The ACORT brief­ing doc­u­ment also noted a high prob­ab­il­ity that Reed’s people were in pos­ses­sion of sev­eral sur­face-to-air rocket launch­ers. It seemed un­likely the mi­li­tia was ex­pect­ing any­thing like an air at­tack, though. The group had been keep­ing a low pro­file for the last few years, play­ing nicey-nice with the local gov­ern­ment and gen­er­ally not ruff­ling any feath­ers.

  In­tel­li­gence in­dic­ated that would soon change. An in­form­ant on the in­side—code­named Sheep­skin—had re­por­ted Reed was gear­ing up for some­thing big. A destabil­iz­ing event. There were rum­blings from other sources, too, but no firm in­form­a­tion on what that event might be.

  Without a bet­ter idea of Reed’s plans, a full-scale FBI raid of the com­pound was off the table. But the gov­ern­ment couldn’t sit around and wait for some­thing to hap­pen. Hence ACORT’s in­volve­ment. One of its ana­lysts had come up with a brazen plan that would cut the mi­li­tia’s legs out from un­der it—if the plan is pulled off.

  ACORT had been ordered by the NSA to give the mis­sion to the newly re­formed Of­fice as a test of the re­con­sti­t­uted or­gan­iz­a­tion’s abil­it­ies.

  Or­lando was over­see­ing the op. As for Quinn, though he was used to com­ing in on a mis­sion after the fact and mak­ing everything look pretty, to­night he would be lead­ing the team do­ing the dirty work.

  He had roped in Steve Howard, Greta Soren­son, and Makoto Taka­hashi to serve on the team. They had spent nearly an hour hik­ing through the rugged ter­rain east of the com­pound, and were fi­nally ap­proach­ing the fence. It sat atop a rise ten to fif­teen feet higher than Quinn and his team’s po­s­i­tion.

  Or­lando was in the get­away vehicle, parked in a grove of trees less than a mile on the other side of the build­ings. With her was Mar­ina Weeks, an ex­per­i­enced driver who had spent the last day go­ing over every inch of road in the area. They would mon­itor events and move to the re­trieval point once Quinn and the oth­ers gave them the sig­nal.

  Quinn checked his po­s­i­tion on his phone be­fore whis­per­ing, “This way.”

  He led the oth­ers through the craggy ground to­ward the base of the bluff the fence sat on. When they were within twenty yards, he checked the map again and slightly ad­jus­ted their course.

  “Should be right over there,” he said, nod­ding to­ward the nearby rise. “Hand sig­nals only from this point.” When the oth­ers in­dic­ated they un­der­stood, he clicked on his mic again. “Quinn for Or­lando. We’re go­ing si­lent.”

  “Copy,” she said.

  The key to the raid was to get in and out without any­one know­ing. If just one mi­li­tia mem­ber picked up a hint of what was go­ing on, the whole thing would be blown. Go­ing through or over the fence was not an op­tion, as there was too great a chance they’d be seen.

  Ac­cord­ing to Sheep­skin, how­ever, the com­pound also pos­sessed a secret en­trance. Reed had ap­par­ently built it so he could leave the fa­cil­ity now and then without his people know­ing. How the in­side man knew about it, Quinn had no idea. He just hoped the info was true.

  He crept along the edge of the rise un­til he spot­ted the round-topped rock and thicket of brush be­low it that he’d been told about.

  When he found the crawl space un­der the bushes, he got on his hands and knees, mo­tioned for the oth­ers to wait, and slipped into the over­grown tun­nel. The crawl­way ended at a five-foot-square cleared area covered by a rocky over­hang. Though from other vant­age points the ledge looked like a nat­ural fea­ture of the land­scape, the steel sup­port beams re­vealed it was man­made.

  At the back of the over­hang against the hill­side was the prom­ised door.

  He clicked his mic once, sig­nal­ing the oth­ers to come through, then moved up to the door. He found the fin­ger­print reader hid­den be­hind a panel that looked like a rock, like Sheep­skin had said.

  From his back­pack he re­moved a small con­tainer, pulled out the five latex fin­ger caps, and placed each on the cor­res­pond­ing di­git of his left hand. The caps came down just past the top knuckle and fit snug­gly over his rub­ber glove. Each cap was em­bossed with the ap­pro­pri­ate Jack­son Reed fin­ger­print. How the prints had been ob­tained, he didn’t know, but he guessed a guy like Reed prob­ably had a po­lice re­cord some­where.

