Lost Girls

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Using a scanner, the Security had quickly found the frequency for the remote security cameras that had been set out. There were four, two on the main road, looking in each direction. One on the top of the barn that was doing a twenty-second long 360-degree sweep, and one facing down the long driveway leading to the farm-house. He set the jammer for the same frequency, but left it off for the moment. He got out of the truck and walked around it, making sure all the fuses were set.

The outside of the mail truck was criss-crossed with detonating cord like a Christmas tree. The Security smiled as he thought of that, fond memories of lightness and happy times trying to intrude into the darkness his life had been for the past year. The smile was gone as quickly as it had appeared as a dark curtain came down over the memories.

He was dead. Had died a year ago. All that was left was retribution.

The fuses were all set.

“I’ve got movement,” Neeley said, as she peered through the high power scope on the rifle. “I can’t make out anything other than a figure moving around the mail truck. Just got a glimpse.”

Gant was already moving. “I’m going down there. See that creek bed to the right? I’ll be coming that way.”

“Roger that,” Neeley said.

Gant slid back and got to his feet.

“What’s going on?” Golden asked, totally out of the loop, as she got to her feet.

Since she wasn’t armed, Gant ignored Golden and began to move fast, running through the woods, the sub-machinegun at the ready.

The Security got back in the truck and slid between the seats into the rear. He sat on the motorcycle that was strapped in there, facing the rear doors, and kick-started it. Satisfied that the engine was running smoothly, he went back to the driver’s seat and started the truck.

Emily was squatting over the chain that was attached to the shackle. Despite being dehydrated, she still had the urge to urinate. She remembered reading in a science fiction short story sometime about a man who eventually cut through the bars on his cage by urinating on them in the same spot time and time again until the acid in his urine wore through the metal.

Of course it had been a science fiction story. She had no idea whether it was true or not. If she remembered rightly, it had taken the man many years to achieve his freedom. And she knew the perp was out there somewhere watching, but she figured she had nothing left to lose.

The two second trickle she let loose was barely enough to wet the chain but she felt a small sense of accomplishment. Another thousand years of this and she might actually see a result. Emily smiled bitterly to herself, her lips cracking.

That feeling abruptly disappeared as the perp came out of the tree-line stalking directly toward her, a pistol in his hand. Emily got to her feet. As he got closer he raised the gun up. Emily thought this was a bit of an over-reaction for her just peeing on the chain.

“Hey,” she said, holding her hands up in front of her. “Stop!”

She saw his eyes and they scared her more than the gun. They were flat and dead. He stopped about five feet from her, the gun steady. Emily stared at it and realized there was something not quite right about the gun.

He pulled the trigger and Emily screamed.

Then she cursed as she saw the small dart sticking out of the skin of her arm. She brushed it off. “You asshole!”

The perp just stood there, staring at her like he would have stared at the tree she was chained to. Emily felt a wave of nausea and she staggered, putting her back against the tree. Her legs became wobbly and despite her attempts to remain standing, she slowly slid down until she was seated at the base of the tree.

“What are you going to do to me?” she rasped, barely able to hold on to consciousness.

Of course there was no reply. The last thing she saw before all went dark was the perp still standing there, staring at her without any emotion.

Gant hit the creek-bed and turned toward the farm-house, which was about three hundred meters away. He paused and pulled out his Satphone. The Cellar had given him the number for the State Department security detachment and he quickly punched it in.

“Jorgenson,” a voice answered on the second ring.

“This is Agent Golden with the NSA,” Gant said as he started to move forward again, one hand on his gun, the other holding the phone. “I’m coming toward your location via the creek-bed to the west of the house. We spotted an old mail truck in the southern tree-line and believe it to be hostile.”

“What?” Jorgenson sounded rattled. “Who the hell are you?”

Neeley’s voice came over the FM radio receiver in Gant’s right ear. “The mail truck is moving. Heading toward the main road.”

“The truck is inbound,” Gant said into the Satphone. “You’ve got hostiles inbound,” he added, trying to get some sort of reaction. “Very violent hostiles.”

The Security hit the jam button shutting down the transmissions from the security cameras. He floored the truck, taking the turn onto the hard top road almost too quickly and the clacker he had set on his lap slid off. He desperately grabbed it before it hit the floor, tucking it back in place, his fingers trembling slightly.

He accelerated once more. He was a half-mile from the driveway, picking up speed.

“Truck is on the hard-top,” Neeley reported. “Windshield is tinted so I’ve got no sight picture on the driver or any other passengers.”

“The truck is on the main road heading your way,” Gant relayed to Jorgenson. He had no doubt one of the targets was in the truck: who the hell tinted the windshield of a postal delivery truck?

“Shit, I’ve lost all video,” Jorgenson reported.

“Get out of the van, ASAP,” Gant ordered. “You’re being attacked.”

