Sealed In Lies (9 page)

Jack pulled his SIG from the side pocket of his duffel bag before he tossed it into the back of the SUV. Shoving the gun into the waistband of his jeans, he went to one of the boxes sitting next to the front of the shed and pulled out a small suitcase. He popped it open and seeing a few changes of clothes, make up, wigs, and other items he used for disguises, he nodded. He tossed this into the back of the Nissan and shut the hatch. He climbed into the cab and drove out far enough to close the door on the storage unit. Climbing out and cursing the pain in his leg, Jack rolled the metal door back down and secured it with the padlock. He got back in and drove all the way to the front of the facility before he realized the same key he’d left lying on the table was the one he would need to open the gate.

Jack cursed violently; he seemed to be doing that a lot lately. Banging his hands on the steering wheel, he shouted, “Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” He sat back in the seat rubbing his bruised palms and breathing heavily. Acting like a two year old having a tantrum was not going to get him out of this mess. He needed to calm down and think. He could easily push through the gates with the powerful car, but that might set off some alarm and then surely he would be caught on camera. He didn’t need any more reasons for people to be after him.

Jack got out of the car and approached the gates as if he had a key in his hand. He examined the padlock on the gates and realized it was very similar to the one he had just picked on his storage unit. Thank God. He thought for sure the gates would be electronic and that would take him twice as long to dismantle the entire system just to get his car out. He returned to the SUV and swiftly retrieved his leather pouch all the while conscious of the precious time he was losing.

Within seconds he picked the lock. He drove his car through the gate and replaced the lock. He glanced at his watch. This had taken much longer than it should have. He berated himself for being stupid one more time. He told himself it was the stress of his situation, but that didn’t work for long for Jack knew he’d been in much more stressful situations than this throughout his career. His life was on the line many times, but this time an entire nation’s security might lie in the balance. Oh, that was better. The nation’s security is resting on his shoulders. Shit, Jack thought, if that doesn’t get the adrenaline flowing nothing would.

Jack pulled out of the storage facility and turned north. He would follow this road to Constitution and take that out of the city. He needed to get to McLean, Virginia to carry out the next part of his plan. He was going to Warren’s house and determine what additional evidence, if any, he could dig up on this assassination attempt. Before he fell asleep at the desk, he found Warren’s addresses for the two houses he owned in Virginia, one in McLean, the other in Charlottesville. If he didn’t find what he was looking for here then he would head south and try the other house.

With Congress being out of session for the holidays, Jack hoped the McLean house would be empty. He needed to find evidence that would give him some idea of who the Emperor was. He also hoped he was prepared for what he might find.

Chapter 10

Jack drove slowly through the exclusive neighborhood, straining to read the house numbers in the dark. He knew he was on the right street but the darkness masked the painted curbs. His sweaty palms gripped the steering wheel as he pressed his face to the glass. There it was. Jack blew out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. It figures, that it would be the last one on the street.

The same moonless night that frustrated him now would later work in his favor later. When he couldn’t see, it meant he also couldn’t be seen. Pulling the car over to the side of the road, Jack peered through the windshield at the cloud-laden sky. He shivered. It was going to snow. It would be the first snow of the season and Jack could smell it in the cold night air. Great, he thought, another complication.

Turning his head, he assessed the large colonial mansion across the street. It really was a big ass house. Warren definitely made a statement with this monstrosity. It had three floors, was solid brick, and had five columns the size of California Redwoods equally spaced across the front porch. This left little room for lawn on the stamp sized lot. Jack had to admit the little patch of yard was artfully landscaped with azalea bushes, boxwoods, and solitary rose bushes circled by bricked in mulch. In winter’s slumber it looked sadly barren, but Jack knew it would burst forth in radiant color in the spring.

The house was dark. No porch or floodlights shone in the front and there were no lights on in the windows either. Jack wasn’t fooled, because in a house this size lights could be on in the rooms you couldn’t see. He needed a better vantage point, one where he could observe without looking suspicious to the neighbors. In a neighborhood of this caliber, a car parked on the side of the street for too long would attract attention. He looked around and noticed a park right across the street from Warren’s house. Perfect.

Jack studied the small park and through the gloom he could make out the children’s playground and swing set as well as a small gazebo to shelter waiting parents from the wind and sun. A soccer field flanked Warren’s house on the right side and was separated from it by a wrought iron fence and a stand of blue spruce trees, regal sentinels guarding Warren’s house from prying eyes and stray soccer balls. A parking lot turned off of the cul-de-sac that was empty now, except for a small Ditch Witch that some maintenance person had left to rust in the coming snow.

Jack picked up speed and pulled the SUV into the small parking lot of the park, but didn’t pull into one of the spaces. Killing the headlights, he kept going, bumping over the concrete barrier and driving directly onto the soccer field. When he reached the row of fat blue spruce trees, he pulled in as close as he could get behind the trees. Getting out, he went around to the back of the car, silently opening the hatch. He shivered as he pulled his duffel bag close to him. Damn, it was cold. Surveillance was not going to be fun and games tonight. He drew in a deep breath and the cold air made his lungs ache.

He opened his duffel bag and pulled out a black knit ski mask, a heavy down jacket, and a small pair of night vision goggles. They were equipped with a zoom lens that would allow him to see the angles of the house more clearly. Jack put on the jacket, pulled the ski mask down over his face, and went to the row of trees hiding the SUV. He crawled beneath the low-lying bows of the closest spruce and settled himself into the bed of pine needles, propping his body on his elbows so he could hold the night vision goggles to his face.