  Quinn placed his faux fin­ger­tips on the reader. A green light glowed be­neath them. When it turned off, the door latch hummed and clicked. Howard gave it a pull, con­firm­ing it was open.

  Quinn shone his flash­light into the inky black of the tun­nel. As secret pas­sage­ways went, this one was more 1849 gold mine than twenty-first-cen­tury su­pervil­lain es­cape pod tun­nel, its earthen walls and ceil­ing sup­por­ted every few feet by wooden arches.

  Quinn poin­ted at Howard and Soren­son—sig­nal­ing they were to come with him while Taka­hashi was to re­main at the tun­nel en­trance—and moved in­side.

  The tun­nel smelled dry and dusty, which did little to al­le­vi­ate the sense it might col­lapse at any mo­ment. As the in­side man had in­dic­ated, the pas­sage went ba­sic­ally straight un­der the com­pound for about a hun­dred and fifty feet be­fore veer­ing north­w­est at a forty-five-de­gree angle.

  The sec­tion on the other side of the turn was only about half as long as the first part had been, and dead-ended at a con­crete walled space, just wide enough for one per­son to stand in. On the left side, se­cured into the wall, was a lad­der run­ning into a shaft that went up a good fif­teen feet above the pas­sage­way.

  While Howard and Soren­son checked their weapons, Quinn trans­ferred the packet con­tain­ing a syr­inge of Beta-Som­nol from his back­pack into the pouch sewn onto the end of his sleeve. He looked over to make sure the oth­ers were ready be­fore he headed up to the wooden trap­door.

  If Sheep­skin had done as re­ques­ted, the latch hold­ing the door down would be un­locked, and the car­pet cov­er­ing the ac­cess point re­moved.

  Quinn doused his flash­light and gave the door a push. No res­ist­ance. He slipped it up­ward un­til there was a nar­row gap between it and the floor. The space bey­ond was dark and he could see noth­ing. He held the trap­door in place, listen­ing for signs of life. When he heard none, he pushed the door farther open.

  Still not a sound. If there were oth­ers in the room, they would have ripped the door out of his grasp by now and shouted at him not to move, or at least turned on a light.

  When the door had gone as far as it could, he climbed up two more rungs and stuck his head into the room. The black sur­round­ing him was im­pen­et­rable. Not want­ing to but hav­ing little choice, he switched on his flash­light and swung it around.

  Sheep­skin had said the tun­nel would let out in a stor­age cel­lar. Sure enough, the hatch opened in the middle of an aisle between floor-to-ceil­ing shelves, packed with sup­plies.

  He signaled the oth­ers to re­main in the tun­nel, climbed out, and crept to the end of the shelves.

  A cent­ral walk­way, with more loaded shelves on either side. The in­side man had said the tun­nel led to the cel­lar of the main house, the one Jack­son Reed called home, and from all ap­pear­ances, that was where Quinn was.

  He re­turned to the hatch and waved Howard and Soren­son up.

  Ac­cord­ing to Sheep­skin, there were three exits to the base­ment—the trap­door Quinn and his team had come through, the main exit via a stair­way to the first-floor kit­chen, and a hid­den back stair­way that went straight up to Reed’s second-floor bed­room.

  Quinn led the oth­ers to a pair of floor-to-ceil­ing cab­in­ets in the south­east corner that sat per­pen­dic­u­lar to each other and to the walls, cre­at­ing a squared-out notch.

  Quinn scanned the shelves, pick­ing out the items he was look­ing for. Then, in the se­quence he’d mem­or­ized, he pushed two of the se­lec­ted books back as far as they would go, and pulled out a third volume to the very edge of the shelf. Lastly, he slid an old ammo box in­ward un­til it clicked in place.

  With a gentle tug, one of the cab­in­ets si­lently swung out, re­veal­ing the spiral stair­way.

  Quinn went up first, then Howard, and, after shut­ting the cab­inet be­hind her, Soren­son. They kept their pace slow to avoid cre­at­ing any noise, but Reed had ob­vi­ously been con­cerned with the same is­sue, as the stairs barely made more than the oc­ca­sional soft creak.

  Quinn killed his light when he reached the door at the top and turned the handle.

