Red Cell: Kodiak Sky Part 24

"It means dive into any hole you can find as fast as you can, because RC7 agents are under attack. It means take all necessary precautions and trust no one. It's a code we worked out a long time ago. It means something very big and very bad is going down."

Jack glanced around the area. Christ, one more thing. "What is it?"

Troy shrugged. "Message didn't say. They never do, for security reasons. But I bet it's wrapped up with L.J. and Karen being kidnapped on the same day. And I bet it's related to someone telling Jennie where I was last month. I think it could actually involve Dad."

"Seriously? You really think he's still alive?"

"I didn't say that. I said it involved him. What I should have said was that it could involve Red Cell Seven." Troy hesitated. "Like I said before, we make certain we aren't being followed when we leave for missions, and while we're on the way to the destination. We check constantly for any signs that something's up, and I didn't notice anything the whole time I was on my way to Spain or while I was there."

"So what exactly are you getting at?"

"I don't think anyone followed me to Europe. I think whoever told Jennie where I was didn't have to follow me because they already knew where I was going." Troy hesitated. "And the fact that she knew enough to accuse me of killing Lisa Martinez is another red flag."

"Are you saying it's an inside-"

"I think we'll know a lot more in thirty minutes," Troy answered, nodding ahead of them into the darkness as he put the SUV back in gear.

"If we're still alive in thirty minutes," Jack muttered under his breath.

"THERE'S BEEN a development."

"What are you talking about?" Sterling asked as he spoke on his cell phone.

"The plane's been delayed."

"I know that, but it's almost ready. They're installing the new part as we speak. I just got a text. They should be wheels-up in ten minutes. Then it's a fifteen-minute flight from Philadelphia, if that. Then you're done. Then your part is over, and you get all your money."

"I want more," Kyle said firmly. "We weren't supposed to have them for this long."

"Too bad."

"The little kid's been whining for hours, and the woman's awake again. The sedative's worn off. She's a f.u.c.king pain in the a.s.s."

"Deal with it. Stuff a rag down her throat."

"I did, way down."

"Then what's your problem?"

"I just told you. I want more money."

Sterling had been waiting for this. Jennie Perez had warned him that Kyle might be a loose cannon. "Get them to the plane. Then we'll talk."

"Bulls.h.i.+t. Then I've got no bargaining power. Then I've-"

"What's going on?" Sterling asked loudly as Kyle interrupted himself to talk to someone else at the other end who sounded aggravated.

"I've gotta call you back," Kyle muttered. "Remember, I want more money."

"Kyle! Kyle! d.a.m.n it," Sterling hissed as the line went dead.

He gazed into the darkness of his room at the inn as he considered what he'd just heard. Zero hour for Operation Anarchy might have to be moved up. And so what if the payday ended up at only two hundred and fifty million? So d.a.m.n what. It was still an immense amount of money.

A SINGLE, narrow street wound its way from the main road through a dense oak and elm forest to the Glen Haven Memorial Park, and Troy wanted no part of it. One way in and one way out through woods like that made them too vulnerable, he claimed. Obvious and without cover, they could be picked off easily or trapped.

So they'd run to the cemetery through the trees and the darkness from a secluded spot a mile-and-a-half away, where they'd parked the SUV.

As long as Jack had known Troy, he still marveled at his younger brother's endurance as they closed in on the cemetery. They'd both been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and it had already been a h.e.l.l of a day. But Troy wasn't missing a beat. His mind and body were still working at peak efficiency, even though he'd taken a bullet, too. He was barely breathing hard, and his strides looked smooth and effortless.

Jack was operating on pure adrenaline, but he could feel exhaustion creeping up on him. Fatigue hadn't made a dent in Troy, not even a ding.

Jack marveled at Troy's sense of direction, too. The stone wall they were approaching had to be the cemetery's perimeter. He'd led them straight here from the SUV without checking his bearings once. Granted, the moon was casting a decent light down through the leaves, but still. The trees in this forest were densely packed. Doing what Troy had just done in the daylight would have been extraordinary. Doing it at night was off the hook.

Troy had that bloodhound gift. He could smell his target from miles away even when that target was emitting no scent.

Jack leaned over beside a tree and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath when Troy reached out to stop him. They were still thirty feet from the cemetery wall.

"Stay here," Troy whispered. "I'll be right back."

