Red Cell Seven (16 page)

Baxter rose slowly out of his chair. His heart was suddenly pounding. He had to do this. “I must tell you something very important, sir.”

“What is it?”

“You need to understand that what I’m about to say comes from a friend I’ve known and trusted for a very long time. He’s been in this town a long time, and he’s always been right when he’s told me something like this.”

“What is it?” Dorn demanded again.

Baxter took a deep breath as he put his hands down on the front of the president’s desk and leaned over it. “Shane Maddux wasn’t operating on his own in Los Angeles, Mr. President.”

Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “How do you even know who Shane Maddux is?”

“Don’t worry about it, sir,” Baxter snapped. “Worry about this instead.” He leaned even farther over the great desk and pointed at the president. “The order to assassinate you came from well above Maddux. It came from Bill Jensen.”

Dorn gazed at Baxter for several moments. Finally he shook his head slowly in total disbelief. “You’re wrong, Stewart. Bill Jensen is a fine man, a man of principle. He would never be involved in something like that. That’s ridiculous.”

Baxter rose back up off the desk and raised one eyebrow. “Is it, Mr. President? Is it really that ridiculous?” He hesitated. “Or does it make perfect sense? Is that what’s really bothering you tonight?”

“What are you saying?”

“I gave you those background checks covering Bill and Troy before they got here yesterday. I know you read them. You read everything I send you.”

“So?”

“So you saw that section in the report about Rita Hayes, Bill’s executive assistant at First Manhattan. She’d been with him for a long time before she disappeared a few weeks ago. And they had been intimate. They had sexual relations, and the information I have is that she was about to tell Bill’s wife, Cheryl, what was going on. And then she disappeared.”

Dorn gazed up at Baxter but said nothing.

“Now no one can find Rita Hayes.” Baxter leaned back down over the desk. “Are you still going to tell me that Bill Jensen is a fine man?”

CHAPTER 17

T
ROY KEPT
moving through the spacious first floor, swinging the hot end of the MP5 from side to side as he cruised forward. He had to make absolutely certain there was only one stairway to the basement from this floor of the house and that this level was completely clear of resistance.

“Come in, Idaho,” he muttered. “What’s going on up there?”

“We’re going through the last couple of rooms on level three, and then we’re good to go. Wyoming’s going through the attic right now.”

“Well, hurry up. It’s getting kind of—
Jesus!
”

Someone darted from left to right in front of him, at the far end of the long hallway he’d just turned down for the second time. The warm body raced through the living room to Troy’s right and continued out of the house after bursting through the front door.

Troy had almost fired, but managed to hold up at the last instant. He hadn’t tapped the target because he couldn’t make out a weapon and the guy wasn’t acting in a hostile manner. In fact, he was running away as fast as he could. The red-orange image in the upper left-hand corner of Troy’s left lens was quickly growing smaller through the living room window, and they weren’t in the business of killing civilians.

It sounded awful, but sometimes that made this job very hard. Facing live-or-die snap decisions was an inevitable part of this life, and you could never be a hundred percent sure of the target’s intention if you fired first. Troy had been trained to err on the side of protecting himself, but occasionally the training didn’t kick in. Hesitating could cost him his life one day. That was an inevitable reality. Worse, it might cost someone else theirs.

Troy kept reminding himself that they weren’t a hundred percent certain Wilson Travers was even here. He’d only been quoted ninety percent, and that terrified expression on the face of the guy they’d tied up a few minutes ago in the barn kept haunting him. The guy had no idea what was happening, it was obvious. Travers might be a thousand miles from here by now—or dead.

Even at ninety percent confidence, this could all be a massive snafu, and the individual who’d fired at them as they were coming up the porch steps might have done so in self-defense, thinking this was a home invasion. It was probably that guy who just took off—which meant the cops were on their way. Unless there were people here who didn’t want cops involved, and that guy was a defector.

Troy took a deep breath as he pushed forward. There were always so many possibilities and unknowns—and so many opportunities to make wrong decisions. Wrong decisions here didn’t result in getting fired or being docked a week’s pay. This was life and death. Civilians didn’t understand that—they couldn’t.

“You okay, Montana?”

