Red Cell Seven (17 page)

Maddux stared at Troy for several seconds like a statue, without breathing. Then he nodded subtly as his eyes narrowed. “So that’s what you think. You think I killed Jack.”

“I know you did, Shane.”

“Of course,” Maddux whispered to himself.

“You killed Lisa Martinez, too, along with my brother’s friend.”

“They saw my face. I had to kill them. It was a matter of national security.”

It was insane, but for a moment Troy actually understood the explanation. For Shane Maddux that would have been a matter of national security because in Maddux’s demented mind he probably considered himself the primary protector of the nation’s security. “But you didn’t kill my son. You didn’t kill Little Jack. I wonder why.”

“You know why.”

Troy swallowed hard as he stared at Maddux.

“You didn’t kill my son because you’re loyal to me, Shane. We’ve been through hell and back together, and that’s why you spared L.J. And that’s why you aren’t going to kill me now.”

A sad grin crept to Maddux’s lips. “I didn’t kill your son because it wasn’t necessary, Troy. How I feel about you had nothing to do with that decision. And it has nothing to do with why I’m letting you live tonight. Letting you live is strategic. I don’t want to piss your father off.” His eyes narrowed. “In fact, Troy, I don’t care at all about you. You are simply an individual who served under my command, and that’s as far as it goes. That’s as far as it’s ever gone. You should understand that. For your own good,” he added somberly.

Troy started to speak, but Kohler slammed the butt of the MP5 he was clutching into Troy’s gut and sent him tumbling to the floor in agony.

Kohler smiled down at Troy smugly. “How’s it feel, you prick?”

Troy grabbed his stomach and tried desperately to breathe. He should have anticipated that one.

As Kohler bent down to drag Troy into the tiny cell, a bullet smashed into his chin, burst through his throat, and blew out the back of his neck.

As Kohler collapsed onto him, Troy saw Maddux pull a small silver ball from his belt and hurl it to the floor. The ball exploded on impact, and the room was instantly clogged with thick, pungent smoke. Troy grabbed the MP5 Kohler had just taken from him, hurled the kid’s body aside, struggled to his feet, somehow found Travers in the haze, and then emptied the second magazine of the MP5 into the basement all around them. His stomach was still killing him, but adrenaline and the will to live overpowered the pain.

“I’m Troy Jensen,” he yelled into Travers’s ear from close range as he reached into his pack, grabbed another double set of magazines, and reloaded. “I was sent by COC to get you out of here.” If he hadn’t been a foot away from Travers when the bomb went off, he wouldn’t have been able to identify him. The smoke had gotten that thick that fast. “We gotta get out of here. Stay close. Don’t lose me.”

A
S SOON
AS
the device Maddux hurled to the floor exploded, Agent Bridger raced back up the steps to the first floor, bolted for the front door, and then sprinted away past the tall maple trees. Bridger didn’t stop running until after recrossing the pasture and making it back into the forest that bordered this side of the farm.

The agent was a former city police officer and knew how to handle a gun, had actually fired in self-defense twice on the streets. But Bridger had never shot anyone, much less taken a life.

Bridger rested against a tree and sucked in air while gazing back through the trees. No one had noticed Bridger sneak down the basement stairs with a pistol leading the way, least of all the poor man who was lying on the floor at the bottom of the stairs with blood pouring from a head wound. In the moment there had been no way to know if he was dead, and no way to check.

But the guy Bridger had shot, the blond one who’d hit Troy with the butt of the submachine gun, was definitely dead. Bridger had always pulled excellent marksman grades—and the bullet had nailed that guy who’d belted Troy. Then that little guy had detonated the smoke bomb, and chaos had ensued.

Agent Bridger leaned the MP5 against a tree and holstered the 9mm that had killed the guy in the basement. Bridger had grabbed the submachine gun off the floor before racing up the steps. It had been lying next to the guy with the head wound at the bottom of the stairs.

Bridger knelt down and took a deep breath.

Mentors on the police force had warned that the first kill was always tough to handle. They were right. Taking a human life, no matter who it was, had a powerful impact on anyone with a conscience.

It had been the right thing to do. Killing that guy had saved Troy’s life. But somehow that didn’t make the death any easier to accept.

Karen wiped the tears from her face, picked up the MP5, and kept going through the trees.

“Why did you leave me, Jack?” she whispered as she moved across the dead leaves blanketing the forest floor. “I miss you so damn much.”

CHAPTER 18

J
ACOB
G
ADANZ
swung his five-year-old metallic brown Honda Accord into a narrow, unmarked parking space of the Manassas, Virginia, industrial park. This location was twenty miles from Tysons Corner and thirty-five miles west of the White House.

Gadanz came to a quick stop between a pickup truck and an old white van—vehicles he recognized as owned by two of his delivery drivers. He made a point of knowing his employees well. He wanted them motivated, and he found that taking a sincere interest in them helped that cause. Even more crucial, that interest made them loyal. It made them think they were family, though they weren’t and never could be.

It was seven o’clock in the morning, but Gadanz had already been awake for two hours. And he’d enjoyed every moment of it. He and his common-law wife, Sasha, had two beautiful daughters—Elaina and Sophie—who were his pride and joy. He fixed breakfast for the girls every morning while Sasha slept in until six-thirty. The girls loved his blueberry pancakes most, but fixing anything for them was always the best part of his day. It was his only time to be with them, because from the time he left the house until well after both girls had gone to bed, he was completely committed to work. So much so that he didn’t call them or take their calls unless it was a dire emergency. So they didn’t bother anymore. They’d learned.

