CHAPTER
62
PULLER DROVE WHILE Robert sat next to him. Knox was in the back giving directions while glancing at her phone screen from time to time. It was now quite late and they had left D.C. and the suburbs of northern Virginia behind. They could just make out the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains up ahead. Puller turned off the highway and the car continued to roll along on surface roads that grew increasingly rougher and narrower.
“How much farther?” asked Puller.
“Looks to be about ten minutes. I’ll tell you when we get close enough to ditch the car. We’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”
“Where are your folks who are tailing her?” asked Puller.
“Stationed to the north and west of the cabin but a hundred yards back, forming a perimeter.”
“How many are there, in case we need some backup?”
“Two teams of three. Loaded.”
“Well, let’s hope we won’t need them,” said Robert.
About six minutes later she had Puller stop the car and they pulled over to the side of the road.
Knox’s fingers flew over her phone’s keys but the text didn’t go. She stared at the loading bar on the screen. It seemed stalled halfway through the operation.
“Reception is shitty around here,” she complained. She punched in a number on the phone. It didn’t go through.
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“I’ve got no bars,” said Puller, glancing at his phone.
“I don’t either,” said Knox. “Okay, we’ll just have to wing this. But there are three of us and only one of her.”
Puller gripped her arm. “This mission is too important to just wing it. We need reliable communication up here or else we could be divided and taken out one by one.”
“We’ll stick together as long as we can. Then we can figure out a way to communicate.”
“I don’t like this, Knox.”
“Are you telling me whenever you were in combat the conditions were perfect?”
“Of course not, combat is never perfect.”
“Then what did you do, soldier?”
“He adapted,” answered Robert. “And so will we. Let’s go.”
They climbed out of the car, their guns drawn. There were no homes on this road, which edged higher into a crevice between two of the foothills where the land flattened out. A fog had started to spread.
“The ground conditions aren’t great,” said Puller to Knox.
Robert said, “And keep in mind that, as Reynolds clearly pointed out to you both, she has guns and is really good at using them.”
“Especially long-range sniping,” said Knox grimly. “Olympic-caliber.”
“Well, then we can’t give her the chance to deploy that particular skill,” said Puller.
Knox led the way up the road, staring at her phone screen as she did so. Puller noted this and drew next to her.
“Memorize where we’re going, Knox, and then turn the damn phone off. It’s like a spotter beacon right into your chest.”
She nodded, did a quick but focused study of the screen, and clicked her phone off.
They moved up the road and then Knox led them to the right, over a stretch of ground that was uneven, rocky, and slippery. However, all three were surefooted and made their way across it without trouble.
They had progressed another five hundred yards when Knox held up her hand and stopped. The two men drew next to her. She pointed up ahead. In the distance about another hundred yards to the east they could make out a dim light.
“That has to be the cabin up there,” she said, pointing at the light. “It’s the only structure around here.”
Puller gazed around on all compass points before returning to the light.
His brother looked at him and said, “What do you think, Junior?”
“Junior?” said Knox staring at Puller. “That’s your brother’s name for you?”
“Well, he is a junior,” said Robert. “He’s named after our father.”
She was a woman who obviously liked fine things and had the money to pursue those likes. So why a crappy cabin in the middle of nowhere? Just as a clandestine meeting place? He didn’t think so. And how could Reynolds have allowed herself to be so easily followed?
Everything about this seemed out of whack, but they were ready to execute. He checked his watch and watched the second hand sweep to the five-minute mark. When it reached it, he pulled his phone and gave a quick flash of the light. A second passed and then he saw a corresponding flash from the right and then the left. They were all in position. He immediately started to count off sixty seconds on his watch. At fifty-eight, he tensed his legs and readied his weapon. At fifty-nine he was starting to move. At sixty he commenced a zigzag trek to the front porch, keeping low and to the side, never exposing himself full on to sightlines from the cabin’s front.
The light in the house never went off. No other
lights came on. No shadows moved in front of that light. He could hear no sounds other than the occasional scurry of an animal in the nearby woods, and his own heartbeat.
Then he was on the porch and standing with his back to the left of