Red Cell Seven (28 page)

Troy looked around quickly for anyone else, saw no one, scrambled back to his feet, and sprinted ahead, aware that the roar of the jet engines was now close. The edge of the trees—the last line in the orchard before open ground—was only fifty feet away.

As he raced around a large tree in the next-to-last row, he got a glimpse of the plane and the barn behind it. The jet was only a hundred feet away across the open ground and seemed to be parked even though the engines were whining and whistling loudly. He checked quickly left and right but didn’t see Travers.

As he sprinted toward the last row of trees, a bullet grazed his upper left arm, and he tumbled into a clump of tall weeds between two trees. “Damn it,” he hissed, checking the wound. It burned like a nest of hornet stings, but it didn’t look deep. There was plenty of blood, but the round hadn’t hit anything critical. He still had full use of the arm.

More fire from ahead that seemed to be coming from behind several pickup trucks parked near the plane. There was gunfire coming from the left as well, from down the tree line. That had to be Travers.

As Troy rose to his knees and aimed at one of the guards standing behind the bed of a black pickup truck on the left, he spotted a man who resembled Jacob Gadanz climbing awkwardly out of a green sedan that had just skidded to a stop beside the plane. The man wore a white suit and was carrying a large briefcase, and when he finally made it out of the car, he labored toward the steps leading up to the fuselage.

Daniel Gadanz, Troy realized. Big, dark, and extremely heavyset, just like Jacob—exactly as Jacob had described his younger brother. It had to be Daniel, and they could not let him get away, so Troy made the decision. He aimed low, squeezed the trigger, and put the man down even though he wasn’t brandishing a weapon. Two guards raced for the man in the white suit even as he was still falling, picked him up roughly off the tarmac, and dragged his limp form up the jet’s steps as Troy laced the steps with another burst of fire. The two guards toppled from the stairs back onto the cement like bowling pins. But someone inside the plane reached out and dragged the big man in the bright white suit up the last two steps and into the plane. The twin engines roared, and the jet lurched forward.

Troy jumped to his feet. He was going to try to shoot the jet’s tires out. But as he rose up he became aware of a man racing toward him through the trees from the right. He started to turn in the direction of the oncoming attacker, but he realized that the other man was going to have a clean shot before he could swing the MP5 far enough around.

“H
AVE YOU
been through the townhouse completely?”

“Yes.”

Bill had sent another RCS agent to check out the townhome. “Were there any signs of a struggle?”

“No.”

He marveled at how the man simply followed orders and answered questions. He must have been intensely curious about what was going on, but he wasn’t giving that away at all. He was being a good soldier. “Did you find what we talked about?”

“No.”

“Have you heard anything about the woman?”

“Nothing, and I checked everywhere. Her car’s here, it looks like all her clothes are here, and the dog’s hungry as hell. The thing wouldn’t leave me alone, so I fed it. I even called her kids and they hadn’t seen her. I told them I was an insurance guy following up on Roger’s death and that I must have had the wrong number. Nobody’s seen her.”

Bill took a deep, aggravated breath. “Okay thanks. Talk to you later.”

As he ended the call, Bill realized they had only one option at this point. They had to go to the peak.

He had no idea if Nancy Carlson had given up the location of the Executive Order that Roger always kept. He wasn’t even certain Nancy knew where that original was located, if she even knew what Executive Order 1973 1-E was—Roger had never mentioned anything about telling her. But Bill felt he had to operate under the assumption that someone who was unfriendly to the cause now had that original, and he had to retrieve the second one. Without at least one of the originals, Red Cell Seven was in deep trouble.

J
UST AS
Troy prepared for the awful sensation of bullets tearing into his body, the man racing toward him screamed, spun violently to one side, and then tumbled backward to the ground, throwing his gun into the air with his arms outstretched above his head as he went down into the weeds.

Shane Maddux appeared from behind a tree and then sprinted to where the man lay. He calmly put another bullet into the man’s head and then jogged to where Troy was standing.

“What the
hell
are you doing here?”

Maddux grinned. “Not even a thank you?”

