Hidden Threat (50 page)

“
Plenty scary stuff’s been happening already, girlfriend. Can’t you just let it alone?”

“
You’re just like Harlan; he’s been telling me to stay out of the way.”

“
Why do you think I told you about him?”

Amanda sighed. She stuffed her hands into her hoodie pocket and looked around the living room, noticing for the first time there were some pictures of her father on the mantle above the fireplace. She could see that in one of the pictures he and Riley were standing atop what looked like Stone Mountain. She was hugging him with her head on his chest, her reddish hair spilling across her face. He was holding her against his side with an indistinguishable look on his face—not overly enthusiastic, not unhappy. Amanda casually walked over to the picture and lifted it off the mantle, studying her father’s face.

“
Looks like when I was about thirteen or fourteen?”

“
Bout that.”

“
I hated him then, you know.”

“
Not really. You just thought you did. Remember, computer hard drive?”

“
Right.” Amanda stared at the picture. It came to her that there was a deep-set sadness in his eyes. She was neither psychologist nor mind reader, but it occurred to her that she was looking at a wounded man, struggling, she figured, with the encompassing rejection promulgated by her. Not so much the way a wine connoisseur embraces the aroma of the settled tannins in a fine Chardonnay, but more the manner in which an apprentice marvels at the work of the tradesman, she understood what she saw in her father’s face. Never before had she really cared or wanted to know what he’d felt, but now it was so obvious.

“
Then why did I do all those horrible things?”

She really did want to know. Not that there was much she could do about it now. Amanda sat next to Riley on the sofa, sliding her hips backward until she was touching Riley’s legs, which were beneath a lightweight blanket. She looked at the photo in her hand and then at Riley. She noticed some color coming back into Riley’s face. She was very pretty, as well as loving and compassionate. She could see why her father would have loved her. She would have made a great stepmother.

“
What is it that you’re getting ready to do that is so scary?”

“
I have to fix things.”

Riley sat up and was awkwardly placing the unbroken arm around her. “You’ve already gone a long way toward that, but some things aren’t fixable.”

“
Maybe so,” Amanda said, smiling weakly. “But I’m going to fix what I can, and I just needed to talk to you. I’ve got the courage to do this now. So, thank you.”

“
You’re scaring me, Amanda,” Riley said. “Don’t make me bop you with this cast.”

Amanda leaned over and kissed Riley on the forehead. “Get you anything before I go?”

“
Why don’t you stay with me tonight?”

Amanda walked toward the door, as if pulled. “I told you, I have to go fix things.”

As she pulled onto the freeway, Amanda never noticed the vehicle that had been waiting in the shadows of the tall elms just past Riley Dwyer’s house.

CHAPTER
69

THE CLIFFS at KEOWEE, SOUTH CAROLINA

Speeding along I-85
, she checked out her new, disposable cell phone. She had left her Droid at Brianna’s house with its GPS tracker switched on.

She punched her address book in the disposable cell, pulled up one of the few numbers she had added, and dialed. “Hey, Mister Dagus. I really need to talk to someone tonight. My mom bought this new house. I was wondering if you could meet me there.” She provided him the prestigious address at The Cliffs and then said, “Sorry I missed you the other night, but I had waited and had to rush out. Call me, please.”

After an hour, including two stops, she had finally reached the winding road that led to her mother’s recently purchased mansion in The Cliffs at Keowee. She reached the long gravel drive just as the sun was dipping below the hills to the west and gripped the steering wheel with tense anticipation. Could she pull it off?

She noticed that Tad had been so efficient that he had already placed a SOLD sign on the lawn.

Checking her watch as she parked in a noticeable position in the front, she thought once more about the car. It should be okay, she reassured herself. Looking at her watch, she figured she had an hour before Dagus showed up, if he got the message. She still registered shock when she thought about the video with Brianna, but his weakness would serve as her bait.

While she didn’t know to what degree Dagus was complicit with her mother, Amanda did know that he had written the article trashing her father. He had most likely beaten Riley Dwyer and had also likely burned her father’s house.

Amanda pulled a small duffle bag out of the trunk of her car. She tried not to think about her plan as the reality of execution began to set in. Too much thought, she figured, might lead to inaction. She needed action.

She placed the bag on the brick porch with a clunking sound. The real estate agent’s lockbox was behind a fern hanging from the porch ceiling. She spun the combination and got lucky on the second try. Extracting the key, she opened the door and was taken aback a moment by the beauty of the foyer.

Large oak plank tongue-in-groove slats shone pristinely beneath her feet. Tad had mentioned that they had just been freshly lacquered. The staircase to the left was directly out of the movie
Gone with the Wind
and, she considered, may even have been the actual version used in the movie. Her mother had told her the house was beautiful, but this was breathtaking. She walked straight through the foyer, across a luxurious authentic Persian rug that absorbed her feet, and into a large family room studded with floor-to-ceiling windows across its rear-facing wall. The view spread from the deck onto the crisply mown sloping lawn to a boathouse that looked like the main residence. She could see the moonlit shimmering waters of Lake Keowee beyond the pier.

“
Like mini-me,” she giggled, noticing how the boathouse was brick with a white rotunda. The reflection of an ascending moon was a broadening yellow stripe as it skidded across the water’s still surface. Taking in the view, she got down to business.

