Operation reckless angel, p.11
Operation: Reckless Angel, page 11
Roth shot a grin at Jackson. “Come on, let’s go scope out some more coyote tracks.”
Jackson nodded. He pointed out a small rise on the topographical map that looked to be in the proper location and elevation to get a look at the helicopter. “We’ll make our first attempt from here. If we can’t get a good look, we’ll have to go onto his property here.” He slid his finger over to the next hill, which was clearly on John Wells’ property. “There’ll be no claiming we didn’t know it was private property. We’ll have to go over his fence to gain access.”
“I’m okay with that,” Garcia said. “Just don’t hurt any of his boys. They might get a bit testy that you’re making an uninvited appearance during their other guest’s visit.”
“Let’s hope they don’t shoot first and ask questions later,” Roth said.
“I’m sure they’ll want at least one of us alive, you know, to question,” Jackson said with a chuckle.
“Stay on comms,” Garcia said.
The two men rode over the rough terrain after exiting the vacant road to the top of the little rise Jackson had selected to try to view the helicopter. Both men raised their night vision binoculars and focused on the jet-black helicopter sitting on the pad off to the left of John Wells’ ranch estate home.
“I’ll be damned,” Roth muttered. “His guest flew in on a Sikorsky VH-3D Sea King. It’s not Marine One, but it’s a close relative. It’s screaming government or military ride.”
“You got a tail number?” Garcia asked through comms.
“I can’t see it from this angle,” Roth answered.
“Me either,” Jackson said.
“You’re going to have to move to another location that will enable your view of the tail. We need that number,” Garcia ordered.
“Damn it,” Jackson swore. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this.”
“Proceed with caution, team,” Cooper chimed in. “I’ll bet it flew her from Biggs. And that makes the visitor military brass.”
“Fuck, it figures,” Roth remarked.
The two men drove their ATVs to the fence at the second location they’d selected to try to view the helicopter. They climbed over the wire fence and dropped onto Wells’ property. “I’m watching you from our eye in the sky,” Garcia broadcast. “So far, no heat signatures are near you or moving to intercept. I’ll let you know if that changes.”
“Roger that, Razor,” Jackson replied.
With every step, Roth was silently cursing. This was a stupid plan. He was sure Wells’ men already knew they were on the property. The man probably had his own satellite watching his property as well as a high-tech security system. The only question was, did he have countermeasures they’d encounter? Or were there underground tunnels his men were moving through right now to pop out of and surprise them? The more he’d thought about it, the surer he was that was how his men had appeared and disappeared so quickly when they were planting the surveillance equipment.
Somehow, they made it to the rise they’d picked as location number two. Cresting it, they both dropped to their bellies to remain out of the view from the half-dozen men surrounding the helicopter. The first rays of the new day were teasing the horizon behind them.
“We still clear, Razor?” Roth broadcast.
“Roger that, Crash,” Garcia replied. “Something is up, though. There were a dozen heat signatures near the craft. More than half of them disappeared into that building to the north.”
“That’s not a building. It’s a metal bunker,” Roth said, his binoculars trained on it. It looked like a barn or a shed from the satellite, but with the door open as it was, it was clearly a metal structure, and the foundation indicated a basement beneath it.
“Son of a bitch,” Jackson said, focusing through his binoculars on the helicopter. “That chopper has no tail number. It’s military and so are the men on the ground guarding it. They’re in suits and ties, but they’re with the Army Protective Services Battalion, I’m sure. I’d bet my left nut on it.”
“So, why in the hell is he visiting Wells just hours before our surveillance is supposed to begin?” Garcia asked. Everyone on comms knew who the ‘he’ was that he referred to.
“Get out of there, now,” Cooper ordered.
Roth and Jackson army crawled down the little hill. Once they knew they were out of sight, they pulled themselves to their feet and ran in a low crouch. Roth’s heart pounded in his chest as hard as it had on any covert mission in Afghanistan.
They had made it two-thirds of the way back to the fence when Garcia broadcast what they didn’t want to hear. “I’ve got eight Tangos just appear from nowhere. Four to your east and four to the south. Move it! You can outrun them.”
Garcia gave them a running dialogue of the Tangos’ locations and distance from them as they ran full out towards the fence and their awaiting ATVs.
As they mounted the wire fence, shouts came from behind them. “Hold it! Stop! Stop where you are!” multiple voices called.
When Roth’s feet hit the dirt on the far side of the fence, shots rang out. “Fuck,” he moaned, dropping to the ground, thankful he wore his bulletproof vest. He wasn’t struck though, and he heard no impacts of bullets anywhere nearby. At this range, they wouldn’t be able to miss. They were warning shots probably fired over their heads. He scrambled to his feet and jumped on his ATV. Jackson fired his up a split second before he did.
The sound of the automatic weapons fire muffled and became less distinct, drowned out by the roar of the ATVs’ engines as they put distance between themselves and the private security force behind them. Roth pushed the ATV to its top speed. He and Jackson quickly put distance between themselves and John Wells’ property. The security men did not follow them from the property, but they knew they were being tracked some way by them.
