Authors: J.G. Jurado
Kate
She observed the farm from a hilltop. She had left the car on the other side, well out of sight of the farm's occupants.
To follow them all the way there had been quite an achievement. They had stopped twice on the way, once to fill up with gas and again at a greasy-spoon truck stop by the Virginia state line, where they chowed down for an hour and a half while Kate nibbled on a couple of stale granola bars she had found in the glove box.
That part of the trail hadn't been too hard. The Mercedes had traveled slowly, ten miles per hour below the speed limit. As the men were armed, they obviously didn't want to risk the state troopers stopping them to give them a ticket, then asking them to open the trunk or get out of the car.
Kate had had to step up precautions when they went through Gainesville. They were no longer on a freeway, where trailing somebody was just a matter of keeping your eyes on their rear lights from a half mile away. Now they were on two-way back roads, with a lot less traffic, which went through towns. She couldn't drop back too far, nor could she turn off her headlights. She had to stay out of range of their rearview mirror, or they would notice her. Which meant she might lose them anytime.
As dawn broke, they made their way into Rappahannock County and Kate began to feel uneasy, because there the highways were just ribbons of blacktop, bordered with orange, that crisscrossed the green expanse.
There were very few towns, just a bunch of scattered farms, which got farther apart as they went. Out in the boonies, there was no way to follow them at a safe distance. She would have to rely on sheer
instinct to follow them, hoping to catch sight of the Mercedes's side markers from afar as it went around a bend. Her heart sank with each minute that passed without seeing them.
The inevitable happened. She lost them.
It took her more than twenty minutes to realize they were no longer in front of her.
I must have gone past an unmarked turnoff. But where?
Worried to death, she turned the car around and drove back past a couple of regular-looking farms. And beyond that, not far from where she had last seen them, past a dirt track.
She wasn't so clueless as to take it, but carried on until she hit a northbound back road, drove around the hill that the track she'd seen skirted, then walked to the top.
She kneeled down by some poison ivy which had turned a glorious orangey-red color with the fall. At the foot of the hill was a gently sloping dale. In the distance, she could see Shenandoah Mountain through the mist, and heard cardinals warbling on and off to greet it.
Kate knew the lay of the land well, because she and Rachel had grown up an hour's drive away, on a farm not much different from this one. That Arcadian spot was in the Virginia heartland, the last bit of wilderness to have fended off the maw of the excavators. An earthly paradise.
And two hundred yards from her vantage point, far from the main highway, was the spot where the kidnappers were hiding out.
The Mercedes could no longer be seen, but she knew right away that this was the place. There were three buildings. The farmhouse, from whose chimney rose a thin plume of smoke. A stable to the north of it, with fresh tire ruts leading to the doors, which in all likelihood was where they kept the cars. Beside the stable was a gasoline-fired generator. In the gap between the latter and the house there was a mound of dirt several yards high.
And finally there was a barn to the south, which they obviously weren't using to store hay. No barn she had ever seen as a child had the latest satellite communications antenna.
Kate pulled out her cell to confirm there was almost no coverage. Only one of the five bars was showing while the 3G icon was crossed out.
That antenna provides the bandwidth to monitor the girl in the dugout. It's here. They've got her inside.
She looked at her watch. Three minutes before the president's operation was due to begin.
Now she had to choose. She could call McKenna, explain what had happened and tell him to get David out of the operating theater. Then call in a heavily armed SWAT team, who would take a couple of hours to get down there and storm the farm. In the knowledge that by then White would have been forewarned and exacted whatever vengeance he had decided upon by remote control.
Or she could go in, with surprise on her side and trusting that God, luck and training would tip the balance her way in a mission impossible against untold enemies who outgunned her.
She hesitated for a second, wavering, for the umpteenth time in the past forty hours, between the call of duty and her feelings.
Finally, she picked up the cell.
On the Observation Deck, Operating Theater 2
The best part was seeing the look on David's face when he realized he was there.
