Outskirts of town
Smithville, South Carolina
Where’s Jennifer?” Brooke demanded, her voice a mixture of excitement and trepidation. “Is she okay?”
“She was spotted five minutes ago by a woman riding through some woods on a trail bike. She saw two men pulling a girl from a car at a farm on Bell’s Road not far from here.”
“Backup?”
“Haven’t called any yet. Let’s check the scene. We don’t want to rush in and spook the two men holding her.”
Brooke had a horrible thought. “Do you think they’re watching the news?”
“I would be.”
“If they hear Akbar is dead, they might decide to hurt Jennifer and run.”
Parker turned their car onto Bell’s Road and accelerated. He switched off the vehicle’s flashing lights and siren, and when they had gone about three miles, he pulled to the side of the road. “The woman said the house is about a hundred yards through these woods. Let’s walk.”
They moved rapidly through the foliage.
“There it is,” Parker whispered when they reached a clearing.
The old farmhouse was about fifty feet from the woods where they were hiding. It was in rough shape. Shingles were missing from its gray roof. The upstairs windows in the two-story house were covered with plywood sheets. Trash littered its unkempt yard. The only evidence that someone was inside was a silver Chevy Silverado truck parked near the back door.
Touching his earbud receiver, Parker whispered, “The media just reported Akbar has been killed.”
Brooke fiddled with her earpiece. “Why are you getting this and I’m not? I haven’t heard the last three or four messages you’ve told me.”
Parker gave her a blank stare. “I’m going to call in the HRT,” he said. “I don’t trust anyone else. It will probably be two hours before they can get here.”
They heard Jennifer scream inside the house.
“We can’t wait,” Brooke said, drawing her pistol.
“No. Stop!” Parker called out, but he caught himself. “Go ahead, I’ll come after I call for backup.”
Brooke was already dashing across the clearing toward the farmhouse. She threw herself against the building’s back wall and hesitated in order to catch her breath and focus. She slowly edged her way to the house’s back door, where she peeked through a sagging wire screen door and dirty window in the upper half of the door. She didn’t see anyone inside the kitchen. Brooke gently opened the screen and tried the knob. The door was unlocked and creaked when she opened it. As she entered the house, she heard the sound of footsteps. A man was running down a hallway toward the kitchen with a raised pistol. He fired and Brooke could feel the shock wave caused by the bullet as it sailed by her left ear. Ducking, she shifted her weight and fired her handgun. Her aim was better than his, and he hit the floor and didn’t move again.
Jennifer screamed.
Her voice was coming from upstairs. Brooke hurried from the kitchen, down a hallway into the front foyer of the house where a staircase would take her up to the second level. But she paused at its first step. Parker had mentioned two men, and she assumed the second terrorist would be waiting upstairs with Jennifer. He would have heard the gunfire.
“Ayub, did you kill her?” Brooke heard a male voice call down.
He would know when there was no answer that his partner was dead. He would also know that she would have to climb the stairs to reach him and Jennifer. Brooke didn’t have a choice. She raced up them as fast as she could.
She reached the top step at the same moment the second terrorist appeared on the landing. Before he could fire, she threw her shoulder into him, hitting him in his groin with such force that she lifted him off his feet. He tumbled backward and instinctively lowered his hands to break his fall.
Now towering over him, Brooke fired twice. The terrorist gasped and began gurgling from the wounds in his chest. He glared at her. She fired a third shot into his forehead.
Only one of the upstairs bedroom doors was open, and Brooke darted through it. She spotted Jennifer sitting on the floor. Gray duct tape was wrapped around her wrists and her right leg was chained to an old-fashioned steam radiator in the room. The terrorist had taped Jennifer’s mouth after her last scream.
Dropping to her knees, Brooke laid her pistol on the floor and drew a pocketknife from the pocket of her denim jeans. She removed the tape from Jennifer’s mouth and freed the girl’s wrist.
Jennifer grabbed Brooke with both arms and burst into tears.
“I’ve got you now!” Brooke exclaimed, squeezing the teen as they hugged. “You’re safe. Those men aren’t going to hurt you anymore.” Jennifer held on tighter.
“I knew you’d come,” Jennifer whispered.
As they held each other, Parker entered the room, causing Jennifer to flinch. “A man!” Jennifer said in a frightened voice, unsure who Parker was.
