Nemesis: A Jordan Quest FBI Thriller Page 7

  “No, we don’t. Chang is expecting us, remember?”

  “I had to take out a guard.”

  “So what? Leave him. By the time he wakes up we’ll be long gone.”

  “He won’t be waking up. He’s dead.”

  “Nice work,” Zhang said sarcastically.

  “I had no choice. He was in the way.”

  “Where is he?”

  “There’s a service road around back. Wait for me by the fence.”

  “We don’t need this. We should be going after Coltraine, not worrying about a damn guard.” Zhang paused, then asked, “Is he alone?”

  “I don’t know… yes… maybe.”

  “Which is it?”

  “If he had a partner, I’m sure I would have seen him by now, so I assume he’s working alone.”

  “You assume?”

  “I was a little busy trying to stop Dr. Coltraine from escaping, no thanks to you.”

  Zhang knew this was an argument he was never going to win. Best to let it go, carry on with the mission, find the woman. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll meet you around back. In the meantime, try not to kill anyone else.”

  Qin turned on her heels and marched back down the gravel pathway. She glanced at the massive motor yacht behind which Dr. Coltraine had been hiding before she ran for the boom lift. Persephone. She cursed under her breath. She should never have allowed her to get away. Instead of firing on the run after killing the guard, she should have stopped, taken a breath, then delivered one perfectly aimed round and taken her down. Chang wouldn’t care if the cargo was slightly damaged. A MSS paramedic team would be on standby, prepped and waiting when they arrived at the ship, ready to attend to any medical emergency the agents might have encountered during the extraction.

  Begrudgingly, she gave her quarry credit for her quick thinking. The use of the boat lift to aid in her escape was a brilliant move, one she would likely have attempted herself, but especially gutsy for a woman with no known training in escape and evasion. She was a scientist, a glorified lab rat, albeit a very important lab rat. Perhaps there was some intelligence her MSS handlers had missed, some reason why she was able to think and act so clearly under pressure.

  Twenty feet from the fence, the guard lay still. He didn’t have to die, although that was on him, not her. He could just as easily have allowed her to play out the charade. When the opportunity presented itself, she could have taken him down, choked him out, rendered him unconscious, then dragged him to a remote location within the boatyard, gagged him and relieved him of his cell phone. After his shift had ended and no one had heard from him, someone would come looking for him. They would search the grounds and eventually find him. But first they would…

  Damn!

  Qin looked up, scanned the fence line, then saw it peering down into the yard, staring at the dead guard’s body.

  The security camera.

  She had been so focused on her argument with Zhang at the front gate that she had completely forgotten she’d seen it when she entered the boat yard from the break in the fence.

  Zhang would have to wait.

  She raced back up the road to the main gate, up the front steps to the security office, tried the door. Open. Evidently, this was the last place the guard had thought anyone would attempt to break in.

  Qin threw open the door and entered the office quickly, sweeping her weapon from side to side as she cleared each room. Empty. She searched the office until she found what she was looking for. She unplugged the cables from the back of the hard drive labeled CAMERAS, yanked the device off the shelf, tucked it under her arm, then exited the office and ran back down the pathway.

  Zhang was waiting for her at the fence. “What took you so long?”

  “Shut up,” Qin replied. She led him to the narrow opening in the chainlink fence, passed him the hard drive. “Put this in the car. Hurry.”

  Zhang did as he was told. He slipped through the opening in the fence and picked up the guard by his legs. Qin slipped her hands under his arms, then nodded in the direction of a tall pile of plastic dock and boat bumpers, fenders, buoys, and lengths of nylon rope. “There,” she said.

  They dropped the body beside the marine supplies. “Put him under it,” Qin said. She began grabbing the nautical gear, tossing the items on top of the guard.

  Zhang stared at her.

  Qin snapped. “Don’t just stand there, help me!”

  Minutes later, the security guards’ body lay beneath the unruly pile.

  Satisfied, Qin said, “Let’s go.” As they ducked through the fence, she said, “Why didn’t you pick up earlier?”

  “Pick up?”

