The Buried (24 page)

The ambulance began moving forward.

Wonderful
, Quinn thought sarcastically.

The second he was clear of the rear bumper, he hopped into a crouch and moved with the vehicle, staying tight to the back and below the rear windows. Though this kept him out of sight while the vehicle headed for the exit, his makeshift plan had one glaring problem—when the ambulance passed the rolling door, the man holding the chain would see him.

Quinn moved as close as he could to the passenger side, and the moment the man came into view, he flew at him.

The chain ripped from the guy’s hands as he sailed backward. Grazing the outer wall, he twisted around, hit the floor shoulder first, and tumbled onto his chest, his forehead bouncing off the concrete. Quinn jammed a knee into his back and raised his palm, intending to hit the man in the head, but realized the guy had been knocked out.

Quinn pulled out his gun and jumped to his feet, knowing what would come next.

__________

A
LOUD METALLIC
rattle filled the air as the ambulance pulled outside.

Orbits turned toward the back window just in time to see the rolling door sail downward, barely missing the ambulance.

The driver, Stafford, hit the brakes and looked back at Orbits. “That asshole nearly took us out. What was he thinking?”

“Must have lost his grip,” Parnell, another member of the team, said.

Orbits was tempted to tell Stafford to drive on and leave Conway here, but given what was about to go down, he might need all the help he could get.

They watched the pedestrian door. When Conway didn’t come out, Branson said, “Maybe he’s hurt.”

“Shit,” Orbits said under his breath. “Someone go get him.”

“On it,” Branson said.

__________

Q
UINN MOVED BEHIND
the pedestrian door and waited. It wasn’t long before he heard steps heading his way.

When the door opened, the new arrival’s focus was in the other direction, toward the rolling door. As soon as the man saw his colleague on the floor, he hurried over.

Quinn followed, and placed his suppressor against the man’s neck as the guy knelt down next to his friend.

A moment of frozen time—the man motionless as he assessed his options, Quinn steady as he watched for the first sign of resistance.

There.

The man twisted around to grab Quinn’s weapon, only the gun wasn’t there anymore.

Thup
.

The bullet ripped through the guy’s calf. As he yelled out in pain, Quinn whacked the hot barrel against the base of the man’s skull. He was dazed, but not out. Quinn hit him again and sent him to the ground with his buddy.

He rushed back to the door to await the next one.

__________

O
RBITS STARTED GETTING
antsy after twenty seconds. When forty had passed, he became downright anxious.

“Should I go see if they need help?” Parnell asked

Orbits stared at the building. Something was wrong.

“If he needed help, he would have come back and asked for it by now,” he said. He turned toward Stafford. “Go. Get us out of here.”

Stafford didn’t need to be told twice.

As they raced away, the door to the building opened.

For half a second, Orbits thought it was Branson, but whoever it was never stepped outside.

The hunter fumed. Somehow their location had been discovered.

__________

Q
UINN WATCHED THE
ambulance race away. It had been too much to hope they’d keep coming in one by one. But he had taken out two of them, reducing their manpower by forty percent.

He yelled for Nate to join him. When his partner appeared, he was holding Quinn’s phone up to his ear.

“Is it working?”

“Yeah, but they’re not talking much.”

“Have they at least said where they’re going?”

“Not yet.”

Quinn looked over at the two unconscious men on the floor. One or both of them might know where the ambulance was headed. But with Dani’s chip and now Nate’s phone, he and Nate didn’t need to waste time questioning them.

They left the men where they lay and headed back to their car.

CHAPTER
31

A
T 4:23 P.M.,
Central time, an auction appeared on the darknet. The item being offered was a Caucasian female in her mid-twenties. A list of her physical traits was included, as were several photographs and the name she was currently using: Danielle Chad.

The reserve opening bid price was $1.5 million.

Because the identities of most interested parties were unknown, e-mail alerts were sent to several people and organizations who might or might not care, in hopes that word would get to those who did.

WASHINGTON, DC

A
N E-MAIL ARRIVED
in Scott Bennett’s inbox, marked urgent.

This wasn’t unusual. Almost everyone who e-mailed Bennett marked their messages urgent. What made this one stand out, though, was that it had come from one of his superiors in the ultra-secret, America-first organization known as Valor. The first line read:

Handle this.

The second line was a link. And the third a random-looking string of letters, numbers, and symbols.

Bennett copied the last line and clicked on the link. His screen went black for four seconds before an empty text box appeared. After inputting the copied string of characters, he hit
RETURN
.

The new page was some kind of auction that was already twelve minutes into a two-hour time limit.

His confusion as to why Valor would be interested vanished when he saw the item on the block.

His first move was to send Ricky Orbits a text telling him his services were no longer needed. His second was to put in a bid.

BERLIN

F
OR A TEN-
minute period, Assistant Trade Attaché Komarov felt like he was nothing more than a glorified switchboard operator. First Schwartz with a message for Moscow, then Moscow with an immediate reply, then Schwartz again, and Moscow, and Schwartz, and finally Moscow.

Whatever was going on was big enough to ignore normal protocols. Komarov had no idea what it could be and was glad for that.

When he passed the last message on, Schwartz told him to stay close for the next hour and a half in case he was needed again.

Komarov didn’t like the sound of that.

NEW YORK CITY

M
ORSE STARED AT
the monitor. On it was an auction page, the item for sale one Danielle Chad.

“Can we figure out who sent this?” he asked the tech.

“We’re attempting to trace, but unlikely.”