Jack took a few more deep but quiet breaths, then pulled the pistol from his belt and glanced around through the shadows. It was eerily quiet out here. There wasn't a wisp of a breeze or a call from the wild-mammal, bird, or insect.

"Come up," Troy called quietly.

Jack cringed as he moved. His footsteps on last year's dead, dry leaves seemed so loud. "See anything?" he asked as he reached Troy, who was hunched down behind the three-foot wall.

"There's a van in the parking lot." Troy gestured across the cemetery, which was half the size of a football field. "It's the only vehicle over there. See it?"

As Jack rose up slightly and squinted, he spotted the top of the vehicle through the night. "Barely, but I don't see anyone around it."

"Maybe someone's behind it. I doubt L.J. or Karen are in it. It could just be a decoy. Still, that's where they told Jennie to have us meet them."

"What are we going to do?"

"Split up," Troy answered, dropping a medium-sized canvas bag on the ground.

They'd bought it at a Walmart on the way there. Inside it were several reams of paper. It had to at least look like they were carrying cash.

"I go first. I'm gonna cut through the tombstones, so they can see me if they're watching. I'm gonna try and make them think I'm the only game in town. When I get halfway across, you start moving around the outside of the wall. I don't know how much Jennie told them about us before tonight. But on the call I listened to, she only mentioned one of us, like I told her to." He pointed right. "Go that way around the wall so I'll know about where you are. Keep your gun in your right hand and your phone in your left." Troy gestured down at Jack's pocket. "Put it on vibrate only."

"It already is," Jack said, pulling the device out.

"All right, go all the way around to the opposite wall, the one that parallels this one. Wait for me there to text or call before you do anything."

"Maybe we should call the cops, Troy."

"No."

"Troy-"

"No."

"You can't put Red Cell Seven ahead of Karen and L.J."

"I would never do that."

Jack wasn't so sure. "Well, then-"

"Are we clear?" Troy asked.

"Yeah, we're clear all right."

Whether or not he called 911 would be a second-to-second decision. He was going to trust himself on that one and no one else, including Troy. If a shootout exploded, they might need help.

Troy tapped Jack's pistol. "You ready to shoot that thing?"

"Hey, don't-"

"I'm serious," Troy cut in, grabbing Jack by the chin and pulling it so they were staring straight into each other's eyes. "Are you ready this time?"

Jack glared back at Troy. "I'm ready."

Troy nodded and gave Jack a firm pat on the shoulder. "Remember, start moving when I'm halfway across the cemetery. Keep low behind the wall, and keep checking your phone."

And then Troy was gone, up and over the wall and moving in among the tombstones toward the far side of the cemetery, carrying the heavy canvas bag.

Eyes just above the top of the wall, Jack waited until Troy's shadow was halfway across. Then he took off, hunched down so he wouldn't be exposed above the wall, and keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of trouble ahead.

When he reached the first corner, he hesitated and rose up. But Troy had disappeared into the darkness. The moon had slipped behind a cloudbank.

Thirty seconds later he reached the next corner, and he peered around it cautiously. Still no one around the van he could see, and no sound of a motor idling. Still no call or message from Troy, either.

Finally, his phone vibrated, and he pulled up the new text immediately. Troy had made it to the far wall and was ready to jump over and approach the van. Jack was to go over the wall now so that he was inside the cemetery, then move along the wall until they saw each other, where he was to hold until Troy went over. Then he was to rise up as well and cover Troy as Troy headed for the van, which was in the parking lot about thirty feet outside the cemetery.

Jack pinged back a quick "ok," slipped the phone into his pocket, then climbed the wall and eased down into the cemetery.

Now he was inside the wall closest to the van. Hunched down, he ran thirty yards, past a row of tombstones, until he spotted Troy, who was also crouched down against the inside of the wall. There, he stopped and gestured.

Troy gestured back, then pointed at the wall and motioned, indicating that he was going over it and toward the van. And that Jack should cover him.

As Troy rose up and scaled the wall, Jack stood up, too, and aimed the Glock at the van. There was still no one around it that he could see.

Troy dropped the canvas bag at the edge of the parking lot, and then moved cautiously toward the van, which was another twenty feet ahead of him.

"Careful," Jack whispered to himself. His heart was beating so hard, the same way it had as they'd sprinted down that slope for the back of the pickup at the Griffin farm, and in the seconds before Wayne and the other guy had raced back out of the house. "Careful, brother."