Ten minutes later, Jackson pulled to the side of the road. Roth followed. “Is Coop on comms?” Jackson broadcast after they were a distance from the property.
“Affirmative,” Cooper’s voice replied.
“I’m sure they’ve got eyes on our location. Do you want us going back to our home base?”
As Jackson spoke, Roth scanned the sky, watching for anything incoming. He expected a drone had been launched to follow them if Wells didn’t have his own satellite watching over his compound. He could only hope that nothing with armament on it was seeking them out.
“Negative, Jax,” Cooper replied. “Big Bear is evaluating. Hold for direction.”
Jackson nodded to Roth as he disabled the transmit function on his comms. Roth did the same.
“What the fuck?” Roth asked. “Has anything like this ever happened before?”
“No. Big Bear will get to the bottom of it,” he said confidently. “There has to be an explanation. SecDef wouldn’t have set us up or used us. He has too much respect for Shepherd or, in the very least, fears what his response will be if that is ever the case. There have to be extenuating circumstances.”
“At least we know now why the start date of our Op was such an issue.”
“Big Bear knew or suspected something,” Jackson said. “I’d love to sit in on that call. It’s not going to be pretty.”
Roth chuckled. Yeah, he never wanted to end up on Shepherd’s bad side, and setting up his people was one of the fastest ways to accomplish that. Only a fool would cross Shepherd. But SecDef was not a stupid man. There had to be something big going on behind the scenes.
“Let’s keep going up the highway. We’ll pass the entrance into homebase and pause a few miles up the road,” Jackson said.
Jackson pulled back onto the road. Roth followed him, the two ATVs eating up the pavement. The breeze whipped through Roth’s hair, exhilarating him. The sun’s bright rays peeked over the horizon. All his senses were bristling. This was one of the many reasons why he loved this kind of work. He was as alert, all cylinders firing together, as when he was on official SEAL missions.
When they pulled off the road, both men’s eyes scanned the horizon and the sky back the way they’d come.
“I know we’re in the U.S., but I expected to be fired on as we retreated,” Roth said to Jackson, both men still not transmitting through their comms.
“We’re not home-free yet. Don’t jinx us.”
Roth kept his gaze on the sky towards Wells’ property. They waited for nearly an hour. No vehicles passed them from either direction. Garcia reported no movement by those on the Wells ranch until the helicopter lifted off, but still, no one from the ranch followed them. He tracked the chopper. It flew back to Biggs Field.
“Return to home base, gentlemen,” Cooper broadcast. “Big Bear will initiate a meeting within the hour.”
They rode back to the campground.
Lima
Briana Woods gripped her pistol more tightly with her right hand. She held it at the ready. She brought her left index finger to her lips in a hushing gesture to the whimpering woman beside her. The floorboard from above squeaked again. Another wave of panic rolled through Tessa Conroy. Another wave of determination crested inside Briana Woods.
There was no way he could know they were in the basement.
Briana had met her newest client in person thirty minutes earlier. Tessa Conroy was a thirty-year-old nursing student at the University of Kentucky. Originally an Indiana native, she’d attended Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana after her high school graduation, where she earned a bachelor's degree in marketing. After working in the field for several years, she became interested in a career in nursing. She went back to school in Bloomington part time, while working part time for the firm she’d been employed at for five years.
That was when her life went sideways.
She caught the eye of a fellow nursing student, a man by the name of JP Knight. He was in his mid-thirties, and he wouldn’t leave her alone, insisting they were made for each other. His conduct quickly escalated into stalker behavior when she declined his advances. The school assisted by changing her class schedule mid-semester so that she was not in the same classes with him, but he persisted in following her. She even saw him parked across the street from her house at one in the morning. Even after she obtained a restraining order, he continued to turn up wherever she was.
She transferred to the University of Kentucky, moving to Lexington, and giving up her life in Indiana with hopes that once she was out of the area, he would move on. At first, she went about her life with no sight of him. Until the day the flowers arrived at the old house where she was house-sitting for a friend.
The card had her name on it, and she recognized his handwriting. She called the police, but they wouldn’t do anything about it without proof he was in the area. She grew paranoid when she felt as though she was being watched, a creepy feeling that was unsettling. By Thanksgiving, she thought she’d caught a glimpse of him several times in cars that passed her or in a store window. But with each second look, he was gone. Had she been imagining him?
Until that night she woke at midnight and peeked out of the blinds to clearly see him standing on the sidewalk, gazing at the house. She nearly passed out; her breath stuck in her chest. She hadn’t even forwarded her mail. How had he found her? She called the police after she’d remembered how to breathe. Officers responded. They found no one. One had the audacity to suggest she’d dreamt it.
The next day, she trolled the internet to find help because the cops clearly couldn’t do anything. One search led to another, and she found a website that offered help. She completed the contact form and was contacted by a woman who said her name was Lisa an hour later. She promised she could help. For some reason, Tessa Conroy believed her.
The door to the basement creaked as it opened. Briana felt Tessa grab her left arm and hold it in a vise grip. They were cloaked in the shadows behind a dust covered screen in the corner of the room near the stairs. There were two open doors across from the bottom of the wood staircase. If they could get him to go into one of those rooms before he discovered them, they could escape up the stairs and lock him in the basement where he’d stay until the police arrived.
