She looks to her father and says, “Dad, I told you that was too much.”
“Don’t care,” her father says. “I wanted to hurt the son of a bitch as much as he hurt you.”
Enough is enough. I jump up on the porch, nearly stumble, and I grab the shotgun by the barrel and fling it onto the gravel behind me. Mr. Fuller is so surprised he just sits there, and I grab the First Lady by her good arm and say, “Ma’am, we’re leaving. I’m responsible for your safety, and I don’t know how he’s going to do it, but I know the chief of staff doesn’t want you around. He sees you as an embarrassment.”
I manage to propel her down the wooden steps, and she tries to wriggle out of my grasp. “Dad! Come along! Please!”
He shakes his head, stands up. “No politician or lackey is going to run me off my own property. You two get along. If somebody shows up, well, I won’t be defenseless. I intend to get my shotgun back.”
“Please, ma’am,” I say, and I half-shove, half-drag her down the driveway. I swivel around, and true to his word, Mr. Fuller is easing his way down the porch steps to retrieve his shotgun.
The First Lady doesn’t put up much resistance and I bring my left arm up to my mouth, toggle the radio. “Scotty, Scotty, this is Grissom. Can you hear me?”
I push and drag. I repeat myself. “Scotty, Scotty, this is Grissom. I need you up here, with the Suburban. Now.”
Still no answer.
We move about six or eight meters when I hear the sound of an engine, and I think, good, Scotty’s heard me and he’s on his way.
The First Lady says, “What’s that over there?”
I look and see it’s a helicopter, a Kiowa by the looks of it, and it’s armed with a weapons pylon on each side.
“Scotty, Scotty, this is Grissom! I need you now!”
Still no answer.
I look up at the approaching military-style helicopter and think, damn, too late.
CHAPTER 71
PAUL MOODY NOTES the closing distance to the target farmhouse when he spots something else: two figures racing down a dirt driveway.
Damn.
Members of the ISIS cell escaping?
His priority is striking the house, but he wants to get a good view of these two figures so he can supply a description later, help the Feds or whatever law enforcement agency is in charge, so these two can be scooped up later and maybe be sent to the tropical prison paradise that’s Gitmo.
There’s a small video screen in his instrument dashboard, and with the onboard surveillance equipment pod stored over the rotors, he instantly gets a good view of the two figures.
Women, he thinks.
How about that.
It doesn’t make much difference, for he has had sharp experience with old women, young women, girls who weren’t even into their teens yet, and all of them were capable of firing off an RPG-7 or an AK-47, or coming at you, smiling and holding up a cold bottle of Coca-Cola while hiding a suicide bomb vest under their robes.
But these women …
They’re no longer running.
They don’t look armed.
They’re waving at him.
Like they’re happy to see him!
He slows his approach to the farmhouse, part of him thinking it’s a trap, that they want him to hover so that somebody in the woods can fire off a rocket-propelled grenade and take out his main rotor, but the woman on the left … she looks …
Familiar?
He toggles another switch.
Zooms in the camera.
The military-grade technology is about a year or so out of date, but it’s still good enough that he can make out the facial features of both women, and the one to the right, the taller of them, is waving frantically and—
He recognizes the woman on the left.
Recognizes her really well.
Good God, what has he gotten himself into?
CHAPTER 72
MARSHA GRAY SEES the Kiowa swoop in over the house and knows from experience what the pilot is doing—just prepping a dry run so there’s no surprises when he circles back to turn that farmhouse into charcoal and cinders.
Good ol’ Parker Hoyt sure is escalating things. She has no doubt the flying death machine up there is operating under his direction, and if it looks like he’s taking a Gatling gun to a knife fight, so be it.
She feels some satisfaction that this job is coming to a conclusion, but she’s not pleased that she isn’t the one wrapping things up. In some jobs you’re the lead, and in others you’re backup, and if playing second fiddle was going to be her destiny today, well, she and her bank account will be all right with it.
The helicopter is coming back, racing along, just above the treetops, and with her binoculars up to her face, Marsha is admiring the man flying that Kiowa. Those guys are legendary for being nuts and loving a good fly and a good fight, and she’s sure this job is going to be packed away in just under a minute.
The Kiowa gets larger, larger, and then—
It flares up, stops.
Just like that.
What the hell?
For a brief moment Marsha thinks the pilot is going to get up close and personal. She knows at least twice over in Afghanistan that crazy Kiowa pilots and crews would go up in the air with M4s across their laps, so they could shoot at the Taliban from inside their cockpits, very face-to-face—and very forbidden!— but she can’t believe this pilot would be doing this.
What’s he doing?
A few seconds pass.
Then the Kiowa … it wiggles back and forth, like it’s waving, and then it roars off.
Damn it!
Marsha tosses her binoculars aside, grabs her Remington rifle and iPhone, and starts running.
The Kiowa pilot broke off for some reason, and now Marsha is no longer the backup, she’s the primary. Parker Hoyt earlier said not to move unless she got a call from him, but there’s no time. From here she can see the Secret Service agent and the First Lady are running down the driveway, but she doesn’t have a clear shot.
She needs to haul ass and cut them off.
Marsha starts to run.
She’s on the hunt.
She loves it.
CHAPTER 73
AFTER CONFIRMING WITH his own mind that the First Lady is actually standing there in front of his Kiowa, Paul Moody is done for the day. He gives the women a good-luck wave by going side-to-side with the rotors, and with that, he’s outta there.
With the target farmhouse and the two women behind him, now it’s time to pass on the news. His finger hits the radio switch and he says, “This is GSS Tango Four, GSS Tango Four.”
The cool and professional woman replies, “GSS Tango Four, go.”
“GSS Tango Four, mission aborted. Repeat … mission aborted. Coming home.”
His faceless contact is not impressed. “GSS Tango Four, return to target area. Complete your mission.”
God, what a beautiful morning. “Sorry, darlin’, ain’t gonna happen.”
“Those are your orders!”
“Ma’am, I’m no longer in the employ of Uncle Sam. I’m under contract to you-know-who, and I’ve just ended my contract.”
She continues to sputter, and he switches the radio to another frequency.
Women.
He checks the fuel gauges, sees he has a number of hours of flying time available to him, but knowing how pissy Global Strategic Solutions can be, he better put this bird on the ground before his former employer sends up a couple of other birds to take him down. Unofficially, he’d die with a missile up the exhaust port or a close-in strafing with a thirty-caliber chain gun, but officially, he would die in a training accident, and that would be that.