Kodiak Sky

CHAPTER 34

“Seven miles out,” Jack called as he followed the map moving across his phone’s small screen.

Troy was driving, and he’d told Jack to count out every mile after they’d turned off the Jersey Turnpike at Exit 9 fifteen minutes ago. Getting off at Exit 8A would have been a more direct route to the small town of Creighton, which was eleven miles east of the turnpike in the central part of the state, an hour south of New York City. But Troy had wanted nothing to do with predictable as they approached the hostage exchange location, which was a cemetery on the west side of the little town of fewer than three thousand residents.

Neither of them was familiar with Creighton, so they were flying blind. Despite not knowing the area, Troy was determined to keep surprise on their side. Troy coveted surprise and stealth, Jack knew. He had ever since they were kids tracking wildlife on the Jensens’ vast property. He loved seeing how close he could get to a deer or rabbit before they raced off. Then he’d chase to see how long it took the animals to lose him.

More than once Jack had hiked home alone after Troy disappeared into the forest in pursuit of something. Jack always tried to keep up for a while, but inevitably, he was never able to. And it wasn’t like he was slow. He was the fastest kid in his class — but the slow kid at home.

“Give it to me every half mile now,” Troy ordered as they sped along a one-lane road that twisted and turned through the dark, heavily wooded area. “When we get to four miles out, I want to stop and figure out a back way into that cemetery,” he said as he swerved to avoid a deer darting across the road in front of them. “See if you can find anything on the map, okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Jack winced as he shifted in the passenger seat. The bullet had only grazed his side, and the bleeding had stopped hours ago. But the wound still hurt like hell.

“Jesus,” he muttered as the horrifying scene came rushing back to him for the umpteenth time since they’d left Brooklyn.

“What’s wrong?” Troy asked.

“A little sore from that bullet,” he answered, dodging the truth. He wanted to talk about what had happened, but he knew Troy didn’t.

“You’ll be all right. We’ll clean it out when we get home, when we’ve got Little Jack and Karen.”

They’d barely spoken during the drive south from the city.

“Six-point-five,” he called out as he glanced over at Troy. “Hey, are you—”

“I’m fine,” Troy interrupted in a steely voice. “I don’t want to talk about it. We’re gonna get L.J. and Karen, and then we’re gonna go home. Leave me alone about the other stuff, okay?”

When Jack called out “four miles,” Troy pulled off into a driveway entrance to check the map on his phone. It was a few minutes after two-thirty in the morning, so they still had almost half an hour to make it to the exchange location.

“What was that text you got earlier?” Jack asked. “Right before I got the one about Karen’s ransom.”

Troy hesitated. “I can’t tell you what it—”

“Don’t give me that,” Jack shot back. “Even if it’s RC7-related, you can’t be holding out on me at this point.”

Troy scrolled through the map on his phone for a few more seconds. “All right, I got a ‘go deep’ message.”

“Explain.”

“It means dive into any hole you can find as fast as you can, because RC7 agents are under attack. It means take all necessary precautions and trust no one. It’s a code we worked out a long time ago. It means something very big and very bad is going down.”

Jack glanced around the area. Christ, one more thing. “What is it?”

Troy shrugged. “Message didn’t say. They never do, for security reasons. But I bet it’s wrapped up with L.J. and Karen being kidnapped on the same day. And I bet it’s related to someone telling Jennie where I was last month. I think it could actually involve Dad.”

“Seriously? You really think he’s still alive?”

“I didn’t say that. I said it involved him. What I should have said was that it could involve Red Cell Seven.” Troy hesitated. “Like I said before, we make certain we aren’t being followed when we leave for missions, and while we’re on the way to the destination. We check constantly for any signs that something’s up, and I didn’t notice anything the whole time I was on my way to Spain or while I was there.”

“So what exactly are you getting at?”

“I don’t think anyone followed me to Europe. I think whoever told Jennie where I was didn’t have to follow me because they already knew where I was going.” Troy hesitated. “And the fact that she knew enough to accuse me of killing Lisa Martinez is another red flag.”

“Are you saying it’s an inside—”

“I think we’ll know a lot more in thirty minutes,” Troy answered, nodding ahead of them into the darkness as he put the SUV back in gear.

