Killing Game (Veritas Book 2) (12 page)

Why hadn’t the park rangers noticed all this? Were some of them taking payoffs to ignore the crazies in their own backyard?

Another guard stood in front of the shed, armed with a pistol and a knife, both of which would come in handy if they tried to make a break for it. Susan and the others waited as he opened the door. Once they were inside, the door slammed shut and the bolt was thrown.

Two barred windows were the only source of light, as there appeared to be no electricity in the cabin. At least there was a potbellied woodstove along the back wall. Pellets of some kind were stored next to it in a bucket. No wood, probably because that could possibly be used as a weapon. The strong scent of cedar permeated the place.

Patti looked around, sniffed, and then sighed. “It smells like a hamster cage—you know, like the shavings.” Her eyes met Susan’s. “Who are these crazy guys?”

Before Susan could reply, Preston slumped on one of the six bunk beds. Each of them had a rudimentary mattress and a quilt for a cover, but no pillow.

“Quinton Ellers is . . . a legend,” the guide replied. “He’s stood against a government that doesn’t answer to its people. He’s gotten folks talking about how wrong things are.”

Susan drifted to the wooden table in the center of the room. It had a few chairs and she sat in the one closest to the stove. “So kidnapping us is a blow for freedom?” she asked.

“I don’t know about that. I’ve been reading those message boards for a couple years. Some of those guys are totally on the level. Others?” Preston shook his head. “They’re just nuts.”

“You believe all that stuff?” she asked.

Preston frowned. “Some of it I do. The government is digging into our personal lives, hacking our computers and cell phones. I don’t like that. But I am not good with killing innocent people just because you don’t like how things are going down in Washington. Like that McVeigh guy. That was murder, pure and simple.”

Susan nodded. Preston might be an ally after all.

“My parents are going to freak when they find out I’m missing,” Patti said, shaking her head in dismay. “I never should have trusted James.” She looked over at them, fear flaring in her eyes. “You can’t let him take me away.”

“We won’t,” Susan said. “Right, Preston?”

“Right. That boy needs to learn that he doesn’t rule the world.”

As Patti turned away, Susan could see the tears forming. If they were lucky, this was one promise they could keep.

Chapter Sixteen

As the day grew warmer, Cait and Brannon traded war stories. Not the bad ones that still brought nightmares in the dark of night, but the ones that made them laugh. Helped them remember the good times with good friends. Cait was just about to start another one when she paused and pointed to the shoreline ahead.

“This is it.”

Brannon couldn’t tell anything different about this one stretch of ground from another, but it would be the right place. Cait knew this swamp like she’d lived here for years. With some effort, his sore back not helping the situation, they beached the canoe, then portaged it farther onto the island. From what he could tell, this one was similar to the one they’d left, only a slightly different mix of trees and shrubs. It seemed less marshy, and he appreciated that.

Once she’d propped it up against a tree, Cait frowned at him. “Rest that back of yours while I hide our tracks, just in case the tangos decide to come this far north.”

Brannon nodded, pulling the near-empty bottle of water from his pack and downing the remainder. Stuffing the bottle back inside, he slowly sank to the damp ground. One particular part of his back was throbbing now, which led him to believe that something other than sore muscles was involved. The Army docs had warned him that it would give him trouble now and then, and they hadn’t been lying.

He reached around and put his hand under his T-shirt, touching the area that hurt. And grimaced in response. His hand came away slightly bloody. He looked up to find Cait watching him. “My back’s bleeding.”

“Huh. I couldn’t tell because your T-shirt’s black. You want me to check it out here, or wait until we get to the cabin?”

“It’ll wait.”

She offered him a hand to help him up and they walked side by side through the trees.

“Right before we arrived you were about to tell me a story about a bet you took on your first R-and-R,” he said.

“Oh yeah,” she said, grinning. “It was a hazing. We were in Thailand. The squad made a bet with me that I couldn’t get one of the guys out of a brothel without help. I figure, how hard can that be? Wait until the guy has done the deed, then haul his butt out of there. So I go door to door to find him, seeing things that I really didn’t need to see, and I finally find him.

“Except Frankie isn’t in any shape to get it on. No, he’d passed out, dead drunk. The other guys knew that’d be the case, but if I didn’t bring him down, I’d lose the bet.”

“How much was the bet?”

“Fifty bucks. It wasn’t so much the money as the principle of the thing. They figured since I was a ‘girl,’ I’d freak out about being in a whorehouse.”

“They didn’t know you very well.”