“Thank you. Now what the hell are you doing here?”

“I broke Kaashif. He told me all about this place and what goes on here.”

Travers had told Troy twice that he was convinced Kaashif would never break. But Maddux had proven that theory dead wrong. “Of course you did,” Troy said as he watched Travers sprint toward them from the left over Maddux’s shoulder. “You could break anyone.”

“Given long enough.”

“But how did you know where—”

“Your father told me.”

Troy gazed at Maddux steadily as the three Apache helicopters roared overhead. They were no more than fifty feet off the ground, and the rotors created hurricane-force gales beneath them, whipping Troy’s long, dirty-blond hair about his face.

Bill had released Maddux from that cell at the house
and
told him where to find Kaashif, Troy realized. Whatever Maddux had on his father had to be devastating, and Troy had a terrible feeling he knew what it was. It sickened him to think about it.

As Travers got to where he and Maddux were standing, the choppers laid down an intense fire on the open ground around the barn in which the Learjet had been hidden, destroying the pickup trucks and killing the guards hiding behind them as the vehicles exploded violently. Then the Apaches moved on toward the outbuildings and the complex’s main house in the distance.

As Troy, Travers, and Maddux broke from the trees, Troy headed toward the briefcase on the tarmac. The one Daniel Gadanz had dropped when he’d been shot. After grabbing it, Troy followed Travers and Maddux past the barn toward the main house. As he ran, he glanced up into the sky to the south. He could still barely see the jet’s far-off silver shape against the clear blue sky as it streaked away toward the Keys. He wondered if Daniel Gadanz was alive up there. He’d aimed low on purpose, for the legs, not to kill but to wound, because Daniel was worth infinitely more to the DEA alive than dead. Interrogated correctly, Gadanz could convey priceless information
that would significantly interrupt U.S. cocaine traffic.

But he’d escaped—for now, anyway.

The two-story mansion was ripped and burning from Apache fire as Troy, Travers, and Maddux approached. Still, someone opened fire from an upstairs window, and they dove for cover behind several large live oaks growing in the front yard.

“No reason to be heroes!” Travers yelled from behind his tree. “We’ve got two hundred special-forces madmen heading this way. And I’m thinking those Apache flyboys are about to do more damage to the mansion. I don’t want to get in their way.”

“Agreed,” Troy yelled back as the choppers circled back for another pass.

As they maneuvered, Troy and Travers quickly donned bright yellow jerseys they had stowed in their backpacks. They hadn’t worn them during the initial assault because they didn’t want to make easy targets for the defenders. But now they didn’t want to be shot by friendly fire—from the choppers or the troops. The Apache pilots and the special-forces soldiers knew not to fire on anyone wearing yellow. Maddux would be safe as long as he was near one of them.

As Troy finished pulling the shirt over his head, he spotted someone sprinting away from the back of the mansion toward the orange grove. “Major!”

Travers glanced over from behind the tree he was using to shield himself from the sniper on the mansion’s second floor. “Yeah?”

“Keep this with you,” Troy yelled, tossing the suitcase to Travers from behind the tree he was using. “Do not lose it.” Then he turned and took off after whoever was fleeing.

Bullets spanked the dry ground around Troy as he ran, but stopped when he made it to the side of the mansion.

As he raced into the orange grove, Troy picked up the prey’s trail quickly. Troy was an expert tracker, and he spotted broken twigs and trampled grass most people wouldn’t notice. He could see the trail leading away through the trees ahead of him as clearly as if the person had left footprints in a field of virgin snow.

As he jogged ahead, he noticed the trail of broken flora ending at a tree thirty yards up. So he ducked right, sprinted three rows of trees over, went left, and then headed up this tree line, keeping track of the tree at which the trail had ended by counting trees in this row.

As soon as they’d gotten here to the plantation, he and Travers had noticed that the orange grove was perfectly and symmetrically laid out. Trees were planted in seemingly never-ending straight lines spaced twenty feet apart. And each tree in the line was planted exactly parallel to the tree in the line on either side of it.

