Red Cell: Kodiak Sky Part 28

"Troy is my kid brother, but he was always showing me stuff like that," Jack whispered, wondering where Karen had been taken and if she was still alive. He'd called the police as he and Skylar were lifting off from the riverbank in the chopper, as he gazed at Troy lying on the road surrounded by police officers, and there was now an ongoing nationwide search for his wife. "I wouldn't let him for a long time. But I finally sucked up my pride and gave in when I got tired of him laughing at me . . . and of missing my targets. As soon as I let him show me, I started nailing the bull's-eye. I swear he could hit anything by the time he was ten, even while he was moving. His hand-eye coordination is still the best I've ever seen."

Jack pulled the collar of his coat up around his neck. The rain had let up, but it was getting cold as night approached. Landing in the small plane at Corning had been a harrowing few minutes as the gales tossed the little craft around in the air like a cork on a rough ocean. But the storm had eased during the drive to the cabin.

Skylar hadn't seemed bothered by the chaos on the way to the ground, but it had been a white-knuckle landing for Jack. Mostly because it looked like the young pilot, who'd been brash and c.o.c.ky back in Maryland, didn't seem very confident about getting to the ground in one piece as they'd begun final approach.

"Your wallet's pretty impressive, too," Skylar spoke up. "Well, I guess technically it was your checkbook I saw in action back in Maryland."

The young pilot had laughed when Jack offered him twenty grand to fly them to Corning. But when he transferred the large amount with his cell phone to an account the guy reeled off as the three of them were standing together in the hangar, and the money had shown up seconds later, the laughing stopped, and the three of them were climbing into the Cessna.

"I wish these people would get the h.e.l.l out of here," Jack muttered impatiently, gesturing toward the cabin. There were only two vehicles left in front of the place, but it had been a while since the other six had left. "What's taking them so long?"

"Relax."

"They'd better not find the Order."

Jack had explained everything to Skylar on the drive from Corning even though she wasn't a member of RC7. At this point he didn't care about protocol. Besides, he wasn't actually a member of the cell. So, technically, he wasn't violating anything.

"They won't," she said rea.s.suringly. "Hey."

"Huh?"

"Look at me."

Jack turned to face her. "What?"

"Thanks for covering me at Harpers Ferry." She reached out and touched his arm. "I owe you." She shook her head as if she couldn't believe what she was about to say. "No one's ever saved my life before. I've always had to do that myself."

Jack stared back at Skylar for several moments. "Sure," he murmured. She was a fascinating study, a walking conflict on so many levels, a pretty young woman who murdered at close range on orders from the highest levels of the U.S. military. Right now she seemed gentle and compa.s.sionate, but Jack knew that in reality she was a cold-blooded killer.

"I'm sorry about Troy."

"Thanks."

"Karen, too. I know you-"

"Every second we wait this thing gets riskier," Jack interrupted, turning back to look at the cabin through the pine trees surrounding the place. He didn't want to talk or think about any of that anymore. Somehow he had to focus, and talking about them wouldn't help him. "Dorn and Baxter's people could be here, too," he said, searching the trees. "If they aren't, they're close."

An hour ago the story had broken in the national news. Bill Jensen, ex-CEO of First Manhattan, who had been missing for nine months, had been found critically injured in a cabin in western New York with a dead man lying beside him. The news agencies hadn't identified the exact location yet, but Jack figured it wouldn't take the president of the United States long to find it, even if the reporters couldn't. And he had no desire to run into the people Baxter would send-even with Skylar alongside.

He glanced around through the gloom. He could feel enemies closing in.

The team that had accompanied Skylar to Harpers Ferry was heading this way, but they were still thirty minutes out. And Jack was going into that cabin as soon as the last of law enforcement cleared out.

"We stopped Operation Anarchy," Skylar said. "You should be proud of that."

"You, too."

A few of the a.s.sa.s.sins had made it into the woods around Harpers Ferry and eluded capture-for now. But they had to be desperately focused on getting as far away from Was.h.i.+ngton as possible, not completing their mission. They had to realize that all prominent federal officials in the District were deep in protective holes and weren't coming out anytime soon. Their targets were protected, and they had become the prey. Their only reasonable strategy at this point was to run.

Two men finally emerged from the cabin, walked to separate cars, waved to each other, and then headed down the long driveway toward the main road.

