Bad Nights (5 page)

“Too dangerous. Those guys came looking for me here. And before they knocked on the door, they disabled your car. That should tell you something about their intentions. When they don't come back, the big kahuna will send more of his men. And it won't be to thank you for helping me.”

She made a scoffing sound. “I'm supposed to take your word for all that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they may be minions of the evil overlord, but I can't go with you unless I have more information. Who are they? What did you do to them?”

***

Jack kept his gaze on her defiant face. She wasn't bluffing. She meant what she said, and he couldn't allow her to kick him out. That was simply too dangerous for her. He dragged in a breath and exhaled to give himself another couple of seconds. He'd been in deep cover for months, and he was breaking protocol if he told her anything. But that cover was already blown, he reminded himself. That's how he'd ended up naked in her front yard.

“Okay. They belong to a homegrown militia organization that has their headquarters near here.”

“I never heard of a militia around here.”

“They've been in the area less than a year, and they don't advertise their presence. On the compound they wear uniforms. But if they go out in public, they change into civilian clothes.”

“Why are they after you?”

The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. He clenched and unclenched his fists.

“I was on an undercover assignment, infiltrating their group to find out what they're planning. I must have blown my cover.”

“How?”

He kept his voice steady as he said the part he detested revealing. “I don't know. I mean, my memories before the interrogation are… missing.” His jaw clenched. “The first thing I remember is waking up on their torture table. You saw the results.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing her wince, but she was back to business immediately.

“And you're working for?”

“Rockfort Security.”

“Not the government?”

He answered with a harsh laugh. “In this case, the government's using a contractor. Rockfort is doing the heavy lifting.”

When she opened her mouth to ask another question, he shook his head. “Not now. We have to get out of here before the others show up. And I have to let my partners know what's going on. Do you have a working phone here?”

“The power was out last night.” She raised her head and looked toward the ceiling fixture. “I had that on last night. It hasn't come back on.”

He crossed to the phone and picked up the receiver, then snorted in disgust. “Dead. Where's your cell phone?”

“It was out of power, and I was going to charge it,” she answered in an apologetic voice.

“Then we'd better split. And let's hope we have a little time to prepare.”

“Like how?”

“I found a couple of packs in the bedroom closet. Get a change of clothes. The same for me. And some water and food that's easy to carry.”

***

Morgan nodded and ran into the kitchen. As she grabbed some power bars, water, and more crackers and cheese, she could see he'd already helped himself to some food. Which made her wonder again if she could trust him and trust his story.

And trust herself. She didn't like the way she'd melted into his arms like a woman whose lover had just returned home. He wasn't her lover. He was still a stranger. And more important, still dangerous. He'd gone after those two men like a fighting machine. But he'd been defending himself, and her, she reminded herself.

And at the moment, the alternative to the man looked worse—if she believed his story. Opening one of the drawers, she took out a knife. Again she saw that he'd already raided the drawer. From the utility closet she grabbed another ground cloth.

Her mind raced as she tried to think of what they'd need. Stuff she'd taken on camping trips. But not too much. Not more than they could easily carry.

Her next stop was the bedroom, where she grabbed some clothing—for herself and for him.

She saw he'd already set out two packs and a sleeping bag, further evidence that he'd been getting ready to leave when the men had showed up at the door. Now he'd changed his mind about going solo.

She swallowed hard. His altered plans argued that he was telling the truth. It was too dangerous for her to stay here. Why else would he bring her along to slow him down?

Unless the militia were the good guys, and he didn't want her talking to them. She made a snorting sound. They hadn't acted like good guys. More like thugs.

Straining her ears, she listened for signs that men were sneaking up on the house. But it was quiet outside. Too quiet because she couldn't even hear the birds who usually sang in the morning in the trees. Quickly she stuffed socks into one of the packs.

“We should go,” she called out.

From out in the living room, she heard him swear. In the next second, the rattle of gunfire made her heart stop, then start up again in double time.

Automatic weapons, it sounded like.

