Threat Warning (25 page)

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Authors: John Gilstrap

Tags: #Fiction, #General

BOOK: Threat Warning
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“A question is not an answer to a question,” Copley admonished.
Franklin’s whole body shrugged. “I think it’s what we needed to do. What’s the sense of having assets if you’re not willing to exploit them?”
“Did you feel that the recording and airing of the video were the evidence of hubris on my part?”
Franklin looked uncomfortable.
“Again, I ask you to speak freely.”
He took his time. “I don’t know how to answer you,” Franklin said. “Hubris means pride, and I suppose that pride is a sin, yet, you have every reason to be proud of what we are accomplishing.”
“Was it the right thing to do, in your opinion?”
“It was an important thing to do. The necessary thing to do. The entire point was to portray ourselves as a Muslim offshoot. That’s a main strategy.”
Copley found himself smiling at the words he’d wanted to hear.
“If you don’t mind me asking, why do you ask the question?”
“Brother Kendig,” Copley said. In its own way, that was a complete answer.
Franklin took a sip of his coffee and gave a conciliatory nod. “Well, yes. Brother Kendig has always been . . . careful. Is he the one who accused you of hubris?”
“On more than one occasion.” Copley paused to consider his next question. “What do you think of the good Sheriff Neen?”
There was that uneasy look again. “I think that he’s been a friend of mine for many years.”
Copley sat on the flat rock, ignoring the aching cold that seeped through his trousers and into his spine. “Do you think he is an asset to our mission, or a hindrance?”
Franklin joined his commander on the rock. “You ask me to speak frankly, and then you ask a question about loyalty. In time of war, the underlying accusation carries a death sentence.”
“For good cause,” Copley said.
Franklin took his time assembling his words. “I’ve known you for many years, Brother Michael. For as many years as we have both known Brother Kendig. If you’re harboring paranoid thoughts that he is somehow against what we are doing, then I respectfully—”
“Not
against
us,” Michael said, raising his hand to interrupt. “Just not entirely
with
us.”
“Two ways of saying the same thing, sir. The entire community has trained long and hard for this war. For those who are under twenty, they have trained their entire lives. Much of that training came from Brother Kendig. Without him, we would not be empowered as we are now.”
“But people change, do they not?”
Franklin considered that. “Of course they do. We all change. Our hair turns gray with time, and we get winded sooner during physical training. But I don’t believe that we change fundamentally. I believe that who we are remains who we are. That means Kendig is a talented soldier and loyal to the cause.”
“Yet he disrespects me,” Copley mused aloud. None of this was what he’d expected to hear. Brother Franklin’s words, in fact, made him wonder if a conspiracy of sorts might be in play.
“If you say, then it must be so. But if you’re seeking my counsel as an elder, then my advice to you is to think carefully about the space that separates disagreement from disloyalty.” He paused, obviously hesitant to state the rest. “One could argue that if a person holds an opinion deeply and firmly enough, disagreement could be judged the highest degree of loyalty. Sir.”
In an academic setting such lofty statements would have more meaning for Copley than they did right now. For a team to function healthily, dissent was wrong. He was surprised that Franklin didn’t already know this.
“What are your thoughts on the execution?” Copley asked.
Franklin’s answer came without pause. “I think that you have no choice. They killed a soldier.”
“The boy maintains that he was protecting his mother from rape,” Copley baited. “I cannot say that such a crime is beyond the reach of Brother Stephen.”
“And had he lived, he would have been appropriately punished,” Franklin said. “As it is, that opportunity for justice was denied.”
“Exactly,” Copley said. “And do you agree that the execution should be broadcast live on the Internet?”
Franklin’s body seemed to stiffen with the question. “Is that important?”
“Our goal is to rend the fabric of what the Users believe is comfort in their lives. Could there be anything more unsettling?”
Franklin hesitated. “Nothing I can think of.”
Copley didn’t like the noncommittal answer. “I said you can speak freely.”
A deep breath, followed by a settling sigh. “I worry about cause and effect,” he said. “Actions have consequences. It’s one thing to watch the news and hear and see reports of the mayhem the Army is sowing. But if you present the public with the spectacle of an execution, I fear that instead of justice, they will see only cruelty.”
“You fear,” Copley said. He was sick to death of that word. “Is cowardice in battle likewise not a crime?”
Franklin stood. “You told me to speak freely.”
Copley felt a wave of anger approaching, but he pushed it down. “Yes, I did,” he said. He stood as well and pointed with his chin to the rifle. “Are you up to more spotting?”
“I am,” Franklin said. As they covered the distance to the weapon, he said, “Please, Brother Michael. If I offended—”
Copley waved him off. “You’re fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine.”
The two men moved almost in unison as they lowered themselves to their bellies on the ground in front of their respective toys. Copley positioned himself at the gunstock and wriggled a bit as he settled into a comfortable position on the ground.
“Be aware on the left,” Franklin said. “It looks like one of Mrs. Shockley’s cows has wandered out of the pasture.”
“Is it likely to wander into my field of fire?” Shooting was a head game, and he didn’t appreciate the interruption.
“Probably not. Not unless you shoot wild. She ranges at twenty-one fifty yards and three hundred twenty feet from the target.”
Copley reacquired the acoustic panel and ran the previous ballistic calculations through his head. “Is the cow moving or standing still?”
“Looks like she’s grazing.”
Without saying a word, Copley pivoted the Barrett to the left, adjusted in his head for the new range, and squeezed the trigger. Again. And again. The massive weapon bucked with each round, the pressure wave at the muzzle blasting dirt and leaves.
Two point two seconds later—long before the sound of the gunshots could arrive on the opposite hill—the cow erupted in a pink cloud, one of its hind legs spinning away and landing ten or fifteen feet from the rest of the carcass.
Copley smiled. He lifted his cheek from the butt stock and craned his neck to look over his shoulder at Franklin, whose face was a mask of disbelief.
“You didn’t even aim,” Franklin said.
“Of course I aimed. I just did it quickly.” He rose to his knees and hefted the Barrett from the ground. “But a shot like that tells you that it’s time to stop for the day.”
He walked back to the flat rock to begin the process of cleaning the weapon and returning it to its padded case, leaving Franklin to pick up the sandbags and other clutter from their shooting perch. Arriving at the rock, he gently placed the weapon butt-down on the flat surface. He removed the five-cartridge magazine and cleared the breach.
“Franklin?” he said without looking.
“Yes, sir?”
He liked the “sir.” That’s what happened when you made people nervous. “Can I count on you to make things happen tonight?”
“Of course,” he said. Then, after a beat: “What things are you talking about?”
“I want the entire compound assembled for the executions, and I want it on a live Internet feed. Route it as we did before.”
A long moment passed in silence. Copley turned to see Franklin just standing there. “Brother Franklin?”
He seemed startled. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll see to it. What time?”
“Eight-ish? After the trial.”
Franklin clearly wanted to object, but he swallowed his words. “Both of them, sir?”
“One at a time, of course. What do you think would make the best drama for television, a mother watching her son die first, or the other way around?”
There was that look again.
“I
can
count on you, can’t I, Brother Franklin?” The action of the Barrett made a loud
clack
as it slid closed.
“Always, Brother Michael.”
“Then who do you think we should send to God first, the woman or the boy?”
Franklin searched a long time for the right words. “I’m sure that any decision you make will be the right one, Brother Michael.”
That unsettled, appalled look would soon be shared by the entire world, Copley thought.
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR
 
