Noble Intentions: Season Three (34 page)

“Everyone’s OK here,” Alex said.

“Not liking how this went down,”
Bear said.

Jack agreed.

“That team was closed,” Bear said.
“They stopped in front of us. That’s where they were killed.”

“Did it look like they had spotted
you?” Jack said.

Bear shrugged. “It happened fast.
Couldn’t tell.”

“Where are the guys that took them
out?” Sasha said.

“Still back there, watching the
woods until we get clear,” Jon said.

Jack said, “So best we can figure,
Mason and six of his guys are inside that house right now along with however
many of Naseer’s men survived the attack.”

“Sounds right,” Sasha said.

The group approached the house with
caution and apprehension. Jack and Bear led the way, with Sasha and Alex in the
middle and Jon at the rear.

All the lights had been switched on
inside. A flood light warmed up and cast a large cone of bright white light over
the back of the property. They altered their path to avoid the light in case
someone was watching. Jack did not care for how nonchalant Mason and his men
were being. Did they have additional intelligence they were not sharing? Had
someone been in place long before they arrived and knew head counts, the layout
of the scene, and what had been happening inside?

Bear held up his right hand, balled
it into a fist, came to a stop. Jack froze in place.

“What is it?” Sasha said in a low,
husky voice.

Neither man spoke. She didn’t ask
again.

Bear extended his thumb and started
jabbing it over his shoulder. He took a few steps back, stopped again. Jack
looked at Sasha and gestured toward the woods.

“What is going on?” Alex said.

“Something isn’t right,” Bear said.

“Did you see something?” Alex said.

“Just a hunch,” Bear said.

“Oh, come off it,” Jon said. “I’m
not waiting out here on a hunch when we’ve got half a dozen trained agents
inside there.”

Jon started toward the house.

“Jon, come back here,” Alex said.

The man didn’t listen. He continued
toward the house, deviated in his path to go around the front.

Jack released the tension in his
body and tried to attune himself to whatever it was that set Bear’s instincts
into overdrive. The voices of men shouting from inside the house cut into the
silence of the night. He heard at least one man moaning in pain? One of Mason’s
guys? A terrorist? Had to be one of Naseer’s guys. If Mason had a man down,
he’d have been shouting for an ambulance.

A burst of static interrupted Jack’s
concentration. Mason’s voice blared through the earwig.

“Everyone get out of the house. Get
clear. Go, get out now!”

Whether they had time to react or
not wasn’t clear. Jack didn’t. As Mason finished his last sentence, the house
erupted into a fireball.

The blast wave knocked Jack
backward. He managed to turn mid-air and land on his stomach. His oxygen
deprived lungs screamed in pain. They hurt twice as bad when he finally managed
to force air into them. To his right, Sasha lay unconscious. He dragged himself
to her side, reached over and felt for a pulse. She groaned at his touch. Her
head rolled toward him and she opened her eyes.

“Are you OK?” he said.

She licked her lips and softly
said, “Yeah.”

He forced himself to his knees and
hovered over her. His hands acted on instinct and performed a quick assessment.
Nothing broken, no major cuts. She had a slight gash on the side of her head,
but it didn’t appear to be deep. He turned toward the Prime Minister.

Alex bolted upright with his hands
planted in the ground behind him. He had a cut that traveled halfway across his
forehead. Blood coated half his face. Bear knelt at the man’s side, prepared an
improvised bandage to place on Alex’s head.

“Are you OK?” Jack said.

“Is she all right?” Alex said
without taking his eyes off the smoldering house.

“She acknowledged me. Nothing
broken. I’m giving her a few to see if she comes to anymore.”

The orange blaze cast unnatural
light and shadows over and around them.

“Are you OK?” Jack said again.

“I’m OK,” Alex said.

Sasha rolled over to her side. She
managed to get to her knees, then reached to Jack for assistance. He pulled her
up, steadied her. She stood for a moment, then stumbled into him, and they
stood for a moment in a tight embrace. The heat from the fire was intense.
Sweat trickled down his face, came to a rest and pooled with hers at the spot
where their cheeks melted together.

