Kodiak Sky (Red Cell Trilogy Book 3) (30 page)

Jack shot twice before the other guy could, lowered his shoulder, and crashed into the man hard. They tumbled to the pavement, with Jack ending up on the bottom. The man brought his pistol up to fire, but Jack knocked it away with a backhand left and then nailed the man flush on his bearded jaw with a crushing right, aided by the pistol he was still clasping tightly.

The man fell away and lay limp on the road facedown.

As Jack scrambled to his feet, he spotted a woman fifteen feet away aiming a weapon at him. Just as she pulled her trigger a gunshot exploded from the left, and the woman staggered back a few feet before falling over the guardrail and tumbling down the riverbank.

Jack’s gaze snapped left, but Skylar had already turned to fire at another target. She’d just saved his life, he realized in the middle of the chaos.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man not wearing a black shirt aiming at Skylar. Jack raised his gun smoothly, aimed at the chest, and fired just before the man could. As the man collapsed, Jack swung the barrel of his gun to the front of the bus and trained it on a woman who’d just jumped out of it and was about to fire at Skylar. Again he fired and put the woman down.

This time Skylar recoiled and hunched down, as if she’d been hit. But an instant later she whirled around, glared at Jack, and then nodded before sprinting out of sight around the bus.

Jack took a quick step after her, then stopped, horrified by the scene to the left. Another assassin was pointing his gun at Troy from close range. But Troy had his back to the shooter.

Jack fired and put the man down—but not before Troy fell.

Jack raced to Troy and knelt down, terrified. Blood was spreading across Troy’s shirt from a wound to his upper chest.

He took Troy’s hand tightly as Troy stared back up in desperation. It was the first time Jack had ever seen this kind of fear in his brother’s eyes.

A
S NEAR
as Sterling could tell, he’d sprinted at least a mile through the forest. He assumed that the people who’d ambushed them on Route 340 would have choppers in the air quickly. In fact, he was surprised he hadn’t already heard the
thump-thump-thump
of rotors. Still, the tree cover seemed thick enough to hide him, though he wasn’t sure about that. And it certainly wouldn’t protect him from the dogs that would certainly be let loose very soon.

All he knew for sure was that he needed to get as far away as possible from this place as fast as possible.

He jammed his hand into his pocket and grabbed the vial filled with amber liquid to make sure it was still there. This vial had suddenly become infinitely more crucial.

“T
HE CHOPPER
will be here in less than a minute,” the trooper called to Jack, who was still kneeling beside Troy. “The pilot’s gonna put it down right here on the road, right out in front of you,” he said, gesturing. “It’s one of ours, not a big medevac, so it’s small enough to get down through the trees. The guy flying the bird’s a pro. He’ll have your brother to urgent care in Charles Town in five minutes. And they’ve got a surgeon on the way from Hagerstown who’ll meet him at the UC facility.”

Jack glanced up as the sound of rotors in the distance reached his ears. How the hell anyone could get a helicopter down through that small an opening was a mystery. But good for him, because this spot was the only flat surface anywhere close to Troy with an opening in the trees above it. And Jack didn’t want to move Troy until the helicopter got here.

Multiple ambulances were racing to the scene as well, but the EMTs wouldn’t be able to do much here on Route 340. Jack was no doctor, but the pool of blood on the wet road at his knees and the ashen color of Troy’s face told a bad story. Troy needed a skilled surgeon
statim
.

He squeezed Troy’s hand. “Hold on, brother,” he urged as his phone went off
again.
“Two minutes and you’re in the air, headed to help.”

By the time Jack could pull the phone out it had stopped ringing. This was the first chance he’d had to check calls since they’d sprinted down the hillside toward the assassins spilling from the bus. Now he saw that Cheryl had called from her cell phone six times in the last ten minutes. And she never left multiple messages unless something was really wrong.

He hit the “call back” button.

“Jack?” she answered loudly before the first ring ended.

“Yeah, it’s me.” His mother sounded awful, on the verge of tears. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s your father,” she said, sobs racking her. “He’s been hurt very badly.”

Jack grimaced in shock, as if he’d just taken a shot to the stomach himself.
“What are you talking about?”
he asked as his gaze flashed to Skylar, who was standing ten feet away, speaking to one of the men who’d come with her to Harpers Ferry. “What happened to him?” he asked hesitantly as the rotors grew louder.

“What’s going on?” Troy gasped, squeezing Jack’s hand hard.

“Easy, brother.”

“Is that Troy?” Cheryl asked quickly. “Is he all right? I’ve been trying to call him, too, but he doesn’t pick up.”

“Troy’s fine.”

“He doesn’t sound fine. He sounds—”

“Tell me what happened.”

“A few hours ago Bill was found in a cabin in western New York by two deer hunters. They got caught in this terrible storm we’re having, and they took cover inside the cabin.” She sobbed loudly. “They found Bill lying in a pool of blood in a back bedroom.”

