Part 12 (1/2)
Desh let out a heavy sigh and frowned deeply. ”Me either, Matt,” he mumbled wearily. ”Me either.”
23.
David Desh glanced impatiently at his watch once again and frowned. He was hidden from view behind a large tree trunk at the outer edge of the clearing, which was roughly the size of a basketball court, waiting for Connelly's arrival. He and Griffin had picked up a cab in Emporia. After instructing the driver to drop them off a quarter-mile from the meeting point they had finished their journey on foot. Desh had the tranquilizer gun in one pocket of his windbreaker and two spare clips for his .45 in the other.
Griffin was waiting twenty yards farther into the woods. Few of the trees were totally bare, while many of them held full compliments of leaves that hadn't even begun to change color. Given the significant number of evergreens added to the mix, the woods provided adequate cover as Desh had hoped, with a thin cus.h.i.+on of colorful, newly fallen leaves on the ground.
Desh came to full alert! A car was approaching.
He relaxed slightly as it came into view and he recognized the colonel behind the wheel. Connelly carefully chose his route over the hardened ground, which hadn't experienced any of the rain that had fallen to the north, trying to minimize any evidence of the pa.s.sage of his car. He killed the engine and cautiously got out, alert for anyone following. He was wearing civilian slacks and a heavy green knit sweater. Judging from his bulk, Desh guessed he was wearing a vest as well.
Connelly surveyed the tree line methodically. When his eyes reached Desh's hiding place, Desh moved his head into Connelly's line of sight and nodded meaningfully. The colonel caught his eye and gave him an all but imperceptible nod of acknowledgment in return. Satisfied that Desh was in place as expected, Connelly scooped up an arm-full of fallen leaves and returned to where his car had exited the road, placing the leaves strategically so they would hide any visible tracks but would still look random.
He then carefully returned to the clearing and stood by his car as if waiting for someone.
Desh knew it was possible that Connelly had lost whoever was tailing him, but if these followers could authorize satellite time this would be little consolation. It was also possible that whoever had been following the colonel had no intention of taking any hostile action, but Desh had no choice but to a.s.sume otherwise.
Desh quietly made his way to the oversized hacker. ”It's showtime,” he whispered so softly that Griffin wasn't sure if he had heard it or had simply read Desh's lips. ”Don't move. Don't even have noisy thoughts,” he continued in hushed tones, his lips almost touching Griffin's right ear. ”A single snap of a twig can give away your position.”
Griffin glared at him angrily for putting him in harm's way but nodded his understanding.
Desh picked his way through the woods noiselessly, with cat-like grace and light-footedness. The tip of his tongue protruded just slightly from his mouth as he concentrated carefully on avoiding pine cones and twigs, and more plentiful still, fallen leaves that had become dried out and would crunch noisily at the slightest touch.
Desh was convinced that whoever was following Connelly would have enough respect for the colonel not to try a frontal a.s.sault. Given Connelly's location in the clearing they were sure to take a textbook approach through the surrounding woods to surprise him on multiple flanks. Desh was on Connelly's southern flank and calculated the angle he would take, coming from the road, if he were attacking Connelly. He chose a post that gave him a full view of this expected approach while keeping him hidden.
He waited behind a dense evergreen, ringed by a thin cus.h.i.+on of needles, now brown, that had fallen from the tree. He remained perfectly still as several minutes ticked by.
He caught movement from the corner of his eye!
A man dressed in black commando gear and wearing a bulletproof vest was stealthily approaching along the exact line Desh had visualized, a militarized and silenced version of Desh's H&K .45 automatic, a favorite of Special Forces commandos, gripped in his right hand. Desh's heart began to jackhammer wildly in his chest but he was able to steady it through force of will alone. The soldier scanned his surroundings alertly while he moved silently and athletically through the woods toward Connelly's position.
Desh leveled the tranquilizer gun at the commando and waited for him to get closer. He had no interest in harming a fellow member of the Special Forces who might just be a dupe in this situation. Given the soldier's body armor, a tranquilizer gun would be his most effective weapon in any case.
The man slowly crept closer. Closer. Closer.
Now! thought Desh, emerging from behind the tree and squeezing off a shot before the man could begin to react. The tranquilizer gun was as silent as a bow. The dart scored a direct hit to the soldier's thigh, and he crumpled to the ground as the tranquilizer took immediate effect.
Desh didn't waste another moment. The man's colleagues were sure to be advancing from alternate flanks. Desh was racing toward the clearing when the word ”Freeze!” thundered through the woods. He reached the tree line to see Connelly with his hands up and two men, mirror images of the man he had shot, emerging alertly from the woods on Connelly's northern and western flanks, their weapons held expertly in front of them with two hands and pointing unerringly at the colonel's forehead.