“Yes,” Troy answered. “Just hurry up, will you? We’re probably on the clock at this point. Somebody just took off out of here like a bat out of hell.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah, but no worries. He was a civilian.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.” Troy really had no idea, but they had to finish this thing off. Rescuing Travers was that important, for one crucial reason that he couldn’t relate to the other agents—because he didn’t know himself. It was that classified. “Just get down here.”

“We’re close.”

Troy suddenly had a very bad feeling. He hated it when that happened, because he was usually right.

He swung around and aimed when he thought he felt a pair of eyes burning into his back—but there was nothing behind him except an empty hallway. He exhaled heavily. “Stay cool,” he muttered, “stay cool.”

Agent Idaho broke back onto the IC. “All right, all right, we’re done. All clear upstairs.”

Troy hustled back to the base of the double staircase outside the dining room as the other two agents hustled down the same side toward him, one after the other.

“They’ve got to be in the basement,” Idaho said, “if they’re here at all.”

“But there’s no exterior exit out of the house from down there. No steps from down there back up to ground level. We confirmed that before we came in. And I can only find one set of stairs to the basement here on the first floor. Any overlap stairs up there?” Troy asked, pointing up with his thumb. “Were there any stairs from levels two or three that skip this floor?”

“No, and we checked everything including closets.”

Troy shook his head. “Why would they trap themselves down there?” This didn’t feel right. Something was wrong.

Wyoming shrugged. “Quid pro quo?”

“Explain that, will you, Caesar?”

“They’re letting us come down. They’re going to negotiate their way out once we’re down there. They’re gonna use Travers as trade bait for freedom. We surprised them, and now they have no choice.
He
has no choice,” Wyoming added. “He has to negotiate.”

Troy shook his head. That didn’t sound right, either. “We won’t negotiate. He must know that.” Troy gestured ahead. “Come on, let’s do it, but careful as we go. This could be an ambush. Maybe that’s why they’re holing up in the basement.”

The three men hustled down the hall to the basement door and then descended the steps quickly, spreading out as soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs, ready for anything.

M
ADDUX SPRINTED UP
the porch stairs. As he crossed the wide wooden slats, he marveled at how silent he was, even as he moved quickly. If he’d been a heavy man, the boards would be creaking and groaning and they might hear him down in the basement. Yes, it was good to be small.

He knew they were down there because he’d just gotten another text—the last one he would receive, he was sure. By now his partner had almost certainly been captured and they were in the process of freeing Travers. But that was fine.

Maddux chuckled softly as he headed down. They hadn’t planned it this way, but it was working out perfectly. Timing wasn’t everything in life. Training, skill, and smarts were the primary keys to success. But timing was still damn important.

T
HE ONLY
thing Troy and the other two RCS agents encountered at the bottom of the basement stairs was Nathan Kohler. He stood in front of a small but solid-looking prison cell with his arms folded across his chest defiantly—unarmed. Behind Kohler and the narrowly spaced, vertical iron bars was Wilson Travers, who was chained to one wall of the cell by his neck.

Troy recognized Kohler immediately. He was an arrogant prick. Worse, he was a bigot. He didn’t flaunt his racial hatred, but it wasn’t hard to detect if you dug only slightly below the surface. Especially after a few beers, which Troy’d had the unfortunate opportunity to share with Kohler a month after Kohler had joined the Falcons. The only reason Kohler had gotten into RCS, Bill had explained to Troy last night, was because of his father, Douglas Kohler. Until his death a few months ago, Douglas Kohler had been the senior United States senator from North Carolina—and a Red Cell Seven associate.

As in all walks of life and no matter how hard they tried to avoid it, Troy thought regretfully as he stared at the blond young man, a few bad apples managed to make it through into RCS. For the most part it was an amazing crew of good and dedicated people. But over the last six years Troy had met three or four men he could have done without—Nathan Kohler being one of them.

“Open the cell door, Nathan,” Troy ordered. He recognized Travers, too. Travers had indeed been the man Troy had delivered cash and instructions to in Greece. “Let Travers out.”

Troy gestured at the lock on the cell door. “Come on, hurry up.” He wanted to get out fast. They’d leave Kohler locked in the cell and then make an anonymous call when they were far enough away so someone could come and get the kid out. “
Now,
Nathan.”

