His shoulders were hunched, half-expecting the van to explode. Gant quickly got out of the van and looked around. The woods were burning wherever a flare had come down, in some cases the pockets of flame were merging, threatening a major fire. The targets could have gone in any direction. The flares and subsequent fire meant they had been prepared to thwart thermal tracking from the air.
What else would I have done? Gant thought.
He spoke into the throat mike. “Talon, you need to call the local firefighters to get this thing under control. Where does this river go?”
“Wait one.”
Gant looked at the cool water rushing by underneath the bridge and he knew his targets had jumped into it, going with the flow. The water would mask their image so that thermals wouldn’t pick them up when they got outside the ring of fire.
“The river empties into a lake about two kilometers downstream. Pretty big lake, about ten kilometers long by six wide. One side of it runs along the main state road.”
Gant nodded to himself. The targets could come ashore anywhere. They most likely had a vehicle cached close to the road and would merge with the traffic. Gant considered calling the state authorities to place a road-block and discarded the idea as quickly. The targets would be prepared for that also.
“Alpha One, this is Talon. I have a secure communication line open and someone requesting to speak to you. Call sign Cellar One.”
Nero’s call sign. Gant sighed and walked down the road to a place where he was clear of the fire. “Go ahead, Cellar One.”
“Mister Gant.”
Gant flinched as he recognized the voice. Masterson. “Yes?”
“It appears our targets have gotten away and we are no closer to Emily Cranston’s location. I don’t suppose you found the rest of the cache report?”
“I did a cursory search of the van and didn’t spot it. If they wanted us to find it, they would have left it in the open as they did the others. We won’t find anything of importance in the van because they left it and didn’t destroy it.”
“And the targets succeeded in completing the mission they started in Colombia a year ago.”
Gant didn’t answer because it wasn’t a question.
“And Neeley is wandering around looking at a cold site in Alabama while you’re in the middle of a fire. Literally. At least in Virginia, working as part of a team, you got one of the targets. Here all we have are eight bodies.”
Gant reached the dirt bike. He sighed, then nodded to himself. “I fucked up.”
“The world is changing, Mister Gant,” Masterson said. “That’s why I’m here. You’ve never faced a team of rogues before. When it was individuals, you could go your own way and deal with the Sanctions. You need to be part of the team, Mister Gant. Use your team. Or else I will put Neeley in charge.”
The satellite connection went dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Neeley shut off her satellite phone and pondered the position Hannah Masterson had just put her in. She had remained quiet during the conference call, not comfortable with secretly listening in, but doing so at Hannah’s request. She had also not been thrilled with Gant’s order to come here to the cache site. And even Bailey had expressed surprise upon seeing her arrive as he was preparing to leave. A bullshit mission for a bullshit reason.
Neeley walked around the open space near the tree, occasionally checking the pictures, notes and drawing she’d been given on arrival, while Bailey followed her. She finally came to the oak tree and stared at it in the harsh light of the klieg spotlights set up all around.
“How old was she?” she asked Bailey who was a shapeless form a few feet away.
“Nineteen.”
Neeley considered that. “When I was nineteen I was with Jean-Philippe in Berlin.”
“I know,” Bailey replied.
“She was partying with her girlfriends when she was kidnapped,” Neeley said, remembering the file, one of dozens she’d quickly read.
Bailey remained silent.
To be nineteen and that carefree. Neeley was having a hard time comprehending it. Jean-Philippe had been a terrorist, involved in the black market in Berlin. Their friends — their acquaintances — had all been shadowy figures in a gray world. It should have come as no surprise to her when he betrayed her. Handed her a bomb to carry on board a commercial airliner. But it had been. And that had been when she met Tony Gant, the current Gant’s twin brother. He’d taken the bomb, taken her, and her life had never been the same again.
Then she realized something about the current situation: Emily Cranston hadn’t had her Gant. Her person to step in when the evil of the world invaded. She was out there all alone. Neeley shivered, trying to hide the reaction from Bailey, who stood there like a statue.
“They cached her again,” Neeley said.
“Of course.”
“But in a worse place.”
“Why do you think that?” Bailey asked as calmly as if they were discussing the weather.
“Because they’re bad people,” Neeley said. “And bad always goes to worse.”
Bailey nodded. “True.” He cleared his throat. “But how could it be worse?”
Neeley considered that. She pointed at the tree. “Here she was in the middle of the woods. Alone. Isolated. No hope.”
“Ah,” Bailey said. “They put her in a place with false hope.”
“Yes. And not isolated. Closer to people. So close she could hear them or at least know they were close. But yet in a place where she couldn’t contact them.”
“Quite intriguing,” Bailey said.
Neeley turned and faced him. “Not intriguing. It’s her life.”
Bailey blinked, a strong sign of emotion for him.
“She’s being tortured in a game she never was a player in except by birth. She never made a conscious act that brought her to this.”
“What difference does it make?” Bailey asked in a level voice. “It does not change the parameters of the mission.”
“It does,” Neeley snapped. “Our targets know she isn’t a player. They’re using her — and they killed the others — to cause pain to the players. But in the end, our targets are going to want to take out the players. The question is, how does caching Emily Cranston help them achieve that goal?”
“It keeps us running in circles while they have another plan?” Bailey suggested.
Neeley nodded. “Most likely. Misdirection. And it’s probably a plan that’s already in play.”
“We have security on the primary players,” Bailey said.
“In four different places,” Neeley noted. “In their homes, where the targets know they will be. Where the targets can already have planned their attack. Maybe we should bring them together in one, more secure place. Someplace these guys couldn’t have thought of.”
Bailey considered that. “Not a bad idea. I suggest you run it by Mister Gant.”
Neeley shook her head. “I think I’ll run it by Doctor Golden first, then the two of us will talk to Gant.”
Doctor Golden stared at the old woman in the pale blue jumpsuit, trying hard to keep her feeling of utter disgust off her face. Golden remembered now that one of the major reasons she’d gotten out of private practice — besides the financial implosion of the clinic she had run with her husband during their divorce — was her growing lack of patience with those who were mentally ill and inflicted their sickness on others with no remorse.