He had moved forward to shake White's hand, feigning indifference, but his eyes abruptly went glassy and betrayed a whirlwind of emotions. White was flattered to be the only one who held the key to what was going on inside David's head at that moment.
“
Hello, Dr. Evans. I don't know if you remember me, we met at a conference in London a couple of years ago,” he said in his best British accent.
There was a long hiatus while Dave looked at the iPad that White was clutching to his chest.
That's right, take note. I've got my finger on the button. One push and your daughter dies.
“Of course. In the Marblestone, wasn't it?”
“What an excellent memory you have.”
That Dave himself had been obliged to corroborate his alias had been the icing on the cake. Not that White needed it. His highly placed employer had tipped him off about Peter Ravensdale some time back. He was second on the list of experts the White House had drawn up.
“Have you come all the way from London?”
“I've just flown in from New York. I rented a car at the airport and got here half an hour ago.”
“It's quite a surprise to see you here.”
“And an exciting opportunity for me to learn from you. They say you are faultless.”
They had gotten in touch with the real Ravensdale on Tuesday, the same day Svetlana died. They sent him an e-mail from the State Department asking what his fees would be to supervise an operation and whether he'd be interested, without mentioning the patient's name. Ravensdale had replied to accept. He said they wouldn't even need to fly him over from London, because he would already be visiting patients in New York.
Eleven hours later he was dead, his corpse in a safe place, while his cell phone, e-mail account and documentation were in White's hands.
The president was right about reining in the NSA. It was so big that not even those it was meant to protect were immune from its prying and conniving. All it had taken to get White into the hospital had been to use PRISM software to tap into the Secret Service database, alter Ravensdale's details on file there to match White's, forge a British passport . . .
et voilÃ
, Peter Ravensdale had a new face.
When he showed up on the second floor that morning, a Secret Service agent had done no more than check his ID, frisk him and call McKenna. After all, he was merely an observer who wouldn't even come close to the president, right?
“I try to be,” Dave said. “Besides, you will all ensure I don't make any mistakes.”
Lowers uttered a pleasantry while Hockstetter mumbled an impudent remark about having to take what you could get. White ignored them. He was savoring the moment.
This was his masterstroke, his secret weapon for wiping away his victims'
last remaining scrap of willpower. He was always in at the kill, to make sure they fulfilled his wishes. The face of a neighbor among the crowd, the mailman nobody noticed, the photographer poised behind his camera. The first time had been in Naples, when he had dressed up
as a cop to deliver the head of the elusive writer to the Mafia man who wanted him dead. From then on he couldn't resist seeing with his own eyes how the last domino passed the tipping point and toppled perfectly into place.
And now the tall green-eyed man who was already on his way out of the observation deck was about to complete his masterpiece, his Sistine Chapel.
“Good luck, Dr. Evans. We'll be here, following your work with great interest.”
32
After I quit the observation deck, I went back to my room. My presence wouldn't be required in the operating theater for a couple of hours. Sharon Kendall would take half that time to sedate the Patient. Dr. Wong would use the other hour to perform a craniotomy and lay bare the area on which I would work. She would make an incision around the skull, peel off the scalp and cut into the bone with a circular saw. Nothing you couldn't do yourself with household tools. Except that we do it accurately, so we can then put it all back together again.
I wasn't involved in any of that. Although short and simple, it was a very intense and physically tiring business which neurosurgeons in charge of the delicate parts usually delegated to residents and less experienced staff. It's not because of arrogance. An operating theater is very stressful, a thousand times more so in the exceptional situation we found ourselves in, in Theater 2. The idea was that the experts should be fresh when they got to work.
The very fact that I was sitting comfortably while the medical chief at one of the country's best hospitals was doing the donkey work prior to my operating on the president of the United States had to be the high-water mark of my career.
