Venice had arranged for a Cadillac Escalade to meet the Lear on the tarmac at BTV — Burlington International Airport — where Jonathan and his team could transfer the tools of their trade directly from the plane without triggering about a thousand security traps that frowned upon the kinds of hardware they were transporting. To the casual observer, the Escalade was being filled with heavy duffel bags.
And Yelena Poltanov had transformed herself into a cross between June Cleaver and Granny Clampett. Her hair had gone from its natural brown to strawberry blond, and she’d cashed her après ski outfit in for an unremarkable brown dress that drooped to below her knees, where brown stockings took over and led to brown hiking boots.
Yelena caught Jonathan’s amused look. “It’s a lesson I learned from the Marshals Service,” she said. “If people are noticing the outfit, they’re not noticing the face.”
But even her face had transformed to be unrecognizable. She’d broadened the bridge of her nose and donned a pair of clear-lens glasses. A prosthetic appliance on her upper teeth added puffiness to her cheeks which, combined with pale pink lipstick, erased the glamor that had made her such a hot property for ladies’ magazines.
“I’m impressed,” Jonathan said. “When this is all over, I’d like a lesson in disguises.”
“Particularly that lipstick, Boss,” Boxers said as he passed with the last of the duffels and laid them on the flat bed of the Escalade. “I’m tired of that red shit you usually wear.”
Jonathan flipped him off.
“I can see you wearing that,” Yelena quipped.
He flipped her off too. But added, “Ma’am.”
Following the directions downloaded by Venice to Jonathan’s GPS, Boxers piloted the enormous SUV through ever-narrowing roads in the general direction of Lake Champlain. The farther they got from the major thoroughfares, the more snow-covered the roads became. As they closed to within the last two miles, Big Guy had to throw the switch for four-wheel low. Though clearly built more for sports than utility, the Cadillac performed better as a truck than Jonathan had expected.
At just after 9:00 A.M., Jonathan held up his hand and said, “Okay, slow it down.”
“I’m doing seven miles an hour. Slower would mean reverse.”
Jonathan kept his eyes on his GPS. “According to this, we’re coming up on the road that leads to the road to Striker’s property. It’ll be up here on the left.”
Every occupant leaned forward and to the left to help with the scanning. Encrusted in white, the woods looked stunning in a way that you can only see in New England. It must have snowed the night before because the coating on the branches was still powdery enough to whisper away from the breeze created by the monstrous vehicle.
“Is that it?” Becky asked from the second rank of rear seats. “See those red reflectors on the trees?”
Jonathan saw them just as she said the words — two round, red reflectors of the type you might see on a bicycle, mounted at about ten feet to two massive hardwoods that rose like columns from the ground to the sky. If he used his imagination, Jonathan could see a snow-covered path — it would be a vast overstatement to call it a roadway — that led deeper into the woods.
“I think that’s it,” Jonathan said. “The GPS shows that we’re right on it.”
“Well, let’s be sure,” Boxers said. “Because once we start up there, we won’t be turning around for a while.”
Yelena leaned forward until her head was even with theirs. “Are you sure you can fit it there at all?”
Boxers turned the wheel and gunned the engine to get traction. “The important parts will.” He fishtailed just a little as he threaded the needle through the trees, shearing the right-hand sideview mirror from its mount. He laughed. “I’ve always said that nothing performs like a rental car.”
Jonathan made a mental note to have Venice scare up the name of a local body shop.
Over the course of the next half mile or so, the pathway opened up a little, but not much. If another vehicle were coming the opposite direction, there would have been an interesting standoff.
“Here we go,” Jonathan said at last. He pointed toward another gap in the trees. “That’s the entrance to Striker’s property.” From the looks of the ground, no one had driven this way in several snowstorms. The coating of white was pristine, undisturbed.
Boxers made the hard left, this time clearing the tree sentries with room to spare.
“This Striker guy,” David said. “He doesn’t like people very much, does he?”
Jonathan chuckled at the understatement. “No, he doesn’t. Never did, actually.” While Oppenheimer had delivered Jonathan in and out of more than a few hotspots, the SOAR guys didn’t interact all that much with the Unit guys outside training and missions — Fort Campbell was a long way from Fort Bragg — so all Jonathan knew of the guy was that he seemed intense, intelligent, and, frankly, scary. He took wild chances and had the medals to prove it, but Striker’s heroism came with a suicidal edge that made Jonathan nervous.
Jonathan had seen Striker only once since the man had retired on disability, and on that occasion — a training seminar on infiltration strategies — Striker seemed… spent. To Jonathan, it seemed that when that bullet took away his ability to fly for Uncle Sam, it took away the pilot’s sense of self. He didn’t like people enough to return to headquarters as an instructor, and, from what Jonathan picked up through scuttlebutt, he’d just sort of disappeared to the old family homestead in Vermont and surrounded himself with the mechanical creatures he loved.
The Cadillac struggled some with the depth of the snow on the ground, but Boxers plowed on, never letting up on the throttle, and somehow finding traction despite bottoming out more than once.
The Oppenheimer spread was an impressive one, easily thirty acres, an equal mix of woods and fields. Being this remote, and knowing Striker’s personality, Jonathan imagined that Oppenheimer was a survivalist at heart, living off the vegetables he could grow in the short summers and the meat he could shoot from his kitchen window.
“This is beautiful,” Yelena said.
“A real slice of New England,” Becky agreed. “The way Norman Rockwell pictured it.”
Even the clapboard farmhouse looked like something from a postcard, with its gables and a wraparound porch that appeared to surround the entire structure. The house sat atop the long, gradual slope that rose from the opening in the fence, and as they came closer, what had initially looked like three large barns became more obvious as hangars for Striker’s pet helicopters. Protected from the direct wind and snow by heavy timber walls, the double doors on one of the structures was gapped just enough to make out the unmistakable nose of a Vietnam-era UH-1 Huey. It was officially called an Iroquois, but Jonathan couldn’t remember a single time that he had heard anyone refer to it that way.
“Park next to the Suburban,” Jonathan said, pointing to the forest green SUV that sat either in the yard or in the driveway. It was impossible to tell which.
As they pulled to a stop, Boxers asked, “How do you want to play it? He’s always been a little twitchy.”
“We’re just old friends who are paying a visit,” Jonathan said. “I briefed him on the phone, and Mother Hen was supposed to call him and remind him we were on the way.”
“Doesn’t mean he’s not still twitchy,” Boxers said.
He made a valid point. “Y’all stay in the truck till we get everything settled,” Jonathan said to the others.
Jonathan didn’t own any winter camouflage gear, so he and Boxers had opted for their standard black 5.11 Tactical kit, minus the ballistic vests and heavy rucks, which they left in the vehicle. Jonathan made sure that his Colt was visible and accessible. He didn’t expect to use it, but twitchy people tended to get twitchier if they thought you were trying to conceal a weapon from them. If the weapon was in plain sight, they didn’t feel duped.