The car had hit roof-first and wrapped itself backward around the tree. No one had been thrown from the car as it tumbled down the hillside. Everyone had somehow remained inside until the impact.
As Angela, in her cutoffs and suede boots, stood guard with her gun, Jack climbed up on the car to look down through the narrow openings that were all that was left when the roof hit the tree trunk and crushed the windows. The bodies inside were ripped and crumpled into a gory mess. There was no one remotely in one piece. There was nothing alive to be rescued.
Angela had efficiently killed them all without having to fire a shot. He doubted that anyone looking at her would realize how deadly this woman truly was. He couldn’t begin to imagine what her life had been like up to this point, but he hoped to find out.
The sky was just beginning to get a blush of color. It wouldn’t be long until dawn.
“Let’s get back to town,” he said.
The remainder of the drive back was uneventful. He had a lot of questions, but right then wasn’t the time. No one followed, so Angela drove, if not at the speed limit, at what was probably a reasonable speed for her. When they arrived back at his car, parked at Barry’s Place, the sun wasn’t yet up, but the sky was already turning a golden blue. The bar was long closed. A few pieces of what looked like hamburger wrappers danced with each other across the empty lot in the predawn glow.
“I have to work tomorrow,” she said. “This is going to be a busy Friday night, so the other girls will need me to help out. I need to get home, shower, and get some sleep. You look like you need some sleep, too.”
He would be able to get the sleep he needed, but it wouldn’t be long until the bar opened again. By the time she got home and to bed, she wouldn’t have the chance to get much sleep.
Jack nodded as he opened his door. “You’re right. You did something incredible tonight, Angela. There are a lot of things we need to talk about. But for now, get some rest. I’ll let you work and then come by later tonight, close to closing time.”
FIFTY-FIVE
When Jack arrived at Barry’s Place that night it was still a little while before their 2:00 a.m. closing time. He knew Angela would be busy helping to keep the bar up and running for Barry, so after everything that had happened the previous night he had wanted to let her do what she needed to do. The parking lot was still half full, so the bar appeared to be doing well.
Now that the people with the bomb had been stopped, he and Angela could take a breather. But Jack still had a lot he needed to talk to her about. He really needed to learn more about her ability to have visions from killers. That was well beyond anything he had ever seen in anyone else.
He didn’t really know yet exactly what he was dealing with. To be honest, it chilled him to the bone.
Jack had checked in with Dvora so she could fill him in with what information she had. She said the incident had been kept well above top secret, which he already knew because the news hadn’t said a word about it. If it had been merely top secret, it would have been leaked by now.
Apparently, after the recent terrorist attacks that had the whole country up in arms and demanding retaliation, the US government didn’t want people to know how vulnerable they were to being nuked. The incident had probably been kept confined to as few people as possible. Even most people in the intel community wouldn’t know about it.
Dvora gave him a report on the killed and injured. She said the nuclear device itself had been blown several hundred feet, but because the bomb required such a heavy steel case for the initial implosion, it hadn’t ruptured. It was secure and NEST was already going about rendering it safe.
The explosives the terrorists had rigged were massive to insure no one at the site survived. None had. He knew that the few lookouts who had chased them were dead as well. Jack was hoping that Cassiel was among the dead. It would take some time, but the authorities investigating the site should eventually be able to confirm his identity from remains found at the site. Once they knew, the Mossad should be able to find out and then let Jack know.
Dvora told him that, from the chatter, it sounded like they had a terrorist in custody. Jack found that surprising. She said they were keeping the captured terrorist under tight wraps and they weren’t saying anything. Jack assumed they must have captured another lookout.
After getting a fitful sleep in a motel room where the curtains let in too much light, he had spent the rest of the day and evening, in the room, doing research over a pizza. He had a lot of information that he had collected over the years about different types of people with the ability to recognize killers. All of those people could do it to a greater or lesser extent. Most to a lesser extent.
Then there was Kate. She had abilities to know things from looking into the eyes of killers that he had previously reasoned would at some point come about because of evolution.
But he couldn’t begin to explain Angela’s abilities. They went far above and beyond any of his own theories. Some very rare individuals, Kate especially, could get shadowy hints of things from looking at killers or their photos.
Angela saw more than shadows. She could name names.
As Jack walked across the parking lot half full of cars, it seemed that a lot of people weren’t leaving, yet. Everyone was probably staying for last call. He wanted to let Angela do her job, but he was eager to talk to her.
The primal woods across the street stood a silent watch. The bar, as he had first thought, looked to be a last outpost before the great, trackless forests. Such things always left him wondering at his place—at mankind’s place—in the greater cosmos. Sometimes he just wanted to vanish into one of those ancient forests and live out the rest of his life alone and at peace without having to deal with killers and their prey.
A wall of pounding rock music hit him when he opened the door on the dark den. Inside was a totally different world than the quiet, surrounding forest just outside.
