Act of Terror

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Fargo slouched in the passenger seat of a green Jeep Cherokee a block up the street from Thibodaux’s house. Bundy sat behind the steering wheel, sipping on a Red Bull and gritting his teeth. They’d lost the suits for khaki slacks and black T-shirts. Bundy’s ugly brown tattoo of a scorpion was now completely visible and appeared to scuttle every time he flexed the tendons on his thick neck.

Fargo found it obvious the man didn’t like him. He hardly spoke unless spoken to and carried out orders with open disdain. The lieutenant colonel assumed it was because he hadn’t actually been to interrogation training himself. He’d heard Echoes were a closed society. Still, they had a job to do and he intended to see it was done correctly. Responsibility could not be delegated, he told himself. And capturing Jericho Quinn was his responsibility.

He pushed from his mind the fact that no one would have been looking for Quinn had he not pressed his uncle to have his name added to Congressman Drake’s list.

“He can’t just have vanished,” he said out loud, hoping to start a conversation with Bundy.

The first sergeant turned to look at him in the darkness of the Jeep but said nothing.

“Did you make the lookouts cover all uniformed branches?” Fargo tried to look stern, like an officer inspecting his troops, but he was pretty sure he just looked dyspeptic. Bundy had a way of tilting his head, just so, that made Fargo cringe.

“All of them,” Bundy whispered, sounding like a bald version of Clint Eastwood. “Including the Girl Scouts.”

“Have you…”

Three black sedans screeched down the street to park in front of Thibodaux’s house. Two men in suits jumped from each vehicle. Four of them, armed with long guns, set up a perimeter around the house while two went to the door.

Fargo threw his binoculars to his eyes and watched as a moment later the men led a teenage girl and six pajama-clad boys out into the waiting sedans. He recognized protective custody when he saw it.

Something inside him felt like it broke and drained away. “Thibodaux knows,” Fargo moaned, swallowing a mouthful of bile. “She told him.”

“Of course she did, sir.” Bundy smirked. “What did you think would happen? This is what we want-shake things up, stir the shit. See what they do.”

“Oh,” Fargo heard himself say. “If Gunny Thibodaux gets his hands on us, I know exactly what he’ll do.”