Mercury rising, p.13
Mercury Rising, page 13
“It’s not much of one, but there’s one here. It’s a plumb ambassador post, a way to reward someone who donated a lot of money to the presidential winner’s campaign.”
“Sounds shady.”
“Just like the rest of Washington, eh? Now, please don’t share this with anyone but your friend and make him swear not to tell anyone else either. It’s of the utmost importance that we keep this whole thing top secret. Understand?”
“I guess so.”
“I’ll send you the details I want you to pass along. You’ll get names and addresses for me and two others, a man and a woman.”
There was a long pause.
“Grace?”
More silence.
“Grace? Are you still there?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here. Just writing everything down.”
“Okay. And when you get done, make sure you destroy that paper.”
“Geez, Blake. You’re starting to worry me. Are you all right?”
“I will be if your friend can help us.”
Barrett went over a few more logistical details before he ended the call. He couldn’t help but think that Grace sounded off. Something wasn’t right. If he’d had more time, he would’ve probed some. But he shrugged it off. The whole request was rather cryptic and required her abandoning her usual inquisitive nature for nothing more than a dutiful response.
All he could do was wait and hope her friend delivered.
The next day, Barrett received a call back from Grace with a report that her State Department friend had agreed to help and had arranged for them to collect their passports at the embassy in Tenerife. He thanked her, anxious to get off the call and report the good news to Watts and Stone.
“Before you go, I have a question,” Grace said.
“Okay. Ask away.”
“How often do you go to Slade’s condo in Miami?”
“Not often enough,” Barrett said with a chuckle. “Why?”
“Well, his cleaning lady said that she recently met Slade and that he was with another man and a woman. And since you also apparently work with a man and a woman, I just thought—”
Barrett swallowed hard, carefully considering his words. He had sensed where this conversation was going, and he wanted to make sure he quelled her fears once and for all.
“It was a cleaning lady, you said?”
“Yeah, a woman by the name of Lupe.”
“Yes,” Barrett said. “I know Lupe. In fact, your brother asked me to arrange someone to clean his condo on a regular basis. You know how he keeps things, so I guess he got tired of living in a pig sty.”
“Okay, thanks. That answers some questions I had.”
“And, yes, before you ask, I take my team down there sometimes. We need to get away from Washington and your brother gave me a key and permission to go whenever I want.”
She sighed. “Any idea when I’ll see you again?”
“Soon, I hope,” Barrett said. “When I’m back in town, I’ll call you. And thanks to you and your friend, it’ll be sooner than later.”
They said goodbye and Barrett ended the call. He leaned against a weathered stone wall, replaying the conversation in his head. Grace’s questions had been more pointed than he’d expected, more informed. She’d been to Slade’s condo, talked to the cleaning lady, and was clearly putting pieces together.
Had he done enough to satisfy her curiosity? Or had he just bought himself time before she dug deeper?
Barrett looked out at the Atlantic stretching endlessly toward the horizon. Somewhere beneath those waves lay the wreckage of the C-130 and the bodies of the men who’d tried to kill them. The Colonel thought they were dead, which gave them the element of surprise. But Grace’s investigation could unravel everything if she was able to put all the pieces together. He knew he could keep her in the dark, but he wasn’t sure for how long—or at what cost.
He texted Sanders from the stolen phone and typed a quick message:
Package delivered. Pickup confirmed tomorrow. Time to go hunting.
Barrett pocketed the phone and started walking back toward town. Three days ago, they were dead operatives tumbling through the night sky. Tomorrow, they would have new identities and a way home. But most importantly, they would have a target.
Nick Lynch had been hiding in the Idaho wilderness long enough. It was time to drag him out of the shadows and find out what he knew about the Colonel’s operation. Barrett had spent too much time running from the truth.
Now it was time to start hunting it.
CHAPTER 17
RIVER OF NO RETURN WILDERNESS AREA | IDAHO
Barrett cinched down the straps on his backpack as he watched the Piper Cub eke over a stand of pine trees at the far end of the grass airstrip. A stiff breeze battered the windsock situated halfway down the strip as the pine branches groaned and creaked while waving wildly. The plane’s wings waggled before it banked west and headed back toward the Idaho resort town of McCall.
Barrett turned his head, shielding his eyes from a rolling cloud of dust that swept across the airstrip before vanishing into the woods. He turned toward Watts and Stone.