“If we’re still alive in thirty minutes,” Jack muttered under his breath.

“There’s been a development.”

“What are you talking about?” Sterling asked as he spoke on his cell phone.

“The plane’s been delayed.”

“I know that, but it’s almost ready. They’re installing the new part as we speak. I just got a text. They should be wheels-up in ten minutes. Then it’s a fifteen-minute flight from Philadelphia, if that. Then you’re done. Then your part is over, and you get all your money.”

“I want more,” Kyle said firmly. “We weren’t supposed to have them for this long.”

“Too bad.”

“The little kid’s been whining for hours, and the woman’s awake again. The sedative’s worn off. She’s a fucking pain in the ass.”

“Deal with it. Stuff a rag down her throat.”

“I did, way down.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“I just told you. I want more money.”

Sterling had been waiting for this. Jennie Perez had warned him that Kyle might be a loose cannon. “Get them to the plane. Then we’ll talk.”

“Bullshit. Then I’ve got no bargaining power. Then I’ve—”

“What’s going on?” Sterling asked loudly as Kyle interrupted himself to talk to someone else at the other end who sounded aggravated.

“I’ve gotta call you back,” Kyle muttered. “Remember, I want more money.”

“Kyle! Kyle! Damn it,” Sterling hissed as the line went dead.

He gazed into the darkness of his room at the inn as he considered what he’d just heard. Zero hour for Operation Anarchy might have to be moved up. And so what if the payday ended up at only two hundred and fifty million? So damn what. It was still an immense amount of money.

A single, narrow street wound its way from the main road through a dense oak and elm forest to the Glen Haven Memorial Park, and Troy wanted no part of it. One way in and one way out through woods like that made them too vulnerable, he claimed. Obvious and without cover, they could be picked off easily or trapped.

So they’d run to the cemetery through the trees and the darkness from a secluded spot a mile-and-a-half away, where they’d parked the SUV.

As long as Jack had known Troy, he still marveled at his younger brother’s endurance as they closed in on the cemetery. They’d both been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and it had already been a hell of a day. But Troy wasn’t missing a beat. His mind and body were still working at peak efficiency, even though he’d taken a bullet, too. He was barely breathing hard, and his strides looked smooth and effortless.

Jack was operating on pure adrenaline, but he could feel exhaustion creeping up on him. Fatigue hadn’t made a dent in Troy, not even a ding.

Jack marveled at Troy’s sense of direction, too. The stone wall they were approaching had to be the cemetery’s perimeter. He’d led them straight here from the SUV without checking his bearings once. Granted, the moon was casting a decent light down through the leaves, but still. The trees in this forest were densely packed. Doing what Troy had just done in the daylight would have been extraordinary. Doing it at night was off the hook.

Troy had that bloodhound gift. He could smell his target from miles away even when that target was emitting no scent.

Jack leaned over beside a tree and put his hands on his knees to catch his breath when Troy reached out to stop him. They were still thirty feet from the cemetery wall.

“Stay here,” Troy whispered. “I’ll be right back.”

Jack took a few more deep but quiet breaths, then pulled the pistol from his belt and glanced around through the shadows. It was eerily quiet out here. There wasn’t a wisp of a breeze or a call from the wild — mammal, bird, or insect.

“Come up,” Troy called quietly.

Jack cringed as he moved. His footsteps on last year’s dead, dry leaves seemed so loud. “See anything?” he asked as he reached Troy, who was hunched down behind the three-foot wall.

“There’s a van in the parking lot.” Troy gestured across the cemetery, which was half the size of a football field. “It’s the only vehicle over there. See it?”

As Jack rose up slightly and squinted, he spotted the top of the vehicle through the night. “Barely, but I don’t see anyone around it.”

“Maybe someone’s behind it. I doubt L.J. or Karen are in it. It could just be a decoy. Still, that’s where they told Jennie to have us meet them.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Split up,” Troy answered, dropping a medium-sized canvas bag on the ground.

They’d bought it at a Walmart on the way there. Inside it were several reams of paper. It had to at least look like they were carrying cash.