Briana looked around the immediate vicinity without moving for anything she could roll or throw into one of those doorways to make him think someone was within. Nothing but a coil of rope and the screen was within grabbing distance. Her other option was to strike him on the head and knock him out. That carried several risks, though, least of which could include him claiming she assaulted him.
From above, the sound of one footfall, then another. White gym shoes appeared through the open-backed stairs, slowly descending the stairs. They creaked and moaned under his weight. Dust floated in the air, dislodged from the movement.
Briana grabbed the rope. She holstered her weapon and then pulled on the rope with both hands, testing to see if it was sturdy, fearing it may have been weakened with age. It held. She quickly and silently tied a taut-line hitch knot, leaving the loop about two feet wide. She handed it to Tessa, fixing her hands to hold it so it remained open. By this time, the man had descended to a step that was even with her chest. Briana reached under the stairs, grabbed him by his ankles, and pulled hard, bringing his feet through the open back of the stairs as far as she could drag him, until his thighs stopped him.
There were curses, a scream, and the sound of the man crashing down the stairs, his hands and face impacting the wood planks.
“Give me the rope!” Briana ordered.
She looped the rope around his calves and tightened the loop. She tied the rope off to a wood beam and then stretched it with her as she came around the front of the staircase, intending to tie his hands so they could get by. She found the man lying over the stairs lower than his legs, attempting to get up. Blood streamed out of his nose.
“What the fuck?” he growled.
Tessa Conroy circled around, so she stood beside the woman she knew as Lisa. “You are trespassing, and you have violated the restraining order!” Her voice was strong, anger spewing with each word. “I am pressing charges, and you are going to jail!” She pulled her phone from her back pocket and dialed nine-one-one.
Briana tied his hands as planned. Then she and Tessa stepped over him and went upstairs. In the kitchen, Briana whispered instructions. Tessa had to tell the police she was a friend she knew from the University of Indiana when she attended ten years earlier, who was visiting. The true nature of their relationship couldn’t be disclosed. Briana secured her weapon in its lockbox in her van and was just returning to the house when the police cruiser pulled up. Briana was not concerned with her ID in Lisa’s name, not holding up to scrutiny. It was valid ID.
The police found a window in the parlor had been broken. That was how he’d gained entry into the house. He was arrested for breaking and entering, as well as violating the restraining order.
“You caused bodily injury to him with that stunt, tripping him on the stairs,” the officer said. “You could have hurt him worse. It was two of you against one.”
“We were so afraid,” Briana said in an overly dramatic voice. “We didn’t know if he had a gun or a knife and we had nothing to defend ourselves with. It was all we could think to do to stop him from coming any closer.”
“And you tied him up. He could sue you with unlawful restraint,” the officer continued.
“How else could we get him to hang around for you to come arrest him? I don’t think saying pretty please would have worked,” Briana said. “Look, Tessa’s the victim. He has stalked her and scared her so badly that she moved from her hometown to get away from him, only for him to find her and stalk her here. What is a woman supposed to do? Stand back and be assaulted, killed, or kidnapped? He broke in here and we didn’t know his intentions, but could logically assume they weren’t good.”
“Miss O’Conner, I don’t doubt for a second that you’re right and that you were both afraid when he broke in here. I’m just warning you both that he could come back at both of you with his own civil charges.”
“Duly noted,” Briana said. “Will you at least guarantee Tessa that he won’t be released without her being notified?”
“Yes,” he said. His gaze shifted to Tessa. “You’ll be contacted by one of our victim advocates who will remain in touch with you throughout the process, from arraignment through sentencing, and even parole if he’s convicted and sentenced to jail time.”
“Thank you,” Tessa said, grateful they had a victim advocacy program.
“And this guy has to be freaking crazy. Can you get him locked up for a psych eval?”
The cop chuckled. “I’ll see what I can do. We’ve got your statements. We’re going to go now.”
Briana and Tessa watched him drive away. The second cop who had responded had already transported the stalker to the police station.
“Thank you,” Tessa said. “I can’t believe it’s over. Well, I hope they keep him locked up. I hope it’s over.”
“Me too,” Briana agreed. “Let’s go in and see what needs to be done to repair that window he broke.”
“And I need to pay you, too. We really didn’t discuss your fee beyond the three hundred dollars, but whatever it is, I’ll find a way to pay you. I don’t know what I would have done had you not been here.”
“You would have figured something out. You’re a survivor,” Briana told her. “We’ll talk about my fee inside.”
They returned to the house and cleaned up the broken glass. Tessa called a local hardware store that repaired windows. They would arrive within the next few hours to take care of it. At Briana’s prompting, Tessa put a kettle on to boil water for tea and they sat at the kitchen table.
“I don’t want to scare you, but you need to be prepared that he may be released from jail,” Briana said. “It’s very unlikely they will keep him in custody until a trial, assuming he pleads not guilty at his arraignment. And even if he pleads guilty, I doubt he’ll get much jail time.”
