BAD DEEDS: A Dylan Hunter Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers) (47 page)

“Annie!” he gasped. “You’re bleeding!”

A faint smile touched her lips.

“It’s not mine.”

She paused there, just an instant, her smoky gray eyes holding his, telling him everything.

Then she rushed over, knelt, and wrapped her arms tightly around him. He felt her body trembling.

“You’re all right,” she whispered. “You’re all right …”

“Are
you
all right?”

She looked up at him, eyes tired but relieved. “I am now.”

“The blood,” he said. “Boggs?”

“No. The guy working with him.”

“So where is Boggs?”

“In the woods. Don’t worry, the UAS is tracking him.”

“I would hug you back,” he said, “but I’m a bit tied up at the moment.”

She laughed, squeezing him even tighter. She let go, then reached into her jacket pocket. Her hand emerged with a hunting knife.

Covered with blood.

“Let me cut you loose.” She glanced at the others. They stared at her, wordless and open-mouthed. “I’ll free all of you in another minute.” She bent to work on the bonds at his feet.

He, too, was speechless as he watched her work. He had heard no gunshots. And he knew whose knife that was.

So he knew what all that blood had to mean.

“Grant sent you, then.
You
brought in the jammer.”

“Don’t blame him. There was no one else.”

A rope on his ankle parted. She paused, not looking at him.

“I didn’t think I’d make it in time.”

“But you did,” he said, gently. “You did it, Annie.”

She looked up at him, the blood-coated knife steady in her grip.

“I did what I had to.”

Hunter sent them all outside to wait in his car at a safe distance while he worked on the bomb.

He didn’t think it would be booby-trapped, and it wasn’t. Boggs had meant to set it off here himself, not plant it for later accidental detonation by some unwary victim. The top of the outer case, which was little more than a carrier, was open; he could see inside. With tools from Adair’s garage workshop he dismantled it inside of fifteen minutes. He carefully wrapped the pipe bombs, the cell-phone and button switches, and the detonator in separate rags, then in individual plastic bags. After placing the items in a large cardboard box he found in the garage, he carried it out to his car.

Will wasn’t inside the Forester with the rest of them. He sat by himself on the short brick wall along the driveway, hunched over, head in hands.

They got out and went back into the house. He placed the box gently in the rear cargo area, cushioned it so that it wouldn’t move around, then locked the car. Turning, he saw Adair standing outside the front door, waiting for him. Hunter walked over.

“You’re a man of many talents, Dylan Hunter,” he said, gesturing toward the car.

“Oh, that? I had some EOD training in the service. During the Iraq War.”

Adair made a face. “Bullshit. I watched you tonight. The way you look around, never missing anything. The way you took command of the situation. How you dealt with Boggs and his punk. Now you dismantle a bomb without breaking a sweat … And then there’s your girlfriend. Annie comes waltzing in here, toting a gun; she takes out an armed man, apparently in hand-to-hand combat; and she brings along some kind of James Bond gadget that keeps the bomb from exploding. I also notice that she’s wearing some kind of body wire, and she’s constantly whispering to somebody. Dylan, I feel like I’m in some kind of spy movie. So, level with me. What gives?”

“Dan, look. I—”

“Listen, you don’t have to explain anything, if you don’t want to. I figure you two are probably from some government counterterrorism agency, so whatever you tell me is going to be some cooked-up story, anyway. It also dawned on me tonight that you and Annie must be the same pair that my people ran into at the diner about a month ago. Those two called themselves ‘Brad and Annie.’” Adair chuckled. “Coincidence? I don’t think so. And please don’t insult my intelligence by telling me any different.”

“I would never insult your intelligence, Dan.”

“So, then. I’m right about all this spy shit, huh?”

Hunter had to laugh. He just shrugged.

“You don’t want to talk about it.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fair enough. But can you at least tell me why Annie had to bring in that bomb-jamming gizmo at the very last minute? My God, Dylan, why didn’t
you
fetch it here in the first place, and spare all of us the scare of our lives?”