“Get down,” Jack shouted as she heard bullets raking the wall and thudding into the door.

She dropped to the floor, flattening herself and crossing her arms over her head to ward off the noise as more bullets tore into the front wall of the cozy vacation house that had suddenly been turned into a war zone.

Oh Lord! Jack was in the living room.

Raising her head, she called his name. “Are you all right?”

When he didn't answer, her heart leaped into her throat. The barrage stopped, and she heard glass breaking, then bullets from a handgun.

He'd broken a window and returned fire. At least she knew that much, but she didn't know if he'd been hit. And if he was still all right, how long could that last? He was only one man with a pistol against guys who had brought along much more powerful weapons.

She hadn't been sure what they were up against. Now she had a much better idea.

She wormed her way to the bedroom door, trying to see down the hall. “Jack?”

Another barrage of fire came from outside the house, and she saw him hit the floor, shouting at her above the clatter of the weapons, “Stay down. Stay back. Don't come any closer.”

She held her position, waiting with her heart pounding while the house seemed to shake around her like someone had thrown it into a giant cement mixer. When the noise stopped, she looked toward the living room, seeing the holes that had materialized in the wall—and Jack holding a sofa cushion in front of his body.

“Jack Barnes, come out with your hands up, and the woman won't be hurt,” a voice from outside boomed.

“They're lying,” he spat out as he ducked low and ran for the hallway where Morgan crouched.

“Jack Barnes? Is that your real name?”

“No. It's the name I was using with them.”

“Jack Barnes, come out with your hands up,” the voice boomed again.

When he ignored it, she looked toward the window. “How many are out there?”

“Three or four firing. At least around front. Is there a back door?”

“No.”

“That's good. They may not have the back covered.”

“What are we going to do?”

He took her shoulders and turned her toward him, his expression grim. “You're going out a back window. Do you have more bullets?”

“Yes.”

“Take your gun and take more ammunition, but don't engage them unless you have to. Don't take anything with you. Run as fast as you can. Head through the woods. If you come to a road, make sure they're not patrolling it. As soon as you can get to a phone, call Rockfort Security in Rockville, Maryland. Talk to my partners, Shane Gallagher or Max Lyon. Tell them what happened. Tell them… Jack Brandt wasn't able to discover Trainer's main mission.”

Doubt and disbelief crossed his features.

“What?”

“At least I don't think I know Trainer's main mission,” he clipped out.

“What does that mean?”

“Like I said, my memory's got some holes.” He gave her a hard look. “You'd better get going.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Draw their fire while you get away.”

“No.”

“It's the only way for one of us to get out of this. And one of us has to tell Rockfort what happened.”

“We're both going,” she said.

“I don't think so.”

Jack checked the clips on the guns he'd taken off the two men who'd come to the house pretending to be FBI agents. He was getting low on ammunition.

When he spared Morgan a look, he saw a steely determination. “You're not going out there,” she said. “I won't let you kill yourself because of me.”

“Maybe I'll take them out.”

She made a rough noise. “You have a couple of handguns. They've got machine guns.”

He flapped an arm in frustration. “We don't have a lot of time to argue about it.”

He hadn't known how right he was. The shooting was apparently over and also the offer of safe conduct for Morgan.

In the next second, a canister crashed through the living room window and landed on the sofa, spewing smoke and fire in all directions. Almost immediately, the chintz slipcover went up in flames.

Morgan gasped.

Jack grabbed her arm and herded her farther down the hall, wondering how long before the flames reached them.

Outside he could hear whoops of triumph from Trainer's men. Maybe the colonel was there himself, directing the operation.

“Come on out if you don't want to roast,” someone called. He thought it was Ryder, one of the men who had played FBI agent earlier. Cocky again now that his buddies had rescued him.

Jack didn't spare the breath to respond.

Behind him, more furnishings were catching fire, turning the living room into a suburb of hell.

The smoke was pouring into the hall and thickening around them. Jack was already coughing as he grabbed Morgan's hand. “Get down.”

“This way,” she said.