Nothing happened at the mansion for an hour and a half. Literally nothing. The sentries didn’t change, and no one left or arrived. From this distance, with the equipment they had available, there was no way to monitor what might be going on inside, but Jonathan’s instincts told him that they were in a lull.
It was possible that they’d missed their precious cargo completely, but thoughts like that were self-defeating, so he pushed them away. If they’d blown the mission, they’d blown it. For the time being, until he had data to the contrary, this was their plan.
As the sun dropped, it took the temperature with it, and under a new moon without a cloud anywhere, they were staring down the maw of double awfulness: frigid temperatures and a bright starlit sky.
He’d switched to night vision about fifteen minutes ago, and the view was like green daylight. Once Venice had the coverage she needed and she’d successfully overridden the video feed, they would move into the house and liberate their precious cargo.
“Cars coming,” Boxers said into his earbud. The sudden noise startled him.
“A bunch of cars,” Venice corrected. “I thought nothing was supposed to happen till seven.”
“Damn bad guys didn’t read the playbook,” Boxers mocked. “What’re you thinking, Scorpion?”
Jonathan answered with a question. “Mother Hen, do you have enough to cover an entry now?”
“I could use more,” she said.
“With all this activity out in the front yard, we’re missing the perfect opportunity to enter through the back,” Boxers said. “Distracted guards are my favorite kind.”
“Understood,” Jonathan said. “We wait till Mother says it’s okay to go.” He shared Boxers’ urge to move, but he stifled it. You had to take a longer view of these things. The video loop was as much about their escape as their entry, and he was rolling the dice that five minutes wouldn’t make a lot of difference one way or the other.
Jonathan counted seven cars in total. Most were pickup trucks or SUVs, but there were a couple of beat-up sedans in the mix as well. The headlights flared his night vision, so he flipped the goggles out of the way. In the starlight, though, while he could see people moving, he couldn’t get enough detail for a hard count.
“Big Guy, how many people do you see?”
“I don’t have the angle for that,” he said.
“I want you to know that I’m feeling very left out back here,” Gail said.
“We’ll be there soon enough,” Jonathan promised. “How are we coming, Mother?”
When she didn’t bother to reply, he knew that she was lost in concentration. A minute later, she said, “Okay, team. Go.”
 
