Satisfied the way was clear, he nodded.

  Here we go.

  We closed the remaining distance to the front door and listened in. Ideally, we’d wait until the day shift came out before subduing them and then going inside using their own keys. But for all we knew, the day shift had already left.

  Mark looked at me and motioned to the door before signaling me to go high and to the right while he would go low and to the left. I shook my head and signaled for him to slow down—I wanted to wait to see if anyone came out.

  He shook his head sharply and repeated his hand signals before stopping suddenly when there was motion on the other side of the door. We both braced ourselves, pressed against the outside of the house next to the door.

  Outside the gate I heard Kathrin returning with the van. I prayed she’d turn the engine off before the door opened. As the door swung open, casting a bright strip of light on the ground, the van rolled by and continued down the street. I breathed a silent breath of relief that she had seen the light and kept going.

  Mark looked at me and nodded almost imperceptibly, letting me know he expected me to take the man who was leaving. As soon as the door closed and he stepped down, I rushed forward. He never heard me—or if he did, he certainly didn’t have time to react before I slammed my rifle against the back of his head, solidly striking him at the base of his skull. I reached out and grabbed him before he could hit the ground.

  Mark nodded as I reached into the guard’s pocket and grabbed his keys. After returning to the top step, I silently slipped the key into the knob and looked up at Mark. With his fingers, he counted down from three, pointing at the door on one.

  I turned the key and pushed the door open. Mark went in, low and to the left. I followed turning high and to the right.

  Everyone was caught completely by surprise, including us—there were no less than six adults in view.

  “Hold!” Kathrin called through our earpieces. “There’s at least eight cars parked on the side of the house.”

  Getting over the initial shock of two strangers bursting in, two of the men in the front room dropped to the floor and drew weapons. Mark handily popped one round each into their heads, the muted pop of his MP5 drawing the attention of those further away. I targeted one who was on the draw and put him down before yet another appeared through the doorway of the kitchen.

  “Two men,” Mark snapped, mocking me. “Hit and run.”

  “Shut up!” I replied as I charged forward, clearing the room with two round bursts.

  I loathed double-tap firing, but I was moving too fast to take the chance of a glancing shot leaving somebody alive—I needed the insurance of two rounds per target despite the waste of ammo. Unlike our MP5s, the Baynebridge men didn’t have sound suppressors—the shots rang through the house, echoing off the walls loudly in the confined space.

  A hammer blow to my back clued me in to an attacker firing at me from behind. The shot to my body armor cracked against my ribs and spine before sending me to the ground. I pulled my Glock as I fell and turned on the floor, putting a round through the man’s head. He fell backward down the porch steps and flattened on the sidewalk.

  “You alright?” Mark asked without looking, having pinned two men in the next room.

  “I’m fine,” I yelled. “I’m moving forward.”

  “We need to rethink—”

  I was already moving forward before he could finish his sentence. I pressed my back against the wall to the dining room and waited for one of the men to fire again. When his arm bent around the door, I grabbed it, pinning it against the doorframe before turning my own Glock around the corner and firing three shots into his chest and under his chin.

  “Moving!” Mark yelled as he came up behind me before bumping his back into mine letting me know he was covering me.

  I dipped my head around the corner for a split second, jerking it back immediately. “Two in the hall. One on the right, one on the left in the doorway.”

  “High or low?” Mark asked.

  “Right low, left high. I’ll take the one on the right.”

  “I’m moving in,” Kathrin said.

  “Negative,” I replied, clipped. “We’ve got this. Keep the engine running. We’ll be moving your way fast once we get the girl.”

  “Acknowledged.” She actually sounded disappointed.

  “Ready?” I whispered.

  A terse nod was my signal to go. I fell forward into the hallway. The standing gunman got a shot off but missed me as I dropped. My target was on the floor, shooting upward. I squeezed my trigger three times, twice as I fell, once as I hit the floor. The first round found its mark, but the other gunman was now drawing down on me. As my arm swept up, Mark stepped around the frame and fired two shots into his chest, sending him backward to the floor.

  “Clear,” I said.

  “Clear,” Mark repeated, still gazing down his barrel, sweeping it back and forth while checking for additional targets.

  I scrambled to my feet. “Check these rooms,” I said as I crept down the hall. “I’ll get the ones on this si—”

  The wall I was against began to spew bullets, cracking and blowing chunks of drywall into the air. Another hammer blow to my shoulder sent me sprawling to the floor. Mark raised his rifle, but I kicked his leg, drawing his attention to me before shaking my head. “We don’t know where the girl is.”

  He nodded. “Are you okay?” he whispered.

  I gave him a thumbs up before peeking through one of the bullet holes. I turned back to Mark and held up two fingers, one for each of the men I saw, before signaling that one of them had a hostage.

  He nodded before moving toward the door. As I got to my feet, the throbbing in my ribs and shoulder began to overwhelm the benefit of the adrenaline and threatened to distract me. I moved my arm to make sure nothing was broken—everything seemed to hinge properly despite the pain.

