The Lance (The PROJECT: Book Two) (18 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Elizabeth pulled into the garage
at the safe house. She'd made a run with Steph and Selena for supplies while Ronnie kept watch on the security monitors. They began unloading the car. Lamont's mother had needed emergency surgery and he'd gone to the hospital in the Capitol. Nick was meeting with Rice's principal aide at a discreet restaurant in Washington.

Elizabeth, Selena and Stephanie
walked into the kitchen, their arms full of groceries. Ronnie sat with his hands on the table before him. His expression was rigid.

"
Hey, Ronnie, we're back." Stephanie looked at him. "What's wrong?"

General Dysart stepped into the kitchen
from the living room. With him were six men holding Ingram Mac-10s with noise suppressors. Nicknamed "whispering death" in Vietnam, the Macs put out over a thousand 9mm rounds a minute. Obsolete technology. Very, very lethal. Elizabeth froze in place.

"
You've caused me a lot of trouble, Harker." Dysart clenched and unclenched his hands. "Put those sacks down. Slowly."

They set the bags on the floor.

"Take your weapons out and lay them on the floor. Put your hands in back of you. One mistake, my men fire. Don't tempt me."

Elizabeth saw Stephanie think about going for her pistol.

"Don't, Steph. Do as he says." They laid the guns down on the floor. One of Dysart's men kicked them aside.

"
Get down on your knees, all of you. You, too."  Dysart pulled Ronnie's chair out from under him.

One of the men handed his weapon to Dysart
and took plastic ties from his pocket. It took only a minute to truss everyone's hands together behind their backs.

"
You can't get away with this," said Elizabeth.

Dysart laughed. There was no mirth in it.
"Of course I can."

"
How did you find us?"

"
Your computer hacking. Difficult to trace, but here we are. You're not as clever as you thought. You shouldn't go looking at other people's emails." He sat down by the table. "Why don't you tell me what you've learned?"

"
I've learned you're a traitor." Elizabeth said. "But you already know that."

Dysart
stood up, walked over and punched Elizabeth hard in the face. She fell to her side, dazed. Blood poured from her nose. Ronnie made a movement toward Dysart. One of the men hit him in the back of his head with a gun, knocking him to the floor. Dysart turned to Selena and Stephanie where they knelt on the kitchen tiles.

"
You won't make any trouble, will you? No, I didn't think so."

Dysart smiled at Selena, an unpleasant, frightening smile. "We have something special planned for you."

He reached down and grabbed Elizabeth's hair, jerked her to her knees. "I enjoyed that." His eyes glittered. "Tie their ankles."

They were trussed up with more ties.
"Take them into the cellar and make sure they can't go anywhere. We'll wait for the others to get back and question everyone at the same time. It's instructive when you show someone what happens when they don't want to talk."

Dysart's men
dragged them down a narrow flight of stairs into the cavernous cellar. Elizabeth's head bumped on the cellar steps. Their captors bound them sitting against two columns supporting the floor above.

One of the men crouched down in front of Selena. She could smell
his stink, a rank, sour smell of unwashed body odor and cheap cigarettes. He reached out and squeezed her breast, twisting her nipple with his fingers, watching her reaction. He grinned as she winced.

He pursed his lips in a mock kiss.
"You're mine, sweetheart."

"
In your dreams, asshole."  Selena's feet were tied but her legs were free. She brought her knees to her chest in one fluid motion and kicked her tormentor hard below the belt. He grunted and flew halfway across the room. His companion laughed.

The man rose
to his feet, face black with anger, clutching his groin. He started toward Selena.

"
That's enough, Carl," the other said. "There's time for that later. Come on, the General wants us upstairs."

"
You'll pay for that, bitch," Carl said.

"
That's original. You get that line from a movie?"

"
Come
on
Carl."

The
men went back upstairs and closed the door to the kitchen behind them. A single, dim bulb cast scarce light into the basement gloom.