“That wouldn’t have worked, Dan. The people helping us tonight were electronically monitoring everything that was being said inside the house. But the jammer would have blocked their communications and monitoring. They would have had no way of knowing what was happening, or what they were up against. Besides, if Boggs discovered too soon that his walkie-talkies, video monitoring, and cell transmissions were being blocked, he would have just shot us before anyone could have gotten here.”

“Oh. I see that, now.”

Dylan turned to go.

“Before you run off, do you mind if I ask you a quick personal question?”

“Go ahead.”

“The thing I can’t figure about you is: If you’re government, why do you write what you do in the newspaper? Taking on all these politicians and government agencies? Dylan, I think I’m a good judge of character. You seem completely sincere about what you write, and what you’ve been doing to help us.”

“I am, Dan. That part—being a newspaper reporter, writing what I write—it’s all real. All true.”

Adair stepped forward, hesitantly—then reached out and gripped Hunter by the shoulders.

“I
want
to believe that. We need somebody like you, Dylan. God, the world needs somebody like you. I can’t tell you how much.” He lowered his eyes. “I can’t put into words … just how grateful—”

“It’s not necessary, Dan.”

“No, it
is
.” He blinked rapidly, cleared his throat. “You saved our lives tonight. You and Annie. You saved my wife and daughter and …” He stopped; his eyes moved to his stepson across the driveway, then back to Hunter. “And me. And my business, too. How can I ever—”

“Dan, do you know the greatest thing you can do for Annie and me, right now?”

“Name it.”

“Tonight never happened.”

They stood looking at each other a long moment.

Adair nodded again. “Okay.”

“I’d appreciate it if you and your family don’t breathe a word about this. To anyone. Ever.”

“I’ll make sure they all understand.” He looked again toward Will. “Especially
him
. Did you know he was working with Boggs all along?
He
was the one who planted those fake samples, for God’s sake. My own
stepson!”

Hunter squeezed Adair’s arm. “I’m really sorry, Dan.”

“He almost got all of us
killed.”

“It looks as if he realizes that now … Maybe he can make some amends.”

“
Amends?
Are you kidding? How could he possibly—”

“He can start by telling the police everything he knows. Not about tonight, of course, but about WildJustice. What they’ve done. Who they’re working with. Who finances them. That could bring a lot of bad people to justice. And also, he needs to tell the media about planting those fake chemical samples. Believe me, that will cause a sensation—enough to save your business, I think.”

“I’ll damned well see to it that he
does.
More than that: I’ll make sure
you
get his story first, for your paper.”

Hunter grinned. “My editor will love that … There’s one more favor I’d like to ask of you, Dan. I saw some items in your garage that I’d like to borrow for the next few hours.”

“Sure. Go ahead, take anything you need.” Adair’s brows furrowed. “Do you mind my asking what for?”

He looked off to the east, into the forest.

“I’m going hunting.”

In a bay of the three-car garage, Hunter secured various items from the workshop and placed them into the rear bed of Adair’s Kawasaki Mule ATV. The last thing to go in, on a blanket for cushioning, was the Remington 700 that Annie had fetched from Rusty’s pickup. Then he set Annie’s night-vision goggles on the seat.

The Beretta was in his jacket pocket. He had ditched the bugged loafers and put on his boots again, tucking Rusty’s sheathed hunting knife into the right one, along his calf.

Annie stood nearby, watching him. The butt of Boggs’s S&W .38 protruded from her jacket pocket. She still wore the earpiece and lapel mic.

He went over to her. “I’ll need to borrow those.”

She unclipped them and handed them over. He took her hand and drew her close.

“You know why I have to do this.”

“I know.” She held up her bloodstained hands, gave him a little smile. “Who am I to argue?”

He laughed. Ran his thumb across her smudged cheek.

“I love you, Annie Woods.”

“I love you, Dylan Hunter.”

Then he kissed her.

He put on the NVGs and turned over the engine. Then took the ATV down the driveway, across the road, and into the forest on the other side.

