War Hawk: A Tucker Wayne Novel (7 page)

He hurried inside, chalking up his first felony on this mission.

Breaking and entering
.

He scanned the garage and found the usual contents: gardening and lawn equipment, a workbench, a few ladders hanging on the back wall.

But no car.

He crossed to the door leading into the house. He checked the knob. Locked. But he also knew Sandy’s habits. He reached up and ran his fingers along the top of the molding.

Bingo
.

He plucked the key, inserted it into the lock, and stepped through into the kitchen. After the humidity of the outside, the air conditioning felt refreshing, cooling the sweat on his skin. He held a hand up to one of the air vents. If Sandy had left the air conditioning running before she had disappeared, it seemed to imply she had intended to return here.

Worry iced through him.

He stood still and listened to the house, but all he heard were the telltale creaks of an empty house. He glanced down to Kane, who must have sensed his attention. The shepherd’s ears were high, his muscles tense under his Kevlar vest. But his partner gave no indication that he detected anything out of the ordinary here.

Tucker touched his side. “Stay with me,” he whispered as he began his search of the premises.

He made a quick survey of the house to get the layout. Sandy’s taste in decor was southern cozy: deep-cushioned chairs, hand-scraped oak floor, maple cabinets. Yet, as homey as it all appeared, it all had a
staged
look. Nothing stood out of place. It felt unlived in, as if Sandy spent most of her time at work.

He looked for any evidence that someone had conducted a search before his arrival, but on his first pass, he found no sign of any trespassing beyond his own.

He ended up in an upstairs study dominated by a dark oak desk, which was flanked by tall bookshelves. He glanced through the titles, a mix of popular fiction and rows upon rows of books on computer languages, engineering, and programming.

Recognizing her interest, he stepped to her computer monitor. He followed a cord over the lip of the deck to a rectangular imprint on the carpet. It seemed the computer tower itself was missing. But did Sandy abscond with it or had someone taken it after she had vanished?

He searched the desk drawers, but found nothing unusual: bills, appliance warranties, letters, pay stubs, car payment vouchers, canceled checks, bank statements, and so on. They were all organized in labeled hanging file folders.

Hmm . . .

For someone so invested in computers, her recordkeeping was more old school. She seemed to prefer hard copies of everything.

A whine drew his attention to Kane. The shepherd stood by the lone window of the study. It offered a view overlooking the front lawn.

Tucker watched a black Chevy Suburban finish a turn into the driveway and glide toward the front door. Its headlights were off.

5

October 12, 10:04
P
.
M
. CDT

Huntsville, Alabama

Tucker zoomed in on the license plate and memorized the number. This timely arrival couldn’t be a coincidence. He didn’t know who the newcomers were, but they weren’t the police.

Must’ve triggered a hidden alarm
.

Ducking away, he retraced his steps to the garage. Just as he reached it, the front door slammed shut inside the empty house. Tucker hurried to the back door of the garage, cracked it open, and searched the rear yard.
All clear
. He motioned for Kane to stick to his legs and slid out. Pressing to the brick wall, he sidestepped toward the front of the house. As he neared the corner, he heard something: the faint swish of a foot passing through the grass behind him.

Shielding Kane with his body, Tucker whispered to his partner, while reinforcing the command with a firm hand signal. “C
OVER
RIGHT
. C
LOSE
HIDE
.”

The shepherd tensed, then bolted into the trees, vanishing immediately.

A harsh voice called out, “Stop right there!”

Tucker half turned, raising his arms, as a dark figure closed toward him. He whispered into his headset, “C
IRCLE
REAR
. Q
UIET
ATTACK
BRAVO
.” Then he yanked the headset down around his neck and called loudly in an affable southern voice. “Hey, there, buddy, I was just looking for Sandy. I’m Fred Jenkins. Neighbor across the street. Me and Libby take care of things for Sandy when she’s out of town. Left me her key.”

He held up the key, while noting the darker shadow of a gun clutched in the man’s right hand. Tucker kept a nervous smile on his face.

