Kodiak Sky

CHAPTER 31

“Go to the other side of the truck,” Troy ordered angrily as he pressed the barrel of the gun hard to Griffin’s head. “I mean it, Jack, go.”

“Don’t do this, Troy.”

“Go!”

“Troy, I—”

“Don’t make me think you don’t want to do everything in your power to find Little Jack and Karen.”

“You know I do.”

“Then get away if you don’t want to see this.”

The man on the other side of the truck was whining pathetically now, terrified by what he’d heard. But Wayne Griffin remained defiant even as Troy slipped his finger behind the trigger.

Maybe Griffin wanted to die, Jack figured. Maybe he’d had enough of this life, and he was glad to have it over. Maybe that was how he could stay so indifferent about his fate.

“Go!” Troy yelled. “Now!”

Jack bowed his head as he moved around the front of the pickup. There was no way to stop Troy at this point, and he didn’t want to see the bullet blast Griffin’s skull apart.

He glanced down at the man on the ground as he came around the truck, grimacing as he anticipated the gunshot. The man was terrified, Jack thought to himself. And why wouldn’t he be? He figured he was next.

Even though Jack knew it was coming, the sound of the shot jolted him, causing his body to jerk violently.

The man on the ground began to scream hysterically.

Troy hustled around the front of the truck, knelt beside the man at Jack’s feet, and pressed the gun to his head. “Who’s your contact?” he demanded.

“Jennifer Perez,” he answered immediately through his tears, terror shaking his voice. “Jennie Perez,” he repeated. “That’s all I know. I swear to God. Please don’t kill me.”

Never act on emotion, only facts.

Trust few, suspect many — even the ones you trust.

Never be tempted by anything.

And the best revenge is living well.

These were Liam Sterling’s life rules — the first of which he’d nearly violated in Peru with Sophia. Fortunately, he’d come to his senses after coming to his orgasm.

He’d never had to worry about the last one. Living well, it seemed, had never been a problem. It was he who was always the object of revenge, though no one had caught up to him yet.

What worried him more at this point: His contacts in the financial world were still unable to identify the sender of the money wire to the brother of the truck driver who’d killed Chief Justice Bolger. So far, they’d failed to unearth that crucial piece of data, which could have major implications for Operation Anarchy. It was a piece of data that might cause him to call off the mission, depending upon who the sender was.

Bolger’s death seemed too coincidental to Sterling. Authorities were still calling it an accident, and the truck driver seemed sincerely overcome by grief in all interviews, on suicide watch, according to some. But Sterling’s gut was telling him that not all was right with the scenario. Perhaps not all the authorities were being honorable in their intent with respect to the issue.

Still, he was moving forward with the mission. The three-hundred-million-dollar payday was simply too tempting.

And that was what bothered him most of all. It was a clear violation of Rule 3.

Operation Anarchy was less than seventy-two hours away. He’d made that decision fifteen minutes ago and communicated it in code to everyone.

Maybe when it was done and he had all that money in the bank, he’d worry less about his life rules.

Jack stared at Troy as the man lying on the ground continued to beg for his life. He wondered if it was remotely possible that he’d correctly heard the name the man had just uttered. Jennie Perez?

When Jack heard that Jennie hadn’t been willing to help Cheryl with the trip into Greenwich, it had raised a tiny red flag, but that was all. Even now that the man on the ground had uttered her name, he still couldn’t believe it was possible.

“What did you say?” Troy asked in a hollow whisper.

Jack heard the shock in Troy’s voice — and the sadness.

“Jennie Perez,” the man repeated. “She lives in the city, in Manhattan somewhere. I don’t know where,” he added quickly. “I don’t even know what kind of car she drives. We always met her in a strip mall out here in Connecticut. Maybe Jennie Perez isn’t even her real name.”

“You ever talk to her on the phone?” Jack asked. “To set up the meeting place.”