“I go first. I’m gonna cut through the tombstones, so they can see me if they’re watching. I’m gonna try and make them think I’m the only game in town. When I get halfway across, you start moving around the outside of the wall. I don’t know how much Jennie told them about us before tonight. But on the call I listened to, she only mentioned one of us, like I told her to.” He pointed right. “Go that way around the wall so I’ll know about where you are. Keep your gun in your right hand and your phone in your left.” Troy gestured down at Jack’s pocket. “Put it on vibrate only.”

“It already is,” Jack said, pulling the device out.

“All right, go all the way around to the opposite wall, the one that parallels this one. Wait for me there to text or call before you do anything.”

“Maybe we should call the cops, Troy.”

“No.”

“Troy—”

“No.”

“You can’t put Red Cell Seven ahead of Karen and L.J.”

“I would never do that.”

Jack wasn’t so sure. “Well, then—”

“Are we clear?” Troy asked.

“Yeah, we’re clear all right.”

Whether or not he called 911 would be a second-to-second decision. He was going to trust himself on that one and no one else, including Troy. If a shootout exploded, they might need help.

Troy tapped Jack’s pistol. “You ready to shoot that thing?”

“Hey, don’t—”

“I’m serious,” Troy cut in, grabbing Jack by the chin and pulling it so they were staring straight into each other’s eyes. “Are you ready this time?”

Jack glared back at Troy. “I’m ready.”

Troy nodded and gave Jack a firm pat on the shoulder. “Remember, start moving when I’m halfway across the cemetery. Keep low behind the wall, and keep checking your phone.”

And then Troy was gone, up and over the wall and moving in among the tombstones toward the far side of the cemetery, carrying the heavy canvas bag.

Eyes just above the top of the wall, Jack waited until Troy’s shadow was halfway across. Then he took off, hunched down so he wouldn’t be exposed above the wall, and keeping his eyes peeled for any sign of trouble ahead.

When he reached the first corner, he hesitated and rose up. But Troy had disappeared into the darkness. The moon had slipped behind a cloudbank.

Thirty seconds later he reached the next corner, and he peered around it cautiously. Still no one around the van he could see, and no sound of a motor idling. Still no call or message from Troy, either.

Finally, his phone vibrated, and he pulled up the new text immediately. Troy had made it to the far wall and was ready to jump over and approach the van. Jack was to go over the wall now so that he was inside the cemetery, then move along the wall until they saw each other, where he was to hold until Troy went over. Then he was to rise up as well and cover Troy as Troy headed for the van, which was in the parking lot about thirty feet outside the cemetery.

Jack pinged back a quick “ok,” slipped the phone into his pocket, then climbed the wall and eased down into the cemetery.

Now he was inside the wall closest to the van. Hunched down, he ran thirty yards, past a row of tombstones, until he spotted Troy, who was also crouched down against the inside of the wall. There, he stopped and gestured.

Troy gestured back, then pointed at the wall and motioned, indicating that he was going over it and toward the van. And that Jack should cover him.

As Troy rose up and scaled the wall, Jack stood up, too, and aimed the Glock at the van. There was still no one around it that he could see.

Troy dropped the canvas bag at the edge of the parking lot, and then moved cautiously toward the van, which was another twenty feet ahead of him.

“Careful,” Jack whispered to himself. His heart was beating so hard, the same way it had as they’d sprinted down that slope for the back of the pickup at the Griffin farm, and in the seconds before Wayne and the other guy had raced back out of the house. “Careful, brother.”

“A million dollars,” Kyle said quietly but firmly into his phone as he stood beside Ray’s Explorer in the middle of the forest. “And I want that million wired to the same account I had you use before, and I want it wired immediately.”

Kyle and Ray had parked on an old logging road that wound its way through the woods outside Creighton, the town where he and Ray had grown up together. As kids, they’d played war in this forest with the rest of the gang, using BB guns for weapons. Anyone unfamiliar with these woods would get lost in here very quickly, but they knew it like the backs of their hands.

At this point in its roundabout travels through the forest, the logging road passed within fifty yards of the Glen Haven Memorial Park. But the best part about its path was its unmarked status. Kyle had checked on all the Internet map applications he could find, and this dirt road didn’t show up anywhere.

The woman who was tied up in the back of the Explorer moaned from beneath her gag, and he hissed for her to be quiet as he held his hand over the phone, threatening her with death for the tenth time this evening if she didn’t shut up. The little boy was inside the van in the parking lot, and Ray was waiting at the back of the van for the father of the little boy and the husband of the woman in the Explorer.