Nothing to see here, buddy . . . just a friendly neighbor . . .

“Hadn’t seen Sandy for a while,” Tucker continued. “Thought maybe she forgot to tell us that she was leaving for a spell. Then I saw that her lawn was turning yellow. What with all the heat of late, I wasn’t sure her sprinklers were coming on, so I came back here to check the timer box.” He pointed toward the back door to the garage. “But it looks like—”

“Keep your hands up,” the man ordered as he stepped closer and lifted his arm higher, revealing his weapon: a semiautomatic pistol affixed with a barrel-shaped noise suppressor.

Not good
.

“Sure, no problem,” Tucker mumbled. “Didn’t mean to—”

A twig snapped behind the gunman—an unusual misstep for Kane. The man began to turn as the shepherd sprinted out of the trees and leapt headlong at the gunman. He blindsided his target like an NFL linebacker. With an
umph
, the man went down hard, his head striking the edge of a stone planter bed. His finger, already on the trigger, jerked reflexively and fired off a round with a cough of the suppressor.

Tucker charged forward as the round buzzed past his ear. He kept moving, but the man had gone limp on the ground. Tucker slid on a knee in the grass next to the body as Kane retreated to the far side.

Tucker snatched the gun, a Beretta M9, and checked for the assailant’s pulse, when a new voice barked harshly behind him.

“Freeze!”

Tucker grimaced.

Of course, there was more than one guy
.

He hissed to Kane, who remained shadowed by Tucker. “C
LOSE
HIDE
.”

As Kane slunk around and ghosted across the lawn into the nearby bushes, Tucker yelled over his shoulder. “Okay, okay! No problem!”

“Don’t turn around!”

Tucker had to act fast. Men with noise-suppressed weapons tended to shoot first and skip questions altogether. Probably the only reason Tucker hadn’t been shot in the back already was due to the proximity of the man’s partner.

Over his shoulder, Tucker said, “Your friend is hurt over here! We better get him—”

Without turning, he brought the Beretta up across his body and fired twice under his armpit. Even as the second round left the barrel, Tucker was spinning on his knees and dropping to his belly. He kept his pistol extended toward the gunman. Unsurprisingly, both of Tucker’s shots had missed their target, but they had served their purpose. The assailant rolled himself around the corner of the house and vanished.

This guy’s trained . . . seasoned . . .

Tucker sprinted to the front corner of the house, leading with his pistol, and peeked around. A bullet shattered into the stucco near his cheek. Tucker dropped to his belly, then peeked around the edge again. The man had reached his Suburban and taken refuge behind the open backseat door.

Why the backseat? Why isn’t he—

The answer occurred as the man lifted a long gun into view. Tucker recognized the weapon: an M4 carbine, noise suppressed and equipped with holographic sights.

Before the gunman could get into position, Tucker squeezed off four quick shots into the Suburban’s open door, shattering the window and pinging rounds loudly off the metal frame. His target backpedaled while returning fire in Tucker’s direction, then disappeared around the Suburban’s rear bumper.

Knowing the man intended to outflank him, Tucker didn’t wait around. He gained his feet and retreated toward the neighboring tree line, firing as he went, careful not to empty his weapon. Ducking into the foliage, he broke contact and sprinted through the trees into a neighbor’s yard. After fifty feet, he stopped behind a tree trunk and went still.

No gunfire. No footfalls in pursuit.

He waited a full minute.

From the direction of Sandy’s home, an engine started, followed moments later by the hiss of tires on asphalt. His opponent’s discipline must have kicked in. No matter who won, a firefight in a suburban neighborhood was a bad idea, so instead of hunting Tucker down, the man had likely collected his partner and fled.

Tucker let out the breath he’d been holding, then reseated his headset and whispered to Kane. “R
ETURN
HOME
.”

10:24
P
.
M
.