"Ready?" Jack asked when both cars had disappeared, pulling out his gun and chambering the first bullet.

"Yup."

They broke from the tree line and jogged toward the cabin through the quiet dusk, side by side. All seemed calm.

But when they reached the front porch, shots rang out from the tree line on the other side of the clearing, and bullets began smas.h.i.+ng into the front wall of the house all around them.

Skylar grabbed the k.n.o.b of the front door and desperately tried turning it, but the police had locked it tight. "Follow me!" she yelled, heading for a large window beside the door. She dove through it, shattering the gla.s.s.

Jack lunged through it right behind her as bullets peppered the front of the cabin, and he tumbled to the floor beside her.

As they crawled across the floor and took cover behind the inside wall, the barrage intensified.

BAXTER FOLLOWED Dorn out of the heavily armored black limousine and onto the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base. But they were quickly separated as a swarm of Secret Service agents surrounded the president.

The agent in charge at the White House had begged Dorn not to make the trip out here because of what had happened in Harpers Ferry earlier in the day. But Dorn would not be deterred, even when the director had called personally and pleaded with him to stay put.

Baxter understood what Dorn was doing. His unwavering commitment to meeting Shannon out here on this cold, rainy evening had less to do with the guilt he felt for the kidnapping ordeal she'd just endured-and much more to do with politics.

The kidnappers had promised all along not to alert the press as to what was happening. But ultimately, and probably predictably, Baxter realized, they'd broken the deal.

Someone, as yet unidentified, had called the a.s.sociated Press's Was.h.i.+ngton Bureau chief a few hours ago and tipped her off. Within minutes the story had gone nationwide, and now it was on TV screens everywhere. President Dorn had an illegitimate daughter who'd been kidnapped and held for ransom-but was now being released.

Rumors raced across Twitter and Facebook that the young woman was an aspiring country singer from Nashville who performed under the stage name Leigh-Ann Goodyear, and that she hadn't even known President Dorn was her father until an hour ago. And that he hadn't known she even existed. None of that had been confirmed, but the public was swallowing every sound bite as the whole truth and nothing but the truth as the story unfolded in front of them. It was sweeping across the nation like a western wildfire racing through a tinder-dry forest, and people across the nation and around the world were glued to their screens in antic.i.p.ation of a father and daughter of such high profile meeting for the first time right in front of them.

Dorn had quickly decided that the only thing he could do to save face was meet Shannon at Andrews. And no one was going to stop him. He was determined to turn a negative into a positive despite any danger from Operation Anarchy, which the Secret Service believed might still exist.

Baxter watched Dorn wade through his ma.s.sive security team as the Gulfstream door opened and a pretty blond appeared.

She was wrapped in a blanket and s.h.i.+vering badly, Baxter could see, even from fifty feet away as he held a magazine over his head to s.h.i.+eld himself from the intensifying rain.

The agents tried to keep Dorn in check, but he fought his way through them like a knight in s.h.i.+ning armor, then climbed the stairs, wrapped his arms around Shannon, and pulled her close as she sobbed into his chest.

Baxter shook his head as a mother lode of cameras on the ground around the parked jet flashed so often it seemed to him that dawn had suddenly broken. The presidential floor model had done it again. David Dorn had s.n.a.t.c.hed victory out of the jaws of disaster.

Baxter's eyes narrowed as he glanced at Shannon when they stepped back from their hug. The young woman didn't look well at all. But after what she'd just been through, that was to be expected.

"WE CAN'T stay here!" Skylar yelled as bullets smashed continuously into the living room through the broken windows, ripping apart furniture and shredding drapes, destroying prints hanging from the walls, and ricocheting viciously off the big stone fireplace built into the wall behind them. "Find the Order fast, and then we make a break for the woods!" she shouted as she returned fire through the blown-out window she was hunched down beside. "We're sitting ducks in here." She stabbed toward the hallway behind them with her pistol. "The bedrooms are back there. Your father's was the first one on the left. It's got to be in there. Go, Jack!"

Jack crawled toward the back of the house as fast as he could. When he reached the hallway, where he was protected from the bullets, he scrambled to his feet and raced for the first bedroom on the left. There was one window in there, and he stayed away from it in case people outside started firing through it.