 
Three minutes later, they’d all gathered in the rear of the mansion. They reviewed the plan one more time, and when Jonathan was satisfied that everyone knew what to do, they moved toward the house. Having studied the architectural plans, they’d decided to make their entry through a door that led to a back hallway near the kitchen. Stealth mattered tonight, and that meant subtlety.
For now.
The first order of business, then, was to find the electrical service and wire it with explosives. If the moment came when they wanted darkness, they would want it right by-God now, and detonating cord with a wireless initiator would do the trick.
They found the meter on the black side, in the corner nearest the red side. Gail and Jonathan took defensive positions, their backs to the building, rifles at the ready, while Boxers set the charges.
When the Big Guy was done, he turned and gave a thumbs-up. “Let’s go in,” he said.
The three of them moved in a deep crouch to stay below the level of the windows as they made their way along the back of the house to the door they’d selected as the point of entry.
“How sure are we that there are no alarms?” Boxers asked into the radio.
Venice answered, “I’ve deactivated all the alarms for now. Windows, doors, the whole nine yards. Besides, who keeps the intruder alarm on when people are arriving for a meeting?”
That was good enough for Jonathan. He stooped to his haunches and unslung his ruck. While he and Boxers were cross-trained in everything—except for flying aircraft, which was the Big Guy’s exclusive purview—their job functions broke down roughly along the levels of violence required. Boxers was the breaker of things and the blaster of holes.
Jonathan found the fiber-optic cable he’d been looking for in its designated pocket in his ruck. Just to make sure there wasn’t a crowd of people waiting on the other side of the door, he used the point of his KA-BAR to dimple the weather stripping at the base of the door and threaded the spaghetti-size cable into the space beyond.
Turning his head, he noted that both members of his team were watching him work. “Don’t look at
me
,” he said. “Look out for bad guys.”
“And if we see them?” Gail asked.
“Try not to shoot.”
The cable he threaded under the door contained both a camera and a transmitter, tuned to his PDA. He flipped his NVGs out of the way, cupped his hands around the screen to shield the light wash, and took a tour of the room beyond. It took the better part of a minute for him to fuss with the exposure enough to get a clear picture of the dark space.
“Looks empty to me,” he said. “All I see is a lot of closed doors. There’s light at the far end of the hallway, but I don’t see any people.”
Now for the burglar stuff. Jonathan kept his lock set in a leather pouch about the size of a very thin pack of cigarettes. He thumbed the cover flap out of the way and found the Y-shaped tension bar and the rake, a three-inch steel rod with a serpentine squiggle at the end. He put rotation pressure on the keyway of the dead bolt, and then dragged the rake along the top and the bottom to dislodge the pin tumblers. In short order, all of the pins moved, and the lock turned. It took even less time to pick the knob lock.
The door floated inward.
“Peeping Tom
and
burglar,” Gail whispered with an admiring smile. She adjusted her M4 in its sling. “Let’s go.”
Jonathan put a hand on her chest. “You’re out here for external security,” he said. “We need eyes outside, and Big Guy and I have done this together a lot of times.” He sensed that he’d just hurt her feelings, but he didn’t care. Not now. If there was fallout, they could deal with it later.
She said, “Keep in close contact, okay?”
“Deal,” Jonathan said. He turned to Boxers. “You ready?”
“Oh, my, yes,” he said.
Because of their relative sizes, it always made sense for Jonathan to lead on any entry. He pushed the door open, took two steps inside, and dropped to a deep crouch, his M4 trained on the hallway ahead. The last thing he wanted at this point was a gun battle—that would almost surely cause the Nasbes to be killed. Two seconds later, Boxers was in and the door was pushed closed again.
This was where it got tough. Absent any useful intel, Jonathan and Boxers had become little more than well-armed burglars. They would have to feel their way into this new environment, using the ancient floor plans as a template, but anticipating that everything about them was wrong. They didn’t know where the bad guys were, and, even more critically, they didn’t know where the good guys were—assuming that they were here at all.
Their advantage had been whittled to nothing more than superior marksmanship.
For the better part of a minute, they stayed frozen in the hallway, listening and watching. With buds in both ears—the right one for the radio traffic and the left to monitor any audio feeds they might get—it could be difficult sometimes to pick up distant conversations. You had to adjust to the ambient noise, and then react as much to background anomalies as to actual sounds themselves.
In this case, he heard the people arriving in the front of the house, but their conversations were an indiscernible rumble.
“Can we at least get some cover?” Boxers whispered over the radio. In superquiet environments like this, the radio was the most efficient way to communicate. The mikes they used could pick up the faintest whispers, yet still be decipherable in the middle of a firefight.
“I think we need to split up,” Jonathan whispered.
“And I think one of us just had an aneurism,” Boxers replied, “because I could have sworn that I just heard my boss suggest that we split up. That ain’t happening.”
“We’ve got to. We’ve got to search the house, and we need to find out what’s going on at this meeting. Together we make too big a footprint. Separately, we can stay out of sight easier.”
Boxers made the growling noise that usually meant surrender. “Promise no shooting without me,” he said.
“Not if I can avoid it. You stay on this level with the guests. I’m searching for the basement.”
Boxers didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue. “Shout if you need me, hear?” he said.
Jonathan crossed his heart. “Got it. And no killing people just because you’re bored.”
 
