The End Game (36 page)

64

We had lift off.

On several levels.

The most literal, however, concerned the drone Kurt had brought with him.

I’d never seen one of these, but apparently they were all the rage, a brilliant piece of playful technology that was as much as a game changer as the original iPhone and the Oculus Rift.

I hadn’t been entirely facetious with Roos. Yes, I had Tomblin. Yes, he was Roos’s partner back in the day, which meant he probably knew a lot of what I wanted to know, maybe even about my dad. Yes, I could have made him talk and got the whole thing on video. But I really did think they would find a way to bury it. And I wasn’t sure we’d survive long enough to suffer that disappointment. I was holding the head of the National Clandestine Service, the CIA’s most secret department. You don’t just walk away from that. No, it really was about Roos and me. Any answers I wanted had to come from him and nobody else. What I’d do once I got them—well, I’d figure that out if I made it that far.

I was stunned by how easy it was to get the drone airborne. Kurt had brought a DJI Phantom, the Vision 2+ model, he explained, which had a built-in full HD camera hanging underneath it. It had only taken him a couple minutes to get it prepped, which involved taking it out of the box, manually screwing in the four plastic propellers, snapping the battery in place, doing a quick compass calibration and getting a GPS lock on our position by spinning it around itself on both axes, and syncing up the drone to the remote control unit he’d use to fly it. Easy enough, although we were lucky he’d done it before and knew how to pilot it with ease—he had one back at his place, but since that was a no-go zone, he had to buy a new one. It was small, a sleek white X-shape made out of plastic, with each of its arms not even a foot long. It was also light, weighing less than three pounds. It still managed to pack enough clever technology in that compact package to justify its thirteen-hundred-dollar price tag.

Our present location had been chosen to allow three things: we needed it to be close enough to Roos’s cabin so that it was within the flight range of the Phantom, which was about a mile; we needed it to also allow the drone to monitor the departure of his goon squad, follow them until they were well on their way out of here, and make sure they didn’t double back; and we needed it to give us the privacy to get on with our work.

We sent the drone up a first time before my call to Roos to get a closer, real-time picture of the situation. The weather was borderline—not so much the snow as the temperature, but the Phantom didn’t seem fazed by it. Kurt sent it up to around five hundred feet. It was so small that we stopped seeing it long before that, and its buzz was so discreet anyway that we stopped hearing it even longer before that. I was confident that Roos and his entourage wouldn’t know it was there.

Kurt had flown it across the hill toward Roos’s property, its remote-controlled camera relaying what it was seeing to the remote control unit in Kurt’s hands, which in turn beamed the footage by Bluetooth to Gigi’s laptop. The image was surprisingly stable thanks to the three-way brushless gimbal that held the camera, and it gave me a great aerial view of what I’d be facing.

Roos’s cabin sat at the end of a long dirt trail that snaked its way from the main road up the mountain, carving a path through his eighty acres of land. Kurt flew the drone in a big circle to see what else was around, which was basically rolling hills of forest, forest, and more forest. At one point, the camera caught the mountains at an angle that looked familiar, and I was pretty sure it was the same mountain range that was behind Orford, Padley and Siddle in that picture of them in full hunting gear, the one I’d snatched from Orford’s office.

This was a hunting lodge, pure and simple, a secluded retreat to escape to and stalk black bear, whitetail deer and turkey, as well as predators like coyote and fox. It was also, it seemed, a lodge where far deadlier kinds of predator roamed around, no doubt plotting their own special brand of hunt.

Kurt had brought the drone around again and put it in a fixed hover so as to give us a clear view of the front of the lodge. It was a rustic log cabin, about a thousand feet in footprint, two floors with a couple of dormers on the roof, a wraparound porch, screened deck at the side. There were three cars out front, parked haphazardly in the small clearing that faced the house, large black SUVs, standard issue for hard-asses with attitudes. I couldn’t see them cramming more than four men per car, given the gear they had to be lugging. So it was likely Roos had eleven hired guns up there. We could see two guys standing outside, by the cars. The others weren’t visible. I’d decided the most I could ask Roos was to ship off two of the three vehicles, hence my request for eight men. I’d be left with Roos and three others to deal with. Twelve-to-one didn’t sound promising. Four-to-one I could live with.

