The Warrior Code (4 page)

‘Most likely,’ he said simply. He’d seen a maturity and confidence in the two women that far exceeded their age and knew they could handle the truth. ‘They were seeking you specifically for something. Ketchum or Connor didn’t mention this, but I doubt the gang is very active in the Jackson Hole area. It’s generally a low-crime place. So that means they were here for a reason, and that reason is the two of you. It doesn’t look like they had rape on their minds.

‘How badly they want that something, we’ve no means of knowing, but if I were in your position, I would lead my life henceforth on the assumption that they will be back.’

Meg’s smile was white in the dark, but it was strained. ‘I guess our tomorrows will now involve constantly looking behind our backs. What’s most frustrating about this is not that someone is after us, but the
why
! Maybe it’s because something Dad did or saw – Ketchum mentioned this could lead back to him… but if that was the case, why wait so long? Maybe it was something I or Beth saw, which we don’t remember or recognize for what it was… but again the same question. Why now?’

Zeb didn’t say anything, allowing them to voice their feelings, but when they kept looking at him for a response, he answered indirectly. ‘Make it second nature to you – taking care of yourselves. Don’t stick to routines. Before stepping out of your home or car, make sure you survey the surroundings, and make sure you’ve deterrents on you. A gun – if you both are trained to use them and have permits, mace, a whistle, those kinds of things. And keep on with your self-defense training. Your dad taught you well. It’ll come in handy for you in life. Once you make all this part of the way you live, you’ll not notice it.’

‘There’s a lot you’re not saying, isn't there?’ Beth challenged him. ‘If the gang is determined to get us, they
will
, won’t they, despite all the precautions we take and the resistance we put up?’

Zeb let his experience show itself in his voice when he spoke. ‘It comes down to a cost and risk benefit analysis for the gang. By making it as difficult as possible for them to get to you, you’re increasing the risks and costs for them – and they might drop off. Secondly, you’re buying more time for the rangers and cops to do their work.’

Meghan squared her shoulders. ‘We’ll light a fire under the Jackson Hole P.D. to throw everything at this. I have a feeling the rangers will be relying on the Jackson police to investigate.’

They left the park the next day, when it was bright and sunny, and merged with the departing traffic. Zeb stayed three cars behind the women, keeping them in sight.

The gang caught up with them a mile away from the park.

Chapter 5

Zeb noticed the rust-colored Ford in his rearview mirror a few miles after they’d left the south exit of the park. It aggressively overtook vehicles and, during overtaking, slowed to scan the occupants in the overtaken vehicle.

He lowered his passenger-side window and stared back at them through his shades when they came parallel to him. He knew very little of his face was visible – his sunglasses and baseball cap pulled low left his features in shadow.

The driver was a balding man with a thick beard; the passenger in the front had close-cropped hair and a tattoo near his left eye – too far to make out the tat. The passenger had dark eyes that stared back at Zeb. Zeb peered behind the two but couldn’t see if there were any passengers in the back of their ride.

Their Ford surged ahead, overtook the next vehicle, and cut back in front of it to fall in two vehicles behind the women’s gray Explorer.

Jackson was sixty miles away from the south entrance, but traffic was thick, and the line snaked slowly on the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Parkway. The parkway linked Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park, and a significant number of tourists headed to either the latter or to Jackson on leaving Yellowstone.

The women, if they paid any attention to their rear, would reckon the pursuers were just other tourists, and the pursuers in turn would regard Zeb as another park visitor.

The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Parkway turned into US-191, and as glimpses of the Teton mountain range and pastoral ranch scenes sped by, the speed of the line of vehicles noticeably slowed as their occupants took in the surroundings. The tarmac was worn in some patches, pools of water gathered in them that reflected the mountain range, silently emphasizing that the Teton Range had existed before tarmac and would exist long after.

It was just past noon when the twins drove slowly into Jackson, a town of about nine thousand inhabitants. It was the gateway to Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone National Park, the National Elk Refuge and was also close to several ski resorts – all these attractions meant a town whose economy was significantly based on tourism and saw a significant floating population throughout the year.