 
The second door on the left led to the basement. Boxers was with him step-for-step until that moment, and then, after they parted with a knuckle knock for luck, Jonathan was on his own.
The stairs were finished with lush carpets, and the walls on either side were decorated with artwork that Jonathan could not have cared less about. He noted with interest what appeared to be drops of blood on the walls. When he touched one, it smeared, and he became even more convinced that he was in the right place.
He descended along the side of the risers for the same reason every teenager who ever returned home after curfew did: the farther you stay from the center of any board, the less likely it is for it to squeak. He chose the left side so that his right hand—his preferred shooting hand—could remain on the grip of his M4.
He moved slowly, taking one step at a time, pausing between each to listen for any noise that might indicate trouble.
Patience was a great asset to soldiers and burglars alike, and perhaps the single most distinguishing trait that separated professionals from amateurs. The slowness was agonizing; the temptation to just get it over with overwhelming.
It took every bit of five minutes for Jonathan to reach the carpeted floor. Now he knew that the floor plans were a waste of paper and electrons. The place was fully furnished down here, complete with a pool table, a bar, and a big-screen television. A man cave. And it was entirely unoccupied.
It also took up only about a quarter of the total footprint of the house, maybe less. That meant that there was more to the place than what he could see.
A vertical seam of light on the far side of the room solved the riddle. As he closed to within a few feet, he clearly saw the outline of a double door in the wall. Lowering himself to his knees, he once again used fiber optics to peer into his future.
The image on his PDA showed a brightly lit area of utilitarian construction. An unremarkable off-white hallway rose from an unremarkable tile floor. Distances were difficult to judge, but every ten feet or so, the walls gave way to closed doors. He’d seen this sort of unimaginative décor in countless office spaces throughout the world.
The good news was that he didn’t see any people in the camera’s field of view. But
someone
had left the lights on.
Hoping to find the means to open the door, he used the flat of his palms and rubbed the door from knee to shoulder height. Sooner or later he’d find a knob. When he couldn’t find it after a minute or so, he flipped his NVGs out of the way and opted to use the muzzle light from his M4. Within seconds, the bright white disk of light revealed not a knob but a D-ring that had been recessed into the wall. If there was an alarm system, he couldn’t see it.
Didn’t mean it wasn’t there, though. He winced in anticipation as he turned the ring. While Venice could easily disable even a sophisticated system from sounding the alarm at the off-site headquarters, she was powerless to silence local alarms that were tied directly to the sensors.
Holding his breath, he pressed the door open, and . . .
Nothing. The mission gremlins remained on his side. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him. He pressed his transmit button and whispered, “Radio check.” He would have been inaudible to someone standing two feet away.
Venice answered, “A little crinkly, but I’ve got you.”
“I’m in the basement.”
“Copy. Take care of yourself.”
The first order of business was to establish a forward operating base for himself here in the bowels of enemy headquarters. If the conversations they’d monitored were still operative, he had more than an hour to kill before anything interesting happened, and standing in the middle of the hallway for that amount of time was a nonstarter.
He decided to start in one of the offices. First, though, he owed his team some intel. “Mother Hen, Scorpion,” he said.

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