He hadn't expected her to take the initiative, but she seemed to know where she was going. He followed close behind as she leaned over and kept low while she sprinted down the hall, the smoke and flames at their backs.

There was still a chance they could get out a window, but now he was sure the attack was planned to herd them to the back of the house where men with machine guns would be waiting to mow them down when they tried to escape.

Morgan led him into a bedroom and slammed the door. It blocked the smoke, and he took a grateful breath of the relatively untainted air. But from the way the fire was burning, he knew the flames would reach the door soon, and then they could either burn up or take their chances at a window. He'd go first and draw their fire and hope she could get away, but he wasn't counting on it.

Morgan's voice was low and urgent as she began to speak. “This house was built in the 1830s—and it has some unusual features. It was a stop on the Underground Railroad. You know—where people helped escaped slaves travel north.”

He tried to wrap his head around what she was telling him and finally thought he got the import of the history lesson.

“Are you saying there's another way out?”

She pointed to the floor. “Under there.”

He watched while she pushed the rag rug aside. Under it, he could make out the outline of a rectangular shape in the wooden floor, with a small metal circle embedded in the wood at one side.

When he reached into the circle and pulled, the piece of flooring groaned with disuse.

He pulled harder, and it finally came up, almost throwing him backward. He recovered his footing and stared down into darkness from which the scent of damp earth and mold wafted upward.

“There's a ladder,” Morgan said, pointing her flashlight beam at the rungs.

“Where does it come out?” he asked.

“In the woods.”

“How far?”

“Maybe fifty yards.”

He was making swift calculations. The house would burn for a while. Trainer might want to order his men inside, but not without special equipment. By the time they got inside, he and Morgan would be long gone, and maybe the attackers would think they had burned to crispy critters.

Morgan handed him the flashlight, and he shined it into the dark tunnel below the house, seeing a dirt floor and walls.

He knew they had to get away fast, but one more problem leaped into his mind.

“Did you leave your wallet in the living room?” he asked.

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Is there any money back here?”

“I think there's some in one of the bedroom drawers.”

“Take it. We'll need it when we get out of here.”

She crossed quickly to the dresser, knelt down, and opened the bottom drawer, then rummaged under some clothing. Pulling out some folded bills, she shoved them into one of the pockets of her knapsack.

“Go down,” he said.

“And you'll follow?” she asked, her voice anxious.

“Yeah. After I close the trapdoor.”

***

Outside in the woods, Wade Trainer cursed under his breath. He didn't allow his men to use foul language, and he believed in practicing what he preached, but this morning he needed an outlet for his frustration.

His hands clenched at his sides as he mentally reviewed the past eighteen hours, intent on figuring out where he'd gone wrong.

And the only thing he could fault himself on was leaving Buckman and Stanford alone with the prisoner after one of the interrogation sessions.

Wade was sure he had been close to getting Jack Barnes to talk. But he'd had to step out of the room for a few minutes when he'd gotten an urgent communication from his moneyman.

By the time he'd come back, the whole situation had gone to hell in a handbasket. Barnes was gone, one of his men was down, and the other was working frantically to revive him.

He'd already punished the morons. At the same time, he'd ordered others to search for Barnes. The man had to be in bad shape. How far could he get?

The logical place to start was the compound. When it was clear that Barnes had somehow stolen an SUV and gotten off the property, Wade had widened the parameters. They'd found the vehicle in a ditch. At least the man had limited his escape radius.

He'd known Barnes was good. He simply hadn't realized how good—or how duplicitous the man had turned out to be.

Barnes was an ex–Navy SEAL with reasons to be disgusted with the service. Two years ago, he and eight other SEALs had been sent on what turned out to be a suicide mission in Afghanistan. Not like that operation where SEALs had killed Bin Laden. In this case, Barnes had been the only one who'd escaped alive.

Of course, Wade hadn't taken the man's word for any of that. He'd used a contact to check his military records, which had agreed with the man's story.