Troy moved well past the tree the path had ended under, turned left, counted three rows, turned left again, and moved carefully ahead with his MP5 leading the way. His eyes narrowed as he focused in on the tree. The bottom branches of this one fell almost to the ground, and it was loaded down with fruit. But he could still make out the form of someone hiding in the lower branches—someone wearing a dress. It looked like she was, anyway.

The woman was facing in the opposite direction, in the direction he’d been coming before he’d detoured around this tree. Troy was coming up behind her, and he noticed a blood trail coming down her leg. She’d been hit by Apache fire inside the mansion and taken off. She was holding a gun, he could see as he closed in. Aiming it back the way she’d come from.

Could he shoot a woman? It would be as bad as shooting a child. She was no doubt terrified, perhaps even innocent. But she was aiming a gun, trying to ambush him.

The doubts churned through Troy’s mind as he moved forward deliberately, step by soundless step. Had he lost his edge? Would he hesitate at the critical moment? Could he really do this?

The figure in the tree whipped around suddenly—and Troy pulled the trigger, nailing the would-be assassin in the chest. The figure dropped heavily to the ground with a loud groan, and Troy raced the last few yards, burst through the branches, and kicked the gun away from the person’s quivering hands.

“My God,” he whispered, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolling quickly to the pictures he’d been sent by the DEA while he and Travers were flying down here this morning.

He gazed at one of the photos for several moments, then down at the face of the person on the ground. He’d just shot Emilio Vasquez. The coward had tried to escape dressed as a woman.

CHAPTER 33

“C
ONGRATULATIONS
, T
ROY
.
You risked everything, and you won. The country will never know what a hero you are.” Bill hesitated. “But I do.”

“I don’t care about the country knowing. I care about it being safe.”

Troy and Bill were sitting alone in Bill’s big study at the house in Connecticut. Bill was behind the large platform desk, and Troy was relaxing in a leather wingback chair before it. The walls were made of dark-wood paneling, it was night, and the only light was coming from a dim bulb in a floor lamp in one corner of the room.

The tables and credenzas were littered with financial tombstones—Lucite-encased announcements of the many Wall Street deals Bill had done during his career—as well as photographs of Bill shaking hands with politicians and sports stars.

It was like a shrine in here, Troy figured as he looked around. “How many of the death squad members have been arrested so far?” he asked as he glanced at a photo of a young Bill Jensen wearing his Marine uniform and shaking hands with President Reagan. He promised himself that if he ever had an office like this, there wouldn’t be a single self-portrait in it.

“Thirty-three,” Bill answered. “According to the information that was in that briefcase of Daniel Gadanz’s you grabbed off the tarmac in Florida, there were a total of forty-four death squad members. Four of them died in Minneapolis the first day of the attacks, and as I said, thirty-three more have been arrested in the last twelve hours. That leaves seven of them still unaccounted for. But with the data from the briefcase and the pictures of those seven men being flashed constantly on TV, they won’t be at large for long.” Bill grinned proudly. “The country’s breathing a sigh of relief, son. There have been no more attacks, and I don’t think there will be. You and Wilson Travers are the reasons why. Red Cell Seven came through again.”

“There were lots of people involved, Dad. Those special-forces guys with us today in Florida were studs. So were the Apache pilots. They deserve the credit.”

“Not like you and Travers.”

“How did Daniel know it was time to run?” Bill was being too effusive with his praise, and it made Troy uncomfortable. It felt forced, like his father was trying to make up for something. “Did Jacob send him a message?”

“Yes.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Fear. Jacob knew Daniel would find out sooner or later who the rat was. Maybe he figured his brother would go easier on him if he had at least sent a warning. Maybe he wasn’t really trying to save himself. Maybe he was just hoping Daniel would spare his girls, that he wouldn’t take revenge on them thanks to the message at the last minute.”

“We’re going to protect them, right?”

“Absolutely,” Bill confirmed. “They are already deep into the program, along with their mother.”

“And Jacob’s in custody? He’s not going free, is he? I sure hope not,” Troy said firmly.

“Jacob’s dead.”