If my father had been alive, I would have called him that second. I'd have told good ol' Doc Evans the score. For sure he'd have given me some sage, homely and useless piece of advice, which would have warmed the cockles of my heart. If Rachel had still been around, she'd have been in there with me, keeping an eye on the Patient's readings and glancing at me now and again, when she thought I wasn't looking. And if I was alert enough, I could even have discerned a look of pride out of the corner of my eye. I know because she had always betrayed such a look.
They had both seen the kid I once was, and what I had made of myself. I thanked my lucky stars they weren't here now to see what I had become: a weapon in the hands of a murderer, as responsible as him for the heinous crime we were about to commit.
I remembered the day my dad had found me playing with the kitten's guts and initiated me in my career as a doctor. That day he forgave me. Twenty-six years on, as I stared blankly at the wall while a couple of bags of poison lurked in the instrument trolley drawer, I could only imagine him spitting in my face for betraying all that he had taught me.
Then I heard a quiet buzz. I had put Kate's phone in a desk drawer. I doubted White would be observing me now through the camera on my iPhone, but just in case I had stashed it away inside my doctor's bag.
I took out the BlackBerry, and when I read the text my heart derailed and tears filled my eyes. I had to read it again and again to check that my eyes weren't deceiving me.
FOUND HER. I'M GOING IN.
DON'T DO IT, DAVE. TRUST ME.
She's found her. But she doesn't have her yet. Anything might happen.
Then a second text landed.
WHATEVER HAPPENS, I'LL LOVE YOU ALWAYS.
There was knocking at the door. I dried my eyes quickly before I turned around.
It was Wong. She came in with coffee from the vending machine and a tired smile. If she could tell I'd been crying, she didn't say so. She leaned on the door, stirred the unappealing brew and nodded her head at me.
“I've lifted the lid, Evans. Now get in there and strut your stuff.”
Kate
She went back to her car, opened the trunk, took off her leather jacket and threw it inside. She pulled a blanket off a lockbox and opened it with a tiny key from her key ring, then locked away her keys, purse, everything she had on her. She wanted to carry nothing that might get in her way or jingle.
She took an MP5 submachine gun out of the case. She had dismantled, cleaned, greased and reassembled it on Wednesday night, so it was combat-ready. The ammo situation was more worrying. She had only three small magazines, forty-five rounds in all, which ruled out continuous fire. She made sure she selected single-fire mode, fitted one of the magazines and clipped the other two to a special belt. She also donned her gun holster and SIG Sauer P229 pistol, then hooked them to the belt, too.
Lastly, she put on her Kevlar vest. It was a light service model, with the letters
SECRET SERVICE
embossed on it in yellow. Her mind went back to the intruders in the Evans house and the shadows of the PP-19 Bizon guns they toted.
Sixty-four shots per magazine
,
she thought as she patted the vest with her knuckles.
How many could this thing stop, if they hit me dead-on? Two, three?
Don't think about it. Don't think about it.
She hesitated before she put her jacket back on. The combined weight of her jacket and vest would slow her down, but her white shirtsleeves were too obvious. The black jacket would help her steal across to the barn.
You can take it off when it's showtime. If you get to raise the curtain.
She climbed back up the hill, gripping the machine gun with
both hands. She would have to climb down the other side very carefully, taking advantage of such natural shelter as the vegetation would afford her. She stopped off at a copse halfway down, to rest and to take a last glance at the farm.
They
're too confident no one will find this place; there's nobody on watch. Either that or they're too tired after last night's little errand.
There had been at least three of them in the car, so they were most probably resting up in the farmhouse. To take on that part of the farm by herself was impossible. There would be stairs, nooks, blind spots and a million other places for them to hide, and many obstacles for them to throw in her way.
If Julia's in there, we're done for.
But the little girl wasn't in there. She'd be in the barn, where they had their communications center and could watch her.
Okay, here's the plan. In you go, release her from wherever she is being held and run uphill as fast as your heels will carry you. Can
't fail.