“What?” Brooke asked, turning her head to look behind her. “Oh, don’t be afraid, Jen. That’s FBI Special Agent Parker. He’s one of the good guys.”
“Yes, I am,” Parker declared, as he walked closer.
Jennifer’s traumatic brain injury had robbed her of many cognitive abilities, but it also had forced her to develop new ones. She remembered voices, even ones that she’d only heard once. It was as if voices became recordings in her brain, much like old LP records that could be pulled from a mental shelf in her head, dusted off, and played.
Jennifer knew instantly that she had heard his voice before, and she knew where she had heard it. She had been locked in a car trunk, still a hostage. It was when Akbar had parked his car and stood outside the trunk talking to another man. It was the same night when Aludra had disappeared. The voice of the other man belonged to Agent Parker.
“He’s one of them,” Jennifer cried. “A bad man.”
“What? What are you saying?” Brooke asked, clearly confused. She was still on her knees facing Jennifer with Parker standing behind her. When she turned to look up at him, she noticed that he was holding two guns, and one of them was aimed at her.
“Lower that gun,” she said. “You’re frightening her.”
Parker didn’t respond, and she saw that he had put plastic surgical gloves on his hands. She also realized that the pistol he was pointing at her was not his service weapon. It was the handgun from the dead terrorist at the top of the staircase.
“What’s this about?” she asked, slowly turning on her knees to face him.
“The Falcon asked me personally to kill you. Both of you.”
“The Falcon?” Brooke stammered.
“You didn’t have a clue, did you?”
“You’re a traitor?”
“Let’s just say I recently decided to switch teams. You should feel honored. The Falcon called me directly. Always before, I’ve gotten my orders through an intermediary. But he called me personally because he really wants you and this girl dead.”
She glanced at Jennifer, who seemed paralyzed, and then returned her gaze to him.
“You bastard!” she said. “You’re the Viper. All this time, you have been right in front of my eyes.”
She shifted her eyes to look at her handgun lying about a foot from her reach on the floor. He noticed and said, “Go for it. I can shoot you here, but I’d rather do it at the top of the staircase.”
“Why?”
“Because then I won’t have to drag your body there. I’ll admit, it’s not the most original plan, but it’s a plausible one. I’ll tell them that I was on my cell phone in the woods calling for backup when you ran ahead. You have a reputation for being impulsive. I discovered your body at the top of the stairs where you’d been shot with this handgun.” He raised the pistol slightly to make certain that she realized that he had taken it from the terrorist whom she’d killed. “Regrettably, I found Jennifer fatally wounded as well.”
“You’re the reason my headset doesn’t work, aren’t you?” she said. “You are why I’ve not been getting messages and you have.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your headset.” He snickered. “I was making up those messages. I knew Jennifer was being brought here. I lied to get you to come with me. Now we’re on a bit of a schedule. I can’t have our backup storming in while you both are alive.”
“You actually called them?”
“Of course. But don’t get your hopes up, Major Grant. I can tell what you are thinking. If you can stall long enough, they’ll arrive in time to stop me from killing you. Not a chance. Now, it would be easier for me if you would stand and walk to the staircase. I’d rather not risk having someone noticing drag marks on your skin during your autopsy.”
“You’re asking me to help you cover up my own murder? Go to hell!”
“Perhaps you need an incentive.” He pointed the pistol at Jennifer. “Do you want to see her die first? Getting shot in the stomach, I’ve heard, is especially painful.”
Brooke glanced at Jennifer, who was clearly terrified.
“Why?” Brooke asked him.
“Now, now, do you really want your last thoughts to be about such trivial matters as my motivation? In a few moments, none of this will matter to you—not even Jennifer. Ticktock, ticktock. We’re on a schedule, remember?”
“You owe me an explanation.”
Parker burst out laughing. “Owe you? Okay, how’s this. Cold, hard cash. Short and simple answer. Lots of it, and I have you to thank for it.”
“Me?”
“Remember when you returned from Somalia? You’d stopped the Falcon from exploding a bomb in Mogadishu that would have killed hundreds, and I got to thinking, what would this new Islamic mastermind terrorist have been willing to pay for inside information? If I had been providing him intel about you in Somalia, he would have been able to set off that bomb.”
“You contacted him and offered to spy?”