Zeb had been to the world’s hot spots and to countless places on the planet most people hadn’t heard of. He had traveled the length and breadth of the country, but Jackson had never been on his itinerary before.

He looked at the Town Square as they approached it; training and force of habit made him seek out and note shelters from gunfire, patches of dark where muggings could happen. He filed them away and sought the Explorer.

They drove past the square, turned right a block away, and drove in the parking lot of a hotel. The gang’s Ford drove past them without giving them a glance and, at the end of the street, turned right back at a traffic light and idled to a stop in front of the hotel. A rear passenger door opened, and a tall man in a leather jacket and jeans stepped out and headed inside the hotel.

Must be a gang member Beth didn’t see
.

The man came back after fifteen minutes, carrying brochures in his hand, and the Ford motored down the street to the next block, turned into a parking lot, and emptied. Four hoods stepped out of the car, headed back to the hotel, and two of them mounted a rotating surveillance on the hotel. The other two disappeared in the direction of Town Square.

There was pedestrian traffic on the street, and Zeb could blend in, but he realized he couldn’t linger around for long. The street was residential and had no cafés or bars in which he could have spent time and kept an eye on the hoods. If he hung around for long, he would come to the attention of the hoods and just about anyone else.

The two gang members had the same problem, but that problem disappeared when from the direction of Town Square came a silver Toyota sedan driven by the other two hoods. It picked up the two men on the street, motored its way down, and parked as if it belonged to one of the residences. The four hoods swapped places, the ones Beth had seen going back inside their car, where they were concealed by the dark windows.

Zeb rapidly ran through his options while pretending to read a map and, using it to partially hide his face, he walked across the street into the hotel. Luck swung in his favor when the hotel turned out to have a restaurant at ground level that overlooked the street.

If I was the gang, I would lift the girls today, before they made any more plans, before they met anyone.

He thought the gang had come to the same conclusion.
Why else would they need four people for mounting surveillance on a quiet street?

Evening came, and Zeb stayed motionless, burying himself in a newspaper, making the caffeine fix last, drowning out the hustle around him. There was a time in Mogadishu when he had spent forty-eight hours without food, water and sleep, lying low from bands of insurgents hunting him. This felt like the lap of luxury to him.

The gang made its move at nine p.m.

Meghan and Beth had been to Town Square at six p.m. and, after taking in the sights, had gone into a restaurant for dinner. They walked back to the hotel; pedestrian traffic was very light at that time and, other than the two of them and a few figures behind them, the street was empty.

Beth saw the figure bending over the front wheel of a silver car in the distance, paid it no attention, looked at Meghan to reply, and something moved at the edge of her vision. She turned her head and opened her mouth to shout a warning.

A hand wrapped itself tightly around her throat, another crushed her mouth, and she felt her legs lifted by another pair of hands. She tried to scream, but the sounds choked inside, and she felt herself going dizzy as her blood supply was cut off by the hand around her neck. Her hands were free, but she couldn’t loosen the grip around her. She looked wildly at Meghan and saw she was similarly captured.

They were carried swiftly to the silver car, where one of her captors suddenly let go of her feet to unlock the door.

Her vision dimmed and black spots appeared in front of her eyes, but even through that, she felt the silent surge of motion and force and heard a dull sound of something hitting the car. The hands against her throat and mouth tore apart, and the hood behind her jerked back.

Beth fell to her knees, breathed deeply and hoarsely, felt air swirl and move above and around her, and a voice screamed in her mind.
Meg!

She raised her head to look at Meghan’s captors, saw one of them drop her legs and approach a dark shadow.

The shadow moved, or she thought she saw it move, and the captor went down. The shadow flowed without pause, Meghan fell beside her, they heard another dull thud against the car, and silence fell.

Beth lifted herself and bent down to help Meghan up. They leaned against each other, breathing deeply, the clear night air going through them, bringing light, sound, and time back.