“There’s something weird about the outside of the truck,” Neeley reported. “Wires routed all over it.”

Gant was now two hundred meters away. He could see the mail truck now, turning into the driveway at a high rate of speed. The walking guard was running toward the dirt road, weapon tight to his shoulder, aiming toward the truck. Gant also saw the door slide open on the van and Jorgenson step out, his weapon also at the ready. And Gant knew they both would be dead within the minute but weren’t aware of it yet.

“Start shooting,” he ordered Neeley over the FM radio.

An unnecessary order he realized as a star-shaped impact appeared on the front windshield of the truck. But the glass remained intact, which meant it wasn’t a normal windshield. And not a normal truck. Gant couldn’t make out the details but he could tell there was something wrong with the exterior of the vehicle as Neeley had reported.

One hundred and fifty meters.

“Move, move,” Neeley whispered as she shifted the rifle from windshield to front right tire and pulled the trigger. Her exhortation wasn’t for Gant, but for the two State Department guards who were standing, somewhat beGanted, in the drive, watching the truck bearing down on them. She could see the mouth on one of them moving, screaming, although the sound couldn’t reach this far and she realized the fool was trying to order whoever was driving the truck to stop.

Stupid.

The round hit the tire, but with no apparent effect and Neeley realized they were solid. Bullet-proof windshield and solid tires. This was going to be bad. She went back to the windshield and fired three rounds as fast as she could pull the trigger, splintering the glass but not punching through. She had put all the rounds within a six inch circle in front of where the driver’s seat should be and had not penetrated, which meant the glass was stronger than normal bullet-proof material or double-layered.

There was something definitely wrong with the exterior of the truck, but before she could check it out further she saw someone open the front door of the farm-house and step onto the porch. Lewis Foley, according to the intelligence packet Bailey had given her. And next to him was his wife.

Foley had a shotgun in his hands and his wife had a pistol.

God-damn idiots, Neeley swore to herself.

She swung back to the truck and realized there were small green objects scattered all over the exterior, connected with fuses. She aimed at one and fired.

Missed.

The Security could see the two guards directly ahead, their sub-machineguns tucked into the shoulders, standing in the school-correct firing stance. The one on the left was yelling something, his mouth moving, but between the sound of the truck and the motorcycle behind him, the Security could hear nothing. Not that the man could have said anything humanly possible to stop the inevitable.

There was ping on the outside of the truck and the Security realized the sniper was now trying to hit one of the Claymores he’d rigged. He laughed out loud, because even if the sniper could hit one of the mines — a damn hard shot — it would only disable that one mine unless a miracle happened and the round hit the small fuse inside the mine.

The Security’s smile grew wider as he saw the target and his wife on the porch. Better than he could have hoped. He jerked the wheel and the truck spun into a skid, stopping less than five feet from the two guards who had fired several ineffectual bursts into the truck, the bulletproof glass and Kevlar blankets draped on the inside absorbing the rounds. He was now less than forty feet from the target and his wife.

“Close enough for government work,” the Security whispered to himself as he reached down and picked up the olive-drab clacker resting on his lap.

“Good-bye.”

He pressed the lever on top of the clacker down.

Gant was just climbing out of the creek bed, less than fifty feet from the farm house when he heard the familiar sound of Claymore mines in sequence going off. He dove backward, landing in six inches of water as hundreds of steel ball bearings screeched by overhead.

Neeley was aware of Doctor Golden crawling up next to her as she continued to fire futilely at the truck, then shifted her aim and put a couple of rounds into the wood railing of the porch in front of Foley and his wife, trying to force them back into the house.

Then the outer sides of the van literally erupted.

“Oh my God!” Golden exclaimed.

The two guards were ripped apart, shredded like so much meat caught in a metal hailstorm. Neeley saw Foley and his wife get slammed back and slump down against the riddled front wall of the house. She didn’t know if they were dead or not. It took a moment to register, but then she realized the outside of the truck had been lined with Claymore mines. At least a dozen, going off almost at once, sending their small balls of death spraying outward in a circle of death.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Neeley muttered.

“What happened?” Golden asked, still shaken at sudden bloody violence.

Neeley slammed a fresh magazine home in the rifle and centered the scope on the truck. “Come out now,” she whispered.

“What is going on?” Golden demanded.

“Shut up,” Neeley snapped as she got her breathing under control.

Gant crawled to the edge of the creek-bed and aimed the sub-machinegun at the truck. He could see the mangled pieces of meat that used to be the two guards. He could see the two bodies slumped on the porch of the house. One was moving, crawling.

He focused on the truck.

The Security could see the body crawling on the porch. It was him. Foley. He was creeping toward his wife who lay bloody and motionless.

“Go for it,” he said. He shook his head, trying to clear the loud ringing noise that was echoing inside his skull from being at the center of the Claymore blasts.

