Shadow of Betrayal - Brett Battles

“Intruder secured.” Five again, his calmer tone denoting that this message was meant for Base and Tucker.

“Who is he?” Tucker asked.

“Name!” five shouted.

There was silence.

“I said give me your goddamn name!”

More silence.

There was a loud thwack. Tucker knew the sound well, rifle stock against flesh.

“Get the fuck back on your feet and tell me your name.”

Silence, then another smack.

“Doesn’t seem to want to cooperate, sir,” five said.

“Take him to the guardhouse and put him on the camera,” Tucker said. “I want to see his face.”

“Roger,” five said, then to the others, “Let’s move.”

Ten feet from the top of the hill, Quinn heard yelling coming from the other side.

“Nate?” he said.

No response.

He scrambled to the crest on all fours, crawling over the rocks and stopping only when he had a shielded position from which he could see what was happening.

At the base of the hill was a fifty-foot-wide gap of scattered boulders and sand. And standing in the middle of it were five men. Five armed men, Quinn noted. They stood in a loose circle around a sixth man who lay on the ground.

“Nate?”

Still nothing.

Quinn pulled out his binoculars and aimed them at the group. It was apparent the guards were not happy with the guy they were surrounding. Several aimed their weapons at him.

“Get the fuck back on your feet and tell me your name,” the guard closest to the man’s head yelled.

As the man stood up Quinn trained the binoculars on him, knowing what he’d see.

Only he was wrong. The captive wasn’t Nate.

“Nate,” Quinn said. “Where are you?”

The response came in two short, low bursts. “Can’t. Talk.”

Quinn swept the binoculars back toward the hill he was on, but didn’t see anything. He tried again, this time turning on the thermal-imaging overlay first. Unlike before, this time two small ovals stood out. They were poking out of the back of a crevice created by a couple of the large rocks that were leaning together.

“Tap your toe,” Quinn said.

“What?”

“Tap your toe.”

Quinn watched as one of the ovals moved upward, then tapped back down against the rock it had been lying on.

“I can see your feet.”

“You can see my feet?” Nate whispered.

“Just me,” Quinn said. “They don’t have an angle on you.”

Quinn returned his gaze to the group in the clearing. Who the hell was the guy they had caught? Was he out here alone? Quinn sensed he must be, because they had seen no sign of anyone else. One man, okay. Maybe Quinn could account for having missed a single person, if the guy was ahead of them. But two or more, no way.

What were the guards thinking, though? They had to be wondering if there were more people out here. If they started looking, Quinn and Nate were going to have to make a serious effort not to be found.

Down below, two of the security men had hold of their captive, while a third was saying something, this time his voice too low to be heard. A few seconds later, they started walking as a group in the direction of the guardhouse.

“We’re moving,” Quinn said.

“Back to the car?” Nate asked.

“No. We follow.”

“What about the sensors? We’ll trip them.”

“I know,” Quinn said. “Wait where you are. I’m coming to you.”

Quinn took two chances. First, he decided that any motion sensor alarms they might set off would be attributed to the group with the prisoner. Since no one had come looking for them, that part seemed to have worked fine. Second, he decided to see if they could get to the guardhouse before the others. He figured that by keeping close to the fence, the guards wouldn’t notice them as they passed in the darkness. That, too, had paid off.

A ridge of stones standing upright like a collection of monoliths less than a hundred feet from the concrete structure acted as perfect cover. Quinn found a gap between the rocks that gave him a good view of both the guardhouse and the short valley that led up to it.

“Don’t know if this is the right time to mention this or not, but we’re kind of trapped here, aren’t we?” Nate said. “I mean, when we head back, we’re going to trip the sensors again. And this time I don’t think they’ll ignore it.”

“We’re not going back,” Quinn said. “At least not yet.”

“Wait, we’re going to try to get inside the fence?”

“Maybe.”

“Didn’t you promise Orlando this was just a simple recon, and we wouldn’t be doing anything that could get us into trouble?”

“I guess I was wrong.”

The truth was Quinn hadn’t planned on making an incursion at all, but the opportunity presented itself, and instinctively he realized it might be their best chance at getting in. In his job, listening to those instincts wasn’t a luxury. He trusted them, and this time they had said, “Move!”