  Once more, Sheep­skin’s in­form­a­tion proved cor­rect. The door opened be­hind a rack of clothes hanging in a large, walk-in closet.

  They crept through to the main door and Quinn placed his ear against it. He heard a fan, prob­ably a ceil­ing one, but that was the only noise.

  He crouched, pulled out his phone, and at­tached a goose­neck, mi­cro cam­era to it. He slipped the cam­era un­der the door­way. The pic­ture that came back was filled with dark shad­ows so he switched the feed to night vis­ion.

  A dresser and some other kind of cab­inet sat to either side of the closet door, while across the room, against the far wall was a king-sized bed. From the lumpy cov­ers, it seemed someone was us­ing it. The room was big enough to have a sit­ting area and a desk. None of the chairs were oc­cu­pied, nor was any­one stand­ing any­where.

  He pulled the cam­era back, dis­mantled the goose­neck, and stowed both. He and the oth­ers donned their night vis­ion goggles.

  Howard entered the bed­room first and angled to the left, gun out. Soren­son, also armed, went next and headed right. Quinn re­moved the syr­inge of Beta-Som­nol from his sleeve pocket and fol­lowed.

  Son of a bitch.

  The bed was oc­cu­pied, all right, but by two people. That put a real crimp in the plan of get­ting Reed and get­ting out without any­one be­ing the wiser.

  Con­veni­ently, the lar­ger of the two was ly­ing on his back. Reed. His gray, mil­it­ary cut hair; thick, def­in­itely not mil­it­ary ap­proved beard; close-set eyes; and acne-scarred cheeks were more than enough to ID him.

  The man’s bed­mate was a wo­man, small, fa­cing away on the other side of the bed.

  Quinn would have to spread the knock­out juice between them. It meant Reed wouldn’t be un­der as long, but they should still have more than enough time to get him to the van without the mi­li­tia leader re­gain­ing con­scious­ness.

  De­cid­ing it would be best to put the wo­man un­der first, Quinn circled the bed. As he leaned down, he froze.

  She was wide awake and star­ing at him. Al­most as alarm­ing was the fact she couldn’t have been more than six­teen.

  She looked nervous, but not nearly as scared as she should have been at the sight of a stranger in the room.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “He won’t wake up.”

  Quinn shot a look at Reed, but the man re­mained on his side.

  “He’s drunk,” she whispered. “He al­ways sleeps like a rock when he’s drunk.”

  Per­haps she was telling the truth, but that didn’t undo the fact she’d seen Quinn. About the only thing he could do was pre­vent her wit­ness­ing the rest of the mis­sion.

  “You need to close your eyes,” he whispered, rais­ing the syr­inge. “This won’t hurt. When you wake up, it’ll be bet­ter for you if you for­get you ever saw me.”

  He reached to pull the blanket off her shoulder.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Please. I’m Sheep­skin.”

  That stopped him dead. “You?”

  She nod­ded. “You used the tun­nel and came up the secret stairs. That was my idea.”

  She was Sheep­skin, all right. Need­ing a mo­ment to fig­ure out what he would do with her, he mo­tioned for Howard to keep an eye on her and moved back around to Reed.

  The mi­li­tia leader didn’t even twitch when the needle went in. Quinn gave him three quar­ters of the dose.

  The syr­inge kit came with spare needles, so he switched out the used one be­fore he re­turned to the girl’s side of the bed. “I’m go­ing to give you this,” he said. “It’ll knock you out un­til morn­ing. That way no one will think you had any­thing to do with his dis­ap­pear­ance.”

  She pulled back from him. “No. No, no. I-I-I can’t stay here any­more. Please. You have to take me with you. You have to.”

  “That’s…” He was go­ing to say that’s not the plan but couldn’t bring him­self to fin­ish.

  He glanced at Howard and Soren­son. Both looked as un­settled as he felt.

  Son of a bitch.

  The girl was just a kid, not that much older than Or­lando’s son, Gar­rett. What if the other mi­li­tia mem­bers de­cided she’d helped in the leader’s ab­duc­tion, des­pite her be­ing drugged? They’d kill her, prob­ably rape her again first, and dump her body where it would never be found.

  “Okay,” Quinn said. “But you do ex­actly what we say. Un­der­stand?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry, I will. Thank you.”