Troy had been gazing at the antlered head of an elk, which was mounted on the wall to his left. That elk had been there ever since Troy could remember, and its presence had always irritated him. It wasn’t right to kill animals just to hang them on a wall. He’d known that by the time he was ten years old. Why didn’t Bill?

“Dead?”

“He jumped out of a van the Feds were transporting him in from the townhouse in Manassas,” Bill explained. “It happened on the Dulles Toll Road outside DC. The van was doing seventy at the time.”

It occurred to Troy that perhaps Jacob had help jumping out of the van, but he didn’t care. “Jacob got what he deserved. And I’m assuming Daniel got away.”

“He did. I understand we tracked the Learjet all the way to Paraguay by satellite. We scrambled two fighters from a base in Tampa, but the Lear was out of U.S. airspace too fast to do anything.”

“Yeah, but—”

“And too far away.”

“Too bad.”

“You got Emilio Vasquez. That was a great catch.”

“Is he going to live?” Troy asked.

“You got him good through the right lung, but the doctors say he’ll survive. The information he has should prove very helpful.”

Troy shook his head. “Vasquez won’t talk. You know that, Dad. And the usual channels can’t do what they need to do to get him to—”

“I’m working on that. I think RCS will get custody of him soon. The DEA will help us with that. They’re very appreciative of what you and Travers did. They don’t give a rat’s ass about President Dorn’s kinder, gentler agenda. They are like us. They understand the lengths to which we must go. They understand that it’s a guerrilla war, which cannot be waged with decorum. The war on drugs is very much like the war on terrorism. The people at the DEA laugh at President Dorn.”

“Good.”

“I heard you saw Jennie before you went to Florida.”

“How’d you hear that?”

“I called her. She told me. I like her, Troy. I hope you two keep in touch.” Bill turned his head slightly to the side. “What’s wrong, son?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem…preoccupied. Is everything all right? You should be a very happy man.”

Troy thought long and hard before he spoke. “I’m considering resigning from Red Cell Seven.”

Bill pursed his lips tightly. “Does this have anything to do with Little Jack?”

It surprised Troy when his father zeroed immediately in on the issue. Spending time with his young sons had never been a priority for Bill. “Maybe.”

“Take your time with that decision. Once you leave, you can’t come back.”

“I don’t want L.J. to be without a mother
and
a father growing up. Mom’s doing a great job, and I appreciate it…but still.”

“Troy, you shouldn’t let—”

“Even if I never have another gun aimed at me, I’ll be gone all the time if I stay with RCS, Dad.”

“It’s a huge sacrifice. There’s no doubt.”

“I’ll never see my boy.”

“You have a responsibility to your country,” Bill argued gently. “Not many people can do what you can. If you leave Red Cell Seven, this country becomes weaker.”

“I have a responsibility to my son as well. He needs me.”

“It’s a hard choice, Troy. I’m not about to say it isn’t.”

“I’ll never see L.J.,” Troy repeated. “Worse, he’ll never see me. I know how that feels, and I don’t want him knowing.”

Bill grimaced.

Troy felt bad for launching that verbal missile, but it had to be said. It had been a long time coming. “You knew about the plot to kill President Dorn all along. Didn’t you, Dad?”

“It was Shane Maddux’s idea,” Bill spoke up sharply.

“But in the end, you and Carlson backed it.”

“Yes, we did,” Bill admitted. “Let’s be brutally honest here. President Dorn’s a very liberal politician. But even worse, he’s a weak man. Down deep I think he understands what has to be done to protect this country. But he won’t do it. The Holiday Mall Attacks are a perfect example. We deal with the chaos, and he still wants to do away with us. And things are only going to get worse from here,” he continued. “Today it’s drug billions partnering with religious extremists. Who knows what it’ll be tomorrow. RCS’s survival is essential if the country is going to be prepared for whatever it turns out to be. We can’t have a man in the Oval Office who wants to destroy us. Full stop.”

“So you kill him?”

Bill stared at Troy steadily but said nothing.

“Are you going to try again?” Troy couldn’t believe he was asking that question.