From the left, toward the other end of the valley, there was the sound of several footsteps. The others had arrived.

Quinn peeked between the rocks at the guardhouse. The door had opened halfway, and there was the shadowy form of a man standing just inside. As Quinn angled to the right so he could get a look at the guards, he pulled out his camera phone. They had closed into a tight group around their prisoner. Quinn snapped several photos as they approached the guardhouse. Once everyone was inside, he chose the best pics and attached them to a hastily prepared email.

Need ID on man tied up.

He started to address it to both Orlando and Peter, then changed his mind and sent it to Peter only. Best to let Orlando relax and not worry.

“You’ve been checking for sensors?” Quinn asked Nate.

His apprentice nodded. “They were placed about every fifty feet through the hills, but the last one’s more than a hundred feet back there.”

“So there’s none up here?”

“I didn’t say that. I just meant I hadn’t seen any more.”

The lack of sensors this close to the guardhouse made sense. If there had been any, every time a guard went for a walk or to relieve himself the alarm would sound. That was an annoyance no one would want to deal with.

“Okay,” Quinn said. “As close as we can get.”

He stepped out from behind the rock and hoped to God that he was right.

CHAPTER

28

“I SEE THEM,” BASE SAID.

Tucker picked up his radio. “About fucking time.”

It was unfair, he knew. The rocks out there were a bitch. But dammit, he hating waiting this long. He wanted to know who was sneaking around their operation, and what he wanted.

Two minutes later, Base said, “Ready for video hookup.”

Tucker already had the video window open on his computer. The light level was a little low, but he could still make out several of his men moving around in the background. Then a face appeared on the screen. Tucker recognized him as a guy named Carter.

“You have a picture?” Carter asked.

“Yes. Could use a little light.”

“Hold on.”

A few seconds later, the picture lightened up by twenty percent.

“Better,” Tucker said. “Let me see him.”

“Over here,” someone barked on the other end.

A body moved into the shot. Male, dark clothes.

“Can’t see his face. I need to see his face,” Tucker said.

Someone adjusted the light on the other end, illuminating the intruder’s face. Tucker couldn’t help feeling a moment of disappointment. He’d been hoping the man was Jonathan Quinn. He would have liked to have seen the look on the cleaner’s face once he realized who was in charge here. A fucking laugher that would have been. But apparently Mr. Quinn had lost the Dupuis woman’s trail.

“Who the hell are you?” Tucker asked.

The man kept his face neutral and his mouth shut.

A rifle butt swung into the frame and slammed into the captive’s stomach. The man doubled over and fell out of the frame.

“Get the fuck up,” a voice off camera yelled. “You hear me? Get the fuck up.”

Tucker could hear retching off camera, then something scraping against the concrete floor. For several seconds nothing happened, then the captive’s head moved back into the frame, rising unsteadily from the bottom.

“Let me ask you again,” Tucker said. “Who the hell are you?”

“No,” the man said.

This time the rifle hit him in the kidney. The man flew forward, screaming, almost running into the camera.

Tucker smiled. Not because of the man’s pain, he was ambivalent about that. He smiled because the man spoke, and in Tucker’s experience once someone opened his mouth, he would eventually tell whatever he knew.

“Bring him in,” Tucker said.

He could hear Carter starting to say “Yes, sir,” but the guard was cut off as Tucker quit the program.

He pushed himself away from his desk and stood up. There were two empty cells along the hall where they were keeping the woman. One of those would be fine for their new guest.

He took a deep breath, then picked up the phone and punched in the number for the lab.

“Yes?” The voice was young. One of the technicians.

“I need to talk to Mr. Rose,” Tucker said.

“He left a couple of minutes ago. Headed up to the main level.”

Tucker hung up without saying anything, then rushed out of his office hoping to catch his boss before the old man disappeared into his quarters. Mr. Rose’s rule number one: If the door to his private room was closed, he was not to be disturbed. There wasn’t even the phrase “except in cases of emergency” tacked on. If he was inside, all could wait until he reappeared.