She couldn't help having a wry chortle at her own stupidity. Julia had been shut away in a tiny space she could not stand up straight in for more than sixty hours. She might be injured or sick, and undoubtedly she'd be in shock. It would be hard enough for her to walk, let alone run. Kate would have to carry her herself.
How much would she weighâforty-five, fifty pounds? God, this'll be just great.
But she didn't have a better idea.
She came down the slope's last few yards with her heart beating nineteen to the dozen. Her breathing quickened and she could feel a sudden shift in the world around her. The light became brighter, harder, almost solid and unbreakable. Time slowed down and the leaves stopped falling from the trees to hover in midair. By the time she reached the barn door, her senses were as keen as could be, thanks to the adrenaline. She could distinguish every speck, every whorl in the grain and every little mossy shadow on the huge wooden door. She reached out for the rusty handle and could feel under her fingers the wrinkles from dozens of coats of paint applied
over the decades. When she turned it, the quiet creaking was a thunderclap to her ears.
She pushed the door open enough for her to slip through. Inside it smelled of dung and rotting straw, a thick, hard stench that stung her nostrils. The place had two floors. The upper one had a window fitted with a pulley, while hay bales lined the walls of the lower one. Somebody had improvised a table by laying a thick, green tarp on one of the bales, which was covered in cell phones, guns, electronics and communications gear. And snoring on a chair behind it all, with his head dangling back, was a tall, bearded man dressed in a white shirt, boots and dungarees. Thousands of specks of dust shimmered in a shaft of daylight, which shone through the first-floor window and hit him in the face.
Something must have caught the man's attention, because in a tick he stopped snoring, blinked a few times and looked toward the door, and Kate.
“Freeze, asshole,” she said, aiming at him.
The bearded guy sat up and screwed his eyes into a cruel squint.
“Hands up, real slow, and on your feet.”
He complied. Kate could see great big sweat stains under his armpits as he raised his hands. She wondered whether he was one of the ones who had drilled holes into Vlatko PapiÄ's head in Baltimore.
“I'm going to walk over,” she said. “When I say so, you will walk toward me and away from the table. Don't even think about looking dowâ”
She didn't finish her sentence. A gleam in the man's eye, a slight shrug of his shoulders put Kate on her guard. They weren't alone. There was somebody else, behind her, somebody about to attack. She ducked as a reflex action, dug one knee in the ground and toppled forward.
Not a second too soon. The bearded man jumped aside and threw himself on the hay bales, while a gun barrel took his place and poked into the shaft of light. There was a flash and a bang. A dozen
bullets rent the air, right where Kate had been standing a moment before, then tore into the barn door.
In the dazzling light she couldn't see who had taken the shot or where he was. Kate fired at a shadow where the flash had come from, without thinking or aiming. She merely pulled the trigger once, twice, three times. A creak and a thud could be heard.
I got him. I got him.
“Whoa! Easy!” the man with the beard shouted. He cowered on the ground and had both his hands on his head.
She stood upright, with her gun aimed at him all the while, then moved over to where the light no longer dazzled her eyes. It took just one look for her to see the gunman was dead. One of the MP5's bullets had hit him in the eye and ripped off half his face. She turned back to the bearded guy.
“Don't even think about it. Don't even think about it, damn it.”
The other guy had raised himself a little and his fingers held the handle of a pistol that had been sitting on top of the tarp. The barrel was aimed at Kate. His whole body was tense. He hadn't yet gotten to his knees, but he needed only to get a good grip on the gun and he'd be in firing position.
“Put your hands down. Now,” she said. Her voice trembled in the middle of the
now
, making her sound like a nervous teenager.
Perhaps that was what encouraged the bearded man to give it a try, to close his fist and squeeze the trigger. The shot missed her, a yard overhead. But hers didn't. The first entered his right armpit, slicing through his axillary artery and also blowing his arm clean off. That shot alone would have been enough to make him bleed to death in a minute, but he didn't have time to die that way. The second bullet smashed through his rib cage, opened up a great gash in his flesh and dragged his lungs out through a hole twice as wide as the entry wound. The man tried to scream, but all that issued from his mouth was a gurgle of blood before he tumbled to the ground.