“No, but they learned.” She laughed. “I fireman-carried that Marine’s heavy ass down two flights of stairs and dumped him in a mud puddle in the street. The other guys just stared at me. They paid their debt and I gave most of it to the girl at the brothel.”

“What was your nickname?”

Her grin grew larger. “Wonder Woman.”

“Well deserved.”

“What about you?”

“They just shortened my name to Bran. One guy tried to piss me off by calling me Bran Flakes. I decked his ass and that was the end of that.”

“Bran. It sounds strong,” she said. “It fits you.”

The brush opened up onto a clearing, and in the center stood an old log cabin, which had probably been built in the late nineteenth century. A stacked-stone chimney sat at one end, and a long porch graced the front. The windows were covered with shutters. Made of cedar, it would probably be standing for another hundred years, at least.

“How did you find this place?” Brannon asked.

“Mike is friends with one of the old trappers. Walt said he used to live here as a boy, came out to visit it every now and then. I hiked in to see if it was still standing. I had to run some critters out, do some repairs and fix a few holes in the roof, but it’s pretty sturdy.”

She climbed the stairs, Brannon right behind her. It was then that he noticed the complex knot that secured the door to a bent nail driven into the side of the house.

“Old-fashioned alarm system, huh?”

“Yup. Unless the thief can duplicate a buntline hitch with my own special addition, I know they’ve been inside. And even if they could . . . ” She undid the knot and something fell to the porch. She picked it up, displaying it on her palm. It was a small, rusted fishhook.

“Clever,” he said, nodding his approval.

The door creaked open to reveal a dark interior. Brannon remained out of the way as Cait batted away a spider web, then opened the shutters, letting in the light. She angled out a chair, and he sank into it with weary relief. He could still hike another twenty miles today if needed, but thank God that wasn’t the case. Running a hand over his forehead, he felt a sheen of sweat. That wasn’t good news.

Cait moved the bed aside, which currently had no mattress, just rope serving as the springs. Beneath the bed was a large metal box. She opened the padlock and began pulling out its contents. First a thin mattress, then a large sleeping bag, all wrapped in plastic. She set those aside.

The goods began to pile up on the table: a large first-aid kit, a twelve-pack of water, a bottle of iodine tablets, toilet paper, body wipes, soap, shampoo, all the simple necessities one would require when your house is located miles away from civilization. Finally, a camp stove and kerosene lantern appeared, along with a box of matches.

“You trucked all this in here?”

“Mike helped me. He has a big boat with an outboard motor, so it cut it down to one run.”

“What don’t you have in there?”

“The weapons and the food. They’re stashed elsewhere. Sorry, but some of it is MRE’s.”

He groaned. “No pizza delivery?”

“Gators would probably like pizza just as much as the rest of us. Unfortunately, they’d like the delivery guy more.”

Cait climbed up on the bed frame and clipped a mosquito net above it. After making the bed, which looked pretty comfortable after the night sleeping on the hard ground, she toted all the supplies to a long, narrow table set against the wall, leaving the main table free.

He was intrigued by how she’d stowed all this gear in such a small space. “So where is the food hidden?” he asked, looking around.

Cait opened a rickety cupboard, removing a couple pots, two metal plates and cups, plastic glasses, and silverware. Then, using her knife, she pried off the back of the cupboard to reveal another stash. This time, there were canned goods, medicine, cartridges, a rifle.

And those damned MREs
.

“I hate to sound ungrateful, but I swore I’d never eat one of those things again, if I could help it.”

She scooped them up and set them on the table. “Feel free to take the rifle and shoot yourself a squirrel. Me? I’ll eat these before I touch another tree rat.”

“Had to eat a lot of them?”

She nodded. “My dad thought it was a great way to teach my brother and me how to be self-sufficient.”

“Tough dad. Mine wasn’t like that. He believed food should come from the grocery store, and that having the local Chinese place on speed dial was a blessing.”

She smiled. “I like your father already.”

“He’s a good guy. He raised us right. And my mother rocks, except when she’s trying to hook me up with some friend’s daughter.”

“Luckily, I don’t get that so much now. Mom knows I’m not a particularly fun date.”

“Not sure about that. You’ve been a blast so far.”

She huffed and ignored his comment, setting a satellite phone on the table in front of him, followed by a bottle of generic pain tablets and a gallon of water. After refilling his own bottle, he downed the pills while waiting for the sat phone to power up.

The moment the call went through, he said, “It’s Brannon.”

