“No.”
“Have you heard anything about the woman?”
“Nothing, and I checked everywhere. Her car’s here, it looks like all her clothes are here, and the dog’s hungry as hell. The thing wouldn’t leave me alone, so I fed it. I even called her kids and they hadn’t seen her. I told them I was an insurance guy following up on Roger’s death and that I must have had the wrong number. Nobody’s seen her.”
Bill took a deep, aggravated breath. “Okay thanks. Talk to you later.”
As he ended the call, Bill realized they had only one option at this point. They had to go to the peak.
He had no idea if Nancy Carlson had given up the location of the Executive Order that Roger always kept. He wasn’t even certain Nancy knew where that original was located, if she even knew what Executive Order 1973 1-E was — Roger had never mentioned anything about telling her. But Bill felt he had to operate under the assumption that someone who was unfriendly to the cause now had that original, and he had to retrieve the second one. Without at least one of the originals, Red Cell Seven was in deep trouble.
Just as Troy prepared for the awful sensation of bullets tearing into his body, the man racing toward him screamed, spun violently to one side, and then tumbled backward to the ground, throwing his gun into the air with his arms outstretched above his head as he went down into the weeds.
Shane Maddux appeared from behind a tree and then sprinted to where the man lay. He calmly put another bullet into the man’s head and then jogged to where Troy was standing.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Maddux grinned. “Not even a thank you?”
“Thank you. Now what the hell are you doing here?”
“I broke Kaashif. He told me all about this place and what goes on here.”
Travers had told Troy twice that he was convinced Kaashif would never break. But Maddux had proven that theory dead wrong. “Of course you did,” Troy said as he watched Travers sprint toward them from the left over Maddux’s shoulder. “You could break anyone.”
“Given long enough.”
“But how did you know where—”
“Your father told me.”
Troy gazed at Maddux steadily as the three Apache helicopters roared overhead. They were no more than fifty feet off the ground, and the rotors created hurricane-force gales beneath them, whipping Troy’s long, dirty-blond hair about his face.
Bill had released Maddux from that cell at the house and told him where to find Kaashif, Troy realized. Whatever Maddux had on his father had to be devastating, and Troy had a terrible feeling he knew what it was. It sickened him to think about it.
As Travers got to where he and Maddux were standing, the choppers laid down an intense fire on the open ground around the barn in which the Learjet had been hidden, destroying the pickup trucks and killing the guards hiding behind them as the vehicles exploded violently. Then the Apaches moved on toward the outbuildings and the complex’s main house in the distance.
As Troy, Travers, and Maddux broke from the trees, Troy headed toward the briefcase on the tarmac. The one Daniel Gadanz had dropped when he’d been shot. After grabbing it, Troy followed Travers and Maddux past the barn toward the main house. As he ran, he glanced up into the sky to the south. He could still barely see the jet’s far-off silver shape against the clear blue sky as it streaked away toward the Keys. He wondered if Daniel Gadanz was alive up there. He’d aimed low on purpose, for the legs, not to kill but to wound, because Daniel was worth infinitely more to the DEA alive than dead. Interrogated correctly, Gadanz could convey priceless information that would significantly interrupt U.S. cocaine traffic.
But he’d escaped — for now, anyway.
The two-story mansion was ripped and burning from Apache fire as Troy, Travers, and Maddux approached. Still, someone opened fire from an upstairs window, and they dove for cover behind several large live oaks growing in the front yard.
“No reason to be heroes!” Travers yelled from behind his tree. “We’ve got two hundred special-forces madmen heading this way. And I’m thinking those Apache flyboys are about to do more damage to the mansion. I don’t want to get in their way.”
“Agreed,” Troy yelled back as the choppers circled back for another pass.
As they maneuvered, Troy and Travers quickly donned bright yellow jerseys they had stowed in their backpacks. They hadn’t worn them during the initial assault because they didn’t want to make easy targets for the defenders. But now they didn’t want to be shot by friendly fire — from the choppers or the troops. The Apache pilots and the special-forces soldiers knew not to fire on anyone wearing yellow. Maddux would be safe as long as he was near one of them.
As Troy finished pulling the shirt over his head, he spotted someone sprinting away from the back of the mansion toward the orange grove. “Major!”
Travers glanced over from behind the tree he was using to shield himself from the sniper on the mansion’s second floor. “Yeah?”
“Keep this with you,” Troy yelled, tossing the suitcase to Travers from behind the tree he was using. “Do not lose it.” Then he turned and took off after whoever was fleeing.
Bullets spanked the dry ground around Troy as he ran, but stopped when he made it to the side of the mansion.
As he raced into the orange grove, Troy picked up the prey’s trail quickly. Troy was an expert tracker, and he spotted broken twigs and trampled grass most people wouldn’t notice. He could see the trail leading away through the trees ahead of him as clearly as if the person had left footprints in a field of virgin snow.
As he jogged ahead, he noticed the trail of broken flora ending at a tree thirty yards up. So he ducked right, sprinted three rows of trees over, went left, and then headed up this tree line, keeping track of the tree at which the trail had ended by counting trees in this row.
As soon as they’d gotten here to the plantation, he and Travers had noticed that the orange grove was perfectly and symmetrically laid out. Trees were planted in seemingly never-ending straight lines spaced twenty feet apart. And each tree in the line was planted exactly parallel to the tree in the line on either side of it.
Troy moved well past the tree the path had ended under, turned left, counted three rows, turned left again, and moved carefully ahead with his MP5 leading the way. His eyes narrowed as he focused in on the tree. The bottom branches of this one fell almost to the ground, and it was loaded down with fruit. But he could still make out the form of someone hiding in the lower branches — someone wearing a dress. It looked like she was, anyway.
The woman was facing in the opposite direction, in the direction he’d been coming before he’d detoured around this tree. Troy was coming up behind her, and he noticed a blood trail coming down her leg. She’d been hit by Apache fire inside the mansion and taken off. She was holding a gun, he could see as he closed in. Aiming it back the way she’d come from.
Could he shoot a woman? It would be as bad as shooting a child. She was no doubt terrified, perhaps even innocent. But she was aiming a gun, trying to ambush him.
The doubts churned through Troy’s mind as he moved forward deliberately, step by soundless step. Had he lost his edge? Would he hesitate at the critical moment? Could he really do this?
The figure in the tree whipped around suddenly — and Troy pulled the trigger, nailing the would-be assassin in the chest. The figure dropped heavily to the ground with a loud groan, and Troy raced the last few yards, burst through the branches, and kicked the gun away from the person’s quivering hands.