if he was unreliable? Why not just you?”

  “Johnathan wanted prestige and power.” She grabbed her boots. “He was a political wheeler-dealer, a game I have zero natural talent playing. The Zorics thought Johnathan and I were presentable as a power couple, so I accompanied him to Washington events. I was eyes and ears and muscle if the need ever arose, and he did the schmoozing. You saw Johnathan. He couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag. Luckily, the need never arose until the flash bang. Thanks for the perforated eardrum, by the way.”

  Finley grimaced.

  “At the events in Washington, it was requested on occasion that Johnathan or I repeat a certain phrase into a specified Washingtonian ear. I thought there was something bigger afoot. That all seemed like window dressing.”

  “It’s not easy to get into those events. The hosts are highly selective.”

  “Money can buy you a ticket almost anywhere. And the entrees were made by the National Gun Association members. Johnathan was shoveling Russian money at the NGA as fast as they could scoop it into their coffers.”

  “Have you figured it out what the whispered messages were about?”

  “Not really. A couple of pieces might be fitting together. I passed them on to my commander. But there’s a tingle across my scalp. Something’s about to go down. Which might be the reason for our little adventure. Can I try a hypothesis on you that has had zero thought process?”

  Finley’s muscles visibly tightened. “Shoot.”

  “What if two FBI agents fell off grid while they transported arrested militia members past the SIC compound?” Anna asked.

  Finley’s gaze left hers as he looked back at the map and processed that thought.

  She heard his “Shit,” whispered on an exhale.

  “That was my thought, too,” Anna said. “The FBI would go in to try to rescue you and Mulvaney. We’re a far piece from where the authorities would ever think to look. If we made it to the cabin,” she leaned in and tapped the map at the end of the highlighted area, “SIC had planned to kill Johnathan and me. That’s what I overheard from the snowmobile folks the first night. As to what would have happened to you and Mulvaney? You would have disappeared for sure. That would have been Waco on steroids.”

  “They’re trying to give the FBI a black eye? Why would SIC want to do that?”

  “My guess? It’s quid pro quo. Quid was the money to build up their supplies and the pro quo was whatever this is.”

  Finley propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his hands, thinking things through. “Well that’s a… that’s crazy.” He lifted his head to catch her eye. “Russia gives money to the Zorics, the Zorics give the money to SIC; SIC gives the FBI a black eye. Therefore, Russia is trying to give the FBI a black eye.”

  “Not just the FBI. Russia is trying to make Americans question all our institutions. The FBI is a big one.”

  “It’s not illegal for SIC to receive funds from Johnathan, or anyone. Murdering two suspects in custody and two FBI special agents most definitely is unlawful.”

  “Lucky for them, the suspect and agent were killed in a car accident in a snow storm when they must have taken a wrong turn. The other two tried to hike their way out. They may never be found. It’s a perfect outcome for SIC. They just need to leave everything alone, and they’ll get the results they wanted.”

  “That would be true except for the topo map and Mulvaney’s burner phone.”

  “Bingo,” Anna said.

  “So, they’re coming at us full throttle to make sure they get that phone.”

  “Bingo, again.”

  “Hell of a theory.” Finley focused on the fire. “Hell of a mess.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Finley

  Anna pushed out of the hut. She stood and stretched, then reached for the shovel to start dismantling the structure.

  Finley crawled out behind her with their ruck and sat on a log, panting to cope with the pain. They’d each taken a pill last night. Th
e last ones in the bottle. They were on their own with their injuries today. He thought maybe Anna should just ditch him once they reached the train track and go get help.

  She’d been leading him around for the last two days. When he walked with his eyes open, the vertigo was nauseating and disorienting. He planted a hand on her shoulder and trusted her to keep him safe as he stumbled along with his eyes closed.

  Had he been on his own? He’d crawl under a pine tree and wait for death to do its thing. Finley was as dependent as a toddler. He was humbled by this situation.

  He opened the bag to feel around for an MRE.

  Weird word humbled.

  He’d thought about it a lot while he was holding Anna as she slept last night. The pain kept him awake until the early hours when exhaustion won out. He’d been left to think about the kinds of things that get put off until your lifeline was looking short – failings, regrets...

  The last time he thought about the word humbled had been at the shitshow where Lacey Stuart rejected him both publicly and emphatically. Finley thought that he’d always love Lacey, but now it was a sentimental kind of love that came with a moral ache. He had been so caught up in stopping the crimes that he’d missed just how poorly his moral compass had been functioning. He thought he could have his cake and eat it too. Use the woman to take down the terrorist ring and have her forgive him and love him anyway.

  Yeah.

  He had moments of self-delusion – that one lasted longer than usual. The humbled he’d felt with Lacey was maybe better defined as “shamed or chastened,” which he deserved to be. His choices and behavior were flat out indefensible.

  So, this was what it felt like when a stranger decided that you were worth the risk of life and limb and fought to keep you alive. This kind of humbled made him question his worthiness as the recipient of such heroics.

  Anna was the very definition of the word hero.

  “What are your thinking?” she asked as she tugged the plastic tarp free from the saplings.

  He’d never tell her those thoughts. She’d hate being seen as heroic; so instead, he said, “My thoughts? I was projecting forward. In a few days, the storm’s over and the roads are cleared.” He opened the heater bag and poured a little water from the Coke can in to start the chemical reaction. “The FBI is out in full force. They figure out that the car was supposed to pass near the SIC compound. They get a warrant and go bang on the door. SIC refuses them entry.”