Kyle had night-vision glasses from his time as a Marine in Iraq, and as he spoke on the phone, he could see Ray waiting behind the van in the darkness, smoking a cigarette.

Ray had smoked like a chimney since they were thirteen, when he’d stolen a full pack of his mother’s Marlboros, smoked all of them in one day, and gotten violently ill. Ray was weak in certain ways — he needed those cigarettes badly in times like these — but that was okay. His dependencies made him easier to manipulate. That was why Ray was standing by the van — and not him. So if this went wrong, Ray was going down — not him.

“That’s what I want for all my extra time, the risk, and my immeasurable patience,” Kyle said, “a million dollars. You hear me?”

“You’re out of your damn mind,” Sterling snapped through the phone. “I’ve had enough of this. Forget it. Don’t make the deliveries. Keep them, you son of a bitch.”

Kyle was quite prepared for the bluff. He’d done his research. “I know who they are. I know who their father is, or was, depending on who you believe. And I know they’ll pay me if you won’t.” He gritted his teeth. “But let me tell you something. If you don’t pay me, I’ll tell the cops who you are and what you’re planning.”

“You have no idea who I really am,” Sterling retorted, “or what I’m planning.”

“Do you really want to take that chance, Mr. Aussie?” Kyle grinned as he glassed Ray again. He sensed fury at the other end of the line, and he loved it. “I don’t think so, pal.” He loved getting in someone’s grill like this. He always had, ever since he was a kid. “You didn’t think I’d fly into this hurricane blind, did you, Mr. Aussie?”

“I don’t care what you—”

“Send the money,” Kyle ordered when he spotted a shadow coming over the cemetery wall. “And send it right now.”

Kyle dropped the phone and grabbed the hunting rifle leaning against the Explorer.

“Here we go,” he whispered. “Here we fucking go.”

“Where’s my son?” Troy demanded as he edged toward the man standing at the back of the van, smoking a cigarette. He made certain to stay wide of the vehicle so Jack could see him from behind the wall. And wide of the man so the man couldn’t make a sudden wild rush at him. “Tell me now.”

“First,” Ray answered, “you need to understand that you’re being tracked by five Marine sharpshooters who are positioned all around you in the woods, and they have—”

“Bullshit.”

There was one more guy involved in this thing right here right now, Troy figured. Maybe two, but that was it. Nobody would involve six people in one phase of a kidnapping. It was hard enough keeping things on the QT with just two people in on the deal.

Besides, the dollars made no sense for six people. They’d been ordered to bring two hundred thousand bucks in ransom. Split six ways, two hundred grand wasn’t that much, not for the crime being committed. For the same risk of punishment, it would have been much more profitable to knock over a bank.

Even more telling, the dollars didn’t split evenly. It didn’t split evenly three ways, either, which, most likely, meant it was this guy and one other, and that was it.

“Damn it, where’s my son?”

“Is the money in that bag you dropped over there?” Ray asked, pointing with the cigarette.

“Yeah, but I want to see my son first. You take one step toward that bag and I’ll shoot you down. Now, where is he?”

“In the van.”

“What about the woman?”

Ray shook his head. “We got her behind the lines. We let her go later, after we got the money.”

“No deal. I want her here immediately, or you don’t get that bag. That’s not negotiable.”

“You aren’t calling the shots, pal. We are.”

“I’ll shoot you dead on the count of zero if you don’t yell to or call whoever has Karen and tell them to get her up here right now,” Troy threatened, aiming his pistol at the man’s chest. “Five, four—”

“I don’t think so,” Ray cut in, flicking the butt of his still-burning cigarette out and to the right. “I think we’re in charge, and you’re about to find that out.”

The moment the cigarette hit the ground, a rifle shot split the night, and the van’s passenger window shattered.

Despite the gag stuffed down his tiny throat, Little Jack began screaming from inside the van.

A thrill coursed through Troy’s chest. The man standing before him had been telling the truth about at least one thing. L.J. was only a few feet away.

“Here I come!” Jack yelled as he jumped the cemetery wall and sprinted past the canvas bag.