I’d asked Kurt to give me another look at the road up to the cabin and I tried to memorize its turns by matching the visual with the satellite picture on Google Maps. Then he’d brought it back and swapped its battery for a fully charged one while I’d prepared the car for my drive up to the cabin.

Once everything was ready, I’d called Roos just after Kurt had sent the quadcopter back up. I’d made sure Tomblin hadn’t seen the drone—we had his eyes covered with duct tape too, and we flew it away from the car so he didn’t hear it. I didn’t want him telling Roos we had a bird up. It was amazing to be able to do this with something anyone could pick up at any halfway-decent electronics store or just buy online for next-day delivery. We had live coverage of the cabin all while I spoke to Roos. There was no action to watch, though. He was obviously inside, and the men outside were just standing there, waiting for orders.

Things changed after I hung up.

After a couple of minutes, three men came out of the house and joined the two who were already outside. The drone was too far for us to get a look at any of their faces. They just looked like small, dark figures against a dirty-white background. Then three others came outside, followed by two others.

They all held position for a moment, the first eight clustered close to each other, the last two closer to the house, facing them. I moved closer to the screen, sensing one of the two was Roos—the general addressing his troops. Then the eight men climbed into two of the SUVs, which drove away and took the long trail down the mountain.

“Where do I go?” Kurt asked. “You want the cars, or you want me to stay on the cabin?”

Ideally, I needed both. The guys at the cabin would be setting up whatever ambush they had planned, while the guys in the departing SUVs might be putting in place a trap of their own. And there were many more of them to worry about.

“Stay on the cars,” I told Kurt. “Let’s make sure they’re really gone.”

He nudged the two joysticks expertly to control the drone’s flight, and I took one last look at the tiny figure on the screen that I imagined to be Roos, burning his image into my memory before he headed back in and the cabin disappeared from the picture.

We watched as the two black SUVs snaked their way down the dirt road. They hung left when they hit the main road, pulled over, and the eight men got out. Kurt had moved the drone well up to make sure they wouldn’t see or hear it. The eight tiny figures stood there aimlessly for a moment, like they were stumped, then they got back in the cars and headed north. Kurt brought down the drone and had it follow them as long as it could, to the limit of its range. Once it reached it, its return-to-home feature kicked in automatically and it just reversed direction and started flying straight back to us. Kurt stopped it after a few seconds and held it in a stationary hover to monitor the road and make sure they weren’t coming up yet. We watched the road for about ten minutes and nothing showed up. I doubted Roos believed my story about a spotter, but it was worth a shot anyway. I figured they’d pull over somewhere within reach and wait for the call that would tell them I’d arrived at the cabin, then they’d rush back. Which meant I wouldn’t have much time up there.

Kurt brought the drone back while I got the Navigator and Tomblin ready. He swapped the battery for another fresh one and we were set. I’d have a guardian angel in the sky and a comms piece in my ear. Deutsch would have the other one. She’d be monitoring the situation and giving me some live updates, for which I was grateful. Assuming I made it up to the cabin alive.

I glanced at my watch. Almost an hour had passed since I’d spoken with Roos.

It was high noon on the shortest day of the year. I didn’t know whether to take that as a good sign or not.

Either way, it was time to go.

65

The black Lincoln Navigator stormed up the mountain, making mincemeat of the narrow trail and swallowing up the slushy bends in its stride.

From behind an open window inside the cabin, Roos waited, scanning the tree line for any sign of movement. The mountain was entirely still, with nothing but the distant sound of water cascading over rocks to disturb it. The snow was still falling lightly, the sky behind the carpet of hardwoods a dull grey. Then he became aware of a growl at the edge of his hearing, the throaty gurgle of a large engine. Its noise grew and grew, sending his pulse spiking up with every added decibel, and then the black SUV appeared from behind the trees as it rounded the last bend eighty-five yards downslope from the lodge.