The fire crackled. Wood groaned as
it bowed and snapped like matchsticks.

“Let’s get to the front,” Alex
said.

Sasha pulled back. Jack slipped an
arm under hers and around her back. She leaned toward him for support. They
followed Bear and Alex, at first away from the house, then toward the street.
Jack glanced back. The fire rose maybe fifty feet into the air at times.

Mason stood in the middle of the
street, stared at the blaze. His blank expression told Jack the man was in
shock. Or a great actor.

“Where’s Jon?” Alex said.

“Don’t see him,” Sasha said.

Jack scanned the area. Didn’t see
any sign of the man. With everything that had occurred, it would be a blow to
Alex to lose his closest confidant and best friend.

They stood in the middle of the
street, each staring off in a different direction. Alex called for Jon several
times. The fire responded with hisses and crackles.

“There he is.” Bear pointed to the
other side of the street. Jon had been lying in the ditch and had just stood.
Either he had the wherewithal to dive into it when the explosion happened, or
he had been thrown there.

Alex took off toward Jon.

Jack, Bear and Sasha went to Mason,
pulled him away from the house. From what Jack could tell, there were no other
survivors.

“What happened in there?” Jack
said.

Mason shook his head, said nothing.
Jack wondered if the man could think through the shock.

“Did you see anything, Mason?” he
said.

“I…” The man paused. “Need some
water.”

Sasha slung her pack around and
pulled out a bottle of water, handed it over.

Mason took a long drink, then
emptied the remaining contents over the top of his head. He dropped the bottle
and stared at it while it rolled toward the ditch.

“Mason,” Jack said.

Mason looked up, nodded. “We
stormed the house. I located Naseer, fired a warning shot. That was the first
shot as far as I know. I had heard from the team in the field a moment before,
and they were ready to take out the PAT.”

Jack nodded, said nothing.

“After I fired, all hell broke
loose. Naseer ducked into a room. Yafi and Samir fled to the back of the house.
We pursued. Two targets were eliminated, and Naseer was alive, as requested.”

“Then what happened?”

“I began preparations to transport
Naseer, and then, I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

Mason looked down, closed his eyes.
His hands balled into fists and shook in front of him. He turned in a
half-circle. “I turned around, and he was standing there.” Mason’s right arm
lifted and he extended his index finger.

“Naseer?” Jack said.

“Yeah.”

“Was he armed?”

“Kind of.”

“How is someone kind of armed?”

“No gun. Explosives strapped to his
body.”

“Why would a billionaire blow
himself up?” Sasha said.

Mason shrugged. “I don’t know if
that was his intention. I think maybe he was trying to leave. He said something
to that effect.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that he wasn’t afraid to
use the device. He was prepared to die. He wanted to know who the leader was
and then he was going to take them with him. Otherwise, he threatened to use
the device.”

“And he followed through with the
threat,” Jack said.

“No, he didn’t.”

“Then what happened?”

“My guy shot him.”

“Who?” Sasha said.

Mason cocked his head, said,
“Naseer.”

“Which guy shot Naseer?” Jack said.

“Oh, Kemp. Ben Kemp.”

Jack looked at Sasha. She nodded,
understanding Jack wanted to know if they’d been watching Kemp.

“Did he kill him?” Jack said.

“In the end, yeah.”

“Meaning?”

“It was a bad shot. Fatal, but not
instant. He rushed it. Naseer fell back. He looked down, saw the severity of
the injury. He closed his eyes and then started, I don’t know, chanting or
something. I couldn’t understand what the heck he said. That’s when I came on
the radio and started yelling for people to get out. Then Naseer, he opened his
eyes and locked on to me. He grinned. He held out his hand, lifted his thumb
over what I guess was the device trigger. I didn’t stick around long enough to
see him set it off. I was maybe ten feet outside the house when it happened.
The blast knocked me into the air. I remember flying and then crashing. I came
to on the street there.”

Mason lifted his arm. The flesh had
been torn from his right forearm and hand. Jack glanced down and noticed the
man’s pants were shredded below the knee. He nodded toward Bear, and the big
man guided Mason across the road.