In another time, long ago, wounded soldiers from the Army of Northern Virginia
had lain in rows in this same basement. The damp stone walls had seen more than their share of pain and misery.

Elizabeth was frightened. She blew a bubble of blood from her lips. She took a
labored breath and thought of her father.

The Judge
had been sitting in his favorite green wingback chair by the fire in his study, a fresh glass of bourbon in his hand. Elizabeth had been fourteen years old. Outside, the sub-zero cold of a bitter Colorado winter had covered the Western Slope in ice and snow, but in the Judge's study it was warm and comfortable. They'd been talking about Stephen Crane's book, The Red Badge of Courage. Elizabeth had wondered aloud how men could overcome their fear, be so brave that they would march into the mouths of cannons and almost certain death.

"
Everyone gets afraid, but sometimes you just have to go ahead."

"
What do you do when you're afraid, Daddy?"

"
Well, the first thing I do is admit it to myself. It doesn't do any good to pretend I'm not scared, or that I don't feel the way I really feel. That's where courage comes in."

"
Courage?"

"
Courage is accepting your fear and doing whatever needs to be done anyway. Cowards are people who can't face up to their fear and let it get the better of them. There's always a place for courage. There's always something that can be done. You might not see it right away. Sooner or later something comes to mind that can help you through it. You make up your mind that it's okay to be afraid and you are going to be all right. Then you do what has to be done. That's courage."

Courage. She needed that now.

Elizabeth heard Ronnie groan.

"
Ronnie, are you okay?"

"
Unnh. Yeah. Head hurts. I'm all right. I'm going to kill that bastard."

"How did they get in
?" Elizabeth took a deep breath through her mouth.

"
I was watching the monitors. Next thing I knew there was a muzzle at the back of my neck. I never saw them or heard them coming. They beat the alarms somehow. NSA bullshit."

Elizabeth took another breath
through her mouth. "Dysart has to kill us. We've got to figure this out, and fast. I wonder if he knows about the tunnel?"

"
Doesn't help unless we can get free."

S
tone fireplaces took up each end of the basement, big enough to stand in and wide enough for eight foot logs. In the days before central heating they had warmed the house above. The concealed escape tunnel began behind the back wall of the fireplace at the far end. On the other side of that wall were weapons and a straight route out of the safe house. It might as well have been in China for all the good it did them.

"
How long you think we've got before they come down and start asking questions?"

"
I don't know, Ronnie." Elizabeth spit blood. The flow from her nose had slowed to a trickle. She coughed, gasped for air.

"
Your nose looks broken." Selena looked over at Elizabeth. "The bleeding's almost stopped."

"
When is Nick due back?" Elizabeth breathed through her mouth.

"
He didn't say." Ronnie twisted in his restraints, but it was no use. "I hope it's soon."

They waited for their executioners.

CHAPTER
FIFTY

Nick tried raising Harker and the others. Lamont didn't answer. He was still at the hospital with his mother and probably in a place where a cell phone would set off fifty heart attacks.  Nick's
ear felt like bees were crawling on it. Under Alpha Red, no response to communications within two minutes meant trouble. Something was wrong.

He
was still driving the armored Suburban. It was already deep twilight. He parked well away from the safe house and moved on foot until he could see the front of the building. There were no cars out front. Everything looked normal. He stayed low outside the stone fencing and followed it around the property. In the back, a light burned in the kitchen window. Two black Jeeps were parked under the trees.

He
crouched behind the wall and thought about his options.

Two vehicles meant at least two men, probably four, maybe more. He'
d never make it to the house undetected, past the alarms and cameras. But there was another way in. He went back to the Suburban and drove with his lights off, past the house to where the highway came to a wide stream. He pulled as far as he could off the road and parked. He took the shotgun and a flashlight and followed the bank of the stream until he came to the grill sealing off the escape tunnel.

The tunnel looked like a large
, rectangular storm drain. Carter disabled the alarm, pulled the grill away and set it aside.