"A MILLION dollars," Kyle said quietly but firmly into his phone as he stood beside Ray's Explorer in the middle of the forest. "And I want that million wired to the same account I had you use before, and I want it wired immediately."

Kyle and Ray had parked on an old logging road that wound its way through the woods outside Creighton, the town where he and Ray had grown up together. As kids, they'd played war in this forest with the rest of the gang, using BB guns for weapons. Anyone unfamiliar with these woods would get lost in here very quickly, but they knew it like the backs of their hands.

At this point in its roundabout travels through the forest, the logging road pa.s.sed within fifty yards of the Glen Haven Memorial Park. But the best part about its path was its unmarked status. Kyle had checked on all the Internet map applications he could find, and this dirt road didn't show up anywhere.

The woman who was tied up in the back of the Explorer moaned from beneath her gag, and he hissed for her to be quiet as he held his hand over the phone, threatening her with death for the tenth time this evening if she didn't shut up. The little boy was inside the van in the parking lot, and Ray was waiting at the back of the van for the father of the little boy and the husband of the woman in the Explorer.

Kyle had night-vision gla.s.ses from his time as a Marine in Iraq, and as he spoke on the phone, he could see Ray waiting behind the van in the darkness, smoking a cigarette.

Ray had smoked like a chimney since they were thirteen, when he'd stolen a full pack of his mother's Marlboros, smoked all of them in one day, and gotten violently ill. Ray was weak in certain ways-he needed those cigarettes badly in times like these-but that was okay. His dependencies made him easier to manipulate. That was why Ray was standing by the van-and not him. So if this went wrong, Ray was going down-not him.

"That's what I want for all my extra time, the risk, and my immeasurable patience," Kyle said, "a million dollars. You hear me?"

"You're out of your d.a.m.n mind," Sterling snapped through the phone. "I've had enough of this. Forget it. Don't make the deliveries. Keep them, you son of a b.i.t.c.h."

Kyle was quite prepared for the bluff. He'd done his research. "I know who they are. I know who their father is, or was, depending on who you believe. And I know they'll pay me if you won't." He gritted his teeth. "But let me tell you something. If you don't pay me, I'll tell the cops who you are and what you're planning."

"You have no idea who I really am," Sterling retorted, "or what I'm planning."

"Do you really want to take that chance, Mr. Aussie?" Kyle grinned as he gla.s.sed Ray again. He sensed fury at the other end of the line, and he loved it. "I don't think so, pal." He loved getting in someone's grill like this. He always had, ever since he was a kid. "You didn't think I'd fly into this hurricane blind, did you, Mr. Aussie?"

"I don't care what you-"

"Send the money," Kyle ordered when he spotted a shadow coming over the cemetery wall. "And send it right now."

Kyle dropped the phone and grabbed the hunting rifle leaning against the Explorer.

"Here we go," he whispered. "Here we f.u.c.king go."

"WHERE'S MY son?" Troy demanded as he edged toward the man standing at the back of the van, smoking a cigarette. He made certain to stay wide of the vehicle so Jack could see him from behind the wall. And wide of the man so the man couldn't make a sudden wild rush at him. "Tell me now."

"First," Ray answered, "you need to understand that you're being tracked by five Marine sharpshooters who are positioned all around you in the woods, and they have-"

"Bulls.h.i.+t."

There was one more guy involved in this thing right here right now, Troy figured. Maybe two, but that was it. n.o.body would involve six people in one phase of a kidnapping. It was hard enough keeping things on the QT with just two people in on the deal.

Besides, the dollars made no sense for six people. They'd been ordered to bring two hundred thousand bucks in ransom. Split six ways, two hundred grand wasn't that much, not for the crime being committed. For the same risk of punishment, it would have been much more profitable to knock over a bank.

Even more telling, the dollars didn't split evenly. It didn't split evenly three ways, either, which, most likely, meant it was this guy and one other, and that was it.

"d.a.m.n it, where's my son?"

"Is the money in that bag you dropped over there?" Ray asked, pointing with the cigarette.

"Yeah, but I want to see my son first. You take one step toward that bag and I'll shoot you down. Now, where is he?"

"In the van."

"What about the woman?"

Ray shook his head. "We got her behind the lines. We let her go later, after we got the money."