Future Under Fire (Operation: Hot Spot Book 4), page 6
Tag nodded absently. If the camera had caught the vehicle east of the I-15 exit, then he wasn’t headed out of town. Or at least not yet or via 15. Maybe Sarah’s abductor was holing up somewhere and waiting for Mitch to contact him about the ransom.
Assuming the girls had been taken by Mitch’s business associate.
“Have Langley’s parents gotten a call from anyone?” he asked.
“Negative.” Rio’s voice was flat.
Tag frowned. If the bastard who had them was after Mitch’s money, what would he do when he discovered Mitch had no intention of paying the ransom? Flinching, Tag rubbed his temples. Yeah, thinking too hard on that question was just going to bump his headache up to a migraine.
He’d run countless recons out in the field. And there had been plenty of ops where they’d had to hole up for days at a time while they awaited intel. But never before had he been so tense and antsy after a mere couple hours of waiting.
He took a right at the next intersection and headed for I-15 and then Pomerado. Fifteen minutes later he pulled up to the Willow Creek intersection. A familiar Jeep Renegade was parked along the curb maybe fifty feet past the lights. Rio must have updated Tram too.
There wasn’t enough space between the curb and street to park for long. Sure as hell not enough for them to have any kind of meaningful discussion. He honked as he cruised past the Renegade and watched in his rearview mirror as the Jeep pulled onto the street behind him. They took the first left, exiting Pomerado in favor of a quieter, narrower gravel side street. Tag parked along the side of the road and waited for Tram to pull in behind him.
After exiting their vehicles, they huddled next to Tag’s truck. Tram had changed out of his dress clothes into faded jeans, blue t-shirt, and his scruffy kick-about boots. Normal stand down attire for most operators. Pretty much the same thing Tag was wearing after he’d gone home to shuck his shorts and tank top.
“If the bastard was headed out of town, he’d have taken the I-15 exit.” Tram frowned, swiped a hand over his head, and turned in slow motion, scanning the dry, desolate landscape. “Feels like he’s going to ground somewhere out there instead.”
Tag massaged his aching temples as he nodded.
Tram’s focus locked on Tag. He frowned, concern glinting in his eyes. “You okay?”
Tag dropped his hands. “Nothing a couple ibuprofen tablets won’t fix.” Or getting a bead on Sarah. Or getting Sarah back. He fought to concentrate. “If the kidnapper grabbed them because of Mitch, then he’s out for money. Maybe he’s gone to ground somewhere close enough to pick up the ransom.”
Assuming the bastard hadn’t set up an electronic money transfer. It was damn easy these days to shift money from one account to another through the wonders of the internet. Hell, if the bastard had set up a digital transaction, he could be waiting anywhere. Proximity to Mitch would make no difference whatsoever.
Of course, all this was one big hypothesis that the girls hadn’t been taken because of Langley. If the threat against Langley was behind the kidnapping, fuck only knew what the bastard was up to.
Although…he frowned thoughtfully. From what he remembered Sarah saying, Langley’s parents were worth a fortune. Maybe money was at the root of both threats.
Tag assessed the scrubby vista surrounding him…while Pomerado was well developed close to San Diego, the longer you followed it out, the less populated it became. If someone wanted to go to ground, Pomerado from eight miles out would be a good choice. Lots of empty acreage out there, full of thick brush and trees for cover. Yet it was close enough to San Diego to make a quick trip into town accessible, if someone were after…say a money drop.
Which was exactly what Tag’s gut was telling him this bastard had done. He’d hauled the girls out here and was sitting on them, waiting for a money transfer or ransom drop.
He swore beneath his breath. The wild, raw terrain farther out was perfect for something else too.
Discarding bodies.
The pressure in his chest expanded, pressing outward until he felt like he was suffocating. The muscles of his chest and arms knotted beneath the urgency to do something.
They needed to come up with some strategy ASAP. If the kidnapper was holed up out there with Sarah and Langley, it would take forever to find him. If he was Mitch’s partner, they wouldn’t be able to cover all the acreage and check all the houses before the bastard realized that Mitch had no intension of coughing up the ransom. They needed to find that damn car before the bastard decided to cut his losses, dump the bodies, and move on.
