Sold Out (Nick Woods Book 1) (17 page)

Chapter
42

The
getaway went off without a hitch. They had paid their parking fee, admitted to
the employee they had heard a shot, too, but informed him it had sounded like
it was blocks away.

It
had just echoed back and forth in the parking garage, they told him. He
actually seemed to believe it.

“Man,
Knoxville is getting crazier and crazier,” the staffer said.

They
drove to the mall, where they ditched the van for good and grabbed Nick's green
Caprice. From there, they headed for their motel outside Knoxville.

Meanwhile,
several hundred miles away, Whitaker learned of the shooting and went into
panic mode. He had good sources, but he barely beat the media on hearing the
news of the shooting of Jack Ward.

Of
course,
it was understandable
that he barely beat the media in this instance. About thirty people had been on
the sidewalks around the building when Nick pulled the trigger.

With
the noise of the rifle, the Knoxville Police Department had received more than
one hundred emergency calls to 911 in less than sixty seconds. Initially, the
Department believed it was dealing with a terrorist sniper. Calls were made for
the SWAT team to assemble. But besides calling 911, people were also calling
the media.

The
broadcast channels broke into commercial breaks, and the cable media soon
followed. In just over five minutes, CNN was broadcasting “early reports” of a
possible terrorist attack in Knoxville.

Just
moments before CNN had the story, a source of Whitaker’s had called him in D.C.
and said there had been a shooting at the building where the FBI was
headquartered in Knoxville. The man explained that he just heard it on the
scanner and would call back when he heard more.

He
didn’t need to. Whitaker already knew. It fit the profile. Angry vet still
madly in love kills the man responsible for killing his wife. And with that, he
felt a cold fear creep into his stomach.

Nick
Woods wasn't going to hide out in the mountains, thankful to just be alive. No,
he had gotten his hands on a rifle and was hunting again.

Chapter
43

The
press releases prepared by Allen Green were written to catch your attention.
And they did.

The
bold headline said, “Who shot FBI Agent Jack Ward in Knoxville yesterday, and
why?”

Allen
and Nick had driven to Chattanooga, another city in Tennessee with more than
100,000 people, the day after the shooting to send out the release. Allen had a
list of fax numbers for newspapers throughout east Tennessee, as well as
regional and national newspapers.

He
knew the only chance the press release had was for whoever picked it up off the
fax to recognize it. He figured the east Tennessee papers were his best chance.

Allen
had hoped to wake up early and shoot the faxes out by 8 a.m., but he overslept,
true to his night-owl character, and didn’t make it to a Kinko’s copy center
until just after 10:30 a.m.

There
was no line, so he walked up to the fax machine and began punching in the
various area codes and fax numbers. He soon had the machine shooting out his
three-page fax across the country. Allen hoped those on the receiving end were
in the right mood to fully read and hopefully follow-up on the press release he
had worked on for hours.

The
release immediately announced in the first paragraph that FBI agent Jack Ward
had been killed by gun-nut Bobby Ferguson. The shooting by Ferguson was in
retaliation for Ward’s actions in the recent botched raid.

The
press release stated that Ward had negligently and wrongfully killed his Bobby
Ferguson’s wife Anne.

While
the shooting was revenge at its core level, the press release stated that the
story was much deeper.

Allen
had then described the story of how Bobby Ferguson was actually former Marine
sniper Nick Woods, who had served covertly in Pakistan against the Soviets. The
rest of the press release read quite similar to Allen’s story in
The New
Yorker
.

The
fax ended by saying each media outlet would receive a call within a couple of
days.

Nick
and Allen had purchased dozens of disposable cell phones from several stores
with money from Nick's pack, and it was with these cell phones that Allen would
call each media outlet.

For
Allen, the work over the next two days proved to be the most frustrating work
he’d done in some time. Setting up in yet another hotel room, this one in
Nashville since Nick thought they should leave Chattanooga immediately after
sending the faxes, Allen worked nearly non-stop from eight to five for the next
two days.

And
with all that work, he achieved nothing.

The
reasons why no one would pick up the story were many. Reporters were out of the
office. Editors had reviewed and shot down the story -- isn’t this the same
story you just denied a couple of months ago, they asked?