“You two sure you want to make this trek?” Barrett asked. “I can go alone and should be able to get the pilot to turn back around with this sat phone.”
Stone kicked at the dirt. “And let you have all the fun by yourself? Not a chance.”
Barrett looked at Watts and arched his eyebrows as if to ask her the same.
“I’m good too,” she said. “Finding Nick Lynch’s hideout isn’t satisfaction enough for me. I need to see this to the end.”
Barrett looked down the trail that led into the darkened woods. “Let’s just hope this isn’t the end for us.”
Rocks crunched beneath Barrett’s boots as he led the trio into the largest unexplored wilderness area in the lower forty-eight. The sun shone bright overhead but its warmth was muted by the chill in the air. There was no snow in the forecast, but the pilot who’d transported them had warned that the weather in this part of Idaho would challenge the prognostications of even the most accurate of meteorologists. “Be prepared for anything,” he’d told them before he waved goodbye.
Before the trip, Barrett had been more concerned with the area’s legendary wildlife. But by the time he was a half mile into the mountainous terrain and he heard the wind whistling through a nearby pass, he considered that maybe he’d had it all wrong.
The fact that they’d tracked Lynch to this part of the world was a testament to the strength of their team, Watts’ skills in particular. Nick Lynch had vanished three years ago, according to his wife Lindsey. When he went missing, Lynch had been spending his retirement working his family’s farm in Iowa, one that didn’t include a single acre of corn. The Lynch family farm had found success growing soybeans and became one of the state’s biggest producers. Working with his two brothers and their father, Nick had been a welcome helping hand as the farm had been pushed to its limits. And then one day, he was gone.
Lindsey said they’d gone to a park to celebrate their daughter’s seventh birthday. In pictures Watts unearthed online that Lindsey had posted, Amelia wore a silver crown and wielded a glittering scepter with a star on the top. She was all smiles as Nick held her up in the air against an azure Midwestern sky. According to police reports, Lindsey said Nick kissed her on the cheek and said he forgot something in the car. She never saw him again, finding his cell phone smashed around the back of the park’s restrooms.
For weeks, reporters wrote articles about his strange disappearance. People who knew Lynch doubted he was dead, but officials never found him alive—or his dead body either. True crime podcasts speculated what happened to him, including a popular series called “Rogue Ranger: Whatever Happened to Nick Lynch?” But it did what most true crime podcasts due—promise a big payoff with a captivating hook only to leave the listener disappointed. It was the audio version of a clickbait headline that dominated most news sites. After the stories faded, the general consensus both publicly and within the military was that if Nick Lynch’s body hadn’t been found, he was still out there somewhere.
It was just the where part that had stumped everyone.
Everyone except Jasmine Watts.
Barrett ducked beneath a low-hanging pine branch as the path turned uphill.
“Jazz, do you ever consider the fact that you’re just the luckiest damn investigator on the planet?” Stone asked from the rear.
Barrett turned to see how Watts would react. He glimpsed the tight smile on her face as the branch whipped back and nearly smacked Stone in the face. He fielded it in time to avoid a painful slap and then grunted.
“That wasn’t nice,” Stone said.
“Do you ever consider yourself lucky that I haven’t cut off your balls in the middle of the night?” she snapped.
“Well, that escalated quickly,” Stone said.
“It’s what happens when you fire a live round first,” she sneered.
Barrett scanned the woods for any wildlife while he considered a way to quell the brewing fight between his two colleagues.
“Stoney, you just might be the king of inelegant observations,” Barrett said.
“Might be?” Watts said, her voice rising an octave with each word. “Might be?”
Barrett placed his hand out and raked it along a patch of green moss growing out of the tree’s rough bark. “I try not to get too hyperbolic, especially when I’m confronting someone about something.”
“I wasn’t trying to be a smart ass,” Stone said. “I just think Jazz gets lucky sometimes, that’s all. I didn’t mean it as a dig, but as an honest question.”
“Luck didn’t play a role in how I found Lynch, thank you very much,” Watts said. “I used a combination of intuition and knowledge to find him.”
“You can’t argue that you were pretty lucky to find that file on him,” Stone said.
Watts stopped and spun around to face Stone, getting mere inches from his nose. “I’ll have you know that the only reason I found that document was because I never quit looking. It had nothing to do with luck.”
“Tell me the story again how you figured out Lynch was here,” Barrett said.