Roos looked through his binoculars. Straining to get a clear picture through the irregular reflections bouncing off the SUV’s windshield, he was able to make out one solitary figure inside it, behind the wheel: male, as expected, in a black baseball cap, sitting straight up. There could be others ducking low inside there, but it wouldn’t really matter anyway. If anyone else was in there with Reilly they’d also soon be just as dead as he was.

He watched as the Navigator rushed up to the mouth of the clearing outside the cabin—and didn’t slow down. It kept going, accelerating now and heading straight at the cabin.

Roos gave the signal, and a barrage of high-powered rounds erupted out of the trees.

The relentless feed of bullets, coming from outside on both sides of his cabin, drilled through the SUV. Roos watched as the 7.62mm NATO rounds rained down on the charging car, obliterating its windshield, side windows, body panels, as well as its driver, whose body was visibly shaking around violently with each impact. It was less than forty yards from the cabin when its wheels exploded from the gunfire, which hobbled it until more rounds ate into its engine and crippled it three car lengths away from the cabin’s front steps.

The gunfire stopped. The stillness returned to the mountain, apart from a light hiss and some irregular clinks from the crippled car.

Roos wasn’t smiling.

Something was wrong.

Reilly wasn’t suicidal. He had consistently shown himself to be way too clever than to attempt a blind charge like that. Roos looked again through his binoculars, focusing on the head of the driver. Too many rounds had found their target—and even though the man was a pulped, bloodied mess, his head was still upright. With wasn’t natural. And the man wasn’t damaged enough for Roos to recoil when he saw enough to recognize the dead driver.

It sure as hell wasn’t Reilly.

I struggled to keep the car properly aligned as I guided it up the mountain.

It wasn’t easy, given that I wasn’t sitting in the driver’s seat. Nor was I driving it by remote control. I was crouched in the footwell of the passenger seat, wearing a helmet and goggles and a vest, surrounded by body armor panels, with one hand on the selfie stick that I’d taped to the gas pedal and the other on the steering wheel.

Above and to my left, Tomblin was in the driver’s seat, held in position with enough duct tape to ensure he couldn’t move an inch. I’d even made sure Tomblin’s head would stay upright by running some tape around his neck and the headrest. His mouth was also taped shut. Only his eyes were free to roam, and they were darting back and forth between the road ahead and an intense, terrorized scowl that was directed right at me.

Kurt and Gigi had set up the visual aids for me: a smartphone taped to the big Lincoln’s front bumper, linked by video call to a 4G tablet they’d taped under the dashboard, where I could see it. It was cramped and awkward, but it was the only way I could see myself even getting close to the cabin in one piece.

The gunfire erupted the second the cabin appeared clearly on the monitor, remorseless large-caliber rounds raining down on the SUV from somewhere up ahead. I crouched lower and floored the pedal, aiming at the house as bits of the car and of Tomblin exploded all around me, showering me with all kinds of debris, hard and soft. Some rounds found their way to the Kevlar panels and punched into them, hard, kicking them back onto me, but I kept the pedal floored and kept it moving until the car shuddered and plowed into the ground for a full stop. Then the shooting stopped.

A panicked voice in my earbud blurted, “Reilly? Reilly! Jesus, are you OK?” It was Kurt, back at the clearing, at the controls of the Phantom.

The plan had worked in the sense that I’d made it up to the door of the cabin in one piece, but I needed to stay that way, which meant I needed to take one of those big guns out. Given the sound they made, the cycling rate and the damage they’d caused, I figured it was something like one of the M240 family of machine guns, positioned under cover outside rather than inside the house to allow for a quick repositioning and a bigger playing field.

“I’m fine, relax,” I whispered into my throat mike. “What do you see?”

“You’ve got two gunmen—on either side of the cabin.” He was flying it lower now, although I didn’t think it was visible or within earshot yet.

“The one to my right. I need a lock on him. Where is he, off the car’s nose?”

“I’d say, two o’clock.”

“I need more precision than that, Kurt. Give it to me in minutes. And be accurate, for God’s sake. I’m only going to get one shot at this.”