“Yeah. My phone’s on the dash in the truck. It’s a 202 area code. I never gave her a contact name,” he said as Jack opened the pickup’s passenger door and grabbed the phone off the dashboard. “She’s the one who arranged for that deposit you were asking Wayne about a minute ago, too. Please don’t kill me. I swear to God I’ll do anything you want if you’ll just—”

“Shut up,” Troy ordered as Jack tossed him the phone and he scrolled through the recent calls. “That’s her number,” he said dejectedly when he spotted the familiar digits.

“What the hell?” Jack muttered. “Why would she do that?”

“What’s going on?” the man asked, picking up on Jack and Troy’s shock.

“Nothing,” Troy snapped. “Jack, get my truck while I take care of these guys.”

“Don’t kill him.”

“I’m not killing anyone. I haven’t killed anyone. At least not today,” Troy added.

“What are you talking about? You just shot—”

“I put a bullet in the ground beside Griffin,” Troy explained, “then I knocked him out. He’s got a nasty gash in the side of his head, like the one you gave this guy. But he’s fine. The gunshot was for this guy,” Troy said, nodding at the man on the ground. “Got him talking pretty fast, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, it did,” Jack agreed, relief spreading through his body.

“Where’s the money?” Troy demanded, pointing at the man on the ground.

“What money?” he asked defiantly.

The guy was suddenly pissed, Jack realized. Pissed that he’d been fooled so badly and probably ashamed of how terrified he’d been.

Troy aimed his gun down at the man’s chest. “Where’s the money?” he asked again.

For a few moments the man remained defiant, even sticking his chin out a little. But then his attitude faded. He wasn’t up for taking chances like Griffin had.

“That’s where we were before we came back here, getting the money. We hid it off-site. Wayne was worried that the people pulling the strings might try to get it back. So he didn’t want it here.”

Troy nodded approvingly. “He was smarter than I thought.”

“He was worried the people who gave it to us might try to kill us, too, to cover their tracks. He told Charlie to be real careful while we were gone.” The man nodded at the truck. “It’s in the back.”

Troy gestured at Jack. “Go look.”

Jack hustled to the back of the pickup, pulled the tailgate down, and hopped up into the bay. A large metal toolbox extended from side to side just behind the cab, and he unclasped the latch and pulled the top up. The box was filled with hundred-dollar bills.

“Jackpot,” he muttered. “What are we going to do with all this?”

“Come on, Drexel,” John Ward called softly to the big golden retriever as he climbed out of his jeep and into the darkness of the overcast night. “Come on down, boy.”

The dog barked softly as it jumped from the back of the jeep onto the driver’s seat and then to the ground.

Ward knelt down and smiled as the dog nuzzled him with its soft, wet nose. “I’m going to miss you, boy.”

Ward was heading for Dutch Harbor, Alaska, in a few hours to meet up with the crew of a crab boat that would take him to a submarine waiting for him in the middle of the Bering Sea. He and a Red Cell Seven subordinate were going into North Korea to pick up data from a friend in-country about progress the Koreans were making on developing nuclear weapons. Then they were planning to assassinate two of the nation’s top nuclear scientists before stealing a fishing vessel and, hopefully, meeting another American sub in the Sea of Japan, which would drop them back off to that same crab boat in the Bering Sea ten days from now. It would be Ward’s fifty-seventh covert mission into some piece of communist-controlled Asia.

“Some kind of a life I’ve chosen, huh, boy?” he mumbled to the dog as it continued to nuzzle him. “Not much I can do about it now, though, is there? I’m just glad Bill Jensen showed me the Order. I was getting a little worried about—”

The bullet smashed into Ward’s head just above the left ear, and he tumbled over without even a moan, dead.

Through the night-vision scope Skylar watched the golden retriever sniff John Ward’s dead body. They were beautiful dogs, but they weren’t the smartest. Still, she loved them, and she was glad she hadn’t hit the animal. She’d aimed carefully and waited for the animal to clear so she wouldn’t.

She lowered the rifle as she emerged from the tree line and jogged toward Ward’s body. These men had killed her sister, and the revenge had just begun.

She hadn’t even considered confronting Ward and interrogating him. She knew better. No matter what she did to him, he wouldn’t break. And prolonging his death would only give him a chance to turn the tables on her.