Sasha took over all parenting duties as soon as Gadanz walked out at six forty-five sharp, and she was in charge of the house until he got home. She did an excellent job, too. He had no complaints. He didn’t ask her how she kept the house and the girls in such good order, and she never asked him how he made the money that enabled her to do that. They respected each other, and they had a system. They’d been together for sixteen years, and the passion was mostly gone. Acknowledged or not, their relationship was more of a business partnership now than anything else. But it worked—for both of them.

Elaina, the older daughter, was halfway through sixth grade, and she’d never earned anything less than an A in any course she’d ever taken. She was a bookworm, and that was perfect. It fit snugly into Gadanz’s long-term plan.

Sophie was nine years old and didn’t care in the least about her grades, which were never very good. But that didn’t matter to her—or Gadanz. It wasn’t that Sophie was slow, either. In fact, she was quite smart. She’d always scored extremely high on standardized tests, and she usually figured out problems before any of her friends, even before her older sister, which irritated Elaina no end and amused Gadanz greatly.

Sophie simply didn’t see the point of spending time memorizing facts and figures. Her natural gift was the ability to influence people, which she seemed to smoothly wield with everyone she came into contact with. Even her teachers admitted that she had an incredible gift for convincing people to do things, the likes of which none of them had ever seen in a girl her age. She seemed able to get anyone to do anything with her charismatic smile and her engaging way. And even at nine years old, she seemed completely aware of how to use her talents to her best advantage and absolutely comfortable doing so.

Ultimately, she would take over the family business, and Elaina would be the chief financial officer. Gadanz already had the line of succession mapped out. The older sister would report to the younger one. If Elaina didn’t like it, well, that would be too bad. She’d have to get over it. He’d never admit this to anyone—even Sasha—and he always made certain to treat Elaina and Sophie exactly the same way and never show either of them any favoritism. But Sophie was the diamond of his eye. She would be the CEO of Gadanz & Company. She would be the next leader of the family.

Their husbands would never be allowed to work at the company, which Gadanz believed Sophie would completely agree with when the time was right to tell her. The husbands would simply provide the seed for the next generation and work at menial jobs that were in no way related to or connected with the family business. They would be at their wives’ beck and call.

It would forever be a family business, and for Gadanz, family was only about blood. People were simply acquaintances unless they were physically related. He made his top few executives believe they were family in order to get the most out of them, but they were really just acquaintances like everyone else at the company. Just like the lowliest janitor.

Even Sasha had been merely an acquaintance until she’d borne Elaina. Only then had she become tantamount to blood, and she was the only exception to his rule. She’d truly become family when Sophie was born. Sophie was “the gift,” and he’d rewarded Sasha with her own generous bank account, though he monitored it closely and forced her to come to him with any expenditure that wasn’t a “normal” household cost. The same way he made the company controller come to him with any corporate expenditure that was unusual or nonrecurring.

Gadanz hummed along while he listened to the end of the Rolling Stones song on the car radio—“Jumpin’ Jack Flash”—as he sat in the car thinking about how lucky a man he was. He owned a significant business that he’d built from the ground up—a string of twenty-four convenience store/gas stations that were located throughout northern Virginia and stretched from Falls Church all the way west to Leesburg. He’d added three this year; the plan for next year was to add another seven. And he’d never borrowed a dime to expand, so he didn’t have bankers constantly in his face thinking they could tell him what to do. He used banks only for depositing cash. His base of operations was the two-hundred
-thousand-square-foot warehouse he’d just pulled to a stop in front of. From here he supplied his twenty-four stores and generated well over a hundred million dollars of annual revenues.

Still, he drove a five-year-old Honda Accord, and Sasha drove a two-year-old minivan with a dent in one side. They lived in a modest three-bedroom townhouse in a modest neighborhood that was a short drive from here and was squeezed in between two major strip malls. The girls went to public school and rode the bus. The family dog was a mutt. And summer vacation was a week in Ocean City, New Jersey, in a rented house three blocks back from the beach. He didn’t even have a personal parking space right in front of the company entrance with his name on it as the lease stipulated he could. It wasn’t that Gadanz shied away from attention and conspicuous consumption—he despised them. Maintaining modesty was his personal religion, and it had nothing to do with God.

Stones song over, he climbed out of the car and headed into the building. The lobby of Gadanz & Company was ultimately plain. In it were six wooden chairs, an old coffee table littered with dated magazines from home, and some cheap wall art. The corporate offices beyond were just as utilitarian.

However, the company trucks and computer systems were the best Gadanz could buy. He spent willingly on infrastructure and paid his people well—again, so they were unfailingly loyal to him. But the aesthetics of the offices were of no concern or consequence. After all, they didn’t generate revenues.

He eased into the chair behind his desk, turned on the computer, and picked up his favorite picture of Elaina and Sophie as the CPU came to life. They were smiling their most beautiful smiles and hugging each other adoringly.

“Hello, Jacob.”

Gadanz put the picture calmly back down beside the computer screen, and then swiveled in the chair until he was facing the young man who’d just stepped out of the small anteroom next to his office.

“Hello, Kaashif.”