“We could canvass the houses along Pomerado,” Tram said after a moment, his voice pessimistic.
They both knew he wasn’t talking about the houses right off the road. The bastard who’d kidnapped the women wasn’t going to hunker down in plain sight. He’d drag them deep into the scrub brush and count on the landscape to provide cover.
“There isn’t time.” Tag’s voice tightened. “Even if we pulled everyone from ST7, there’s too much territory to cover, which means we can’t walk in, we’d have to drive. The bastard would hear the vehicles. We’d lose the surprise factor.”
The blitz attack was a special operator’s most potent weapon. Strike when the target least expected it, take them down while they were off balance and unorganized. This tactic was the core principle of the vampire shift, striking from within the darkness of zero-dark-whenever.
Using cars to canvass potential sites would put the target on red alert. The bastard would be waiting for them.
“If cars are out, the cops are too.” Tram’s voice was thoughtful. He frowned, the skin of his forehead wrinkling.
As far as Tag was concerned, that was the only bonus to the situation.
If the cops found the Impala before Tag or Tram or any of their buddies from ST7 who’d turned out en masse to cruise the streets, Tag would be banned from participating in the rescue. It was against federal statute for USA military forces to act in a law enforcement capacity. Which meant he’d be sidelined during the action.
No fucking way was he sitting Sarah’s rescue out. No way.
Hostages died all the time during botched infiltrations. Hell, just the other day some poor woman had been killed by an inexperienced SWAT officer who’d mistook her for her gun-toting ex-husband. It was too damn easy for some fucking banana with an itchy trigger finger to kill the wrong damn person.
He wasn’t trusting the cops with Sarah’s life—fuck federal law. He’d make sure Sarah got out of this alive, even if he had to die to do it, even if he got eighty-sixed from the teams, even if the feds brought him up on charges.
Sarah’s life was more important than all of that.
And…yeah…maybe he wasn’t as over her as he’d thought.
“Might as well call the rest of the boys. Have them canvass out here.” Tram broke the building silence. “They can run the road. Hell, maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll pass the Impala. Or see it parked in front of a house.”
Tag scowled. With the way their luck was running, the car had probably been garaged. Still, the more eyes the better. It was just too bad all the eyes were on the ground. He glanced up, frowning. They needed some eyes in the sky. Trees and shrubs wouldn’t obstruct an aerial view.
“What are the chances Radar could hook us up with a satellite feed?” Tag asked.
Rerouting SAT feeds was predominately through JSOC mission intelligence. While Radar wasn’t with HQ1 intel, he did have major connections. As the assistant to Commander Kovach, who’d taken over as commander of ST7 after Mackenzie had been goat fucked off the teams, Radar knew how to get things done. Hell, he probably knew just the person to discreetly approach about getting a satellite rerouted for a few minutes. Long enough to get some aerial footage, anyway. A white car would stand out like a bullseye on the SAT feed. Which would narrow down their search.
Or hell, if Radar couldn’t work that miracle, Pienkowski could probably get the satellite redirected through the ambassador’s military connections.
Tram squinted up at the blue sky. “We don’t need a satellite feed. Not with Danny Kinard into drones.”
A drone. Tag tilted his head, considering it. While it would give them an aerial sweep, the damn things were noisy as hell. Recon with a drone would be no better than using a car.
“Too loud. That buzzing carries.” He shook his head. “Hell, you can hear the damn things long before they hover overhead.”
“The old ones, yeah. But Danny has this new one. A quiet one. He was telling me about it during that training stint out in the dunes. He said this new one is barely audible at fifty feet and undetectable at a hundred feet. We can run it at a hundred, drop it to fifty if we need to check a plate.”
Okay, that sounded interesting. A drone would cover the terrain a hell of a lot faster than they could by foot—or hell, even by car. Plus, if they found the Impala, he could sit on the news, handle the rescue personally, something that would be impossible if the intel came off a satellite.