“What about a location off the photographs?”

“They don’t have any geo-tags and the background’s just a wall, sir. It could be anywhere.”

“There’s nothing that can help us?”

“Nothing yet. We should be able to trace the money once the winning bid is paid. That would give us—”

“That’ll be too late.”

There was one thing they could do, Morse knew, but authorization for that would have to come from above.

“Keep working at it,” he told the tech, and then returned to his office and called Clark.

After Morse laid everything out, the older man said, “It seems we’ve been handed a second chance.”

After red team had been all but wiped out early that morning, the agency had had no choice but to remove itself from the physical chase for the Hayes girl until another team could be freed up.

“It could be a trick,” Morse said. “They might not have her at all.”

“Have you been able to verify her identity in the pictures?”

“Preliminarily, yes. But—”

“Then I say we have no choice.”

“So that’s a green light?”

“Yes.”

“How high can I go?”

“As high as needed.”

LOCATION UNKNOWN

T
HE WOLF PUSHED
the
button again, and immediately Director Cho arched on the table from the electricity coursing through her body. At the preset time, the shock cut off and Helen dropped back down.

“Another, I think,” The Wolf said, and tapped the button once more.

Cho had just started to arch again when the door opened. Braun stuck his head into the room and motioned to his boss. She acknowledged him with a nod, and then watched Helen finish the latest round.

When the cycle was done, she said, “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

She found Braun in the hallway, holding a laptop.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Someone found the girl.”

She tensed. “Who?”

“It’s not that easy. Look.”

He opened the computer and showed her the screen for the Danielle Chad auction.

After reading through it and studying the pictures, she said, “It looks like her, but are we sure?”

“It’s her,” he said. “The fingerprints are a match.”

The Wolf finally allowed herself to smile. So her dead partner’s daughter had finally been found. Now all she had to do was find out who was behind the auctioning, because there was no way she would let anyone else have the girl. She’d been waiting so long for Danielle Hayes to reappear, and had already borrowed heavily to fund the hunt for her. The secret the girl held rightfully belonged to The Wolf. Not only would it pay off her debts, it would allow her to finally regain the life she’d once had.

She glanced back at the door to the playroom. “I fear Ms. Cho has just become obsolete. Hold her until you hear from me in case this is some kind of scam. If they really do have the girl, eliminate her and thank our host for his hospitality.”

CHAPTER
32

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

O
NCE WINSTON
started
talking, he hadn’t held back. He’d told Orlando and the others that he and Terry Kuhner had taken Helen Cho to a private airfield in Marin County, where they caught a waiting Gulfstream jet south to the Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles. From there, they transported her to a construction site in Koreatown.

“The night guard waved us right through,” he’d said. “There was a Suburban waiting for us in the underground garage. You know, a black one with tinted windows. Like you see in all the spy movies. Two guys get out and take the woman from us. While they’re putting her in the back of their car, another guy gets out. I was surprised because it was Mr. Rachett.”

“
Thomas
Rachett?” Orlando said, an eyebrow raised.

Winston nodded. “His people have hired me a few times, but I had never seen him in person before. He quizzed us on how things went down, and then told us our money would be in our accounts within the hour. After that we went our way and they went theirs.”

“So he’ll know where she is.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, he should know. Can I have the antidote now?”

“Does he still work out of that old theater?”

“I, uh, think so. Last I heard, he did.”

The Imperial Theater was one of the old downtown Los Angeles movie palaces. For decades most of them had sat unused and decaying, sad reminders of the area’s sparkling past. In recent years, many had been restored to their previous splendor and reopened to the public. Rumors were that the Imperial, too, had been redone, though no one but the invited was allowed inside.

Rachett’s public face was that of a successful businessman who had his hands in a lot of different things—construction, restaurants, real estate, and parking lots. His other face, the one the public doesn’t see, was that of a big-time fixer who meddled in politics, torpedoed rivals, and used whatever means necessary to exert influence on whomever he chose.

Orlando, Daeng, and Ananke were still thirty minutes from downtown when Orlando’s phone rang. On the screen was a single letter:
M
—Orlando’s shorthand for the Mole.

She hit
ACCEPT
. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“Have you…seen the auction?” he said.

“Auction? What are you talking about?”

“Open…your e-mail.”

She logged on to her laptop and opened the e-mail that had just come in from the Mole. It contained only a link.

After clicking it and reading the page that appeared, she said, “Holy crap.”

ILLINOIS

O
RBITS COULDN’T STOP
thinking about the fact that someone had known where he’d taken the girl.

He went over it and over it as they headed south. If someone had found out about his flight from Spokane, the person might have been able to have people in position to follow him when he landed. But he couldn’t see how that was possible. No one had seen him pick up the woman, so how could they have known he’d even gone to Spokane? Maybe they would have eventually figured it out, but he’d have landed and been long gone by then.

After several minutes of mulling it over, his gaze turned to Danielle. There was only one possibility.

Leaning over her, he checked pockets and hems, and patted down her legs and arms. Nothing. He rolled her onto her side and had Parnell hold her there while he searched her back. Still no bug.

He almost gave up, thinking he must have been wrong, when he glanced at her feet. He yanked her shoes off. The tracking chip was underneath the insole of her right shoe. A square hole had been cut into the rubber so it would fit nice and snug.

“Got you,” he said.

He moved up front to the empty passenger seat, rolled down the window, and tossed the chip and both shoes onto the side of the road.

With a laugh, he said, “Whoever you are, you’re out of luck now.”