Watts enthusiastically obliged, occasionally turning around to shoot daggers at Stone. She recounted how she found an old transcript—one that wasn’t supposed to exist—of Lynch speaking with a therapist after one of his missions where he’d killed sixteen combatants. During the session, Lynch mentioned that he and his father used to travel to church where they would camp outside and enjoy the beautiful outdoors for days on end. But Watts figured that the “church” he’d mentioned was actually the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area in Idaho. Lynch’s family had grown up in Iowa, but Watts confirmed her hunch through another family video she found posted online of Nick’s father talking about how they often used to go to Idaho and experience the only part of the country that had remained just as it was when Lewis and Clark first ventured along their infamous trail.
From there, Watts had managed to cross-reference the purchase of satellite wifi programs that people used to stay off the grid with the time that Lynch went missing. She narrowed down her search to three locations in Idaho and was able to verify the identities of the other two. But the one belonging to a man named Mickey Diego proved to be a little more difficult to find, which turned out to be what ultimately singled him out. Watts hacked into the satellite wifi company’s servers and was able to pinpoint the GPS location of the hardware—a log cabin tucked deep in a stand of trees just off the south fork of Camas Creek north of Sheldon Peak. Watts had almost missed the cabin when she first searched the area using satellite imagery, but one of the images captured in January showed the faint traces of smoke rising from the trees. She investigated the area again, searching images from more recent months and found the cabin, which was now their destination—and the place where Barrett hoped to learn the identity of Col. Sanders.
“You really think Lynch will talk to us?” Stone asked as they trudged along a faint path running parallel to Camas Creek.
“If he wants to know about his daughter, he will,” Watts said.
“What makes you think he doesn’t already know?” Stone said.
“Because the insurance company is still fighting Lindsey in court, refusing to release the money,” Watts said. “Lawyers for the insurance company are using every trick in the book to delay paying out on his death. And if they’re fighting it that hard, you better believe they’re somehow monitoring her communications online, throwing subpoenas until she either runs out of money to fight them or gives up because of the headache that it is.”
“Stars and stripes, liberty and freedom, America and litigation—the last one doesn’t sound as poetic, but it’s solidified its place in our country,” Barrett said.
“Don’t I know it,” Stone said.
He didn’t say anymore, but Watts and Barrett knew he was referencing his nasty divorce that left him nearly penniless after his wife hired a team of lawyers to ensure he didn’t get a dime more than the court said he could have. Barrett held his breath, hoping Stone wouldn’t climb onto his soapbox and bemoan the country’s legal system, a complaint he’d made so often that Barrett could almost recite it from memory.
Barrett wished they could’ve been dropped off closer to Lynch’s place, but he feared getting any closer would’ve risked signaling that someone had found him and send him deeper into the woods. He glanced at his GPS tracker before dabbing the sweat from his brow and then suggesting they take a break. Settling onto a fallen tree, the brittle bark an uncomfortable seat, he took a long swig from his water bottle. They had three more miles before they reached Lynch’s cabin, but Barrett wanted to make sure they didn’t botch their first attempt at contact. If they spooked Lynch, he might disappear for good.
After reviewing their plan for approaching the cabin, they resumed their trek to locate Lynch. Just before they reached the final mile, they separated and triangulated around the house. If Lynch decided to run, he wouldn’t get far.
Watts took the front of the house, while Barrett and Stone took up angles that afforded them clear sight lines of both the sides and back of the structure. Barrett conducted a check of their coms units before signaling that they advance toward the cabin. Aside from the random chatter of squirrels and chirping of birds, the woods had fallen eerily silent. Barrett took extra care to ensure a stealthy approach.
When they drew within a hundred meters, they noticed the first movement in the cabin.
At fifty meters, Watts squawked on the coms. “He’s coming out the front.”
“That’s far enough,” Lynch shouted.
“What’s happening, Jazz?” Barrett asked.
“He’s got a shotgun leveled at me,” she said in a hushed tone.
“Stay calm,” Barrett said. “I’ll shift around to the back. Stoney, you join Jazz at the front.”
“Copy that,” Stone said.
Barrett crept toward the back porch, using the trees in the area to stay out of view. But it was Stone who had the best chance of alerting Lynch that there was a larger contingent.
“What’s going on out here?” Lynch asked. “I won’t hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later.”
“We’re not here to hurt you, Mr. Diego,” Watts said, following Barrett’s instructions to address him as his alias in order to keep his suspicions at bay.