“Bring it on, brother,” Troy called as he raced at Ray and hurled the kidnapper against the van before the man could turn and run.

Another rifle shot cracked the night and slammed into the side of the van just beside Troy and Ray as they struggled.

“Go to the other side of the van, Jack!” Troy shouted as he grabbed Ray by the shirt collar and pulled him roughly around the back to the driver’s side. “Go to the driver’s side!”

Jack veered right, dashed past the front of the van, and met Troy on the driver’s side just as Troy slammed Ray against the vehicle again. “Who’s paying you?” Troy demanded as he shoved the barrel of the pistol into the kidnapper’s mouth. “Who is it?”

“Where’s Karen?” Jack shouted, hurling open the driver’s door and climbing in. Little Jack lay in the middle seat, hog-tied and screaming through the gag. Jack scrambled over the console and scoured the backseat and floor of the vehicle, but didn’t find Karen. “She’s not in here, Troy.” He wanted to comfort L.J., but there wasn’t time. As gently as he could, he pulled L.J. to the floor, where he’d be safer from gunfire, then hustled for the front of the vehicle. There hadn’t been time to untie the boy, and it was probably better not to, anyway. He might try to run from the van, and then he’d become a potential target for whoever was firing away outside. “I’m coming back out!”

As Jack yelled, Troy withdrew the pistol from Ray’s mouth, pressed it to the side of the man’s head, and fired into the air as Jack jumped back out of the van.

“Cover us,” Troy ordered as Ray began screaming. The shot fired directly beside his head had him screaming for mercy. But his screams were cut short when Troy jammed the barrel of the pistol back into his mouth. “We cut off the bastard’s line of sight by coming to this side of the van,” Troy explained, gesturing over his right shoulder, “but it won’t buy us much time. Listen for someone running through the woods from the left. Watch for someone coming out of the woods at us and trying to get to the other side of the van. You see anything, you empty that clip at him. You kill him! If it’s more than one person, shout.”

“Find out about Karen!”

“Cover us!” Troy yelled back, refocusing on Ray. “Who had you take the boy and the woman? Who was it?”

Jack darted to the back of the driver’s side, half listening to Troy interrogate behind him, half listening for footsteps in the dark woods in front of him, adrenaline pumping through his system wildly as the chaos continued. “I hear something,” Jack called over his shoulder as someone raced across the leaves out in front of him. “He’s coming from the left.”

“Get back here, Jack,” Troy yelled, pulling Ray around to the front of the van. “Get back here. Now!”

Jack obeyed his brother and bolted for the front of the van. Just as he turned the corner, another rifle shot blasted the night. The bullet blew past the van and caromed off the cemetery wall, pinging wickedly as it ricocheted off the stones and up into the air.

“Who was it?” Troy demanded again, this time pressing the barrel directly to Ray’s forehead. “I swear I’ll kill you if you don’t tell me.”

“Some Australian guy,” Ray babbled breathlessly. “He’s holed up in West Virginia, in some town called Harpers Ferry, I think. He’s got a lot of badass people with him. That’s what Kyle said.”

“Who’s Kyle?”

“My partner.”

“What’s the Australian’s angle in all this?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. We were just supposed to deliver the boy and the woman. I swear I don’t know anymore than—”

“He’s moving again!” Jack yelled. Footsteps were crashing through the woods from the left. In a few seconds the person out there was going to have another shot at them.

“What’s the big picture?” Troy demanded again, hauling the kidnapper to the passenger side. “What’s the Australian doing?”

“I don’t know, I swear.”

Another bullet blasted past Jack just as he darted around the front right corner of the van to the passenger side. “Ask him where Karen is. Damn it, Troy, come on!”

“What’s going on in Harpers Ferry?” Troy hissed, ignoring Jack. “Tell me!”

The next bullet from the woods shattered the driver’s side window.

“Jesus Christ,” Jack muttered as he ducked instinctively. “We’re gonna get killed out here.”

Turning the tables on the shooter in the woods suddenly seemed like the best option — the only option. So he sprinted along the passenger side of the van, away from the cemetery and toward the woods.

Jack broke from behind the van, running as fast as he could, expecting at any moment to take a bullet for the second time today before he reached the tree line, which was thirty yards in front of him. If he could reach the trees, he just might have a chance to take the shooter down from close range.