He had already tested the earpiece to establish contact with Garrett. Using the Predator’s sensors, the spy boss directed him onto the same ATV trail that Boggs had taken forty minutes earlier. The bird still tracked him; Grant told Hunter that Boggs had traveled barely a mile through the rough terrain.

“I must say how nice it is to hear your voice again, Grant,” he shouted above the growl of the engine.

“You, too. I was sweating bullets until Annie told me she had neutralized the bomb.”

“Speaking of Annie: I don’t know whether to hug you for all you’ve done tonight, or kill you for sending her in.”

“Frankly, I don’t know which threat frightens me more. But there really was no one else available to do it on such short notice. And you must admit: She performed magnificently.”

He thought of her in the den’s entranceway, holding the Beretta.

“That she did.”

The Mule’s powerful headlamps revealed a large boulder in his path; he navigated around it, bouncing over a bone-jarring rough patch next to the trail.

“So how much trouble have I gotten you into tonight?” he asked.

Garrett actually
laughed.
It turned into a coughing fit. He cleared his throat.

“Nada. The people here know better. Besides, everybody’s buying the cover story. The two sensor guys and the UAS pilot think this is just a cool training mission, and that they’re being graded for extra brownie points. I told them to butt out of the audio monitoring, and to send the feeds directly to my headset. So they don’t know squat about what’s been happening. I did hate to lie to my colonel buddy at Belvoir; but in my position, he would have done the same thing. And the chopper pilot is none the wiser, either. So I’d say that all my bases are covered.”

“You know that I owe you another box of cigars for this. What’s your poison?”

Garrett told him.

“Ouch. Those are pricey. And hard to come by.”

“Are you telling me that you don’t have the money or resources to get them?”

“Of course I can. But you know how much I hate sending my hard-earned cash to Fidel.”

“Tough shit.”

Boggs stopped at the crest of a small hill to catch his breath and figure out what to do next. But he saw nothing in the dark—nothing but an endless black expanse of trees.

He had run and walked for what seemed like miles and hours, even though his smartphone told him it had been only forty-five minutes. But he was exhausted. The shotgun was a burden, but not one he could afford to discard; he might have to use it.

Well, he would just have to continue, looking for some—

The noise of a distant motor …

At first he couldn’t tell from which direction the sound was coming. But within half a minute he knew it was behind him.

And getting louder.

His heart began to race. He gripped the shotgun tightly in both hands and began to run down the path.

Within another two minutes, he realized it was futile. He was too tired, and the noise was only getting closer. It sounded now like a lawnmower or small tractor—

An ATV
…

He looked around desperately into the near-pitch black of the woods. The area to his left looked as if it might be easier to move through. He plunged off the path in that direction.

In a moment he found himself in obsidian darkness, barely able to see branches until they swept by, inches from his face, or scraped his exposed knuckles. His knees crashed through weeds and small bushes, the shotgun that he held protectively before him bumped small limbs, a branch slashed painfully along his ribs. He had to veer around several trees that materialized out of nowhere.

He found himself at the foot of what seemed to be another slope rising into the graphite sky, a sky almost obscured through the spiky branches overhead. He stomped and pushed his way forward, as the throbbing noise of the engine behind him grew ever louder, ever nearer …

… then died abruptly.

He staggered to a halt, tottering in place, trying to stifle his loud panting. He pivoted slowly in a complete circle, straining his ears for any sound from the ominous shadows.

And heard nothing.

That chill silence scared him more than the engine noise. The vehicle had stopped close by, near where he had left the path. As if they knew where he was. Maybe they had seen his footprints or some branches he’d broken.

He had to find a place to hide—fast.

He tried to keep quiet as he continued pushing forward. After another minute or two, he found just what he needed: a thicket so dark and dense that he would be invisible. He moved around it, searching for an access point. On the far side, he found an indentation in the vegetation and slipped inside. He faced inward, away from the opening, hoping to hide the glinting metal surface of the shotgun.

It was almost totally dark in there, and so quiet that he thought he could hear his own heart beating in his chest. He stood as still as he could, sweat soaking the inside of his clothes.

Stood there, listened, and waited …