  “Your phone. I called you. You didn’t answer. Why not?”

  Zhang swallowed hard before answering. He couldn’t let his partner know the woman had relieved him of his cell phone. The operation had already gone completely off the rails. He was not about to add insult to injury. “I was busy.”

  “Too busy to answer your phone?”

  Zhang refused to answer. He threw open his door, seated himself, cranked the steering wheel as tight as it could turn, then hit the gas. With an anger to match his own, the Mercedes roared to life, spun around.

  When they reached the building beside the marina, Zhang slowed the car.

  “Get out and look for her,” he barked at his partner. “And if you see her, don’t lose her a second time!”

  19

  DARPA AGENTS TAMBLYN and Anderson pulled off the Interstate just outside Gardena and powered up the laptop. Anderson entered the required passwords and permissions and waited for the LEOLink satellite system tracking request to respond. In seconds, the low earth orbit communications system had found Spencer’s Range Rover.

  Tamblyn picked up his cell phone, placed a call.

  “Hallier.”

  “Sir, we have a location on Mr. Coltraine.”

  “Where?”

  “Approximately twenty minutes south of our location. A Publix parking lot in Carson.”

  “Stay with him.”

  “Copy that, sir.”

  Hallier ended the call, turned to Jordan. “Spencer is in Carson. Any idea what he would be doing there?”

  “What do you mean?” Jordan replied.

  “He left the condominium and didn’t stop until he hit Carson. Do you know if your cousin has family there, perhaps someone he would reach out to for help?”

  Jordan shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of. Like I said before, Maddy and I are close. Spencer and I not so much.”

  Hallier slowed the car as he approached a sign which read BLUE WATER MARINA. The arrow under the company name pointed to the left. “This is it,” he said. “You’re sure about this, Agent Quest?”

  “I know what I felt, Colonel,” Jordan replied. “Maddy is here… somewhere.”

  Hallier stopped the car at the front gate. Together with the agents, he exited the vehicle, drew his service weapon. The gate was locked. The guardhouse inside the main entrance was dark. No light shone through the windows.

  “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?” Chris said.

  “I take it you’re referring to the unguarded guard house?” Hallier asked.

  “Exactly.”

  “He’s probably making his rounds,” Jordan offered.

  Chris looked up, saw the razor wire atop the fence. “Good luck scaling that. Anyone who tries to get over that fence is going to end up sliced and diced.”

  To Hallier, Jordan said, “Perhaps there’s another way in. Chris and I will follow the road, check out the perimeter. If we can get in, we’ll open the gate from the inside.”

  Hallier nodded, removed his phone. “I’ll call the number on the sign. It probably goes directly to the security office. I’ll tell the guard to open the gate.”

  “Copy that.” To Chris, Jordan said, “Let’s go.”

  The agents ran down the service road, periodically checking for breaches in the perimeter fencing, found none. On the gravel road a
t the back of the marina, Jordan spied the tear in the fence. She pointed it out to Chris. “There,” she said.

  As Chris approached the fence, he said, “Stop.”

  Jordan stared at him. “What is it?”

  Chris pointed to the marshy ground at the base of the tear. “Footprints. Two pairs by the looks of it.”

  Jordan knelt, inspected the prints. “One is definitely a pair of sneakers,” she said. “Small foot size, likely a woman or a kid.”

  “The second looks like it might be a women’s shoe.”

  “It is. I can tell by the shape. It’s a flat.” Jordan removed her phone, took a picture of the prints, then pulled back the ragged section of fence and slipped into the marina. Chris followed.

  “Guard’s probably asleep in the security trailer. I’ll open the gate and let Hallier in while you look around.”

  “Copy that.”

  Chris and Jordan removed their flashlights from their belts, turned them on, scanned the grounds.

  “I don’t like it,” Jordan said. “It’s quiet.”

  “Too quiet,” Chris replied. He headed past the boats and down the gravel road toward the main building and the guardhouse. He called over his shoulder as he ran ahead. “Stay sharp, Jordan.”