“Thank God,” Sanjay said, heaving an immense sigh of relief. “We were sweating here, my friend. You okay?”

“Yeah, but we got a big problem. So I don’t have to repeat all of this, can you get me on a conference call with the boss?”

“Sure. Give me a minute to set it up.”

He was put on hold and heard blissful silence. If someone was calling this particular phone number, they didn’t need to listen to some tinny version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.”

When a noticeable click came through the phone, Brannon pushed the speaker button.

“We’re ready,” Sanjay reported. “Crispin and Morgan are here.”

“Hi guys,” Brannon said.

“Damned glad to hear from you,” his boss replied. “We had concerns.”

“Sorry it took so long. I have Caitlyn Landry listening in on the call.”

“Ms. Landry,” Crispin said. “Good to speak with you.”

“Thank you,” she replied cautiously.

Brannon gave his report, laying out exactly what had happened, where they were, and the situation they faced.

“Well, hell,” Morgan muttered.

“Sanjay, where is the cash now?” He turned to Cait. “We have a tracker stuck to one of the bundles of money.”

“Smart,” she said.

“It’s still in the swamp, stationary since mid-morning,” he reported. “Where are you located?”

Cait retrieved her map and supplied the necessary coordinates.

“Then you’re about nine miles northeast of the tracker,” Sanjay replied.

“You think that’s where Ellers’s compound is?” she asked.

“That’s our guess,” Morgan replied.

“I spoke with Mr. Montgomery about an hour ago,” Crispin began, “and he believes that, if Ellers is anywhere, he’s exactly where the tracker is at this point.”

“How is Mike?” Cait asked.

“Doing well. We’ll let him know you’re alive and unharmed.”

“Thanks.”

Crispin went on to explain how Rockwell and Adams had come to be on that particular tour.

“Huh,” Brannon said, shifting in his chair. “No matter what, Ellers isn’t going to surrender without a fight.”

“We have the same concerns, though the feds did learn valuable lessons at Waco and Ruby Ridge. They’ll be more cautious this time around,” Crispin replied. “Would you be able to reach that location and determine if this is indeed Ellers’s compound? And if it is, serve as a forward scouting team?”

Brannon looked over at Cait. She gave him a thumbs-up.

“We’re ‘go’ for that. We’ll need coordinates and anything else you can provide.”

“We’ll get you all we have,” Morgan said. “Give us an hour or so and I’ll pull it together for you.”

“How long would it take you to get down there?” Crispin asked.

Cait answered. “Probably about three hours, if we push it. Usually it would be faster, but there’s a lot of debris in the water after the storm. Since it’ll be best to do the run at night, and we don’t have a full moon, we’ll be feeling our way along.”

“What do you have in the way of weapons?” his boss asked.

“Two knives and a rifle,” Cait answered. “If we encounter any tangos, we’ll acquire more from them.”

“There’s one issue that is going to hamper both us and the FBI,” Morgan said. “As of a couple hours ago, the swamp’s airspace was closed, except for park rangers and fire personnel. The fire is nowhere near you, but to keep the news helicopters out of the way, they’ve shut down the entire area.”

“Okay. We’ll just have to do it the hard way,” Cait said. “‘Embrace the suck’, as they say.”

“There you go,” Brannon replied, smiling now.

“There’s another player in the game that you’re unaware of,” Crispin said.

Brannon raised an eyebrow as his boss explained exactly who Susan was. “I wondered what was going on with her,” he said. “Does she know there’s an arrest warrant for me?”

“Yes,” Morgan replied. “At least you have someone inside that can help you.”

“Provided she’s still alive. If Ellers finds out she’s FBI, she’s dead.”

“Indeed. We’ll send you what info we have, and I’ll call the FBI, let them know the situation,” Crispin said. “You’ll have backup in your area in a few hours; Neil will be positioned in Valdosta by nightfall, and he’ll have access to a helicopter. We’ll obtain permission to access your airspace, if needed.”

“Roger. Always good to have the Iceman on a mission,” Brannon replied. “I’ll check messages in a couple hours, but the phone will be off until then to conserve power.”

“Understood. See you when this is over.”

When the call ended, Brannon turned off the phone and set it aside.

“What happens if they can’t get that permit for the copter?” Cait asked.

“Won’t matter. The boss will ensure that we have backup. He’ll worry about the legal flak later.”

“He sounds like a good commander.”

“He is. Veritas only hires good people. Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad people in this world, and often it doesn’t even out.”

“Then let’s make sure it does, at least this time.”