Even
those who got past his denial and began to probe as to why he had later
retracted the story found it absurd to believe that secret agents had
apprehended and threatened Allen, planting evidence on his computer.

And
they supposedly burned down a building, too? This was nothing but an
out-of-this-world conspiracy theory.

Allen
diligently kept good notes of each phone call and marked off each news source
as it became clear they wouldn’t do anything on the story. At his highest
point, he thought three organizations might do the story:
The New York Times
,
Time
magazine, and
60 Minutes
.

The
New York Times
came the closest
before bowing out. The reporter from there said her editor thought the story
might be plausible except it didn’t make sense that Allen would change his
story because of secret agents or threats. No good reporter would cave in and
give up the truth, she said in a sanctimonious voice.

Of
course, he'd once felt the same way. But being abducted, assaulted, and
threatened had a way of changing one's point of view.

Allen
gave up on the media, at least for now.

Chapter
44

In
Fredericksburg, Virginia, Whitaker used his key to open a heavy steel door on
the side of a rundown warehouse. He and Tank entered the huge warehouse and
slammed the door behind them.

Inside,
men lifted weights off to the left. Whitaker had bought enough weights and
machines to make most small gyms jealous. Whitaker believed a team should lift
and live together as much as possible. It kept his teams tight and forced them
to push themselves harder than if they were lifting alone.

The
equipment sat on the concrete floor and lacked even the comfort of rubber
matting, but his men didn't care. Each had worked out in far worse conditions.

Whitaker
heard heavy metal music blaring from a boom box on the floor. His men pushed
and pulled weight in impressive amounts, sweat pouring from their bodies. He
nodded to the leader of Strike Team Two, who supervised the team of eight men.

Whitaker
kept walking and fought the urge to join his men. He knew Tank wanted to, as
well. Probably worse than even he did. Seeing the men of Strike Team Two lifted
Whitaker's spirits.

These
men were professionals. Killers of the highest order. And he had four more
strike teams just like them. Five teams. Eight men each. Forty of the best
commandos in America. All waiting for a target.

Whitaker
knew he could bring Nick Woods down if he could just determine his location. He
walked into his office with Tank, which was one of several rooms built inside
the shitty-looking warehouse. From the outside, it looked like those around it.
But from the inside, it had been retrofitted and upgraded to a command post,
complete with the latest command and control equipment.

Whitaker
had located his command post in Fredericksburg, Virginia, for several reasons.

First,
it was near Washington, D.C., where he often had to go to meet with one of
Senator Gooden’s aides.

Second,
unlike D.C., Fredericksburg lacked the traffic of commuters or a first-rate
police force with experienced, nosy detectives. It had less than 30,000 people
and an average police force.

Finally,
the city was close to Quantico, where the Marine Corps had plenty of ranges for
practicing weapons drills and assaults. The base also had miles of woods for
the teams to practice in. Strike Team Five, in fact, was training in Quantico
today.

Whitaker
always felt the location of his command post had been nothing short of
brilliant. Actually, the entire setup of his unit by Sen. Gooden had been pure
genius, and everything could keep going as planned as long as he took down Nick
and Allen.

Whitaker
took a seat at his desk and sighed heavy. Tank plopped down across from him in
a guest chair.

“What’s
ailing you, Boss?”

Whitaker
rolled his neck in a circle and groaned. Tank said nothing. He knew when to
keep his mouth shut. Whitaker took his eyes off the ceiling and looked at Tank.

"We've
got one shot to get Nick and Allen," he said.

"Why's
that?"

"Because
we know they're going to go after Colonel Jernigan. He's their only remaining
clue at the moment. But if we miss taking them down during their hit on him,
then we'll be stuck on the defensive. We'll have no idea what their next moves
are, and they'll pick us apart."

"Then
we need to make sure we take advantage of this opportunity," Tank replied.

"Indeed.
We've got two teams here on rotation, doing nothing but training. I want both
of them with us to North Carolina."

"Sixteen
men, plus us? That's a lot of firepower."

"We
may need it," Whitaker said.

"And
do we warn Col. Jernigan that he may be in deep shit?" Tank asked.