Agent Idaho covered Kohler with his MP5 while Agent Wyoming covered the stairs in case anyone tried coming down from the first floor. Neither of them had fired a shot yet, so each man had a full magazine as well as another full clip in the clamp alongside the active one.

“Why’d you do this?” Troy asked. Time was of the essence, but he wanted to know. “Why’d you turn on the cell?”

“Fuck you and your father. The nigger stays where he is.”

Troy shook his head in disbelief. Bill and Douglas Kohler must have been
very
good friends. “We have full license from COC tonight, Nathan.”

“You mean from your father.”

“Do you understand what that means?”

“It means you can screw me—”

“It means I have the authority to use any and all force necessary to get Major Travers out of here. It means I can kill you if I want to.”

“Yeah, well, fuck yourself. Go ahead and shoot me.”

Troy moved to where Kohler was standing and held his hand out. “Give me the keys. I don’t have time for this.”

“I’m not giving you—”

Troy hammered Kohler’s gut with the butt of his gun and sent the kid groaning and sprawling to the cement floor. Kohler coiled into a fetal position as Troy leaned down, rolled the kid to one side, and grabbed the set of keys beneath him.

As Troy rose back up, he was aware of Agent Idaho falling limply to the floor, followed immediately by Agent Wyoming. They’d both been shot through the head. Blood was already pouring onto the floor from gaping wounds just above their ears. They weren’t even twitching, the shots had been so perfect.

Then there was a blade at Troy’s throat.

“Hello, Mr. Jensen,” came a calm voice from behind him.

Shane Maddux. Troy recognized the voice immediately. The man had been his superior for six years. Now he knew who had turned Nathan Kohler against Red Cell Seven.

“Hello, Shane.”

How did Maddux
do
it? Travers and Kohler had been the only other people down here—Troy had believed. He and Agent Wyoming had checked the entire basement thoroughly—while Idaho had watched Kohler—and there were no stairs other than the ones the three of them had descended from the first floor. Now Troy understood why Kohler hadn’t resisted or tried to run. Maddux wanted them all down here.

“No formal address?” Maddux asked. “No more Major Maddux?”

“You don’t deserve a formal—”

“Drop the gun, Troy.”

Troy allowed the submachine gun to slip from his right hand where it had been hanging next to his leg. It clattered to the floor.

There was no point resisting. Maddux was far too good a killer. If he sensed the slightest defiance, that blade beneath Troy’s chin would slice his throat, and nothing much else would matter after that.

“Pick up the gun, Nathan,” Maddux ordered sharply. “Get up. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.”

Kohler crawled to where Troy’s MP5 lay, grabbed it, and groaned again as he struggled to pull himself to his feet.

“Open the cell, Nathan.”

Kohler looked at Maddux like he was crazy. “What?”

“We’re taking Major Travers with us.” Maddux nodded at Travers. “Get him out of there. Make sure he’s still cuffed before you let him out of the ring.”

“Why are we taking him with us?” Kohler demanded as he grabbed the keys back from Troy and slid one of them into the lock.

“Major Travers has something very special I want. We need him to lead us to it.”

Kohler swung the cell door open and moved to where Travers sat on a narrow bench. When he was satisfied the cuffs securing Travers’s hands together behind his back were tight on both wrists, Kohler unlocked the metal collar around Travers’s neck. The chain that connected the collar to the ring anchored into the wall snaked to the floor.

“Toss me that gun,” Maddux ordered as Nathan followed Travers out of the cell.

Kohler bent down and grabbed the gun lying beside Agent Idaho’s body, then lobbed it to Maddux. Maddux released Troy, caught the submachine gun, and quickly slid the knife back into a sheath on his belt.

Maddux motioned toward the cell with the gun. “Get in there, Troy.”

“Not going to kill me?”

“I would,” Maddux answered, “but I don’t want to piss your father off now that he’s calling the shots.”

The explanation sounded hollow. Why would Maddux be worried about that? He’d killed Jack. He must know Bill was already out for revenge. “You killed Jack. You really think you could hurt my father more than you have?” And how would Maddux know that Bill was calling the shots at Red Cell Seven? He might assume, but he shouldn’t know.