  I tapped Mark on the shoulder before signaling that I wanted him to open the door. He nodded before using the barrel of his rifle to push it wide. Shots rang out immediately, blasting holes in the wall across the hallway. When they stopped, I strolled past Mark at an even, though fast gait and targeted the man who wasn’t holding a gun to the little girl’s head—one shot to the head when I dashed past. I heard him thump to the floor as I pressed my back against the wall.

  I nodded to Mark that I had hit my man.

  “You’re going to back up out of this house or I’m going execute these kids,” the remaining man said. “Then I’m going to get in my car and drive away with them.”

  I looked at Mark, confused, before mouthing, “Kids?”

  The confusion was just as deep on his face. He shrugged before nodding me toward the opening.

  I stepped into the doorway, my Glock trained on his head. He had a girl and a boy, both much younger than twelve, grasped tightly in front of him. His gun was at the boy’s head.

  “You weren’t listening!” he yelled. “I’ll kill these fucking kids.”

  Mark stepped into the doorway as well, his rifle trained on the man’s head. “If you drop the weapon now, you will have the privilege of being the only one of your buddies that lives,” Mark said.

  “That’s not how this is going to work,” he said, anger and fear rippling across all his expression markers.

  “You got him?” Mark asked in a quiet voice.

  “Got him,” I replied, even, calm, controlled.

  Mark lowered his weapon. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of the phenomena of cranial vault penetration, but the motor cortex isn’t—”

  I took my shot, dropping the bad guy to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut. The kids ran to the corner, huddled together, crying.

  “I wasn’t done with my speech yet,” Mark complained as he unclipped his assault rifle and laid it on the floor before going to the kids. “It’s okay now. The loud noises are over.”

  “Kathrin, we need you in here,” I said into my mic as I left the room and went down the long hallway to check for more henchmen.

  “On my way,” she replied.

  I pushed the next door open and found three kids, two boys and a girl, who looked to be between ten and fourteen years old, and a woman in her thirties dressed only in a dirty slip. I raised my finger to my lips hoping to quiet their crying. “Anyone else in here?” I whispered.

  They shook their heads.

  “Okay. Stay down until I come back,” I said before pulling the door closed again and walking down to the next room.

  The door was ajar, so I pushed it open. I dipped my head through the opening for a split second before pulling it back. Two women and another girl of about twelve. I stepped in and raised my finger to my lips again. “Is there anyone else—?”

  One of the women made a rapid movement with her eyes toward the other just as the second woman pulled a revolver from behind her. In a split-second decision, I fired a round through her shoulder, spinning her around and to the floor. The other woman and the girl rushed toward me as the gun skidded across the hardwood.

  “Go into the other room,” I said pointing at the room I had just come from without looking away from the wounded woman.

  The woman and the girl scurried around me in that direction.

  “Why are there so many hostages here?” I asked the crying woman on the floor as she cradled her shoulder.

  As I approached, she fell sideways and went for her weapon.

  “Knock it off,” I said, unimpressed as I kicked the .38 caliber revolver away from her.

  I kneeled next to her. “Why are there so many hostages?”

  “I don’t know,” she said through her sobs.

  I pressed my knee down on her shoulder. “Why?”

  “I don’t know!” she yelled, her face contorted in anger and pain. “We were bringing them all together to be shipped out…it’s only the first night in the same house.”

  Consolidation…something’s going down.

  “Where are you?” I heard Kathrin call from down the hall.

  “Here,” I yelled stepping through the door without breaking eye contact with the Baynebridge woman.

  “More than two,” she said as she approached me.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  “More than one little girl too,” I replied. “Check the room next door.”

  She moved away from me and into the next room. “Hi,” I heard her say. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  Mark appeared with the two kids he had been with. “This is more than we’d planned on, and I’ll bet you anything at least one of them got a call out.”

  I nodded before going back to the lone survivor. “When was the transfer supposed to happen?”

  “In the morning,” she said, through a grimace of pain.

  “Who was supposed to get them?”

  “I don’t know,” she muttered.

  I kneeled on her shoulder again before she threw a punch at me. I caught her arm and leaned heavily on her wound. “Who?”

  “I swear to God, I don’t know!” she yelled.

  I looked down at her, blocking any emotion from showing on my face as I stared at a tattoo on her arm—a special forces tattoo.

  Former military, betraying everything she swore to defend. I shook my head. “That oath you took didn’t end just because you were discharged.”

  She looked up at me angrily as I released her arm. “You don’t know nothing about me.”

  “I know that oath you took didn’t end just because you were discharged.”

  “Fuck you.”

  I nodded before striking her across the temple with the butt of my Glock, knocking her unconscious.

  “She’ll bleed out if you don’t do something about that wound,” Mark said from behind me.

  I looked at him over my shoulder as I pulled her blouse open.

  “—if you care,” he said with a shrug before walking away.

  I pulled a field dressing out of the top pocket of my tactical vest before quickly tying it around her shoulder. When I was finished with my first aid, I took a black marker off the desk and wrote, “I’m alive because I told them everything…sorry,” on her forehead.

  “Come on!” Mark yelled down the hall.

  I got up and ran out the front door before helping Kathrin herd the hostages into the van. “Is Rachel Bailey in here?”