The tunnel was dry and high enough to walk in. The light from
his torch shone on cement walls stained with damp. Bugs and spiders scuttled out of his way. He reached the end of the tunnel. He looked through a spy hole behind the fireplace and saw the others bound to columns, feet stretched out before them on the floor. Harker's face and blouse were bloody.

Nick
stepped through the back of the fireplace. He set the shotgun against the wall, pulled his knife and started cutting them free. First Ronnie, then the others.

"
Nick!" Ronnie whispered. "Dysart and six others. Heavy firepower."

Ronnie
picked up the shotgun and ran to the bottom of the stairs. He eased the slide back, checking to see if a round was chambered. Selena rubbed her wrists. She touched Nick on the arm, as if making sure he was real.

Stephanie ran to the tunnel, opened a steel locker and took out weapons. She handed an M4A1 to Selena, one to Harker and quietly racked the bolt on her own. They loaded up.

"They've got Mac-10s," Ronnie said in a low voice.

Nick
took out his pistol. "What do you think? Should we go up, or bring them down here?"

"
Up. There's no way to get them all down here at once. We have to go after them."

"
Is the door locked?"

"
I don't know. Probably not. They think we're helpless." He smiled. Nick knew the look. Ronnie was mad. It wasn't a good idea to get Ronnie mad at you.

"
Black flag, Ronnie."

He nodded.
"I'll go first." He patted the stock of the Remington. "More spread, close quarters, lots of noise. Should take them by surprise."

Nick felt the adrenaline rush. He took a few breaths to calm himself.

"Stephanie, Director," he said in a low voice. "You wait down here. Take them out if someone gets by us. Selena, you follow Ronnie and me up. Cover us. Lay down fire when you can. You get a clear shot at one of the bad guys, take it. Don't get yourself killed."

The three moved silently up
the stairs. Light and the murmur of voices slipped through the crack under the door. Ronnie put his left hand on the knob and turned it in a slow, even movement. He nodded.

Nick
held up three fingers, mouthed the count. One. Two. Three.

The door flew open. T
he man who had mauled Selena sat with one of the others drinking beer. Their guns were on the table in front of them. They went for their weapons.

The Remington blew the first man out of his chair and painted the wall in back of him with blood.
Nick fired twice as the second lifted his gun. The big hollow point bullets drove him into the stove and to the floor. Two down.

Nick caught m
ovement in the living room and dove to the side. He heard Selena's weapon behind him. The arch around the entrance to the living room disintegrated in a shower of plaster.

A
long burst from a Mac-10 sprayed the kitchen with rounds. He could hear the bolt snicking back and forth over the soft stuttering of the suppressor. Ronnie fired twice, the twelve gauge loud as thunder inside the house. The double ought buckshot lifted the shooter off his feet and threw him backward.

Nick
got to his feet and reached the living room. Another burst from a MAC-10 chopped the kitchen cabinets into bits. China and glass shattered behind him. Ronnie fired and a shape behind the sofa collapsed. Someone stood and Selena shot him. He went down firing, the bullets stitching a pattern into the ceiling and blowing out the chandelier. In the next room a man reached around the doorway and fired. Selena fired a short burst and he crumpled.

A
man in uniform ran for the front door. Nick let off three rounds into his back. He slammed face first into the door and slid to the floor, arms spread wide, leaving broad smears of blood behind on the smooth, white enameled surface.

Loud silence.

The rooms filled with the smell of cordite, blood and the stink of emptying bowels.

"
I count seven," Ronnie said. "That's all of them." He racked the slide on the shotgun, ejected an empty casing. It bounced with a hollow clatter onto the wooden floor.

They
checked the bodies. Dysart lay by the door, his green uniform dark with blood. That was the good news. The bad news was that he wasn't going to answer any questions.

Selena stood frozen in the kitchen, her rifle still held close to her cheek. Nick walked over and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"You're all right."

Something changed in her eyes. She lowered her weapon.

Harker and Stephanie came into the room. Harker looked at the carnage and shook her head.

"
I'd better call the President," she said. "He needs a new spymaster."