He dove the last few yards into the woods, tumbled head over heels once, scrambled to his knees, crawled behind the trunk of a large elm, and gazed up the tree line toward the general area where the last bullet had exploded from. The moon had reappeared from behind the clouds, and now he had a decent view of the open ground between the van and the forest. If anyone ran for the van he’d see him.

Above the sounds of Troy yelling at the kidnapper, footsteps crashing across dead leaves reached Jack’s ears. They were off to the left, deeper in the woods, slowly receding.

Jack headed deeper into the forest, dodging tree trunks as they loomed in front of him. He made his way along quickly but warily, both hands clasped tightly around the Glock’s handle as the gun’s barrel led him through the forest. Even as he was whipped in the face by the low branches of smaller trees, he kept track of the other person’s progress, intensely focused on all sights and sounds. Praying the entire time that only one other person was out here, because if there was a third enemy in this battle, he could be walking straight into an ambush.

The footsteps stopped suddenly — and an instant later, so did Jack. He stood statue-like among the trees, holding his breath as he strained to pick up any clue, visual or audible. It was so quiet out here — no sounds from the van, either. The other person could be a hundred feet away — or behind the next tree. He had no idea.

Shouts from the direction of the van broke the stillness. He recognized Troy’s voice, and then a gunshot exploded from the same direction.

Jack took a quick step that way, but then footsteps began crashing through the forest off to his left again. He turned and followed the footsteps, skirting trees, trying to stay with whoever was running ahead of him, making certain those footsteps ahead of him kept going, making certain he wasn’t mistaking his footsteps for the ones he was chasing so he wouldn’t run straight into that ambush.

Twenty yards ahead an engine roared to life, and then taillights and headlights flashed on. Jack raced for the lights and the sound of the engine, breaking through a thick line of sticker bushes with a painful shout and then out onto a dirt road. He sprinted for the lights until he was so close to the vehicle that he recognized the silhouette as an Explorer.

The back tires spun wildly in the dirt as the driver jammed the accelerator to the floor, spattering Jack with a shrapnel cloud of mud and pebbles as he closed in on the back bumper. The truck dove into a huge pothole as it fishtailed forward and then hit a rock coming out of the chasm, sending the vehicle flying into the air and crazily to one side.

Someone in the back shrieked as the Explorer dropped back down and careened ahead.

It was Karen. The shriek had been faint, but Jack would have recognized her voice anywhere. It was her — no question.

“Karen, Karen, I’m coming. Hold on, sweetheart!”

He dodged several more potholes and raced up the passenger side of the truck as the engine revved loudly and the tires spun. He was almost to the back door, his fingers were only inches from the handle, when the driver veered sharply to the right, hitting him and sending him flying into the underbrush paralleling both sides of the dirt road.

By the time Jack had torn himself out of the sticker bushes and staggered back to the road, the Explorer was forty yards down the dirt lane and racing away.

Shane Maddux stole along the driveway and through the darkness toward the cabin he and Bill Jensen had been holed up in for the last nine months. He’d parked his jeep back up the gravel lane, about halfway to the main road, because something didn’t feel right. And over the years, Maddux had learned to trust his gut unfailingly.

As he neared the log structure, he realized his instinct had been correct — again. A light was on in his bedroom, and though the blind was down, he could clearly make out a figure moving around in there.

He pulled his gun from his belt, moved through the shadows to the back of the cabin, and slid his key soundlessly into the lock.

A few steps inside and the scent of wood smoke he loved about the place rushed to his nostrils. A turn to the left, seven more paces down a narrow hallway, and he reached his closed bedroom door.

Maddux hesitated for a few moments, listening, and then burst into his bedroom. Bill wheeled around, throwing his hands in the air as Maddux aimed the gun straight at him. Bill had been leaning over the bed, studying a notepad that he’d removed from a small, open safe that was on Maddux’s bed beside the notepad. Maddux had kept that safe hidden in an alcove of his closet, covered by blankets.

“What are you doing?” Maddux demanded.

Bill nodded solemnly down at the notepad. “This is over the top, Shane, even for you.”

“How did you open the safe? Who gave you the combination?”