The people inside were varying degrees of drunk, loud, and seemed to be having a great time. The place was filled with cigarette smoke. Colorful lights played over everyone, making them look almost like they were being sprinkled with pixie dust. Some people danced to the music among the tables. Some women in low-cut tops and short skirts danced on guys’ laps.
Jack saw the girls who worked in the bar having a last drink with their customers. It was a party atmosphere, but he knew that Angela wouldn’t be taking part in the drinking. One of the things he had learned about her was that, like most people with the ability to spot killers, she had an aversion to mind-altering substances of any type.
As Jack made his way across the room among animated people hanging all over each other, drinking, talking, laughing, and dancing, Nate spotted him and rushed over to take him by the arm and drag him around the side of the bar and then to a doorway into a back room where it was a little quieter, but not much.
“Where’s Angela?”
“Please!” Nate said, sounding rather desperate. “Come back here where we can talk.”
Nate dragged him into the back stockroom, where it wasn’t quite so noisy.
“Where’s Angela?” Jack asked again.
“They took her!” Nate said, still gripping Jack’s arm. “Those fucking bastards came and—”
“Wait a minute,” Jack said holding up a hand. “Slow down. Tell me what happened.”
“I wanted to call you—I tried—but I didn’t know how to reach you. I called every motel in Milford Falls and no one had a Jack Raines registered there.”
Jack didn’t use his real name at motels. He had fake IDs he always used so that people couldn’t find him.
“All right. I’m here now. What happened?” Jack’s level of alarm was growing by the second, but he tried not to let it show. “Where’s Angela?”
Nate pressed his fingertips to each side of his head as he took a calming breath.
“When we opened early today in the late morning I had just arrived and was waiting because I don’t hav
e a key. Angela showed up about that time to open the place. None of the other girls had arrived, yet.
“As she was unlocking the door all hell broke loose. Men in black tactical gear from head to foot, with only their eyes showing, pointed machine guns at Angela. They shoved me to the side. They were all screaming orders at once. It was insane.”
Jack leaned in, his jaw hanging open. “What?”
“Yeah, there were dozens of them. They rushed in and slammed her up against the wall. Like fifteen guys all had their hands on her, pressing her up against the wall so she couldn’t move. Everyone was pointing guns at her. I was yelling and screaming at them to leave her alone and not to hurt her.
“Then, as they were holding her against the wall, a whole bunch of black SUVs came roaring into the parking lot, completely surrounding us. About half a dozen of these guys in black with machine guns dragged me back and frisked me. They told me to keep my fucking mouth shut.”
“What about Angela?” Jack asked.
“They had her pressed flat against the wall. A few guys searched her while some others were putting handcuffs and leg irons on her. They took a gun out of a holster in her waistband in back. Another guy pulled a knife out of her right boot.”
“What was she doing? Did she say anything? I hope to god she didn’t resist.”
“No, she didn’t try to fight them. She looked like a rag doll in their hands. I felt terrible for not helping her, but I had half a dozen guns in my face. These fuckers weren’t fooling around. They told me that if I didn’t stay back and keep my mouth shut they would shoot me. I don’t think they were bluffing.”
“They weren’t,” Jack told him.
“Then four or five of them picked Angela up—picked her right up off the ground like a rolled-up carpet—and carried her to the back of one of those big black SUVs. Just before they got her there and stuffed her inside, she turned her head back and yelled for me to keep the bar open.
“I knew what she meant. Lots of the girls need the work and Barry is going to need to make a living—if he lives. But at that moment that was the last thing in the world I cared about. I was afraid for Angela. I have no idea who these men were. They didn’t have any markings and I sure as hell wasn’t about to ask to see their ID.
“As soon as she said that, they stuffed a gag in her mouth as they were putting her in the SUV. Then the whole lot of them piled into their vehicles and blew out of here.”
Jack stared off in fury. “Damn.”
“Do you know who they were, or what they wanted with Angela? Did it have something to do with that big explosion I heard about over in the old industrial area? I heard they have the entire area closed off and there are troops all over the place. They said a military plane had crashed.
“Do you know why they came in here and took her like that? I mean, putting her in handcuffs and leg-irons and all? These weren’t police. I’ve seen SWAT. This wasn’t SWAT. This was something else, some kind of armed-forces people.”
“I don’t know what’s going on, Nate.”
Jack really didn’t. His mind was racing, trying to think what to do.
“We’ve got to help her!” Nate sounded desperate.
“What time did this happen?”
Nate threw up his hands. “I don’t know. Right before we opened. Just before noon. Something like that.”
“That means they’ve had her for over fourteen hours.”
“I didn’t know what to do. The other girls started arriving, and customers were showing up, so I let the girls open the place up. I told them what happened to Angela—well, I only told them that she had been arrested—and that Angela told me to open the bar.”