Lynch laughed humorlessly. “So there’s more than one of you? In my experience, anytime there’s more than one person who’s attempted to visit me, they’ve had ulterior motives in mind.”
“We’re not just making a welfare visit, that’s for sure,” Watts said, her voice steady and calming. “But we do need to talk with you.”
“About what?” he hissed.
“It’s about Col. Sanders,” she said.
Barrett heard nothing but a screen door slamming before Watts gave him a report.
“He’s headed your way,” she said over the coms.
Seconds later, Lynch exited through the back of the house, his legs spread wide as he jumped off the back porch and into the wild brush surrounding the house. He landed on his feet and kept running, his gun sweeping left and right in front of him as he scanned the area for hostiles.
“Don’t run,” Barrett said. “It never ends well.”
Lynch spun in the direction of Barrett’s voice before freezing, squinting as he searched the woods for the person speaking to him.
“It’s okay, Nick,” Barrett said, finally invoking his name in an attempt to get him to calm down. “We just have a few questions for you—and an update on Amelia.”
Lynch glowered as he continued looking for whoever was speaking to him.
Barrett took a deep breath as he stepped out from behind the trees, purposefully stepping on a twig to snap it. The sound echoed through the woods, and Lynch and his gun spun in the direction of the noise.
Barrett held both hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I swear, Nick. None of us want to hurt you. We’ve just got some questions for you. And we hope you’ve got the kind of answers we need to help you get your life back.”
“Questions about what?”
“Questions about Col. Sanders,” Barrett said.
Lynch didn’t move, his eyes evidently still trying to process if his visitors were friend or foe. “Regarding what?”
“Who he really is and what he was doing in Afghanistan,” Barrett said. “And maybe, just maybe, it’ll help you get your life back.”
Barrett lowered his weapon and eased forward, free hand in the air in a gesture of surrender. He moved slowly, allowing Lynch time to study him.
“Come out,” Lynch said before cupping his hand against the side of his mouth and shouting, “all of you.”
Lynch paused and looked at Barrett again for a moment, clearly hesitant to proceed.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Barrett repeated. “Admiral Becker mentioned something about guilt and—”
“Guilt? This goes much deeper than guilt.” Lynch looked deeper into the woods, his grip tightening on the shotgun. “But I don’t want to talk about that right now. I only care about Amelia. Is she all right?”
“Sounds shady.”
“Just like the rest of Washington, eh? Now, please don’t share this with anyone but your friend and make him swear not to tell anyone else either. It’s of the utmost importance that we keep this whole thing top secret. Understand?”
“I guess so.”
“I’ll send you the details I want you to pass along. You’ll get names and addresses for me and two others, a man and a woman.”
There was a long pause.
“Grace?”
More silence.
“Grace? Are you still there?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here. Just writing everything down.”
“Okay. And when you get done, make sure you destroy that paper.”
“Geez, Blake. You’re starting to worry me. Are you all right?”
“I will be if your friend can help us.”
Barrett went over a few more logistical details before he ended the call. He couldn’t help but think that Grace sounded off. Something wasn’t right. If he’d had more time, he would’ve probed some. But he shrugged it off. The whole request was rather cryptic and required her abandoning her usual inquisitive nature for nothing more than a dutiful response.
All he could do was wait and hope her friend delivered.
The next day, Barrett received a call back from Grace with a report that her State Department friend had agreed to help and had arranged for them to collect their passports at the embassy in Tenerife. He thanked her, anxious to get off the call and report the good news to Watts and Stone.
“Before you go, I have a question,” Grace said.
“Okay. Ask away.”
“How often do you go to Slade’s condo in Miami?”
“Not often enough,” Barrett said with a chuckle. “Why?”
“Well, his cleaning lady said that she recently met Slade and that he was with another man and a woman. And since you also apparently work with a man and a woman, I just thought—”
Barrett swallowed hard, carefully considering his words. He had sensed where this conversation was going, and he wanted to make sure he quelled her fears once and for all.
“It was a cleaning lady, you said?”
“Yeah, a woman by the name of Lupe.”
“Yes,” Barrett said. “I know Lupe. In fact, your brother asked me to arrange someone to clean his condo on a regular basis. You know how he keeps things, so I guess he got tired of living in a pig sty.”
“Okay, thanks. That answers some questions I had.”
“And, yes, before you ask, I take my team down there sometimes. We need to get away from Washington and your brother gave me a key and permission to go whenever I want.”
