The middle portion of the door cleared the jamb, creating a small opening.
“Mila?” Nate called. “Are you in there?”
“Yes!” she yelled.
“Stand back.”
Once more he attacked the door, this time leading with his back and ramming his whole body against it. The door broke free.
“Come on!” he yelled.
“You came to get me,” she said as she rushed out.
“Come on.” He grabbed her hand, pulled her to the stairway, and up to the next floor. When they reached Orlando and Daeng near the front door, Mila put on the brakes, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“They’re with us,” Nate said. “Intros later, if you don’t mind.”
That tempered her a bit, but not completely.
“Have we heard from Quinn?” he asked.
“Been trying to reach him,” Orlando said.
“Has anyone checked the door?”
Orlando looked at him as if he were crazy. Daeng said, “You’re more than welcome to, but I’m pretty sure we aren’t the only ones who heard our little explosion.”
“Understatement of the year,” Orlando said.
“I’m sorry,” Nate said.
Orlando shook her head. “Never mind. If we had left right away, maybe we would have made it, but by now there’s got to be at least three or four of them out there.”
The single exit was a choke point. The only thing the men outside would need to do was train their weapons on the doorway, and shoot anything that moved through it.
“I’ll go,” Nate said. “You all hide. I’ll convince them I came in alone. Hopefully, one of them will recognize me as the one who was with Quinn earlier. They probably think he’s dead, or at least laid up. I’ll just say I was trying to finish the job of getting Mila away.”
“They’ll come in and look anyway,” Orlando said. “They’ll want to know what happened to her.”
“Yeah, but they’ll be splitting their forces, not coming at you all at once.”
“…o it…” Quinn’s voice crackled through the comm.
“Quinn?” Orlando said. “Are you all right?”
“… got…ont cov…There…an…way…”
“You’re not coming through clearly. Can you repeat?”
“…ther exit…”
Nate narrowed his eyes. “Exit?
“…es…”
“Quinn?” Nate said.
Silence.
“Quinn?”
He was gone.
“If you want my opinion,” Daeng said, “I think he was suggesting there might be another exit.”
“Did anybody see one?” Nate asked.
They all shook their heads.
“There must be something,” Orlando said. “Places like this always have an emergency exit. So I think before you go off sacrificing yourself, we should at least take a look.”
Nate frowned. “Even if there is, don’t you think they’ll have someone waiting on the other side? Hell, maybe they’re using it right now to get in.”
“We have to try,” Orlando said.
She was right, of course.
He looked at the door. The thing about choke points was that they worked both ways. While they searched, only one of them would have to stay behind to dissuade anyone outside from using the door.
He finally nodded. “Let’s take a look.”
Quinn circled back into the vineyards, then cut across the grass toward the rear of the farmhouse. As he moved closer, he began hearing snippets of conversation over his radio.
He didn’t get everything, but it was clear Nate was planning on sacrificing himself, and hoping that would allow the others a chance to get away. Though it was something Quinn would have probably done, he didn’t want them to give up yet.
“Don’t do it!” he whispered into his mic.
“Quinn? Are you…right?” Orlando asked.
“They’ve got the front covered. There must be another way out.”
“You’re not coming through. We don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
“Look for another exit! Another exit!”
“Exit?” Nate this time.
“Yes! Yes! Look for the emergency exit. There has to be one.”
“Quinn?”
“The emergency exit.”
“Quinn?”
He knew he was no longer getting through. But whatever they decided on, there was one thing he could do to help.
He moved around the side of the farmhouse opposite the detention building. When he reached the front, he peered out across the long porch. It was deserted. Everyone had raced over to the other building. He could see them in the open field about a hundred feet in front of it, their guns trained on the door.
He scanned them, looking for any familiar faces. Whoever was heading up their team would be an experienced operative, and, if this was indeed Peter’s operation, someone Quinn might know.
He picked out a couple men he’d seen before but didn’t know their names. Tangential players on previous gigs. But, wait.
There.
The tall one near the back. His name was Michaels. A decent op who knew his stuff.
The important thing at the moment was that if he was outside, there was little chance anyone was left in the house.
Perfect.
Quinn crept across the porch and let himself in. Ten seconds later, he found the room he was looking for.
CHAPTER 30
WASHINGTON, DC
Helen Cho called back exactly thirty-seven minutes after Peter had hung up with her.
“I don’t know what you were expecting, but I doubt this was it,” she said.
“What did you find?”
“I shouldn’t even tell you. In fact, I probably should be calling the FBI and having you detained somewhere for just asking about this.”
“I told you I’m working for the government.”
“For former senator Mygatt,” she said.
“And Green. He still gets his paycheck from the same place you do.”
“Green,” she said, letting his name linger for a moment. “Ironic in either case. If I call the FBI, they’ll check with him first, and what do you want to bet I’d get put in the cell right next to yours?”
“Helen, what did you find?”
There was a long pause. “Have you ever heard of something called Project Cancer?”
“No.”
“Neither had I until fifteen minutes ago, thank you very much. Were you ever involved in any extraordinary rendition cases?”
Everybody in the intelligence world, at least those on the front lines in high-level positions like Peter and Helen, had been involved in the transfer of citizens from one country to a secret prison in another. The post-9/11 years had been a busy time. “A few. Is Project Cancer part of that?”
“First of all, the project is a rumor. It never existed. But hypothetically, if it did, it would be a variation on the theme.”
“What kind of variation are we talking about?”
She paused once more, then, as if reading from a book, she told him exactly what kind.
When she finished, he was speechless.
“Hypothetically, of course,” she said into the silence.
“Of course.”
Neither of them said anything for a moment, the full weight of what she had described filling the connection between them.
“And behind it all?” Peter finally asked.
“I did say ironic, didn’t I?”
Mygatt and Green, he thought. “How sure?”
“Let’s just say if it were an election, no one else is running.”
Dear God.
“Listen carefully,” she said, then gave him an email address, followed by a string of letters and numbers. “Do you have it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m sure I won’t be hearing from you about this again.”
She hung up.
Though the computers in his secret office were extremely secure, he didn’t for a second consider using one of them. To check the email account Helen had given him, he needed complete anonymity.
He went back downstairs, extracted an empty black accounting case from the closet that would typically have been used for linens, and left the building. Two streets away, he caught a cab that took him on a short ride to a neighborhood he hadn’t visited in over a year. He walked for several more blocks before turning down an alley.