"Of
course not," Whitaker said. "He brought this on himself, so if he
catches a bullet, it just saves us the trouble down the road. Plus, I don't
want him looking nervous. Nick Woods can smell a trap from a mile away. We
can't let him get away this time."

"He
has a habit of that. Afghanistan. Just recently."

"Don't
remind me," Whitaker said. "Let's hit the locker room and change into
gym clothes. We'll hit the weights hard before we saddle up tonight."

"Roger
that, Boss."

Chapter
45

Nick
Woods watched Col. Russ Jernigan through a pair of binoculars as he stepped
from his home and walked to his Jeep Grand Cherokee. Jernigan followed the same
routine as he had the three days prior.

Nick
scribbled a notation in his sniper logbook and noticed Jernigan was running
three minutes ahead of schedule today. Still, the man left his home each
morning between 7:45 and 7:48 a.m.

In
addition to recording Jernigan's habits, Nick noticed a few men who also had
their eyes on Jernigan. Two sat in a car at the end of the street. There were
at least four in full camouflage in the woods behind his house.

Nick
figured there were probably a couple more somewhere he hadn't seen. The shot
was doable from where he lay more than seven hundred yards away.

He
was across the street from Col. Jernigan's home and more than twelve homes
down. It was a cattycorner shot, angling away. Difficult, even for Nick, but
he'd pulled off more difficult shots.

His
best shooting location for the shot was in the other direction, but Nick had
seen several men in full camo working their way around it. So, he'd use this
second location. Not ideal. But safer. And more unpredictable for his enemy.

Nick
had upgraded his rifle. A couple of weeks earlier, he'd snuck onto the base
where the Marine Corps hosted its sniper school training grounds. Quite
quickly, he selected a couple of poorly trained snipers in their first week of
sniper school and snuck up on them one night. He'd shined a bright flashlight in
their faces and surprised the shit out of the tired and exhausted trainees.

But
through the light, they'd seen his pistol and given that they were unarmed --
no live ammo, just blanks -- they had little recourse.

In
the end, he'd talked them into voluntarily giving up their weapon. Nick even
fired a round into the air, so that their story about being robbed by some
crazy man had more credibility.

Then
Nick had booked it out of the area, humping across the woods through an escape
route that avoided roads and hit every thicket and swamp he could find. It was
only two klicks to the road where Allen was driving up and down, waiting to
pick him up.

None
of that extra precaution on the escape had been necessary as the training staff
hadn't been in the field and the two men hadn't been given a radio for their
routine training exercise. It took more than six hours before the MPs were even
alerted, and by then Nick lay on his bed in a hotel room just twenty miles away
in Jacksonville, N.C.

He'd
already showered and cleaned up.

Nick
had spent the next week getting familiar with the rifle he'd stolen, which felt
like an old friend from back when he served. It was the same rifle, caliber,
and scope as he'd used, so it took little time to get familiar with it. He'd
fired more than a hundred rounds through it on an abandoned farm thirty minutes
away while Allen Green spent the week working the phone and a laptop to find
exactly where Col. Jernigan lived on base in Camp Lejeune.

Allen
had worried he'd have to stake out the bar scene again, as he had the first
time, but in the end, he managed to get through to a couple former friends from
the news world. Several were starting to believe Allen's crazy story of being
framed.

He
had, after all, had an impeccable reporting record for the past thirty years. All
the insiders had known he'd been working on a major story for months and
months. To have been that mistaken about a story then turn around and admit
he'd been wrong was so farfetched for a veteran reporter of Allen's stature
that many former friends were kicking themselves for abandoning him so quickly.
One of his best friends had paid back an old favor and tracked down Col.
Jernigan's home address through a couple of military contacts he had
relationships with.

And
now just a little more than three weeks after drilling FBI Agent Jack Ward from
a parking garage in Knoxville, Nick Woods lay behind a much better rifle and
planned to blow away Col. Jernigan the following day. He'd prepped the
battlefield, studied his exit route, and planned all kinds of surprises for
Whitaker's men who were "guarding" Jernigan.

These
dumb sons of bitches were about to tangle with one of the best warriors America
had ever produced, and they'd been getting sloppy after guarding the same man
and following the same routine for three weeks straight. In a word, they were
screwed, Nick thought.