Chasing the Son (34 page)

“I fear not many survived in this part of the country,” Mrs. Jenrette said. “But that is all up to you now. The island is yours. I trust you will care for it.”

“We will,” Tear said. “And our children and our children’s children. You have done a good thing.”

Mrs. Jenrette shook her head. “I never expected it to happen like this. But evil exists. It is good that there are men and women still willing to stand up and fight it.”

Thomas spoke up. “This will be a place of peace from now on.”

“I am tired, Thomas,” Mrs. Jenrette said. “Very tired. Could you help me sit down for a second?”

Thomas gently helped the old woman to a sitting position on the sand. She stretched her withered legs out in front of her. “I remember the beach,” she whispered. “Greer and I used to . . .” but her voice drifted off to silence. Her head slumped down.

Before she could fall backward, both Tear and Thomas had their arms around her. Together they lifted her up.

* * *

Hannah had listened to Cardena’s after action report on the entire Gregory mess. The old man, the Senator, had been undone by his own son. Almost sad.

But not quite.

Now she was alone, as she normally was. The thick file that had accumulated on Preston Gregory was on a corner of the desk where her assistant would collect it at the end of the day. To be put in a drawer with all the other closed files.

But there was still the thin file of Sarah Briggs, front and center, on her desk.

Most curious.

Hannah opened the bottom right drawer on her desk. There were three other files in there. Hannah picked up Sarah Briggs file and added it to the three.

* * *

On the northern end of Daufuskie Island, Dave Riley sat in a beach chair, a cooler to one side and to the other, Kate Westland in her own chair. He pulled out two cold ones, unscrewed the tops, and handed one to her.

“Nice place,” Kate said.

“It is.”

“Might be a good place to retire to,” Westland said.

“I thought you didn’t get to retire.”

“Well,” Kate said. “How about semi-retire?”

Riley glanced over at her. “Is that an offer, a question or a statement?”

“A question.”

“Hell, yeah,” Riley said. He held out his bottle and Kate Westland clinked her’s against his.

* * *

And outside what used to be Horace Chase’s house, Sarah Briggs, who no longer even remembered the name she’d been born with, was hitting the heavy bag hanging down from the walkway out to the dock. Turn kicks. Side kicks. Fist strikes. Sweat poured down her body.

But after a few minutes, she began to slow down and the force of her blows lessened.

Until she dropped to her knees in the sand.

And then she realized she was crying. Tears flowing down her cheeks.

She hadn’t cried in twelve years.

The End

To learn how Chase and Riley ended up involved with Sarah Briggs, and Chase learns he is a father for the first time, there is
The Green Berets: Chasing the Lost
.

To read about the mission Dave Riley and Kate Westland were on together, it’s in
The
Green Berets: Eyes of the Hammer
, which is the very first Dave Riley book. He’s younger and faster, but not necessarily smarter.

To read about the Cellar, it begins with
Bodyguard of Lies
, which tells Hannah’s story when she’s picked by Nero; when her file was in that lower right drawer.

For more about Doctor Golden and her theories on profiling and how she works with Hannah, there is
Lost Girls
.

To read about Horace Chase and his time as Federal Liaison to the Boulder Police where he ends up investigating the apparent rape/murder of a housewife and a secret CIA operation, there is
The Green Berets: Chasing the Ghost
.

EYES OF THE HAMMER

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DRAGON SIM-13

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CUT OUT

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SYNBAT

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ETERNITY BASE

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Z: THE FINAL COUNTDOWN

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CHASING THE GHOST

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CHASING THE LOST

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CHASING THE SON

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More Books by Bob Mayer

THE CELLAR SERIES

Praise for Lost Girls: “ . . .delivers top-notch action and adventure, creating a full cast of lethal operatives armed with all the latest weaponry. Excellent writing and well-drawn, appealing characters help make this another taut, crackling read.” Publishers Weekly

Short Excerpt

CHAPTER ONE

The old man sat alone in the darkness contemplating failure on a scale that historians would write about it for centuries, and the subsequent inevitable need for change. He was one of the most powerful people in the world, but only a few knew of his existence. His position had been born out of failure over sixty years previously, as smoke still smoldered above the mangled ships and dead bodies in Pearl Harbor. For over six decades, he had given his life to his country. His most valuable asset was dispassion, so he could view his own recent failures objectively, although recent was a subjective term. He realized now it had all begun over ten years ago.

His office lacked any charm or comfort. There was a scarcity about the room that was unnerving. The cheap desk and two chairs made it look more like an interview room in an improvised police station than the office of a man so powerful his name brought fear throughout the government he served in Washington. The top of the desk was almost clear. Just a secure phone and a stack of folders.

There were, naturally, no windows. Not three hundred feet underground, buried beneath the ‘crystal palace’ of the top secret National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. And not that he could have used windows. The few who knew of the organization sometimes wondered if this location was what had led to its name. While the CIA made headlines every week, the Cellar was only whispered about in the hallowed halls of the nation's capitol. It might have been located underneath the NSA building but it was an entity unto itself answerable only to its founding mandate.

The room was lit only by the dim red lights on the secure phone. They showed the scars on the old man’s face and the raw red, puckered skin where his eyes had once rested. There was track lighting, currently off, all three bulbs of which were over the old man’s head and angled toward the door. When on, they placed his face in a shadow and caused any guest to squint against the light. The few who had the misfortune to sit across from him didn’t know whether the lighting was placed in such a way to blind them as if he was, or to hide the severity of his old wounds.

He was not a man given much too sentimental reflection, but he knew his time was coming to an end, which made him think back to his beginning, as he knew all things were cyclical. He opened a right side desk drawer and pulled out a three dimensional representation of an old black and white photograph. He ran his fingers lightly over the raised images of three smiling young men dressed in World War II era uniforms—British, French and American. He was on the right. The other two were killed the day after the photo was taken.

He left the image on the desktop and reached for the files. The ones he wanted were the first two. He placed them on his lap. Paper files, the writing in Braille. He’d never trusted computers, even though there were ones now that could work completely on voice commands and read to him. Perhaps that was part of the problem. He was out of date. An anachronism.

They were labeled respectively Gant, Anthony and Masterson. He ran his fingers over the names punched on the tabs. He was patient. He had waited decades for plans born out of seeds he had sown to come to fruition. Quite a few similar plans had failed, so there was no reason to believe this one would succeed. But this plan was now in motion, initiated by an event he had had nothing to do with, the way the best plans in the covert world always started to allow deniability.

Despite his gifts of dispassion and patience, he felt a stirring in his chest. It puzzled him for a few moments before he realized he was experiencing hope. He squashed the feeling and picked up the phone to set another piece of the puzzle in motion.

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THE SHADOW WARRIOR SERIES

“A pulsing technothriller. A nailbiter in the best tradition of adventure fiction.” Publishers Weekly.

“Mayer has crafted a military thriller in the tradition of John Grisham’s The Firm.” Kirkus