“No, I offered him a business deal, my information services for cash. Why do you seem so surprised? John Walker Jr., Aldrich Ames, and Robert Hanssen were all Americans who sold secrets to the KGB during the Cold War. Wake up, Major Grant. Terrorists are the new marketplace for information—the new enemy—and for the right price, I have been willing to sell that information to them. Do you know why jihadists have been able to avoid detection in Europe and the U.S.? Edward Snowden. That young, naïve American posted information on the Internet that exposed our secret communication system and showed them how to evade detection. Many Americans call him a whistleblower, a hero.”
“You’re not a hero. You’re a Judas.”
“Oh, Major Grant, sticks and stones, really? Trust me, the Falcon paid me much more than thirty pieces of silver. And before you get too melodramatic, don’t forget that Osama bin Laden was once on our side fighting the Russians in Afghanistan. Once upon a time, we hated Iran but we ended up fighting with them in Syria against ISIS. One day our enemy, the next day our friend. That’s how international politics work.”
“Stop trying to minimize what you are doing. What’s the going rate for betraying your country?”
“Why, you interested in joining the team? Ha. Two million dollars as a retainer, plus another million for eliminating you and the girl. A million-dollar bounty—you should feel honored.”
She glared at him. “With you, it’s more than the cash, isn’t it? I’ve been around you long enough to know that it’s ego too. You get a kick out of going to work each day fooling everyone around you, don’t you? It makes you feel important, doesn’t it? It makes you think you’re special, smarter.”
“Enough psych 101. Enough stalling. Raise your hands and walk to the top of the stairs, or I’ll shoot the girl first so you can watch her die.”
Brooke turned and positioned herself between Parker and Jennifer as a shield as she slowly rose to her feet.
“No heroics,” he warned.
Brooke lunged at him. He fired at the same moment her body struck his. She had never felt anything as painful as the slug that ripped into her abdomen. It was as if she had been hit by a speeding car. Despite the intense pain, she grabbed Parker around his neck with both hands as they tumbled onto the floor.
He landed hard on his back, with Brooke now lying prone on his chest. She felt the air escape from his lungs when they hit the floor, and she tried to tighten her grasp to choke him. But her fingers failed her. The initial shock of being wounded caused her entire body to shake as she fought to remain conscious.
Parker momentarily gulped for air but quickly regained his composure. He released his grip on both handguns—his FBI service weapon, which he was holding in his left hand, and the terrorists’ pistol in his right—so he could pry her locked fingers from around his neck. He shoved her from his chest and rose up on his knees so he could face her, turning his back on Jennifer. He stared down at Brooke, who was now immobilized by her wound.
“Had to play the hero up to the end,” he snarled, mocking her.
Brooke’s white cotton blouse under her navy blazer was turning dark red from her blood. Her breathing was labored and irregular. She looked up at him half conscious and wanted to speak, but couldn’t.
“Stupid bitch,” he snapped. “Now I’m going to have to drag you and clean up your blood.”
He bent forward and retrieved the terrorist’s pistol from the floor. He pressed its barrel against her breast not far from where the first slug had pierced her. “I think I’ll just leave you dead here. I’ll tell them you were protecting the girl when you and the terrorist exchanged gunfire. It will take some staging, but everyone will want to believe you died being a hero. They’ll want to believe my story.”
As he started to pull the trigger, a piece of chain flew over his head and caught itself around his throat.
Parker had been kneeling with his back to Jennifer so he had not seen the teen gather up the excess chain that ran from her leg to the radiator and fashion it into a garrote.
Parker instinctively dropped the pistol and grabbed the chain collar now choking him. He tried to pry it free with both hands but Jennifer pulled the chain with all of her strength. Now panicking, Parker stood and began twisting and turning, shaking violently in a failed attempt to toss Jennifer from his shoulders. She tugged the links tighter against his throat as if it were a bridle on a horse that she had mounted. The traitor’s face turned bloodred as he threw his hands behind him and grabbed Jennifer’s hair, causing her to scream, but she did not loosen her grip.
Parker suddenly remembered the pistols at his feet near where Brooke was now lying. He bent down and reached for one.
Brooke saw him. She’d recovered slightly from the initial trauma of the gunshot, and although she didn’t have the strength needed to rise from the floor to challenge him, she called up every bit of energy that she could muster and forced her hand to respond. Sliding her fingers across the floor, she searched for the pistol grip. She felt it just as Parker was about to seize it. She pointed it upward and fired.
The last sight Brooke saw was Special Agent Wyatt Parker’s chin exploding.
She blacked out.