She took the
Gone With the Wind
steps two at a time and was pleasantly surprised to find a large den at the top of the staircase. A maroon-felt pool table was situated in the center of the room, which opened onto the landing at the top of the stairs. Someone playing a ball from the near end of the table would be visible from the front door. This same pool player, if he looked up from a shot, would be staring at a six-foot-square plasma television screen deeper into the room.

“
Perfect.”

On that notion, she unzipped the duffle bag and placed the revolver in the middle of the pool table.

***

Lenard Dagus steered
his car along the winding road, fumbling with his cell phone. Finally able to retrieve his last call, he punched
send
and let the phone ring.

“
Yesss?” He heard the suggestion in her voice.

“
Amanda, it’s Lenard Dagus. I’m on my way. Are you there?”

“
Sorry about last night. I waited, but you never showed. I
really
wanted to talk.”

“
I’ll be there in about ten minutes.”

“
Okay.”

“
See you in a few.”

Dagus felt himself stir at the thought of what he might do to Amanda Garrett. He would try not to hurt her too much. He could make no promises, though. That scab had been picked. He knew that he was no longer in control. He was someone else now. Besides, she was playing with him. He was smart enough to detect the tease in her voice.

He raced the engine and negotiated the winding curves like a Formula One race car driver.

***

Amanda stared at
the pistol and then turned as she searched for the entertainment center’s remote control. Amanda ran a light hand across the dials and buttons of the DVD player. “Come to Mama.”

She pressed the eject button and slipped a disk into the player. Punching the remote, she watched as the television screen appeared. The DVD player came on immediately, to her surprise, when she punched the TV/DVD button.

“
Bingo.” The image she wanted was on the screen. She pressed the off button and slid the remote into her hoodie pocket.

She was ready.

CHAPTER 70

Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistan

Monday Morning (Hours of Darkness)

The UH-60 command and control Blackhawk settled with a hard rocking motion in the uneven terrain. Matt was out of his safety strap as were Hobart and Van Dreeves, the two “commo guys” he had brought along.

“
Thanks for the ride, General. We’ll be in touch,” Matt said into the headset mouthpiece. The interior of the aircraft cabin was dark save the spotted red and green lenses of staff officers’ flashlights. The crew chief opened the door so that the three men could exit.

“
Good luck, son,” General Griffin said.

“
Luck, sir, has little to do with what we’re going after, but thank you.”

With that, Matt and his team leapt from the aircraft, took a knee and then laid flat on the ground as the helicopter powered up, spitting rocks and debris upon their backs. Once away, the Blackhawk shifted direction toward the west, lifted and flew back into Afghanistan and safer territory.

“
Let’s move,” Matt said.

He turned on his GPS, which put him two miles from the target location where the flash drive had originally sent out the beacon. On his radio he heard the occasional spot report of troops in contact. Intermittent machine-gun fire and mortar explosions signified the metered pace of the Screaming Eagle advance through the Northwest Frontier Province. They had inserted along multiple landing zones and by now hundreds of air assault troopers were scampering through the hostile villages of this Al Qaeda stronghold in heavy handed fashion. This was no peacekeeping mission.

Rather, this was a raid that was intended to produce at least one pearl of intelligence, whether it be weapons of mass destruction, Al Qaeda or Taliban leadership, or indicators of nation-state support to the enemy. They needed to come back with something, Matt knew, or they were screwed. Pakistan would go ape shit and America would have to hasten its withdrawal from the region. But now seemed as good a time as any to put on the full court press, which is what Matt had argued for with the National Command Authority and he was glad that Houghton had backed his recommendation.

“
One and a half miles men. We need to get there before any of the Airborne guys,” Matt said.

“
Their objectives are in the two opposite directions,” Hobart said. “I made sure of that.”

“
These guys can get lost. We need that computer and we need to docex that bitch,” Matt said.

“
I’ve got that covered,” Van Dreeves said.

They climbed from 12,000 feet to 15,000 feet and back down to somewhere around 14,000 feet. They quietly bypassed goat herders and kids running around in the middle of the night with all of the commotion. To the best of their knowledge they had not been compromised.

As they approached the valley that led to the village, which was the object of their advance, Matt halted. They were standing in ankle deep snow, a cool breeze rifling through the v-shaped notch in the mountain pass. He saw a few dotted lights below in the valley and knew that they had found their mark. The satellite and Predator reconnaissance missions they had performed matched closely the sparse layout of the
qalats
spread through the kilometer-long valley, which was protected by knifelike ridges on three sides. Snowcapped, they looked positively impassable. How Zach had ever escaped from this location, Matt would perhaps never know.

“
This one’s for Zach,” Matt whispered.

“
Roger that,” Van Dreeves and Hobart chimed in unison over their cordless voice microphones.

“
Hobart, give me some overwatch as Van Dreeves and I snake down this trail. It’s the only way in and we’ll need a sniper shot, I’m sure.”

“
Roger.” Hobart moved about twenty meters up the ridge, extended the bipod on his M24, sighted in, and reported, “Two guards on the number three.”

They had mapped the 12 homes in the village and given each one a number so that they could easily reference where they were and where they needed to go. Number three was the target home.

“
Anything overwatching the pass?”

“
Hang on.”

Matt waited as Hobart scanned for likely shooter locations. Small hilltops, caves, crevices, rooftops, and the like.

“
Got a warm body on the western side of the ledge about 200 meters above number two.”

“
Anything else?” Matt asked.