“No one gave me anything. It wasn’t hard to figure out the digits. I entered one-eight-three-seven. That’s R-C-7. It opened right up when I did.” Bill shook his head as he brought his hands slowly down to his sides. “I never thought you’d be so predictable.”

“You just made a very big mistake, Bill. Now I have to kill you. Now I have to—”

The bullet blew through Maddux’s chest, tearing apart one lung and part of his heart as the single hollow-point round exploded on impact.

Maddux collapsed to the floor, and Bill was on him in an instant, grabbing the pistol and ripping it from his clenched, white-knuckled fingers. “Get out of here,” he muttered over his shoulder.

“But I—”

“Now,” Bill yelled angrily.

“How could you do this to me?” Maddux gasped as he gazed up at Bill, who was now kneeling beside him. “After everything we’ve been through?”

“What are you talking about, Shane? You were about to kill me.”

“You were about to weaken a nation.”

“You don’t know that. All you really know is that I was looking at your plans.”

“How can you let the bastard win?”

“I’m sorry, Shane,” Bill murmured. “I’m sorry it had to come to this.”

“I can’t let you tell anyone,” Maddux whispered, his strength ebbing away quickly as the massive internal wound bled profusely. “I can’t.”

“I’m afraid you have no choice.”

With his last few heartbeats, Maddux released the four-inch blade that was attached to a leather strap around his wrist and hidden beneath the cuff of his jacket’s right sleeve. Then, with his last burst of strength, he drove the point of the knife into Bill.

Bill rose unsteadily with a desperate groan, clasping his neck as blood began pouring from the wound. He wavered for a few moments in the middle of the room, staggered three steps ahead, and then crashed face-first to the floor.

The kidnapper’s body lay sprawled out before him on the pavement beside the van. He’d been shot neatly once through the forehead.

“You killed him,” Jack murmured.

“I did what I had to do.” Troy clasped Little Jack tightly in his arms. The boy was still sobbing uncontrollably, and it had been several minutes since Troy had untied him and pulled the gag from his mouth. “Let’s get out of here, Jack, before anyone comes. We’ve gotta get to Harpers Ferry as soon as possible.”

Jack was still staring down at the dead man. “Did you ask him about Karen at all?”

“I thought you said Karen was in that Explorer you chased.”

“She was, but neither of us knew that when you were jamming your gun in this guy’s mouth.”

“Jack, I—”

“I want to know if you asked him about my wife before you killed him.”

As Troy was about to answer, his phone vibrated. “Hold Little Jack for me.”

Jack took his nephew and pressed the boy’s tearstained face gently to his chest as Troy read the text. As he gazed at his younger brother, Jack noticed that one shoulder of his brother’s shirt was torn badly.

He shook his head as he realized how that had happened. Troy had been standing near the front of the van when the first rifle shot had been fired from the forest, shattering the passenger window. The bullet must have grazed Troy’s shoulder.

“Jesus, Troy,” Jack murmured, “you’re indestructible.”

As the Gulfstream G650 rose smoothly from the runway and banked east toward the Atlantic Ocean and the Republic of the Congo, which was more than five thousand miles away, Karen’s eyes fluttered shut as she lay across two wide leather seats, still bound and gagged. They’d just administered another sedative, but it hadn’t been necessary. She was exhausted and would have slept all the way across the Atlantic even without the syringe full of amber-hued liquid they’d just pumped into her left arm.

She was exhausted, but worse, she was defeated. She’d thought for a few moments, as the vehicle had bounced around violently, that Jack was about to rescue her. She’d heard him yell from outside the truck; she couldn’t miss that voice anywhere.

But then the ride had smoothed out and the awful man in front had laughed loudly at her, assuring her that her fate had been sealed and that he was about to “sell her to the highest bidder.” He’d shouted to her triumphantly from the front that he’d just checked his account and now he was a rich man. But she had no idea what he meant — other than someone was paying him a lot of money to take her off his hands.

She’d fought and struggled through all of those terrible rehab sessions for the last nine months, never missing a single one, never giving up hope of walking and speaking normally again. And Jack had never once wavered in his love or support for her in any way.

Now all that effort seemed wasted. Jack was gone, and she didn’t want to live without him.

For the first time in her life, she wanted to die.