  Jordan walked up the roadway, scanning the dry-docked craft, listening for telltale sounds of movement within the boats, anything that might indicate Maddy was hiding inside. She stopped when her flashlight beam glinted off something on the ground twenty feet away. She scanned the grounds. As she approached the shiny object, the beam found the first of several bullet casings. Jordan picked up the spent brass, inspected it. “Nine-millimeter,” she said to herself. She photographed the spent rounds, then stood and looked around the marina. “Who the hell is after you, Maddy?” she wondered aloud.

  Jordan walked up the gravel roadway, scanning the hull of each boat she passed for bullet holes, found none. Twenty feet from the location of the casings, she found a large smear in the middle of the path. She knelt, removed a latex glove from her jacket pocket, slipped it on, then tested the small pool with her fingertips. It felt tacky, the odor metallic.

  Blood.

  A gun had recently been discharged in the marina. Someone had been shot. Her thoughts turned to Maddy. She paused, called upon The Gift, and concentrated. The scene played out in her mind, lightning fast. The shooter… female… firing down the gravel path. Jordan followed the ethereal image. There… standing thirty feet away, the guard. She watched his body flinch as the rounds struck him, one after the other… saw him drop his flashlight, then fall to the ground. With that, as always, the psychic vision ended as abruptly as it presented itself.

  Jordan turned, followed the dream-like scene to the pile of boat bumpers and tangled rope. She moved one bumper aside with her foot.

  The dead guard’s hand fell into the flashlight beam.

  20

  FIGHTING THE PAIN in her injured leg, Madelaine shuffled across the street to the vacant lot. The large plot of land was swampy and overgrown, which accounted for why it had not yet been commercially developed as had the properties which shouldered it. She paused when her running shoe got sucked off her foot as she attempted to half-ran across the marshy field. She retrieved it from the mud, slipped it back on her foot, and pressed on. When at last she reached the far side of the field, she looked back at the building whose rooftop had aided her in her escape, then dropped to the ground. A sedan crept along the road beside the building, its high beams flashing periodically, illuminating the surrounding buildings. Silhouetted against the dark, a lone figure walked beside the vehicle, the outline of a woman, no doubt the same person who moments ago had tried to kill her as she ascended the boat lift.

  The beam from the figure’s flashlight pierced the night. Madelaine knelt behind a discarded oil drum as the bright light lit up the tall grass and shrubs surrounding her. For a brief second, the beam hung above the drum and sent a wave of panic through her. She had managed to put a substantial distance between her pursuers. Having just traversed the mucky bog, she knew it would be impossible for the woman to give chase and catch up to her now, but a well-aimed bullet would instantly close that gap. Madelaine contemplated her options. She could break from her present cover behind the drum and run like hell or wait it out and hope the beam of light did not find her. Her decision was made a second later when the light suddenly vanished.

  Madelaine raised her head and peered across the field toward the road. The vehicle and the woman walking beside it were nowhere in sight.

  She was safe, at least for the moment.

  Too afraid to move quickly, distrusting that the vehicle might suddenly reappear, and the woman conduct a second visual sweep of the vacant lot, Madelaine stayed put and listened. The low hum of the car’s engine was gone. Her pursuers had continued down the road, which had bought her enough time to survey her surroundings and determine her next move.

  There.

  Several buildings down, backing on to the large parcel of wetland, dozens of drums stood stacked atop one another. From her limited view of the yard, the company appeared to be a manufacturing or shipping concern of some kind. Madelaine had no idea how large the facility was or even if she could access it, but her choices at this moment were gravely limited. Unlike the marina, perhaps the staff were still at work. She could seek refuge in the facility, explain what was happening to her, then wait while they called the police. Yes, that was the plan.

  Still fearful that the sedan and the woman might reappear on the road at any second, she stayed low. She remembered the obstacle course games she had played as a child and how her father had jokingly called her his ‘SEAL pup.’ He had taught her how to move quickly and silently across the ground on her belly, pushing with her feet and steering with her elbows while keeping her head down. That’s it, pup! he would say. You can do it! His words of encouragement played in her mind as she crawled across the damp muddy ground, pausing periodically to listen for any telltale sounds that her attempt to escape her pursuers had failed. When she had reached the fence line at the back of the company, she breathed a sigh of relief. She was now out of sight of the roadway. All that remained was to conquer the obstacle in front of her.