Jack glanced at Skylar again. She’d claimed Bill was alive when she left that cabin. “But—”

“There was another man dead in the same bedroom from a bullet wound,” Cheryl continued, “but Bill had a . . . he had a terrible knife wound. He’d lost so much blood, Jack.
Oh, God. I don’t know what I’m going to—
”

A hurricane from above wiped out her words as the chopper began its descent straight down through the narrow opening in the treetops.

“What the—” Jack shouted as Troy grabbed him tightly by the front of his shirt. “Save your strength. What are you doing, Troy?”

“You’ve gotta take this chopper out of here,” Troy gasped with a wild look in his eyes as the blast of wind from the helicopter blew leaves and branches everywhere. “You’ve got to get to that cabin in New York.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I heard what Mom said. You’ve got to take this chopper out of here, get to a plane, and get to that cabin.”

“
You’re
taking this chopper,” Jack yelled above the wind and the roar as the craft neared the pavement. “You need a doctor
immediately
.”

“No. You’ve got to get the Order. It’s the last one. It’s the one that was in the cave on Gannett Peak, and it’s in the cabin. Dad told me everything on the phone when I talked to him in Brooklyn. If that last Order falls into the wrong hands, Red Cell Seven is done. Dorn can destroy us if he has both of them. The Supreme Court can declare us outlaws and shut us down, throw our agents in jail. I can’t let that happen, Jack. I can’t.”

Jack stared down into Troy’s intense expression, which was twisted by the awful pain he was fighting. Jack was well aware of how crucial it was for Red Cell Seven to possess at least one original of Executive Order 1973 1-E. Bill had explained that last December before sending Karen and him to Gannett Peak.

“I’ll drive to the closest airport and take a—”

“No!” Troy shouted as loudly as he could. “Seconds could matter. If the news agencies pick up on Dad’s situation and where it happened, Baxter will send his people out there immediately. He’s smart. He’ll figure that’s where the Order is. Red Cell Seven’s too important to the security of this country to let that happen. What happens to it is way more important than what happens to me.”

“We could send someone ahead, someone from RC7.”

“No,” Troy gasped. “The only person I trust with this is
you
. You’ve got to get that document.”

It was a level of patriotism Jack couldn’t comprehend.

“Take Skylar with you,” Troy said.

“She might have—”

“No,”
Troy cut in, clenching Jack harder as another spasm of pain tore through him. “I heard Mom say it was a knife wound to the neck. It had to be Maddux.”

“Why did it
have
to be Maddux?”

“Maddux always has a switchblade bound to his right wrist beneath his sleeve. It’s why he always wears long sleeves.” Troy coughed several times. “Go, Jack,” he whispered. “Now. Please, brother.”

“I can’t do it, Troy. I can’t leave you here like this.”

Troy shook his head. “You don’t have a choice.”

CHAPTER 37

A
T
T
ROY’S
insistence, Jack and Skylar had squeezed into the little helicopter and flown to the airport at Hagerstown—which was across the Potomac River and north of Harpers Ferry. There, Jack had convinced a young pilot to fly them in his four-seat Cessna Skyhawk through the storm lashing the Mid-Atlantic and northeast to Corning, New York—for twenty grand plus fuel.

After making it to Corning, they’d rented a car and driven north through Watkins Glen and up the western shore of Seneca Lake to the cabin where Bill and Maddux had holed up for the last nine months, parking the car a mile away and hustling through the rain-soaked forest.

“Where’d you learn to shoot?” Skylar asked. “That was pretty damn impressive back at Harpers Ferry.”

They were standing thirty yards from the cabin, inside the tree line so they could see the structure but no one could see them. They were waiting for the last members of New York law enforcement to finish their investigation and clear out so they could search the place for the Order.

“Troy,” Jack answered dejectedly.

Troy was in critical condition at a hospital outside Washington, while Bill was in critical condition at a hospital in New York City. And Karen was gone—probably forever. It was tough for Jack to focus. His world was shattered.

Cheryl was being raced to New York City by members of the Jensen family security detail, nearly inconsolable as she prepared to see Bill for the first time in nine months even though he was unconscious. And she didn’t even know about Karen being kidnapped and Jennie being dead. At least they’d gotten L.J. back, Jack thought to himself. His mother had sobbed in relief when he’d told her that. She’d felt terribly guilty for being the one who’d lost the little boy.

“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 cocky 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 hell 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 reassuringly. “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 compassionate, 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 assassins 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 Washington 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 smashing into the front wall of the house all around them.

Skylar grabbed the knob 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 glass.

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.

B
AXTER 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 Associated Press’s Washington 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 anticipation 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 massive security team as the Gulfstream door opened and a pretty blond appeared.

She was wrapped in a blanket and shivering badly, Baxter could see, even from fifty feet away as he held a magazine over his head to shield himself from the intensifying rain.

The agents tried to keep Dorn in check, but he fought his way through them like a knight in shining 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 snatched 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.

“W
E 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 document. 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.