“Is ST3 on the ground?” Tag asked.
Danny was the senior enlisted in SEAL Team Three’s Alpha Platoon. The guy was obsessed with electronics. On stand down, while the rest of his crew were out at the shooting range, punching holes in various targets, Danny was out in the boondocks, flying his expensive toys.
“Far as I know.” Tram reached for his phone. A minute later Danny was collecting a few of his machines and heading out to join them.
A half an hour later, Danny stepped back from the Mavic, a four-armed, four-propellered, silver-gray mechanical bug squatting on the grass to the right of the assembled vehicles.
“There’s no wind, so we’ve got around thirty minutes per battery.” Danny glanced up, the sun glinting off his green eyes. “I’ve got four fully charged batteries, so we’re looking at two hours of flight.”
Danny looked like a washed-out version of Ron Howard from Happy Days. He was stick thin and tall. Even with the endless hours of training, running and working out, his frame remained barely muscled and underdeveloped. He’d surprised everyone when he’d made it through BUD/S and SEAL Qualification Training in the top percentile. The guy might not look like much, but that light frame of his housed a core of steel and some fierce determination.
“How much mileage does that translate to?” Tag examined the drone with interest. It was smaller than he’d expected. Lighter too.
“About twenty miles per battery.” Danny walked back to his beat-up Bronco and picked up the remote sitting on the tarnished hood. “I brought the car charger and the hub, so we can charge the exhausted batteries if we need more airtime. It takes about two and a half hours for a full charge. There will be a thirty-minute lag between the last battery draining, and the first battery fully charging again. But we can keep the Mavic in the air for hours. I brought extra batteries and a charger for the camera.”
Tag drew a deep breath and nodded. Christ, he hoped it didn’t come to that. Hours in the air meant Sarah was stuck with her kidnapper for hours too. Long enough for the bastard to realize he wasn’t getting paid. Anything could happen in two hours.
It was close to fifteen miles from I-15 before Pomerado turned the corner and became Bernado. Fifteen miles down the left side of the road and then fifteen miles back to home base along the right side of the road. Thirty miles round trip, maybe less as Pomerado had a lot of curves and the drone would be flying straight.
Still, even if it flew straight, there went one full battery.
Thank Christ they had three more, plus unlimited recharging.
“Let’s light this baby up and see how loud it is,” Tram said, taking a healthy step back.
Danny walked over with the remote clasped between his hands. The drone came to life with a deep, buzzing sound—but at a much lower decibel then Tag had expected.
“I’ll send it up to fifty feet.”
The drone rose into the air. At twenty feet that deep buzz was noticeably quieter. By fifty it was still audible, but barely. When it hit a hundred feet Tag couldn’t hear it no matter how hard he concentrated.
Fuck, this thing would be perfect. Their target wouldn’t even know it was up there spying on him. Some of the tension eating him lessened.
“How do you view the camera feed?” Tag squeezed in next to Danny to get a better look at the remote.
“Through the DJI Fly app on my iPhone.” Danny nodded toward his cell phone which was anchored below the remote by two metal arms.
Video was already streaming. Tag could clearly make out the three vehicles parked along the road, as well as three male figures. The footage was too distant to make out license plates or facial features, but dropping the drone down when necessary would take care of that.
“This thing has a range of about four miles between the drone and the controller,” Danny said absently, “so we’ll need to follow it as we scan. Best practice would be to scan from right to left down Pomerado.”
So they’d need to keep pace with it in one of the vehicles. “Will you lose the connection between the drone and controller if you’re operating from inside the Jeep?”
Danny frowned slightly before looking up to meet Tag’s gaze. “The connection is stronger in open air.”
“Then you’ll have to ride in the back of my truck. I’ll open the back slider. We’re looking for a white sedan. An Impala. If you see a white car, drop the drone for a closer look.”
Without commenting, Danny walked back to his Bronco and returned with the car charger and battery hub. He handed them off to Tram and hopped into the bed of the truck, settling down with his back against the cab. Tag slid behind the wheel, and Tram climbed into the passenger seat.