Jack’s mind was racing, trying to decide on what to do next.
“Is there a federal building in Milford Falls?”
“Yeah, sure,” Nate said. “A small one. It has Social Security Administration offices there, things like that.”
Jack didn’t know why in the world they would have taken Angela prisoner, but since it had to be about the bomb, it would be some kind of high-level federal force.
That kind would probably want to question her on the spot before any more time elapsed or anyone else horned in on what they had claimed as their territory. Those kinds of men wouldn’t want to wait until they got her back to Washington. They would want to be in an obscure location, since their agency was being watched all the time by reporters looking for news or leaks about the mass terrorist attacks.
“Where’s this federal building?”
Nate gave him directions. Jack raced out to his car and took off. If they did take her to the federal building for the initial questioning, they might still be there.
FIFTY-SIX
Jack parked almost a block away in a spot at the end of a side street where he would be able to keep an eye on the small, local federal building. There were a half dozen black SUVs parked on the street. Since there was underground parking, there were likely more he didn’t see. They all had government tags but no agency identification. He hoped those vehicles meant that Angela was still in there.
He hoped, too, that he could find a way to get her out. They would never in a million years understand her and what she had done for the country. That was irrelevant to them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have picked her up and treated her like they had just captured Osama Bin Laden. They had their own agenda.
They’d had her in there for fifteen hours. He knew she wouldn’t be sleeping in a cell. These people had no intention of letting her sleep. They would be hammering away at her in a relentless interrogation. He didn’t know for certain why they had her, but he had his suspicions.
If they got her back to Washington she would vanish in a maze of bureaucratic organizations and secret locations. She would be at the mercy of elements of intel agencies and a justice department that were above the law or accountability. Because he had worked with some of those people he knew that this was his best chance to intercede before they took her to Washington.
There weren’t many cars parked on the street at the late hour. That made Jack uncomfortable, because he stood out like a sore thumb.
He knew that if he was going to accomplish anything, he was going to have to come out of the shadows. He had stayed off the grid for years. Now, if he was going to help Angela, he had no choice but to surface.
Jack checked his watch. It was 3:00 a.m., so that made it 10:00 a.m. in Israel. He pressed the speed dial.
Once he had coded in, Dvora immediately picked up.
“Dvora, I’ve got a problem.”
“What is it?”
“Federal agents snatched Angela. I don’t know who or why.”
“I can at least help with the ‘why,’ ” Dvora said. “We’ve been monitoring some of the deep chatter. We believe they think she was involved with the terrorists.”
“What? That’s bullshit. She’s the one who stopped them!”
“What do you want me to do?”
Jack’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “I’m going to have to contact some people who think I’m dead. They may decide to make sure I stay dead this time. I need you to initiate our fail-safe protocol should anything happen to me.”
“Are you sure it’s that serious?”
“I have at least a half dozen snipers on rooftops zeroed in on me as we speak.”
Dvora paused for a moment. “All right, I’m patching it in now.” There was another pause. “Okay, it’s set. If you fail to check in every twenty-four hours, the packet will be released to all the places listed. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. When do you want the clock to start ticking?”
Jack checked his watch again. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get the person I need to speak with to answer his phone in the middle of the night. Let’s make it eight a.m.”
“You got it. At eight a.m. where you are, three p.m. here, the clock starts. You will need to call in by eight a.m. every day until you abort, or the packet will automatical
ly go out.”
“Understood. Thank you, Dvora.”
She paused a moment. “Is this subject worth the risk, Jack?”
“I couldn’t even begin to explain to you how important she is, except to say that because of her alone, New York City won’t vanish under a mushroom cloud.”
Dvora let out a low whistle. “Wow. Okay, Jack, we have your back. Do what you need to do to get her out of there.”
When she hung up, Jack dialed another number. There was no answer. He hadn’t expected there would be. He dialed the number every fifteen minutes throughout the night.
It was seven thirty in the morning before a man answered. “This had better be important.” He sounded more than a little grumpy.
“It is, Angus,” Jack said.
“Who is this?”
“Jack Raines.”
There was a long pause. “Jack Raines is dead.”
“I regret to inform you I’m still alive and kicking.”
“How the hell do I know this is really Jack Raines?”
“Because I called you on this number.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. You could have stolen it or taken it off a dead man—a dead Jack Raines.”
“You mean like you took that dead man’s little black book in Cincinnati? I was there, remember? I watched you take it out of his breast pocket after your man, Sam, if memory serves, garroted the guy.”
“Jack … good god … it really is you?”
“Afraid so, Angus.”
“We thought you were dead. Everyone thought you were dead.”
“I know. I wanted to be dead. Now, I need to be alive.”
“What’s this about?”
“This is about something I need you to do.”
“Well, I’m not sure I would still be able to—”
“Or else, among other things, I expose your agency’s existence and where it is in the black budget.”