He left the light off, too, as he quickly turned the room inside out searching for the precious doc.u.ment. The dim lighting made the search more difficult, especially as he rooted through the clothes and boxes in the closet, but turning the bulb on would make him so vulnerable.

Finding nothing in the closet, he thrust his hand inside the pillowcases and reached beneath the covers. Then he threw the mattress from the bed and tossed the box spring aside. He dumped the contents of the nightstand drawer on the floor. He rifled through the small desk in one corner of the room.

But he found nothing.

As he shoved the last drawer back into the desk and rose up, an eerie feeling came over him. As he stared at the print of a forest scene hanging on the far wall, everything else in the bedroom disappeared. Even the sounds of the bullets faded from his ears.

As a young boy he'd walked into Bill's study one day and surprised his father hanging a picture on the wall. Rehanging, Jack realized now. Bill had made some excuse about how it had fallen from its nail, but that had struck Jack as strange, because he hadn't heard anything fall as he was walking toward the study, and the frame looked undamaged. And Bill had seemed nervous, which he never was.

Jack put his pistol down on the nightstand and hurried to the print. As he lifted the frame from the wall, a single piece of faded paper fell from behind it and dropped to the floor. He put the print down and picked up the paper. It was the Order.

"Good job," a gruff voice said. "My boss is gonna be real happy about that."

Jack whipped around. A man holding a shotgun stood in the doorway, smiling smugly.

"Who's your boss?" Jack asked, not expecting an answer, surprised when the man brandis.h.i.+ng the weapon actually answered.

"Stewart Baxter," he said, raising the shotgun and aiming it at Jack. "Now say good-bye, Jack Jensen."

GADANZ MOVED forward to the edge of his seat and caught his breath as the television camera panned in for a close-up of the president hugging his illegitimate daughter while the bright lights from the press gallery below the jet flashed at them like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

When Dorn and Shannon finally leaned back from their initial embrace and the camera caught a full glimpse of the young woman's face, a thrill coursed through Gadanz's body. Shannon was a pretty girl, but she didn't look pretty right now. She was sick, though she had no idea how sick.

She'd been asleep in the one-room hut of the small town nestled into a remote river valley of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in western Africa when she'd been injected with the filthy blood poisoned by the Ebola virus. It had been fewer than twelve hours, so she couldn't know-yet. But the doctors would diagnose her condition very quickly.

Gadanz threw his head back and laughed demonically as Dorn hugged Shannon again for the cameras and smiled that winning smile. Despite being ambushed at Harpers Ferry as he was leading his a.s.sa.s.sins toward Was.h.i.+ngton, Liam Sterling had still gotten his primary target. President Dorn had now been directly exposed to the virus and would undoubtedly fall victim to it as well.

The blood that Karen Jensen had been injected with, in that same hut a few hours later, was rife with the virus as well. Gadanz nodded to himself as he watched. This part of Operation Anarchy was still moving forward perfectly. Sterling had still executed the most important piece of this to perfection.

Somehow Troy Jensen, his brother, and other b.a.s.t.a.r.ds of Red Cell Seven had interrupted the plan. But Gadanz didn't care. In fact, he was happy that, based upon the reports he was receiving, Troy was going to live. Very soon, according to Sterling, who'd managed to escape the ambush at Harpers Ferry and had already called Gadanz twice, Troy was going to wish he hadn't survived. Troy was going to be faced with a terrible decision no absolute patriot and loving, compa.s.sionate brother would ever want to face. No one in their right mind would.

Gadanz felt the familiar pain in his head coming on, and he leaned forward and closed his eyes in advance of it, as he'd become too accustomed to doing. Perhaps it was finally time to see another doctor.

He hated doctors. They rarely had good news.

He glanced at the TV as the pain in his forehead intensified. They certainly wouldn't have good news for Shannon-or the president.

He screamed as the pain in his head turned unbearable.

TROY LAY on the hospital bed. Somehow the bullet he'd taken on Route 340 had missed all the major organs in his chest. He'd lost a tremendous amount of blood, and they'd given him a heavy dose of painkillers, but he was awake.

"My father," he whispered as an attendant moved into the room.

When the man reached Troy's bedside, he leaned down so he could hear better. "Sir?"

"My father is Bill Jensen," Troy gasped. "Have you heard anything about him?"