Before Tag fired the Dodge up, he reached around to drag open the slider.
“Keep the radio off. Radio signals interfere with the connection.” Danny shot a quick glance toward Tag before his gaze returned to the remote. “Where do you want to send it first?”
“The Willow Creek intersection. We’ll sweep east on Pomerado from there.”
“That’s barely a mile out,” Danny said. “Well within range. Stay put. I’ll send the Mavic out to Willow and bring it back,” He paused before announcing absently. “I’ll start with mile long swaths to the right and left of the road.”
Shit. He hadn’t thought about having to do narrow swaths. But the camera would need to be directly overhead to get a clear view around any trees or brush. There went a couple more batteries for sure…a couple more hours as well.
Tag shut the Dodge back down and took to waiting. At least it was a hell of a lot more tolerable waiting in San Diego’s eighty-degree weather than Kabul’s mid-nineties.
It took surprisingly long for the drone to work its way back to them. But then it was sweeping both sides of the road, a mile at a time. The muscles of his chest cinched again as frustrated impatience dug in.
Christ, at this rate it was going to take them forever.
Forever in this case took almost four and a half hours, and so many batteries he’d lost count. Mileage wise they were ten miles down Pomerado when Danny yelled into the cab that he had something.
Tag pulled to the side of the road, praying like a motherfucker that this time the white car the drone had located was their Impala. This wasn’t the first something the drone had picked up. It needed to be the last though, because they were running out of light. Sunset was headed in fast, and Christ only knew how long the drone could fly before it went blind. He estimated half an hour tops before they’d have to shut down and wait for dawn.
“Hang on,” Danny said through the window, as he bent over his phone. “White sedan surrounded by camouflage. Looks like the car’s parked in front of a house.
“You got a plate?” Tag asked.
“Too far up. I’ll drop for a closer look, grab a snapshot, and pull out.”
“If you lower to fifty feet, can you zoom in with the camera?” Dropping that low would expose the drone’s buzzing for a minute or two, but it would still be light. Not too noticeable behind walls.
“Not with the drone camera, but I can with my phone,” Danny said, “Hang on.”
The next few seconds seemed to take forever. Tag’s heart beat more violently with each moment that ticked past.
“I got it,” Danny finally said. The rustle of paper sounded as he checked the plate numbers on the paper Tram had passed through the window. “I’ll be damned.” He sounded surprised, as though he hadn’t really expected the drone search to work. “They match.”
Son of a bitch. Relief whooshed through Tag, lightening his load by at least a hundred pounds.
They’d found the Impala.
Chapter Seven
The kidnapper’s snores were sawing the air. And from what Sarah could see in the gloom, his body was limp as he sprawled out in the armchair, sound asleep.
Now was the time to launch her escape.
If she could move.
Her hands were numb, so were her feet—except for the periodic burst of excruciating tingling that swept through her fingers and toes. The upright—don’t touch anything—position of her spine added to the throbbing in her shoulders and back.
But the most distressing thing facing her was the lack of light. On the plus side, the darkness spreading across the room like a foreboding shadow meant she couldn’t see the scourge-infested denizens sharing the space with her. Which would have been great—except she could still hear their scurrying little feet and their creepy rustling as they pushed their way through the trash.
Somehow hearing them without seeing them was even worse.
Sarah stared at the biggest hole in the wall. The light leaking through had darkened from bright to dim. Before long, it would disappear completely.
Night was falling.
Which meant one of two things.
She was going to spend the pitch-black night in this bacterial and virus riddled atrocity of a house, all the while praying that her multi-legged companions didn’t decide that she would make a nice protein packed snack.
Or…she was going to have to force her frozen body to cooperate, lock down the pain, and find the strength to escape her captor…in the dark. And once she accomplished that, she’d have to find and release Langley…in the dark. And then the two of them would have to make their way to the closest road through the scrubby territory surrounding them, with only the light of the moon to ease their way.