Jack and Sasha walked down the
street, away from the house, into the dark.

“What do you make of that?” Jack
said.

Sasha rubbed the side of her head,
blinked hard. She reached out and grabbed Jack’s forearm. Her touch felt cool.

“You OK?” he said.

She nodded. “Yeah, just a little
dizzy now and then.”

“We’ve got to get you checked out.
You might have a concussion.”

She smiled slightly. “I’m sure I
have a concussion, and I’m not getting checked out, not after all this. There’s
no time.”

Jack said nothing.

“What do I make of it?” she said.
“We have a directive to take Naseer alive, but he comes out in a jacket made of
explosives with a threat to blow the place up if they don’t let him go. I’m
thinking that Mason’s goal would have been to stall, buy some time by talking
to Naseer. Worst case, go with him and let us do what we do best. We had the
road blocked on either end, he wouldn’t get far. But then Naseer gets shot,
fatal but not immediate. And then the house explodes.”

Jack nodded, said nothing.

“I don’t like it, Jack. Not one
damn bit.”

Jack looked past her, toward the
man. Mason stared at the blaze. His face lacked expression. Did that indicate
guilt or shock?

He said, “You think Mason shot him
then detonated the device?”

She said, “I’m not saying he
didn’t. And it’s not our place to find out. Despite what Jon did on the way out
here, we have people dedicated to questioning our agents. Jon shouldn’t have
stopped in the woods and questioned him. Especially not at gunpoint. That was
unscripted. You know that right?”

“I could tell.”

She shook her head. “I could have
slapped him for that. It’s just like him, getting hot-headed and doing
something stupid. Maybe if he hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be standing out
here while six of our men roast in there.”

“Again, assuming that Mason had
something to do with this, and that it was Jon’s actions that drove him to it.”

“Jack, can you honestly say that he
didn’t have anything to do with this?”

“No, I can’t. But I’m not ready to
tie him to the stake just yet.”

He heard the faint sound of sirens.
They grew louder. Blue lights bounced off the trees. The fire engine stopped in
front of the house and five men went to work unwinding the giant fire hose.
Jack left Sasha to deal with the police car that arrived a few moments later.

Jack found Bear, and together they
found Jon and Alex.

“Naseer and at least two of his men
are dead,” Jack said.

Alex nodded, said nothing.

“And six of Mason’s agents.”

“How is he?” Alex asked.

“Shock for sure. Guilt, possibly.”

“Guilt?” Jon said. “You think he
had something to do with this?”

“That’s what we’ve got to figure
out.”

Jon shook his head. He looked
toward the house, then the fire engine. “I’m going to have that cop take me to
the van. Anyone want to tag along?”

No one responded.

“Very well.” Jon left and went to
where Sasha and the police officer were standing. He and the cop got into the
cruiser and drove off. Strobe lights faded behind the curtain of smoke.

Jack watched the firefighters
battle the blaze. Orange flames retreated and left charred remains in their
wake. Some house, some human. Plumes of white smoke rose into the sky as
section after section of the fire died.

He noticed Alex pull his cell phone
out. The screen lit up and Alex dragged his finger across the display, then
placed the phone to his ear. The man nodded several times and said nothing.
Jack thought some of the color drained from Alex’s face.

“What is it?” Jack said after Alex
tucked the phone away.

“He said it’s not over.”

“Who?”

“We took out the wrong guy.”

“Naseer?”

Alex looked at Jack, shook his
head. “And he said, I’m next.”

Jack placed his hand in between the
Prime Minister’s shoulders and shoved him toward the fire engine. He pulled the
door open and said, “Get in there.”

“What are you doing?” Alex said.

“We don’t know who’s on our side
and who isn’t. You got that? There could have been more than one.”

“What? One what?”

Jack slammed the door shut. He held
his Beretta in his right hand. The weapon brushed against his thigh, reassured
him. The surrounding darkness didn’t.

Bear and Sasha jogged toward him.
They looked concerned and confused.