She sighed. “Any idea when I’ll see you again?”
“Soon, I hope,” Barrett said. “When I’m back in town, I’ll call you. And thanks to you and your friend, it’ll be sooner than later.”
They said goodbye and Barrett ended the call. He leaned against a weathered stone wall, replaying the conversation in his head. Grace’s questions had been more pointed than he’d expected, more informed. She’d been to Slade’s condo, talked to the cleaning lady, and was clearly putting pieces together.
Had he done enough to satisfy her curiosity? Or had he just bought himself time before she dug deeper?
Barrett looked out at the Atlantic stretching endlessly toward the horizon. Somewhere beneath those waves lay the wreckage of the C-130 and the bodies of the men who’d tried to kill them. The Colonel thought they were dead, which gave them the element of surprise. But Grace’s investigation could unravel everything if she was able to put all the pieces together. He knew he could keep her in the dark, but he wasn’t sure for how long—or at what cost.
He texted Sanders from the stolen phone and typed a quick message:
Package delivered. Pickup confirmed tomorrow. Time to go hunting.
Barrett pocketed the phone and started walking back toward town. Three days ago, they were dead operatives tumbling through the night sky. Tomorrow, they would have new identities and a way home. But most importantly, they would have a target.
Nick Lynch had been hiding in the Idaho wilderness long enough. It was time to drag him out of the shadows and find out what he knew about the Colonel’s operation. Barrett had spent too much time running from the truth.
Now it was time to start hunting it.
CHAPTER 17
RIVER OF NO RETURN WILDERNESS AREA | IDAHO
Barrett cinched down the straps on his backpack as he watched the Piper Cub eke over a stand of pine trees at the far end of the grass airstrip. A stiff breeze battered the windsock situated halfway down the strip as the pine branches groaned and creaked while waving wildly. The plane’s wings waggled before it banked west and headed back toward the Idaho resort town of McCall.
Barrett turned his head, shielding his eyes from a rolling cloud of dust that swept across the airstrip before vanishing into the woods. He turned toward Watts and Stone.
“You two sure you want to make this trek?” Barrett asked. “I can go alone and should be able to get the pilot to turn back around with this sat phone.”
Stone kicked at the dirt. “And let you have all the fun by yourself? Not a chance.”
Barrett looked at Watts and arched his eyebrows as if to ask her the same.
“I’m good too,” she said. “Finding Nick Lynch’s hideout isn’t satisfaction enough for me. I need to see this to the end.”
Barrett looked down the trail that led into the darkened woods. “Let’s just hope this isn’t the end for us.”
Rocks crunched beneath Barrett’s boots as he led the trio into the largest unexplored wilderness area in the lower forty-eight. The sun shone bright overhead but its warmth was muted by the chill in the air. There was no snow in the forecast, but the pilot who’d transported them had warned that the weather in this part of Idaho would challenge the prognostications of even the most accurate of meteorologists. “Be prepared for anything,” he’d told them before he waved goodbye.
Before the trip, Barrett had been more concerned with the area’s legendary wildlife. But by the time he was a half mile into the mountainous terrain and he heard the wind whistling through a nearby pass, he considered that maybe he’d had it all wrong.
The fact that they’d tracked Lynch to this part of the world was a testament to the strength of their team, Watts’ skills in particular. Nick Lynch had vanished three years ago, according to his wife Lindsey. When he went missing, Lynch had been spending his retirement working his family’s farm in Iowa, one that didn’t include a single acre of corn. The Lynch family farm had found success growing soybeans and became one of the state’s biggest producers. Working with his two brothers and their father, Nick had been a welcome helping hand as the farm had been pushed to its limits. And then one day, he was gone.
Lindsey said they’d gone to a park to celebrate their daughter’s seventh birthday. In pictures Watts unearthed online that Lindsey had posted, Amelia wore a silver crown and wielded a glittering scepter with a star on the top. She was all smiles as Nick held her up in the air against an azure Midwestern sky. According to police reports, Lindsey said Nick kissed her on the cheek and said he forgot something in the car. She never saw him again, finding his cell phone smashed around the back of the park’s restrooms.
For weeks, reporters wrote articles about his strange disappearance. People who knew Lynch doubted he was dead, but officials never found him alive—or his dead body either. True crime podcasts speculated what happened to him, including a popular series called “Rogue Ranger: Whatever Happened to Nick Lynch?” But it did what most true crime podcasts due—promise a big payoff with a captivating hook only to leave the listener disappointed. It was the audio version of a clickbait headline that dominated most news sites. After the stories faded, the general consensus both publicly and within the military was that if Nick Lynch’s body hadn’t been found, he was still out there somewhere.
