––––––––
I worked hard at appearing relaxed and prepared, even though I wanted to stick my head out the window and scream. Sweat coated my palms and ran down from my armpits. The gear strapped to me felt like it weighed two tons.
Manning sat beside me, her blood pressure through the roof. I didn’t want to show any fear because of what it might do to her resolve. She would go through with the mission no matter what, that was her character, but I needed her as calm and collected as possible.
Her eyes kept cutting over to me.
“Relax.” I leaned over to her. “You’re here with us for a reason.”
Tate sneered back at us. “You nervous? That’s all we need—you firing a high-powered rifle near us while you’re quaking in your boots.”
“Get off her ass, Tate.” Briggs shook his head. “We got enough to worry about without you poundin’ on your chest the whole way there.”
I wished Drew were there with us.
He was a much better leader than I could ever hope to be. His calm demeanor put people at ease. He’d fought hard to get Nelson to approve of him coming down with us, but the man in charge had given him a hard no.
Drew’s wrist hadn’t recovered enough for him to be fully effective during the mission, so Nelson had scrapped his involvement. I thought Drew might clock him and go anyway, but cooler heads had prevailed.
Besides, Nelson had been right.
If things went downhill, which they almost always did when I was involved, then we needed everyone operating at full capacity. The dexterity in Drew’s fingers hadn’t fully returned yet. If his hand failed him at the wrong time, we could all die.
So instead, Nelson and Drew were working on getting us drone surveillance over Christie Tolbert’s apartment building. It would be difficult for them to pull off without raising too many red flags in another agency. We didn’t want any interference from the FBI.
President Thomas had made it very clear we were to take care of Smith ourselves if at all possible. He didn’t want anyone else knowing about the Psych Ward and its past transgressions.
That made me wonder what would happen to us once we took out ol’ Scarface.
As I looked at the sky through the window, I wondered how many drones were above us just then, keeping an ever-watchful camera lens pointed at me.
The guards outside our facility provided twenty-four hour surveillance on me, but they couldn’t conceivably follow us into D.C. I assumed they had eyes in the sky above me. And I had little doubt that Thomas would never let me live freely again. I was too dangerous. My best bet at living in peace was to play his game.
I almost laughed as I thought about it. To live in peace, I had to charge into bad situations with a team of armed Special Forces tough guys. Up was down and left was right in my life.
The hits never stopped coming for team Asher Benson.
Shea kept the speedometer pegged at a minimum of ninety miles an hour. The beefy engine under the hood maintained that speed with ease. Cop cars pulled out after us twice, their lights flashing, only to stop pursuit when they saw our U.S. government license plates.
Traffic slowed to a crawl when we were five miles outside of the beltway.
Shea put us on the shoulder and slowed down to forty.
Cars honked as we zipped by.
The tension inside our vehicle rose with each passing moment.
We sat in silence, preparing ourselves mentally for what would come next.
It was go time.