Still, Bill didn’t answer.

“Did you cut Maddux loose after the assassination attempt?” Troy finally asked.

“We had to. Roger and I couldn’t have the cell thinking we endorsed the shooting. That could have caused dissension in the ranks. It was strategic. Maddux understood.”

“Protecting this country rules his life. It’s the only thing he really cares about, the only thing that matters. You turned your back on him, Dad. You cut loose your loyalty to him for your own gain.”

“No, for the country’s gain. And like I said, he understood.”

“You made it sound like he alone was responsible for the shooting.”

“There was a bigger picture.”

“Now who sounds like a politician?”

“Why are you defending Shane Maddux so hard? He killed Lisa. You say he killed Jack. Why do you care about him so much?”

Troy took a deep breath. “He saved my life in Florida this afternoon. I’m sitting here now only because of his talents and his devotion to this country. If not for him I would have joined Jack today.”

Bill nodded. “Ah,” he murmured, “I get it now.”

“Jack died because of you, Dad, not because of Shane. Maybe Shane shot him, but you lit the fuse to that execution. Jack went to Alaska to show you how much he loved this family because you made him feel so terrible about who he was for all those years…and who he wasn’t. At least, you made him think he wasn’t. He’s dead because you didn’t care.”

“And a lot of people are alive today because he did go to Alaska, including you. And because I do care, deeply.” Bill hesitated. “There’s something you need to know about…” His voice trailed off.

“About what?”

“Never mind.”

“Come on, Dad. What were you going to say? I need to know.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I want to hear what you were going to—”

“No,” Bill said sternly. “There’s something much more important we need to talk about now.”

“What is it?”

“I need you and Major Travers to go on another mission right away. I’ve already spoken to Travers about it, and he’s agreed. You must lead the mission because I can only truly trust you. But I can’t send you alone. It would be too dangerous.”

P
RESIDENT
D
ORN
eased into the big chair behind the desk with help from Baxter. It was the first time he’d sat in anything but that damn wheelchair in a long time, and it felt good. The wheelchair had served its purpose well, and it should be saved for its historic significance. It should probably go to the Smithsonian so people could appreciate his courage and conviction. But he had no more use for it than that.

“Feel good, sir?” Baxter asked cheerfully as he sat in the chair in front of the desk.

“Very good.” Dorn exhaled heavily. “It feels incredible to have these death squads stopped, too.”

“Absolutely. I got another call right before I came in here. They caught two more of them in Missouri. We’re down to only five outstanding. I think it’s safe to say the danger has passed. People will come back out from their burrows.”

“Excellent.” Dorn intended to put Baxter’s mind at ease quickly. “But it doesn’t change my view on Red Cell Seven, Stewart.”

“Thank God,” Baxter said loudly as relief spread through him like a wildfire through a bone-dry forest. “I was worried you might be rethinking your strategy with those bastards. You know, what with Troy Jensen leading the charge down in Florida today.”

“I don’t give a damn. RCS must be destroyed. It’s the only way.” Dorn’s eyes narrowed. “Is our plan still in place?”

Baxter nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll be leaving in a few minutes.”

“Y
OU AND
Travers are going to Wyoming,” Bill explained, “to the Wind River Range in the western part of Wyoming, specifically to Gannett Peak. It’s the highest peak in the state.”

“Why are we going there?”

“You know why.”

“Protect the peak,” Troy whispered. “You told President Dorn in the residence the other day you didn’t know where the original Executive Orders were. But you did. You lied to him.”

“Grow up, son. We all knew what was going on in that room.”

“So one of the original orders is hidden on Gannett Peak.”

“Yes. And I’ll give you its exact location immediately before you leave here tonight.”

“What about the other one? The one not hidden on Gannett Peak?” Troy asked. “Where is it?”

“I honestly don’t know. I never did. But my gut tells me President Dorn has it now.”

“Why?”

“Roger Carlson’s wife, Nancy, is missing. No one has seen or heard from her in days, even her children. I believe she knew where the other original was, and Dorn made her pay the ultimate price for that knowledge.”