It was just the where part that had stumped everyone.
Everyone except Jasmine Watts.
Barrett ducked beneath a low-hanging pine branch as the path turned uphill.
“Jazz, do you ever consider the fact that you’re just the luckiest damn investigator on the planet?” Stone asked from the rear.
Barrett turned to see how Watts would react. He glimpsed the tight smile on her face as the branch whipped back and nearly smacked Stone in the face. He fielded it in time to avoid a painful slap and then grunted.
“That wasn’t nice,” Stone said.
“Do you ever consider yourself lucky that I haven’t cut off your balls in the middle of the night?” she snapped.
“Well, that escalated quickly,” Stone said.
“It’s what happens when you fire a live round first,” she sneered.
Barrett scanned the woods for any wildlife while he considered a way to quell the brewing fight between his two colleagues.
“Stoney, you just might be the king of inelegant observations,” Barrett said.
“Might be?” Watts said, her voice rising an octave with each word. “Might be?”
Barrett placed his hand out and raked it along a patch of green moss growing out of the tree’s rough bark. “I try not to get too hyperbolic, especially when I’m confronting someone about something.”
“I wasn’t trying to be a smart ass,” Stone said. “I just think Jazz gets lucky sometimes, that’s all. I didn’t mean it as a dig, but as an honest question.”
“Luck didn’t play a role in how I found Lynch, thank you very much,” Watts said. “I used a combination of intuition and knowledge to find him.”
“You can’t argue that you were pretty lucky to find that file on him,” Stone said.
Watts stopped and spun around to face Stone, getting mere inches from his nose. “I’ll have you know that the only reason I found that document was because I never quit looking. It had nothing to do with luck.”
“Tell me the story again how you figured out Lynch was here,” Barrett said.
Watts enthusiastically obliged, occasionally turning around to shoot daggers at Stone. She recounted how she found an old transcript—one that wasn’t supposed to exist—of Lynch speaking with a therapist after one of his missions where he’d killed sixteen combatants. During the session, Lynch mentioned that he and his father used to travel to church where they would camp outside and enjoy the beautiful outdoors for days on end. But Watts figured that the “church” he’d mentioned was actually the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area in Idaho. Lynch’s family had grown up in Iowa, but Watts confirmed her hunch through another family video she found posted online of Nick’s father talking about how they often used to go to Idaho and experience the only part of the country that had remained just as it was when Lewis and Clark first ventured along their infamous trail.
From there, Watts had managed to cross-reference the purchase of satellite wifi programs that people used to stay off the grid with the time that Lynch went missing. She narrowed down her search to three locations in Idaho and was able to verify the identities of the other two. But the one belonging to a man named Mickey Diego proved to be a little more difficult to find, which turned out to be what ultimately singled him out. Watts hacked into the satellite wifi company’s servers and was able to pinpoint the GPS location of the hardware—a log cabin tucked deep in a stand of trees just off the south fork of Camas Creek north of Sheldon Peak. Watts had almost missed the cabin when she first searched the area using satellite imagery, but one of the images captured in January showed the faint traces of smoke rising from the trees. She investigated the area again, searching images from more recent months and found the cabin, which was now their destination—and the place where Barrett hoped to learn the identity of Col. Sanders.
“You really think Lynch will talk to us?” Stone asked as they trudged along a faint path running parallel to Camas Creek.
“If he wants to know about his daughter, he will,” Watts said.
“What makes you think he doesn’t already know?” Stone said.
“Because the insurance company is still fighting Lindsey in court, refusing to release the money,” Watts said. “Lawyers for the insurance company are using every trick in the book to delay paying out on his death. And if they’re fighting it that hard, you better believe they’re somehow monitoring her communications online, throwing subpoenas until she either runs out of money to fight them or gives up because of the headache that it is.”
“Stars and stripes, liberty and freedom, America and litigation—the last one doesn’t sound as poetic, but it’s solidified its place in our country,” Barrett said.
“Don’t I know it,” Stone said.
He didn’t say anymore, but Watts and Barrett knew he was referencing his nasty divorce that left him nearly penniless after his wife hired a team of lawyers to ensure he didn’t get a dime more than the court said he could have. Barrett held his breath, hoping Stone wouldn’t climb onto his soapbox and bemoan the country’s legal system, a complaint he’d made so often that Barrett could almost recite it from memory.