  The tall chainlink fence loomed above her. Maddy stood, tested her weight on her injured leg. The pain from the bullet wound to her thigh felt as if she had been pierced through her leg with a red-hot poker. In jumping from the boat lift to the roof of the building, the rush of adrenaline coursing through her body had masked the pain. But now that chemical rush had subsided, and her body was informing her just how badly injured she really was. She had managed to crawl through hundreds of feet of swampy, muddy land laden with animal and insect feces. God only knew how many strains of bacteria living in the filthy, stagnant water had entered her body through her wound and now taken up residence in her bloodstream. As a scientist, she knew precisely how dangerous this environment was. The clock was ticking. She needed medical attention, and the sooner the better.

  Climbing the fence was impossible. In her current state, there was no way that she could negotiate a foothold strong enough to balance herself, much less pull herself up and over the imposing barrier. Dammit! She shook the fence in frustration. Had she not been shot, she could have conquered the fence in her sleep. She would have been up and over it in a heartbeat, military-style, just like she had done dozens of times in the past when she had run obstacle courses with her father. In her mind, the structure mocked her like a bully, intimidating and unbeatable. She wanted to rip it out of its crumbling cement footings, pull out its posts, because before she was Madelaine Coltraine, she was Madelaine Forster, daughter of James Marcus Forster, United States Navy, Special Warfare Operations, SEAL. This was her mission now, her rules, and she was of SEAL blood. Which meant nothing was impossible.

  That was it.

  The footings.

  Adapt and override. Thanks, Dad.

  Her injured leg might not permit her to go
over the fence, but it damn sure wouldn’t stop her from going under it.

  Madelaine trudged along the fence line until she found the center most post, then pushed on it. Sure enough, its weak cement foundation began to crack, then crumble. She worked the steel post from side to side and back and forth until at last she freed it from its concrete foundation. The post swayed freely above the ground.

  Madelaine grabbed the bottom of the fence with both hands, fought the raging pain in her wounded leg, then pulled up on the chainlink as hard as she could. It raised a foot off the ground. Good enough. She dropped to her knees, lay on her back at the foot of the now fatigued fence, then lifted the weakened section of over her body. The fencing rattled against its sister posts as Madelaine scurried under it and into the yard. Exhausted, she lay on her back and caught her breath. Beside her, the fence swayed, then settled back into place.

  Dozens of fifty-five-gallon steel drums stacked two high surrounded her. Madelaine listened, waiting to learn if her illegal access to the grounds of the business had been detected.

  The storage yard remained quiet.

  She rose to her feet, made her way through the yard, then stopped in her tracks.

  Ahead, eyes peered at her through the dark, menacing and red.

  The growl that followed sent a chill down her spine.

  21

  NORTHWEST SAN PEDRO, in the vicinity of the Port of Los Angeles. That was Maddy’s current location as indicated by the microdot tracking app Spencer had installed on his phone to monitor his wife’s whereabouts.

  Seeing the blip suddenly stop had sent his mind into overdrive. It was hard enough knowing that his wife had been abducted but being kept entirely out of the loop regarding the details of the mission being undertaken to rescue her was proving to be more than he could take. Thank God he had hidden the tracking devices in Maddy’s garments and belongings. At least now he had a fighting chance of finding her.

  The conversations they had shared over the past two weeks reeled around in his mind. Maddy had shared with him her concerns about being followed by the man and woman in the black Mercedes. He had chosen not to tell her he believed that the same vehicle had been following him as well. A frightening thought occurred to him. If they had both seen the car and suspected that they were being followed, had DARPA known about the vehicle as well? Had they been keeping tabs on the man and woman from a distance, waiting for them to make their move, and using the two of them as bait to draw them out? No, that couldn’t be true. They would never put their lives in danger, especially considering Maddy’s high profile role with Project Overlord.