The house looked empty. He scanned the windows looking for movement but saw no one. That didn’t mean anything. In a house that size people could be having a party and he wouldn’t necessarily know it. From where he lay he could see a faint glow from the kitchen window in the back of the house, probably a stove light. He continued scanning from the kitchen window around to the back of the house where he stopped again when he reached the large oak plank deck attached to the back of the house.

He didn’t like how exposed the back yard was. The deck covered most of it and there was very little cover for him to move from the back of the yard to the back door without being seen. His next obstacle loomed in front of the night vision goggles. An eight-foot wrought iron fence surrounded the back of the property. The locked gates blocked the driveway and the fence went around the entire perimeter of the back yard. Scooting a little further under the pine tree so he could look up, he looked for trees that might be hanging over the property. He was a climber from age 3 and if he could just find the right tree he could drop over into the yard.

Much to Jack’s disappointment, all the trees near the fence were trimmed back just as they should have been. Okay, so there was no help there. How was he going to get into those gates? Jack heard a soft whirring motor and his gaze snapped to the garage. On the corner of the building, attached to the steeply pitched roof of the garage, was a security camera. A motion censored security camera. Shit. It just gets better and better, he thought. Well, there was nothing to do now but wait. He needed to be sure no one was home before he tried to get in. That would give him time to work out how he was even going to get in.

Two hours later the cold began seeping through Jacks down jacket and tiny ice crystals were forming around the eyes and mouth holes of the ski mask. He shivered violently. He was going to have to either make a move or get back into the SUV before he died from exposure. He was backing out from under the low boughs of the spruce when he heard a man’s voice boom through the silent night.

“
I’m going home, Bill. I think you can handle it from here. She certainly isn’t going anywhere in the shape she’s in. I doubt you even see her ‘till morning. I’m hungry and I haven’t seen the wife since last Friday. The Senator won’t be back for a couple of days so I’m going home for the night. Call me on my cell if you need me for anything.”

Jack watched, as a big burly man came out the back door and across the deck. He stopped looked back as someone made a comment from inside the house. Jack watched him as he nodded, turned, and started across the deck. His heavy boots thudded on the hard wood planks. Jack assessed his potential opponent. Judging him to be about six foot three and 250 or so pounds, Jack thought he could take him. His huge muscular arms were the size of large tree branches, but Jack had learned, in his years of experience, that the bigger they were the harder they fell, and the slower they ran.

While Jack waited for the big man to come around the deck toward the garage, he thought about what he’d just heard. The guard, on his way out the door, had spoken of a woman in the house. She must be ill if she wasn’t going anywhere else that night. That told Jack two things; first, she was the only one there besides the one remaining guard; second, she wasn’t feeling well so she would be no threat. She was probably in bed by now and he should be able to get in and out without a hitch.

He watched the big man continue toward a dark pickup truck that was parked in the driveway. It was then he got his break. Jack couldn’t believe his luck. He would have to open the gate to get the truck out and Jack would have just enough time to slip in before it closed. The problem was how to do it without being seen by the man driving the truck or the security camera at the corner of the garage.

That camera was going to follow the truck out of the driveway and then slowly swing back to position looking out over the back yard. Jack would have a very tiny window of time to take advantage of the gate being open. If he could just slide around the gate and back into the dark corner near these bushes, he would have time to plan his next move.

The truck pulled up and waited as the two metal gates began to roll sideways into their tracks. Jack worked his way around the bushes and trees and crouched in the shadows, waiting for the truck to pull through. As soon as the gates were wide enough, the truck began to pull forward. Jack looked up at the corner of the house and saw the camera begin to move in his direction. He was going to have move quickly and just pray the other person watching in the house was more focused on the truck.

He stayed in a crouch and as soon as the truck was past him, Jack ran quickly across the small patch of pavement and around the gate. He headed straight for the corner and landscaped bushes to his right, dropped flat on his belly, and waited. He nearly gasped when the stitches in his leg threatened to pop open as he dropped but he managed to stay silent. The wound that had grown numb with cold, was now hot and throbbing.

The gate began to close almost as quickly as it opened and Jack heard the metal clank as it locked shut behind him. He watched as the truck proceeded down the driveway and into the street, turned right, and headed away. Jack released a deep breath, that he didn’t realize he was holding, in one big frosty puff. That was close. He still wasn’t sure he hadn’t been seen so he waited a few minutes before he moved. Blowing on his hands to keep them warm, he watched the deck and the back door closely, waiting for more men to come charging out of the house, but they didn’t. All seemed quiet.

Not sure of the range of the motion censor on the camera, Jack crawled on his belly along the fence line toward the back of the house. In his pouch he had a small transmitter that would jam most of the electronics in the house, but he hesitated to use it.

Once he was inside, he might need to reset the alarms immediately and the transmitter would take them off line for at least five minutes. That might alert a monitoring service and they would call the police. He needed another break.

Jack didn’t have to wait too long. The back door opened and a much shorter, thinner man came out onto the deck. Jack saw a small flare of light and knew the man was lighting a cigarette. Jack rolled his eyes toward heaven and thanked the gods for nicotine. It was time to make his move. He got stiffly on his feet and into a low crouch, ignoring the screaming protest of his injured leg. He moved cautiously along the back of the yard until he was on the opposite side of the deck. He waited, hoping the man would come down off the deck into the yard. It would be much easier to take him down in the grass and make less noise.