And the personal part had fit. Barnes had mourned the other members of his team, and as soon as he'd been able, he'd left the service, then wandered the country, like some kind of modern-day Rambo, with a chip on his shoulder and the skills to wreak havoc if he chose.

Wade had thought he'd turned the guy around.

Since joining the RAM, Barnes had accepted the militia code and followed the rules, down to the proscription against getting to be best buddies with anyone. But looking back, there were some clues that he might not be what he seemed. After their initial conversations, he'd stayed out of ideological discussions. He kept to himself more than was strictly necessary, and he had a tendency to wander off into the woods by himself when he wasn't on duty. Taken together, all those things had aroused Wade's suspicions, and he'd assigned a couple of men to keep tabs on the guy. The troops were happy to do it, because Barnes projected a grating aura of superiority.

It had taken weeks of covert surveillance. In fact, Wade had been about to give up on getting anything on the guy, until his surveillance team followed Barnes back to camp while everyone was on maneuvers. He'd ducked behind the latrine, then zeroed in on Wade's office, and he'd been sitting at the computer when Thackery had whacked him over the head with the butt of his gun.

He'd stopped breathing, and Thackery had panicked, calling out for help. Wentworth, Wade's physician's assistant, had rushed in and slapped Barnes across the face a couple of times, and that had brought him around, still groggy.

When they'd been sure Barnes wasn't going to croak, Wade had looked at his computer. The screen had been displaying the desktop, but that didn't mean Barnes hadn't somehow gotten farther in—and erased the evidence of his snooping.

Wade was sure he'd been close to finding out what Barnes knew, when the guy had escaped. He was good, but there had been no way he could get far on foot. Not naked, beaten to a pulp, and half out of his mind from torture. Once he'd abandoned the vehicle, it had been a process of elimination to track him to this house, which belonged to a widow named Morgan Rains. She must have seen the guy in the woods and taken him in, because Wade couldn't imagine Jack Barnes coming up and knocking on the door. Or maybe Jack had forced his way in and held her hostage. And there was another possibility as well. Morgan Rains could be a plant, stationed at the house and ready to rescue Jack Barnes if he got into trouble.

He took an involuntary step back as the heat from the fire he'd started threatened to set his clothing on fire.

If it was hot as hell out here, it must be unbearable inside the structure. Barnes and the woman were going to burn up in there if they didn't come out soon. Or maybe they had already passed out from smoke inhalation, and there was no way of saving them. Which was a shame, because Wade was still missing the information he needed. And his moneyman was going to want details.

He swore under his breath again. Everything had been going his way, until Barnes had come along. Wade had found a prime location for his camp in Skyline, Virginia, close enough to Washington, D.C., to easily attack the capital. He'd improved the facilities. Acquired a nice stock of weapons. Set up practice areas and trained his men to be the soldiers he needed to pull off the operation he'd planned. His troops would obey him without question, and he thought about ordering one of his men to go into the burning house and drag Barnes and the woman out.

But that option had little chance of success. And he wasn't in the business of wasting men when there was no purpose to it.

Clenching and unclenching his fists, he watched the house burn with a feeling of triumph and defeat warring inside himself. The traitor would be dead, but Wade wouldn't find out what he'd gotten out of the computer, or who had set up the spy operation. Was the government spying on the RAM? He'd have to move up his timetable.

***

Jack watched Morgan climb down the ladder, testing the wooden rungs as she went. He breathed out a small sigh when they all held.

After she reached the tunnel floor, she turned and looked up anxiously.

“Come on.”

“I'll be right there.”

He tossed down the knapsacks and the bedroll they'd brought, then stepped onto the ladder. He was just reaching up with both hands to lower the door the rest of the way when an explosion boomed out, shaking the house to its foundations. Maybe from the propane tank or another bomb Trainer's men had lobbed inside.

Whatever the reason, the rung under Jack's feet wavered, and he scrabbled to get a grip on the side supports. When the ladder arched backward and threw him against the far wall, he lost his footing and tumbled off into space.

From below him, he heard a scream as he plummeted downward into blackness.