  Quinn star­ted to lift the blanket to help her up, but dropped it back in place when he real­ized she was na­ked. “Where are your clothes?”

  She poin­ted at a door across the room. “In the bath­room.”

  “I’ll get them,” Soren­son said, and hur­ried through the door­way.

  The girl bit her lip. “We need to get my sis­ter, too.”

  “Your sis­ter?”

  “She’s only thir­teen. I-I-I can’t leave without her.”

  Quinn hadn’t thought his blood could turn any colder, but he was wrong. “Do they…use her like”—he mo­tioned at the bed—“like this, too?”

  Eyes welling, she nod­ded.

  “Is it just the two of you?”

  “There are seven oth­ers.”

  Je­sus.

  “I don’t have enough people to get them out right now,” he said.

  “I know. But my sis­ter…”

  He grim­aced. “We’ve already been here longer than we planned. After we get Reed out, I’ll make sure this whole place comes down, and we free your sis­ter and the oth­ers as quickly as pos­sible.”

  “I can get her brought here. To the room. Please. I can’t leave her be­hind.”

  Quinn knew he should say no, but he couldn’t. “How would you do it?”

  “I’ll need my robe.”

  Soren­son, who’d reentered the room, said, “I’ve got it.” She handed the robe to the girl.

  Quinn turned away so she could put it on. “What’s your name?”

  “Vanessa.”

  “And your sis­ter’s?”

  “Jordan.”

  “You can call me Jonathan.”

  “All right. You can turn back around now…Jonathan.”

  She was sit­ting on the bed, the robe on. It wasn’t ex­actly sheer but it was close.

  “Don’t you have some­thing…more?” he asked.

  “He would ex­pect me to be wear­ing this.”

  Try­ing not to think too much about what that meant, he said, “Who would be ex­pect­ing that?”

  “The guard at the bot­tom of the stairs. If I ask him, he’ll have someone get Jordan.”

  “Won’t he be sus­pi­cious?”

  Her face twis­ted and she shook her head. “It…wouldn’t be the first time.”

  Quinn had to force him­self not to glance at Reed, afraid he might put a bul­let in the man’s head.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll try it.”

  She smiled and jumped off the bed. “I’ll be right back.” She headed to the door and let her­self out.

  Quinn clicked on his mic. “Quinn for Or­lando.”

  “Go for Or­lando.”

  “We’ll be bring­ing two ex­tra pas­sen­gers.”

  A pause. “Who?”

  “I’ll ex­plain when we get there. In the mean­time, have Misty ar­range it so I can talk dir­ectly to the cli­ent as soon as we get out of here.”

  “They’re go­ing to want to know what about.”

  “Tell them I’m giv­ing them the keys to the com­pound.”

  He could al­most hear her raise an eye­brow as she said, “Okay.”

  “One more thing. Tell them they’ll want to have a strike team as­sembled and ready to go be­fore the sun comes up.”

  “Copy.”

  Vanessa re­turned seconds later.

  “Any prob­lems?” Quinn asked.

  “No.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “No more than ten minutes.”

  Quinn and the oth­ers used the time to trans­fer Reed into the body bag they’d brought. The bag was equipped with an oxy­gen cyl­in­der and breath­ing mask, the lat­ter of which now sat over the man’s nose and mouth. They lowered the bag down the shaft into the main tun­nel.

  “You two head out,” Quinn said to his com­pan­ions. “I’ll wait with the girl.”

  “Sure you don’t want one of us to stay with you?” Howard asked. “We can get Makoto to come in and help with the body.”

  “It’s okay. We’ll be right be­hind you.”

  Howard star­ted down the shaft to join Soren­son and Reed in the tun­nel while Quinn re­turned to the bed­room.

  Vanessa sat on the edge of the bed, her hands in her lap. After a glance at the spot where Reed had lain, she asked. “What will they do with him?”

  “Ask him a lot of ques­tions, I would think.”

  “Will they kill him?”

  “I, um, I doubt that’s part of their plan.”

  “I want them to kill him.”

  Her tone was so mat­ter-of-fact that Quinn thought he’d mis­heard her. When he real­ized he hadn’t, he nod­ded. If Reed was the child pred­ator he ap­peared to be, Quinn wanted him dead, too.

  When he heard steps in the hall­way out­side, Quinn moved to the wall be­side the door so he’d be out of sight when it opened.

 

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