Tucker passed only one other person in the corridors on his way to the elevators, one of his security men on patrol. When the facility had been built, it was designed so that a hundred people could work inside at the same time. Mr. Rose’s operation was manned by less than half that amount—twenty security personnel, seventeen technical staff, Mr. Rose, and Tucker. Thirty-nine total. Of course, that wasn’t counting the Dupuis woman. Or Mr. Rose’s special packages.

When he reached the elevator, the car was already there and empty.

Frowning, he headed to Mr. Rose’s suite, hoping he wasn’t too late. As he turned onto Mr. Rose’s hallway, he nearly ran into the old man. He was standing just five feet around the corner, talking to a technician Tucker had seen a couple times before.

Whatever conversation they’d been having had stopped the minute Tucker appeared.

“Glad I caught you,” Tucker said.

Mr. Rose just stared at him.

“We’ve caught an intruder.”

That woke the old man up. “What? Where? Here in the base?”

“No,” Tucker said. “He was outside the fence, near the gate. He tripped the sensors, then hid when my men went to find him.”

“But they caught him.”

“Yes,” Tucker said.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know yet. He wouldn’t give us his name. My men are bringing him here right now.”

“Into the facility?” Mr. Rose did not sound happy.

“I can question him here, and we can run his prints through the system.”

“Do a complete scan of him before you bring him down,” Mr. Rose said. “Understand me? We can’t chance anything jeopardizing the operation.”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Not ‘okay, sure’! It should not even be an option. You should have already thought of that.”

“Of course,” Tucker said. He’d known his mistake even as he’d spoken the words. He tried to do a little damage control. “It’s standard operating procedure is all I mean. We’ll definitely do it.”

“That’s not what it sounded like.”

“I apologize if I was unclear.”

“You were,” Mr. Rose said.

No one spoke for several seconds.

“Was there more, Mr. Tucker?”

“No,” Tucker said. “That was it.”

“Give me a full report when you are done talking to him.”

“Of course.”

“Come on, come on, come on.” The words were more in Quinn’s head than spoken.

He and Nate had crawled to within a foot of the gate. It was built like the fences, horizontal wires about half a foot apart. And while it looked like it could also be electrified, it wasn’t humming like the double fence that converged to meet it.

“Come on,” he whispered again.

Getting to the other side should have been simple. They should have been able to slip through the deactivated fence while the others were inside with their prisoner. The problem was that one of the guards had decided it was a good time to take a leak. And even though he had finished, he was taking his sweet time zipping up and rejoining his friends inside.

Each second longer meant it was a second closer to more of the guards coming back outside. Perhaps they would take the prisoner through the gate and to the Yellowhammer facility. Maybe even after they were gone, someone would flip a switch turning on the power to the gate. Quinn’s best chance was to move now, before any of that could occur, but the son of a bitch seemed to be enjoying a little alone time.

Finally, the guard finished up and went back inside.

About goddamn time, Quinn thought.

He glanced at the window. No one seemed to be keeping tabs on the outside. What was inside was more interesting to them at the moment.

He gave Nate a quick nod, then crawled forward into the pale light that illuminated the gate. Once he was moving he didn’t stop. He pushed his backpack to the other side first, then squeezed between the wires. They were pretty taut, but they gave enough to let him through. Nate followed right behind him.

Once they’d both made it, they ran in a crouch down the road until they found a good spot from which to keep an eye on the gate. Turned out their precautions were unnecessary. It was another ten minutes before the door to the guardhouse opened again. This time, though, it wasn’t another pee break. It looked like the whole squad had come out, and with them the prisoner.

The gate opened and the group passed through. They continued down the road, passing less than a dozen feet away from Quinn and Nate’s position.

Once they’d gone by, Nate looked at Quinn, his eyebrows raised in a question.

Quinn nodded.

Without a word, they began to follow.

The elevator let Tucker out in a secure room at ground level. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, they were all concrete, and at least two feet thick, built to withstand a direct, pre–nuclear era attack. Of course, these days you wouldn’t need an atomic bomb to do the job. A single bunker buster would destroy the whole facility.

Tucker pressed his palm against the security-release pad next to the door, and was greeted with the gentle whoosh of the lock releasing.

Tucker entered the main part of the structure. From the outside it looked like a small one-room cinderblock hut built in a small clearing between piles of boulders. Most people would mistake it for something left over from one of the handful of failed mines that were spread through the Alabama Hills.