"He's in a hospital in New York City. From what I understand, he's going to live." The man had no idea if Bill Jensen would live or die, but he believed it would be better for Troy's mental state if he received good news. And the man wanted Troy to live-for now-though not for the reason the hospital's legitimate staff did. "I have something for you, sir," he said, pressing a note and the vial filled with amber liquid into Troy's weak hand. "Good luck. You'll need it."

With that, Liam Sterling exited the premises. His latest disguise had worked beautifully.

CHAPTER 38.

"GOOD AFTERNOON, Henry," Baxter said politely as he eased into the same chair he'd sat in the last time they'd met in Espinosa's home study. The night they'd discussed the Order that made Red Cell Seven untouchable. The night Baxter had unleashed his ominous warning about s.e.xual skeletons. "I appreciate you being available for me on such short notice."

"Of course."

Espinosa's response sounded cordial, but Baxter knew the chief justice nominee wasn't at all happy about this meeting. Beneath the calm exterior Espinosa was nervous, and justifiably so. The silent current running through this meeting was strained-which was exactly as Baxter wanted. It would make Espinosa pliable, like putty.

"That was a h.e.l.l of a thing that happened in Harpers Ferry yesterday."

"Yes," Espinosa agreed, "it was."

"I think we're all safe at this point. But it's still a good idea for the major players in town to lay low for a while."

"Your boss didn't lay low last night," Espinosa pointed out. "That was quite a show he put on at Andrews."

Baxter nodded. There was no denying David Dorn's flair for the dramatic-and his understanding of how to use television. His approval rating had soared to almost ninety percent by ten o'clock this morning. No one seemed to care about his indiscretion in Vermont all those years ago. Only that he'd "manned up" and gone to meet Shannon at the airport as soon as she landed-as well as quickly defused another major terrorist attack. His tide couldn't get much higher.

"It worked out well for him," Baxter observed.

"It seems as if everything always does."

Usually, Baxter agreed, though there was an issue this time. It turned out Shannon was very sick. She'd been taken from Andrews Air Force Base directly to Walter Reed Hospital and was now lying unconscious in the intensive care unit.

Now President Dorn had fallen ill, too. Doctors were running tests on Shannon and the president, and Baxter had left orders with his staff to call him as soon as the results were in. Baxter figured it was simply a bad bug, and Dorn would be back in the White House saddle quickly. Nothing ever seemed to slow the president down for long.

"Let's get to the point," Baxter said brusquely. "It's time to-"

"First," Espinosa cut in, "tell me how you knew to call and warn me the other day."

"What are you talking about?" Baxter demanded, irritated at the interruption.

"How did you know what was going to happen? How did you know I could be a target for those people who were caught in Harpers Ferry?"

"I received a last-second intel report from the CIA," Baxter lied.

It had been Shane Maddux who'd alerted him, but Espinosa didn't need to know that. No one did. It seemed strange that Maddux would come to the rescue like that with the nugget of vitally important information, but so be it. Now was not the time for questions, and Baxter would never violate the personal loyalty Maddux had shown, giving the warning, by giving away his source. It had occurred to Baxter that Maddux must somehow be involved in the terrorist plot, but no one had died. Perhaps Maddux had actually had a hand in foiling it.

"Now," Baxter said firmly as he pulled two pieces of faded paper from the manila envelope that lay on his lap and then another, fresher one, "let's get to why I'm here."

"Did you have Chief Justice Bolger killed?" Espinosa asked evenly. "Was that really an accident on Const.i.tution Avenue? Or were you behind it, Stewart?"

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it," Baxter hissed, surprised at the insolence Espinosa continued to show. "Don't interrupt me again, Henry."

It didn't really matter to Baxter that Espinosa had put two and two together and correctly suspected the White House's role in Bolger's death. Espinosa would never say anything to law enforcement, because he might come under scrutiny as well-Baxter would make sure he did, and Espinosa must suspect that, too. After all, Espinosa would have a h.e.l.l of a motive for being involved in a conspiracy to kill Chief Justice Bolger, and Baxter could easily connect the dots to him for law enforcement-even if the trail was completely manufactured.

And what would be the point of Espinosa saying anything? Bolger was dead. Nothing would change that. And now Espinosa was chief justice. He'd reached the pinnacle of the judicial system in the United States. He'd achieved his lifelong goal. Wasn't that the real point?