They watched the shadow bend over the four hoods, cuff them with plastic ties, and tape their mouths.

‘That’s the guy Steve and the other guy who grabbed me.’ Beth pointed to the two hoods in the middle. She shivered. ‘I don’t recognize the other two. One of them might be the driver, but it was too dark for me to make him out. I guess they returned to finish whatever they intended to do. Thank you again.’

‘You were following us?’ Meghan asked Zeb when she’d got her breath back.

He didn’t say anything; he hauled the men up and propped them against the car.

‘We’re running quite a tab,’ she said again. She forced a cheerful tone. ‘We had it under control, you know.’

He looked at her finally, saw her rubbing her neck. ‘Are you both okay?’

‘Yeah.’ Meghan sighed. ‘I know you warned us to be alert always… but we didn’t expect them to grab us here and so soon. Heck, we’re just minutes from the hotel!’

She looked down at the men. ‘You expected something like this, didn’t you? That’s why you were tailing us.’

Zeb shrugged. ‘I’ve nothing else on my plate right now, and since I was heading in this direction…’ He had debated with himself about getting involved, helping them out. It had been a very brief, one-sided debate. He’d never stood by when women were in danger.

‘Call the cops,’ he told them.

Beth dug out her phone and after a brief call, hung up. ‘Fill us in, please. How and when did they spot us?’

Zeb gestured in the direction of the hotel, and he followed them as they walked to its sanctuary. At Beth’s glance at the men, he said, ‘They aren’t going anywhere now, and I’m sure the cops will be here soon. This is a small town.

‘They fell in behind you almost immediately after you left the park. My guess is they were stationed near the exit and were scanning all vehicles.’

‘You think they would have killed us?’ Meghan asked. She hugged herself tightly as the adrenaline began to wear away and reaction set in.

‘Nope. They could’ve shot you and left you here. They’re after something else from you.’

‘Can’t we ask them?’

Zeb hesitated, the first time they had see him do so. ‘In other circumstances, yeah. Let the cops do their work here. I’m sure they’ll tell you once they know.’

Beth unzipped her jacket, removed it, and draped it over Meghan too, the two of them each using a sleeve. She breathed deeply and steadily and, in a quiet voice, asked him, ‘Just who are you, Mr. Carter?’

‘Zeb.’

‘Zeb.’

‘I’m ex-Special Forces. I work for a government agency I can’t mention.’

In the distance they could hear the faint noises from Town Square, and in the distance, they could hear a police siren. The words shimmered in the still air and dissolved slowly.

Meghan raked her fingers through her hair, smiling uncertainly. ‘We figured you were an undercover guy. What are the chances of this happening? Three-hundred-odd million in the country and the person who helps us in four thousand square miles of the least populated area of that country turns out to be just the one we need.’

‘Ma’am, I guess the same chances as my finding a pair of twins, one of whom has lost her memory.’

They laughed at that, relieved laughter that turned to genuine mirth.

He turned away to watch the hoods lying against the car. They were still groggy and had made no attempts to stand.

Laughter is good. They’re young, tough and resilient, and if they can laugh, they’ll be fine.

I’ll make sure of it
, he added.

He could imagine Broker snorting. ‘You and your Batman syndrome!’ Broker was the second in command in their group. He was an ex-Army intelligence analyst who had a very successful private intelligence business that served government and private sector clients the world over. Large multinational businesses, defense agencies, military contractors, intelligence agencies, all came to Broker for the best intel available in the market.

Broker was the Warriors’ organizer, planner, and supplier of hardware – being extremely wealthy had its benefits. He was a rare breed – an analyst who took an active role in their missions, since he was also an ace sniper.

‘Mr. Carter, Zeb?’ Beth’s voice brought him to the present.

‘How long will you be with us?’

‘I’ll be here for a few days, ma’am. I haven’t been to Jackson before. Once the cops have this thing firmly in hand, I’ll drift.’