Desh fired! The soldier on Connelly's northern flank collapsed to the ground.
Desh wheeled around the instant the shot was off and fired again at the last remaining commando, but the man had caught Desh's motion and instinctively threw himself into a roll. Instead of hitting an appendage, Desh's shot bounced harmlessly off his vest. The soldier came up firing but Desh had already darted back behind a tree.
Bark flew past Desh's face as a bullet imbedded itself in the tree he was using for cover. The soldier was about to shoot again when his arm was blasted backwards and his gun clattered to the ground. A stunned expression came over his face as he realized he had been shot. Blood poured from his arm. Connelly rushed forward and kicked his gun away, and then retreated to a safe distance with his own weapon still trained on the wounded man. Connelly had known Desh was on his southern flank and had been primed to act once Desh had made his expected move.
Desh circled the clearing at the tree line, his gun drawn, looking for additional a.s.sailants. There were none. He returned to his original flank and motioned Griffin to leave his hiding place and join him in the clearing. They emerged from the woods and quickly joined Connelly. Desh was calm and alert while Griffin was pale and clammy, looking as if he had seen a ghost.
”All clear?” said Connelly.
”It looks that way,” replied Desh, ”for the moment at least. Let's question this guy and get the h.e.l.l out of here.”
Connelly motioned to Griffin. ”Is this your friend?” he asked.
Desh nodded. ”He's a computer expert I've been working with who got drawn in. I think we can trust him.” He paused. ”Matt Griffina”Jim Connelly,” he said.
The men shook hands while Desh turned to the wounded soldier and stared at him intently. ”Who are you working for?” he barked. ”And what were your orders?”
The soldier remained silent.
”You're obviously US military; ex-Special Forces. I'm guessing you're working for a Black Ops group, am I right?” Once again there was no response. ”Do you have any idea who it is you were attacking?” He gestured toward Connelly. ”You're looking at a highly decorated officer in the US Army Special Operations Command.”
The soldier's expression suggested that he knew exactly who it was he was attacking but didn't care.
Desh pocketed the tranquilizer gun, drew his .45, and pulled back on the slide to chamber a round. He pointed it at the prisoner's kneecap suggestively. ”I'm only going to ask one more time,” he growled. ”Why are you after him?”
The soldier's face remained stoic but he glanced from his kneecap to Desh's fiery eyes and swallowed hard. ”We were told he went off the reservation.”
Desh glanced at Connelly and raised his eyebrows. ”How so?”
”We weren't given details. We were just told he had gone rogue and was extremely dangerous. That he was working against the interests of the United States and had to be brought in. The orders came from high up the chain of command.”
”Brought in or executed?” said Connelly.
”Brought in.”
”But you weren't told he had to be taken alive, correct?” said Desh.
The soldier didn't respond, but the look on his face spoke volumes.
”Just as I thought,” said Desh. ”So if you were able to bring him in without a fight to interrogate him, great, but if you had to kill him, no one would lose any sleep over it.”
The soldier glared at Connelly. ”You sell out your country and you get what you deserve.”
Desh shook his head. ”You've been lied to. The colonel hasn't sold out his country. Whoever is ultimately giving the orders has, and is afraid the colonel is on the brink of finding out. So I'll ask again, who gave you your orda””
Desh jerked his head toward the sky in mid sentence as he detected the faint but unmistakable sound of helicopter blades overhead, his heart accelerating wildly. The chopper was already less than two hundred feet away and was closing fast.
Impossible!
Desh darted for the tree line as a m.u.f.fled shot rang out from above, and an armorpiercing bullet screamed through Connelly's vest and drilled a hole just below his left shoulder, sending his gun flying. Two soldiers in the helicopter tried to follow Desh's sprinting form with their silenced rifles but held their fire as he entered the woods.
A helicopter was far too noisy to have made it so close undetected, thought Desh in alarm. But this one had. Which meant it was one of the few, next generation choppers designed to have a dramatically reduced acoustic and radar signature. Whoever was after them had access to the military's most advanced equipment, which was extremely disconcerting.
The helicopter approached the clearing and four men, clutching automatic rifles and donned in commando gear, rappelled down a green rope that had unfurled like a streamer from the floor of the chopper. As soon as their boots. .h.i.t the ground, two of them captured Griffin and Connelly, and two raced into the woods after Desh, fanning out. The helicopter gently settled onto the ground next to Connelly's car as they did so. The man who had called himself Smith was at the controls.