It hadn’t taken Skylar long to assemble Kodiak Four’s core team, and several more Red Cell Seven agents would die tonight after the missions were successful. K-4, as she’d nicknamed Kodiak Four, would need more warm bodies if they were going to take out all of the more than two hundred RC7 agents quickly. But recruits wouldn’t be hard to find. Men always wanted to work for the president of the United States.

Word would get out quickly that a war was on. And then things would get hot very fast. After that, eliminating names from the list Stewart Baxter had given her at Camp David wouldn’t be anywhere near as straightforward. RC7 would dive for cover, and then it would become a much more deliberate process. Still, she’d win in the end. And then she’d get to see her father.

It still shocked her that he was alive — if he really was. And therein lay the dilemma. She still hadn’t decided if she could trust the president.

As Drexel nuzzled her neck, she knelt down and went through Ward’s pockets. Her eyes narrowed as she pulled the paper from his shirt, unfolded it, and stared at what was written there in the light from a tiny flashlight.

She shook her head in disbelief. John Ward had been careless. Out of nowhere, a huge opportunity had just fallen into her lap.

And she would take full advantage.

“I don’t get it,” Jack said, glancing into the SUV’s rearview mirror. The headlights behind him were from Wayne Griffin’s F-150. Troy was driving, and they’d been talking on the phone since leaving the farm a few minutes ago. “Why would Jennie do this? It makes no sense. She’s a good person.”

“I can’t believe it, either.”

They’d taken Wayne and the other guy to a second-floor bedroom of the farmhouse and secured them tightly together in a closet — they weren’t going anywhere. They’d come back for them later — or send someone. Right now finding Karen and Little Jack was the priority.

“I guess,” Troy added softly.

“What does that mean?” Jack demanded.

“I’ll tell you later.”

So Troy had suspicions, too. That was interesting.

“She must know something about Karen being taken, too,” Jack pointed out as they drove. “That’s where Karen was headed when I put her in the cab at JFK. She was going to see Jennie. If Jennie’s involved in L.J.’s kidnapping, she must be involved in Karen’s as well.”

“Yes.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let Karen go into the city by herself.”

“It’s not your fault, Jack,” Troy said firmly. “I needed you, and you came right away. You cannot feel guilty for leaving Karen by herself. There’s no way either of us could ever have predicted Jennie turning on us.”

It was horrible for Jack to know that Jennie was involved, but at least they had a solid lead to go on now. And Troy seemed very confident that they’d be able to track Jennie down quickly even if she was nowhere near her apartment in Manhattan, though he hadn’t explained why or how.

“It’s coming up on the right,” Troy said loudly. “There it is. Pull in and park in the lot as soon as you turn in. I’ll pick you up.”

Jack did as ordered, then hopped into the passenger side of Griffin’s F-150. A few moments later they skidded to a stop in front of a shelter for homeless children.

“May I help you?” an elderly, gray-haired woman asked as she came through the front door.

“We’re here to make a donation,” Jack answered as he hopped to the ground, then headed to the back of the pickup and climbed into the bay with Troy.

Together they lugged the toolbox to the back of the bay, and then lowered it to the ground after they’d jumped back down to the pavement.

“What kind of donation is this?” the woman asked suspiciously as she moved hesitantly toward the box while Troy lifted the top.

“Take a look.”

For several moments the woman peered down at the pile of cash, unable to comprehend. Finally, she put her hands to her mouth. “How much is in there?”

“Almost two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Oh, my God,” she gasped.

“You can have the truck, too,” Troy said as he reached out and pulled Jack’s arm. “Come on, let’s go.”

“Why’d we park all the way out here?” Jack asked as they sprinted across the parking lot toward the SUV. Behind them the woman was shouting her appreciation.

“So our donation was perfect. So it was anonymous. So that woman can’t get the license tag of this vehicle and call the cops in case she gets to wondering how we came into all that cash. We don’t have time for anything like that right now.”

Jack nodded to himself as he hopped in the SUV and they peeled off. Troy was always thinking.