Barrett wished they could’ve been dropped off closer to Lynch’s place, but he feared getting any closer would’ve risked signaling that someone had found him and send him deeper into the woods. He glanced at his GPS tracker before dabbing the sweat from his brow and then suggesting they take a break. Settling onto a fallen tree, the brittle bark an uncomfortable seat, he took a long swig from his water bottle. They had three more miles before they reached Lynch’s cabin, but Barrett wanted to make sure they didn’t botch their first attempt at contact. If they spooked Lynch, he might disappear for good.
After reviewing their plan for approaching the cabin, they resumed their trek to locate Lynch. Just before they reached the final mile, they separated and triangulated around the house. If Lynch decided to run, he wouldn’t get far.
Watts took the front of the house, while Barrett and Stone took up angles that afforded them clear sight lines of both the sides and back of the structure. Barrett conducted a check of their coms units before signaling that they advance toward the cabin. Aside from the random chatter of squirrels and chirping of birds, the woods had fallen eerily silent. Barrett took extra care to ensure a stealthy approach.
When they drew within a hundred meters, they noticed the first movement in the cabin.
At fifty meters, Watts squawked on the coms. “He’s coming out the front.”
“That’s far enough,” Lynch shouted.
“What’s happening, Jazz?” Barrett asked.
“He’s got a shotgun leveled at me,” she said in a hushed tone.
“Stay calm,” Barrett said. “I’ll shift around to the back. Stoney, you join Jazz at the front.”
“Copy that,” Stone said.
Barrett crept toward the back porch, using the trees in the area to stay out of view. But it was Stone who had the best chance of alerting Lynch that there was a larger contingent.
“What’s going on out here?” Lynch asked. “I won’t hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later.”
“We’re not here to hurt you, Mr. Diego,” Watts said, following Barrett’s instructions to address him as his alias in order to keep his suspicions at bay.
Lynch laughed humorlessly. “So there’s more than one of you? In my experience, anytime there’s more than one person who’s attempted to visit me, they’ve had ulterior motives in mind.”
“We’re not just making a welfare visit, that’s for sure,” Watts said, her voice steady and calming. “But we do need to talk with you.”
“About what?” he hissed.
“It’s about Col. Sanders,” she said.
Barrett heard nothing but a screen door slamming before Watts gave him a report.
“He’s headed your way,” she said over the coms.
Seconds later, Lynch exited through the back of the house, his legs spread wide as he jumped off the back porch and into the wild brush surrounding the house. He landed on his feet and kept running, his gun sweeping left and right in front of him as he scanned the area for hostiles.
“Don’t run,” Barrett said. “It never ends well.”
Lynch spun in the direction of Barrett’s voice before freezing, squinting as he searched the woods for the person speaking to him.
“It’s okay, Nick,” Barrett said, finally invoking his name in an attempt to get him to calm down. “We just have a few questions for you—and an update on Amelia.”
Lynch glowered as he continued looking for whoever was speaking to him.
Barrett took a deep breath as he stepped out from behind the trees, purposefully stepping on a twig to snap it. The sound echoed through the woods, and Lynch and his gun spun in the direction of the noise.
Barrett held both hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I swear, Nick. None of us want to hurt you. We’ve just got some questions for you. And we hope you’ve got the kind of answers we need to help you get your life back.”
“Questions about what?”
“Questions about Col. Sanders,” Barrett said.
Lynch didn’t move, his eyes evidently still trying to process if his visitors were friend or foe. “Regarding what?”
“Who he really is and what he was doing in Afghanistan,” Barrett said. “And maybe, just maybe, it’ll help you get your life back.”
Barrett lowered his weapon and eased forward, free hand in the air in a gesture of surrender. He moved slowly, allowing Lynch time to study him.
“Come out,” Lynch said before cupping his hand against the side of his mouth and shouting, “all of you.”
Lynch paused and looked at Barrett again for a moment, clearly hesitant to proceed.
“We’re not here to hurt you,” Barrett repeated. “Admiral Becker mentioned something about guilt and—”
“Guilt? This goes much deeper than guilt.” Lynch looked deeper into the woods, his grip tightening on the shotgun. “But I don’t want to talk about that right now. I only care about Amelia. Is she all right?”
