Page 56 of Cross Down
“What happened in North Carolina?”
“We were followed,” I say. “During that Zoom meeting, after Ruiz was killed, the fishing cabin we were in was attacked. Mel got shot.”
The little red dot remains centered on my chest.
Then moves away.
“You kill any of them?” she asks.
“Don’t think so,” I say. “We were pretty much outgunned.”
“Too bad. Come on up, we’ll grab some coffee and get the hell out of here.”
She emerges from a shelter of tree branches and camouflagefabric by the driveway. I join her on a walk to a breezeway connecting her garage to the house, and in the dawn light, I see she’s wearing a black jumpsuit, boots, kneepads and elbow pads, a bullet-resistant vest, and a ballistic helmet, and she’s carrying a cut-down M4 automatic equipped with night vision and a laser scope and a black duffel bag.
“Expecting visitors?” I ask.
“I am,” she says. “You’re the first.”
“You’ve been waiting all night?”
At the garage, she puts down her duffel, takes out a thermos, and pours coffee into two tall metal travel mugs. “Don’t be stupid, John,” she says, handing me a mug. “I figured you were near Fort Bragg, and after poor Ruiz got nailed, you had a certain number of hours to get here.”
I don’t like being called stupid, and in any other time or place, I would make that clearly known to this CIA officer. But I want to get moving. “So here I am. Where do we go next?”
“To see Gary Bastinelli,” she says. “Other than the two of us, he’s the last survivor of our mission. We need to talk to him before someone else gets there, though I doubt anything bad will happen to Bastinelli.”
I do the gentlemanly thing and pick up her duffel bag. “Say again?”
“Bastinelli is a full hard-core prepper,” she says. “Anybody trying to get into his compound without permission is going to run into a buzz saw.”
I follow her into the neat and tidy garage, black Chevrolet Tahoe parked in the center. We put our coffee in the cupholders and the gear and the M4 in the rear seat. She gets behind the wheel and I take the passenger side and say, “Do we have permission to visit him? And how do you know this?”
She toggles a switch on the Tahoe and the garage door lifts up. “We do have permission, and it’s my job to know things.”
I say, “What do you know about me?”
We go down the driveway, and she makes a right. “Don’t have the time. Sorry, John.”
We travel less than fifty yards and we’re getting near the parked Lexus, and I’m about to ask Deacon if she learned anything else after our Zoom call when she says, “Shit.”
I say the same thing, haul my Glock out of the holster.
Up ahead is the Lexus on four shot-up and flat tires; the rear window is shattered, bullet rounds pockmark the metal, and I see shapes on the side of the road.
Deacon brakes hard, and the Tahoe shudders to a halt; she throws the car into reverse and slams the accelerator. We roar back up the road in reverse, and then, in a series of quick and smooth moves, Deacon puts the gear in neutral and rotates the steering wheel.
I grab the dashboard of the Tahoe as she expertly does an evasive J-turn and then shifts into drive and punches the accelerator. We speed away from the ambushers.
“Impressive,” I say.
“And our goddamn coffee is still in the cupholders,” she says.
Chapter
66
Less than twohours later we’re in the small town of Healy, New Hampshire, and it’s been an interesting drive, although Deacon knocked down all my attempts to talk to her about the people trying to kill us, the terrorist attacks, and the important thing we might have seen or heard in Afghanistan.