Ten minutes later—after making sure the Suburban had truly left—Tucker found himself back in Sandy’s kitchen with Kane at his side. It was the last place in the house he had failed to search. As he checked every drawer and cabinet, Tucker felt the tension of each passing second building into a knot in his neck. The unknown assailant could return with reinforcements at any time . . . or the gunman could simply force Tucker away by alerting local law enforcement with an anonymous tip of a suspicious person at Sandy’s address.

Either way, he had to move quickly, but so far he had found nothing.

Tucker leaned against the counter and pondered. His gaze settled on a key rack by the kitchen door that led into the garage. He had stepped right past it earlier.

Stupid . . .

He needed some sleep.

Crossing over, he found another example of Sandy’s usual meticulous nature. Each key was carefully labeled: backdoor, patio, Mom’s house. Standard household stuff. But the last hook—this one unlabeled—held a padlock key. On it was a yellow sticker with the number 256, and beneath it in smaller letters 4987.

Tucker recognized the type of key from his military days, when he shifted posts regularly.

“Self-storage,” he murmured.

If he was right, the four-digit pass code would unlock the entry gate, and the unit itself was marked by a three-digit address.

But which storage place?

Huntsville was a military town, which meant there had to be at least a dozen within range of the Redstone complex.

Suspecting where he might find a clue, he returned to Sandy’s study and reopened the file drawer that held Sandy’s bill folder. He sifted through the bills but found nothing from a self-storage company. He moved on to her canceled checks; there were hundreds, going back to 2011. Tucker started there and worked forward. The earlier checks showed Sandy’s address in Washington DC, before she moved back to Huntsville. Tucker flipped through the succeeding months and years, sifting through her life, until he came to Sandy’s move to Alabama. Again he found what he expected: a payment to a moving company, followed by standard household expenses: telephone, water, cable.

Nothing significant.

What am I missing?

He closed his eyes and remembered Jane had mentioned that Sandy had become withdrawn about six months ago. Maybe that period deserved a closer look. Tucker flipped back through the checks to eight months prior, then moved forward more slowly, this time looking for anything that might coincide with Sandy’s change in behavior.

At the five-month mark, Tucker found a lone check made out to Edith Lozier in the amount of $360. The memo line read
Loan repayment. Thanks, Edith!!!

“Why would Sandy need a loan?” Tucker mumbled. He had seen Sandy’s bank statements. She certainly didn’t need to take out a loan, especially for such a small amount.

So why this check?

Tucker got out his satellite phone and did a local search for Edith Lozier. He got a hit in the neighboring town of Gurley, south of Huntsville. He plugged the address into the phone’s Google Earth app. It appeared Edith Lozier lived off a highway in an industrial section of Gurley. Her home was within a fenced-off area containing a dozen Quonset-like buildings.

A storage facility.

The woman was most likely the business’s live-in manager or owner.

Tucker smiled.

Gotcha
.

11:48
P
.
M
.

Shortly before midnight, Tucker slowed his SUV as it passed a sign that read G
ARNET
S
ELF
-S
TORAGE
. The town of Gurley lay about twelve miles south of Huntsville, home to some eight hundred people, small enough for everyone to know everybody’s business. Tucker had passed several other storage places on his thirty-minute drive here; one was practically around the corner from Sandy’s home.

So why choose this place?

He glanced to the neighboring two-story building that matched the address of Edith Lozier. The windows were dark at this late hour. Who was this woman to Sandy? Clearly she was enough of a friend to accept a check written to her rather than to the business. He wondered what else Edith might know, but to go knocking on a stranger’s door in the middle of the night might not warrant the warmest of welcomes.

Instead, Tucker patted Kane’s flank as the shepherd rested his muzzle on the sill of the passenger window. “Let’s first see what Sandy hid out here in the middle of nowhere.”

Kane thumped his tail in agreement.

Tucker edged his vehicle up to the rolling gate of the facility and reached out to the pole-mounted keypad. He punched in the four-digit code found on Sandy’s padlock key, and the gate clattered open. Tucker let out a long breath of relief and slowly idled his truck through the nest of Quonset huts, following signs to Unit 256.