Then he looked as best he could through the splintered glass toward the surrounding country-side. He knew there was no way he would be able to spot the sniper who’d been firing at him. He hadn’t expected that.

“Change in plans,” he said to himself, rubbing his scarred face and glancing over his shoulder at the still running motorcycle. If the sniper was any good, he wouldn’t make it twenty feet before he got cut down.

The exhaust fumes from the bike in the enclosed space of the truck were beginning to make him light-headed as he tried to figure out what to do. Crack a window. He laughed out loud.

Right. And take a round right through the skull. Besides, the bulletproof windows he’d installed didn’t open.

He looked at the farm-house. Foley had reached his wife and was trying to help her staunch some of the bleeding, which meant she was still alive also. “How nice. How noble,” he muttered out loud. His brain was fuzzy, the carbon monoxide combined with the after-effects of the explosions combining to push away reality.

The Security had gone with the Sniper on several missions. They had trained together for years. He knew all about how a sniper worked. Given the angle of the bullets that had hit the truck, the sniper was most likely on the knoll to the north. Which meant the south side of the truck was safe. For the moment.

He shook his head, realizing he wasn’t thinking straight. The armored interior of the truck was the safest place, despite the motorcycle fumes. The truck’s engine was still running. The solid tires should hold. He turned the wheel and pressed the accelerator. The truck slowly rumbled forward toward the farmhouse, the right front end dipping sharply from either a ruined shock or ripped up tire. There was a bump and he realized he had driven over the body of one of the guards. He kept the truck moving.

“The truck is heading toward the house,” Neeley reported.

“No shit,” Gant muttered. He was moving, crawling forward, the sub-machinegun tucked in the crook of his arms. The truck was less than thirty feet away, the farm-house slightly more than that. He could see Foley cradling his wife’s body in his arms but he couldn’t tell if the woman were alive.

The battered mail truck rumbled to the base of the short flight of steps leading to the couple. Gant could see rounds impacting on the windshield, further shattering it and knew Neeley was keeping up the fight from her position. But as the truck came to a stop it was angled now in such a way that whoever was driving it could get out the driver’s side and get close to the porch behind its cover.

Of course, that also gave Gant a covered approach on the other side of the vehicle, safe from the driver’s view. Gant got to his feet and dashed to the rear of the truck.

“I see you, Gant,” Neeley said. “But I can’t see the porch anymore.”

The truck engine stopped running, but Gant could hear another engine still going, something inside the back of the truck. Then he heard the driver’s door open and he knew there was no more time.

Gant exhaled, then stepped around the side of the truck.

A man dressed in black fatigues and wearing an armored vest was walking up the steps toward the prone couple. He had a sawed-off shotgun in his hands and wore a black balaclava over his head. He came to a halt standing just short of the couple, enjoying the cover the truck provided him from Neeley. Foley was looking up at the man, a small trickle of blood flowing out of the side of his mouth. The front of Foley’s shirt was splattered with blood, both his own and his wife’s.

The man reached up with his free hand and began to pull the balaclava off. Gant’s finger was on the trigger, but he didn’t fire. He knew what was coming and what was at stake.

“Remember me?” the man shouted and Gant knew everyone’s ears were ringing from the explosions.

Foley was looking up, his hands staunching the flow of blood from a wide wound on his wife’s stomach. Foley shook his head. “Please.”

Gant didn’t hear the word as much as he could tell what it was by the way Foley’s lips moved. Gant took another step closer.

Foley must have realized he hadn’t been heard. “Please,” he yelled. “I didn’t do anything to you. I don’t know who you are.”

“Should have thought of that before you betrayed us,” the man said, raising the shotgun up to firing position.

Gant took the opportunity to fire a quick three round burst into the man’s left thigh, spinning him about. As the man went down, Gant charged forward, while firing again, putting two rounds into the man’s gun arm, causing him to drop the shotgun while his other hand went to his chest. Emily. That was the thought foremost in Gant’s mind as he kept the target alive.

Gant was stopped on the middle step, the muzzle of the sub-machinegun pointing at the target’s face. Gant saw the scars that were seared into the man’s skin and knew he had Kathy Svoboda’s killer. And the killer of Svoboda’s baby.

“Where is Emily Cranston?” Gant demanded.

The man was smiling and Gant looked down at his good hand and saw the pin for a grenade in it. Time slowed down for Gant as he then saw the live grenade still hanging on the man’s vest on top of a lump of explosive charge. Gant dove off the steps, hitting the ground and rolling as the sharp crack of the grenade going off split the sky, followed immediately by a secondary explosion from the charge.

Blood and body parts splattered the ground.

Gant lay on his back for a few seconds, breathing hard.

“Are you all right?”

Gant saw Golden’s face in his field of vision. She was leaning over him.

“We fucked up,” Gant said.