“OK, OK, hang on. I think, uh, thirteen.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, yes. Thirteen.”

I quickly asked, “Distance?”

“OK, uh, it’s around, uh, thirty yards. Yeah, I think that’s about right, I’m measuring off the length of the car. He’s behind what looks like some fallen logs.”

“OK. Hang on.”

I focused on my positioning, imagining the front-to-back axis of the car and locking it in my mind relative to everything around me. Then I closed my eyes and conjured up a mental picture of what Kurt had told me about my position relative to the shooter. I’d only get one shot at him and it had to count.

I adjusted my position and got the M4 ready, then I pulled out a stun grenade, pulled out its pin, focused my concentration, then lobbed it out the opening where the front windshield used to be, to the left of the car, the opposite side of the shooter I was going for. Flashbangs had very short fuses, two seconds in this case, so the small, perforated cylinder had barely left my hand when it went off in a deafening bang and a blinding flash. I knew its effects wouldn’t be as disorientating as they would if this were inside a room, but the blast was so powerful that, even inside the car, I was rocked by its concussion wave. It instantly created the desired result as more rounds erupted from the trees, but were directed away from the car. With my eyes closed, I spun around and came up from my crouch, M4 ready and already aimed in the direction and at the distance Kurt had spotted for me—and I opened my eye, looked through the scope, and there he was, for a second, the top of his head and the barrel of the gun barely visible through the light snowfall, the red dot inside the optic aligned on his forehead.

I squeezed the trigger and saw his head snap back in a burst of crimson.

One down, maybe two—and Roos—to go.

“Guide me out of here, quick,” I rasped.

“OK, I’m looking at your side of the car. There’s that large rock to your right that we saw before, at one o’clock,” he added, “and the trees are just beyond that, about ten yards farther.”

“Got it.”

The belts these guns used held a couple of hundred rounds at best, and given that they fired at upward of six hundred rounds per minute and seeing as how many hits the car had taken before this last onslaught, I figured whoever was manning them should be needing to restock their feeding tray by now. Regardless, I had to move fast. They now knew I was alive and in the car. I sucked in a couple of quick, deep breaths, then I pulled on the door handle and kicked the door out, following it out in the same frenzied move. I rolled on the ground before coming up in a crouch and I sprinted towards the rock, bullets kicking up the slush around my feet. I didn’t shoot back, saving the rounds of my M4 until I had something viable to shoot at. I made it to the rock just as more bullets ate into it, sending shards of it flicking around me. The shooter was on the other side of the house from me now and I knew the rock would protect me. I had no idea where the third guy, if there was one, was, nor if Roos was in the cabin or elsewhere.

I figured I couldn’t stay where I was for too long and I couldn’t cut across in the open, so the best option seemed to be to get to the cabin and work my way around it or through it to take out the guy with the big gun on its opposite side. I peeked out, took in my position. I couldn’t see any movement. I figured that if I took the direct route to the cabin, I’d be exposed longer than if I went parallel to its side initially, then cut across to it—longer, but safer, unless there was a shooter in one of its side windows. It had three—two on the ground floor that gave on to the porch and a third on the floor above. I debated going the extra ten yards away and using the edge of the tree line, but the soil there would be less even than the clearing I was in; more snow would have settled there under the bare branches, and I’d be moving less confidently while risking a fall.

I steeled myself for the move, then sprinted out from behind the large rock, running parallel to the side of the house. Snowflakes licked my face as gunfire erupted immediately from the same shooter but, surprisingly, nothing came from the cabin. I ran as fast as I could and, within seconds, the shooting stopped as the gunner lost his bead on me. I cut across the field, headed straight for the cabin now, and hurdled onto the porch before slamming to a stop against the log wall.

Everything went silent again.

I didn’t like it. Playing cat and mouse like this, facing an unknown number of shooters who’d brought major firepower to the fight. Then Kurt’s voice came through my comms, and his words only made things worse.

“Reilly! Reilly,” he hissed.

“What?” I whispered.

“I just sent the drone on a quick perimeter swoop. The two SUVs, the ones with the heavies? They’re back.”