What a fool
, Kate thought,
to think he was faster than a speeding bullet.
She took a couple of paces toward him, to make certain he was no longer a threat. Blood gushed from the man's arm wound and seeped into the black, fertile dirt beneath him.
I have never killed anybody before
,
Kate said to herself. And then the previous night's events pricked her conscience.
By my own hand, that is.
Shouts came from outside. The firefight had only lasted a few seconds but had made one hell of a noise. The shots must have been heard all over the valley.
On top of the table, and coming from the bearded man's belt and somewhere below the first gunman's body, there was a click and a commanding voice spoke in an alien tongue.
Here they come.
She slung the MP5 over her shoulder, went across to the bearded man and snatched the pistol from his defunct fingers. She aimed at the laptops and boxes of electronic gear on the table and emptied the clip into them, fanning out the shots. The bullets raked over everything, turning thousands of dollars' worth of equipment into smoking, worthless scrap.
So much for evidence. But maybe this will screw up their comms and buy us some more time.
She looked around anxiously and went back to mapping out the place in her head, as she had been doing before she was rudely interrupted by the shoot-out with the two scumbags. The barn had two big doors, one at each end. In between were the rows of hay bales, with a ten-foot-wide passageway down the middle. A ladder led to the hayloft, and that was it.
Julia. Where are you?
She had no time to look for her. The dead men's comrades would be there in no time to find out what was up. They'd be doubly dangerous with their military experience, albeit more predictable. They would regroup and attack from one of the doors, or from both at the same time.
Up. You must go up.
She dropped the pistol and climbed up the ladder. She ran to the window, which was a couple of yards from the ladder. Mounted on the window frame was the jib of a crane used to hoist the hay bales. She peeked outside and what she saw quickly confirmed her worst fears. There were three of them, at least as far as she could tell, and they were running over to the barn from the farmhouse.
Bad idea, you jerks. You don't all run together when there's a shooter nearby.
She had only a couple of seconds before she would lose her line of sight, but she needed no more. She aimed eighteen inches in front of the last man and fired. White's foot soldier, a thin young man, went down with a splotch of crimson in the middle of his gray sweater. The others were now out of sight, sheltered by the building.
Now they have the upper hand. One will come from each end. They know I'm up here. They have walkie-talkies to get their act together. And even if they don
't, they only have to speak Serbian for me not to know what on earth they're up to.
The loft was very narrow and there were inch-wide gaps between the floorboards. There was nothing to shield her, nor was there anywhere to hide. And if she lay down flat she could cover only one of the two doors.
I'm a sitting duck up here. And if I try to go down the ladder, I'll be a sitting duck that can't fire back.
While she tried to decide which door to aim at, she saw the one on the right open a little. She fired twice at it, then rolled over and fired to the left, just to confuse them and make them believe she was not alone. But it was futile. The door planks were very thick and the bullets could not burrow through them. And the attackers had a much more evil plan in mind. There was the sound of breaking glass and columns of flames shot up on either side of the barn, making quick work of the dry hay.
Molotov cocktails. I hadn't thought of that. The cunning sons of bitches.
This scenario wasn't covered in any Secret Service handbook.
There isn't a book in the world that can tell you what to do when you're alone, trapped in a hayloft and surrounded by enemies covering your escape routes with automatic weapons.
Kate could hear squealing. Faint and muffled, but unmistakable. She looked below and amid the smoke she could see a patch in the middle of the barn that was a different color, with a metal ring to one side of it. Then she knew what the mound of dirt was doing outside.
Julia was buried alive down there.
“Julia, baby! Don't worry, it's Auntie Kate!”
“Rats! Rats!”
And there's no book in the world that can tell you how to deal with that situation while rats are eating your niece alive.