Karen was unconscious even before her attacker dragged her through the narrow doorway on one side of the coolers and back into the stockroom. It all happened so fast. Other than the man who’d attacked her, no one else in the store saw what had happened — except Jennie.
For what seemed like an eternity, Jack and the kid behind the steering wheel stared at each other over the pickup’s console. The kid had cherry blond hair, a thin face, and bad acne on his chin. He was a baby, Jack realized. He couldn’t be more than seventeen.
Jack brought his hands up and turned away as the kid fired and the gun exploded with a deafening roar. He wondered where he’d been hit as he tumbled backward onto the gravel driveway. Maybe he couldn’t feel the pain yet because of the adrenaline coursing through his body, or maybe he was already dead and this was what it felt like to die. No physical pain, just a terrible sadness.
As Jack struggled to his feet, still trying to figure out if he’d been hit, he heard the kid begging and pleading. And then he realized what had happened as Troy dragged the kid from the vehicle and quickly splayed the boy out on the other side of the gully like a gutted deer. Troy had grabbed the kid at the last second through the driver’s window, causing the round to blast up into the truck’s ceiling.
“What’s your name?” Troy demanded fiercely as Jack came around the front of the pickup and jumped to the bottom of the gully.
“Charlie,” the kid answered, already sobbing. “Charlie Griffin.”
“Is your father Wayne Griffin?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where is he?”
“They left a few hours ago to do some things.”
“They?” Troy asked.
“Him and a friend.”
“Are you all right?” Jack asked after getting to where Troy and Charlie were. “Are you hit?”
“I’m fine,” Troy snapped as he held the kid down with one hand and pulled the kid’s belt off with the other. “Get his gun. It’s in the truck somewhere.”
By the time Jack found it, Troy had lashed Charlie’s wrists tightly together behind his back with the belt.
“What the hell?” Troy demanded, rising to his feet when he was finished and coming right to where Jack was standing, so he was right in Jack’s face. “Goddamn it, what did I tell you?”
“Shoot first,” Jack answered solemnly. Troy was so right. He’d frozen at the critical moment. “But he’s just a kid.”
“So what? He was gonna kill you.”
“I know,” Jack admitted. He’d never make that mistake again. He’d be a trigger-happy fool from now on. His whole body was starting to shake hard as the reality of what could have just happened sank in. “You saved my life.”
“We’re even for Alaska,” Troy muttered. “Let’s check out the house out. We’ve got to make sure no else is around. Then we’ll interrogate this little shit.”
“What do you mean, ‘interrogate’?”
Troy’s eyes flashed back to Jack’s, and they stared at each other intently for several moments as the kid began to bawl loudly. “I mean,” Troy said deliberately and loudly so Charlie could hear, “that I will use any and every method I have to in order to get any and every piece of information I can out of this young man as fast as possible.”
“He’s not a man, he’s a boy.”
“Don’t start,” Troy warned. “My son’s been kidnapped, and this kid may know where he is. I intend to find out immediately if he does, and whether or not you agree with my methods is of no consequence to me whatsoever.”
“Don’t do it,” Jack whispered.
“I will do it,” Troy replied calmly. “I have no problem doing it. If you’re going to try and stop me, try now. Let’s get it over with, because I will put you down.”
He couldn’t beat Troy in a fight. And he wouldn’t point a gun at his brother. “You can’t torture him.”
“If he doesn’t answer me right away, or he doesn’t answer truthfully, I will absolutely torture him. To death if I need to.”
Charlie’s sobs grew loud.
“You can’t know if he’s telling the truth or not.”
“Oh, I’ll know. Believe me, I will.”
Jack’s phone went off, indicating that he’d received a text message. He dug the phone from his pocket and checked the screen. As he read the words there, the breath rushed from his lungs. Suddenly he was in the same boat as Troy.
“We have Karen, too,” the message read.
“What is it?” Troy demanded.
Wide-eyed, Jack held the phone out. But it shook so wildly in his hand Troy had to grab it from him to read the words.
CHAPTER 26
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, was a quaint town of less than three hundred residents located seventy-five miles northwest of Washington, DC. It was nestled into the eastern side of a steep hill overlooking the wide, deep confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. Immediately across the Shenandoah to the east were more of West Virginia’s heavily wooded shoreline and tall hills. A short distance downstream from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia turned into Virginia. And to the north, immediately across the Potomac, were Maryland’s tall, steep cliffs. It was a unique area in that it formed the confluence of two great rivers and three historic states.
Harpers Ferry had been vitally strategic to both sides during the American Civil War. Guarding the border between North and South, important river crossings, and multiple railroad lines that used the riverbanks as passes through the Appalachian Mountains, the town had changed hands several times during the war after fierce fighting.
A century and a half later, the isolated enclave was serving as a strategic location again — this time for Liam Sterling. He’d quietly brought in twenty-four of the world’s deadliest sharpshooters — like importing fine red wines, he’d told them last night — and the assassins were all staying at a bed-and-breakfast called The Fisherman’s Inn. The inn was constructed on the crest of the hill overlooking the confluence and had a magnificent view of the two great rivers joining forces in the valley below.
Harpers Ferry was a perfect place to prepare for Operation Anarchy, which he had named this historic attack. The town was well off the beaten track and intimate enough to easily detect unfriendly trackers. Sterling was still congratulating himself on his choice of location as he walked along through the late-afternoon sunshine.
Twelve of the assassins were men, and twelve were women, and they were all sharing rooms as if they were couples. The inn’s proprietor believed theirs was a church group using his facility as a base for a retreat. Sterling had told him they had come here to get away from life’s everyday rigors, to mellow out a bit, and to enjoy several days of biking, hiking, prayer, and general appreciation of the beautiful fall weather.
The proprietor had asked no questions. He was only too happy to hang a “no vacancy” sign out front for a few days.
Why would he question anything, Sterling thought to himself as he led the group across the westerly of two CSX Railroad trestles that spanned the Potomac only a stone’s throw upriver from its confluence with the Shenandoah. They looked like twelve average American couples out for a relaxing time. It wasn’t as if they were brandishing hunting rifles with dangerous-looking telescopic sights atop the barrels, or they had signs hanging from their necks advertising what could potentially be the deadliest day in history for America’s most senior officials.
All the deadly hardware was safely locked away in a climate-controlled public storage facility near Tysons Corner, which was fifteen miles west of the White House. It had taken some coaxing to convince the men and women to temporarily part again with the weapons, which they’d sent on ahead of themselves in cloaked packages. But when they’d heard about the size of the payoff they’d quickly agreed. While he hadn’t been specific with them yet, he planned to pay each of them three million dollars.