  “Yes,” came a faint and timid reply from the back.

  “It’s good to meet you, sweetheart,” I said, thankful that I finally had Combine’s leverage over Greg Bailey safely in hand.

  “Where are we going?” one of the women asked.

  I looked at Mark through the rearview mirror before starting the engine. “We are going to Virginia.”

  “Can’t we go home?” a girl asked.

  “Yes, sweetheart, you’ll be going home, but first we need to make sure you’re all safe from these bad guys…and we can’t do that until we have more people around,” I said.

  Mark came forward and tapped me on the shoulder as I drove fast along the service road away from the house. “You’re going to have to drop me off before you get to Langley,” he said in a quiet voice. “If anyone recognizes me, they’ll have me back on lockdown, and I might not survive it this time.”

  “I’ll swing by the safe house on the way out of town,” I replied, checking my mirrors for anyone following us after turning onto a connecting street. “You can drive the Mustang back to Virginia.”

  “Why would I do that?” he asked.

  I looked up at his face in the rearview mirror. “There are eight insurance policies in the back of this van who are going to have family members willing to talk now that they’re free,” I said before refocusing on the street. “If you want to meet your sister’s killers, I’m betting one or more of them are going to be able to give us a name.”

  “You going for Bailey first?” he asked.

  I nodded. “I don’t know how much time we have before Combine starts tying up loose ends, but I’m betting they’ll have a harder time reaching Bailey in the ADMAX than they would the rest of them.”

  “You better call and let Langley know you’re coming,” he said. “The last thing you want to do is get caught with a bunch of kidnap victims in your possession. Knowing these guys, they’d kill the lot of us and pin the whole thing on you.”

  I shook my head. “I have to chance it. The less time our security leak has to react, the better it is for us… I’ll call the director from outside the gate.”

  “I’m glad I’m not coming with,” he said with a chuckle.

  “You are…you’ll be right behind me until I get close, then you’ll take Kathrin to see Storc.”

  “Uh uh,” he grunted tersely. “I’m not trusting my security to anyone else.”

  “You aren’t trusting your security to anyone else… I’m trusting you with Storc’s security,” I replied. “As soon as Baynebridge and Combine find out it was me who stole their hostages, they’re going to come down on my operation with everything they have.”

  Mark was silent, prompting me to look up into the rearview. He was concentrating on something that had brought a deep frown to his face.

  “Mark?”

  “Okay,” he replied finally. “But we’re not staying in Virginia…we need to find somewhere off grid to lay low until you have a solid lead.”

  “Storc can’t be off grid,” I said, turning toward the highway. “His systems are what we’re using to dig through the finances.”

  “I suppose I can’t carry a gun, either.”

  “No…you can carry,” I replied with a grin. “Just don’t leave any weapons laying around where he can put his hands on them. He’s not trained.”

  Mark shook his head and sat down in the floor behind me. To the rear of the cargo area, a girl was crying.

  “What’s wrong?” Kathrin asked.

  The girl sniffed through a catchy sob. “I peed myself.”

  I looked up to the rearview mirror. “Don’t feel bad, sweetheart…I think I did too.”

  ten

  Tuesday, February 15th

  6:20 a.m. —Tyson’s Corner, Virginia

  HEINRICH BRAUN rubbed his eyes. They burned from lack of sleep. He had been awakened late last night by a phone call from Ned Richards, informing him the Baynebridge black site where the hostages were being assembled had been attacked.

  Within an hour of notifying William Spryte, this new, extremely reckless plan had been put in motion, and Braun had been ordered to Virginia to oversee it. He was in flight to Regan National on Spryte’s private plane less than an hour after that.

  The rhythmic clacking of tires on the beltway threatened to pull him back to sleep as he and Tris rode in the backseat of the sedan. In front of him, Patrick was driving with a cell phone pressed to his ear, making final arrangements.

  Is this what brings us down? Is this insane act what finally destroys me?

  “How long until it’s ready?” Patrick asked into his cell phone. He nodded and looked into the rearview. “Just another hour for the truck,” he said to Braun’s reflection. “They had no trouble at the factory. Everything they needed was on the dock.”

  Braun nodded before turning to Tris. “You’re certain you have the right name?” he asked.

  “It’s not the first time this Op has been planned,” she said. “We already had a list of over a hundred candidates just waiting to be activated.”

  “Activated,” he muttered, mocking, shaking his head.

  “Encouraged,” she replied with a sly smile before leaning over to him. “The profile is a perfect match. We already know what his response will be.”

  “Fine,” Braun snapped. “If we’re going down in flames, we might as well do it with a plan. I just hope I can be out of the city before they execute.”

  “Relax,” Tris said, patting Braun’s leg, patronizing. “We both know, regardless of the clumsiness, this will solve one of your biggest problems.”

  Braun nodded reluctantly. But he couldn’t help feeling resentful of such a dramatic response when he had, for so many years, been so careful to apply only the precise amount of pressure required to solve a problem.

  “We’re here,” Patrick said as he pulled to a halt in front of a small, secluded house on a dead end service road just inside the beltway.

 

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