Bateman had demanded more information, indicating a very strong desire to be ‘in’ on the mission of tracking down the target. Bailey had ignored her requests and told her to do as ordered. He would have thought she would have seen with what had just happened that this was something the FBI could not deal with. The HRT team was the best they had — what did she think they could do for an encore?
He surveyed the area, keeping in mind the site where they had found the Caulkins girl. Gant had found the surveillance position that had been used by one of the targets. Not only in advance of the cache being put in, but based on recent information, also manned while Caulkins slowly dehydrated and starved.
Bailey moved to his right, toward a clump of bushes and a large log. He clambered over the log and saw the carefully constructed surveillance position. It was, as he expected, sterile. Bailey stood where the target had been watching Emily Cranston chained to that tree.
It took a hard man to do that, Bailey knew. He’d served with and fought against many hard men. The closest person to the type of these targets was a man named Racine who the Cellar had used on missions for many years. When the job was particularly nasty, and especially if it involved women, Racine was the man Nero had turned to, even though both he and Bailey had detested the sociopath.
There were dangers to using such men, Bailey reflected as he looked at the oak tree. Unknown to Nero and Bailey, Racine had been doing un-sanctioned freelance work for a United States Senator. Work that had hurt the United States during the debacle in Mogadishu over a decade before. And Racine had eventually become more of a liability over the years, one that was terminated quite efficiently by Ms. Neeley and Ms. Masterson, sort of their final exam before joining the Cellar. And while the US Army and the US government had probably been more than happy with Sergeants Lutz, Forten and Payne and the work they had done over the years in the country’s service, they too were now liabilities. Liabilities with the best training in inflicting death and destruction in the world.
Bailey stepped back over the log and walked toward the tree. He side-stepped a splotch of still wet blood. When he got within ten feet of the tree, he halted once more. There was something white nailed to the tree, about eye-level.
A piece of paper.
Bailey nodded. The next step in the trail.
The compound was set on an island in the middle of a lake in Northern Maine. The island wasn’t large, barely four acres, but it was thickly covered with trees, which mostly hid the six buildings. The perimeter of the island was patrolled by guards, two in a small boat that circled the island in a random pattern and a shift of four on the land itself, set in small watch towers positioned to cover the entire shoreline.
The inhabitants of the compound lived in a limbo between prison and protection. It was debatable whether the guards where there to protect them or keep them from leaving. It was also debatable how many of the two dozen inhabitants had any desire to leave given their life expectancy would probably be hours, at best days, if they were spotted by the wrong people out in the real world. The wrong people being those they had betrayed in order to save their own hides.
The compound was under the control of the CIA although the guards were contracted from private security firms, mostly ex-Special Operations Forces types. It was considered plush duty, beating work in Iraq or Afghanistan, where most of them had spent several tours of duty. The CIA used these contractors not only because its own ranks were stretched thin, but for deniability in case the compound was ever exposed in the media. In the same manner the CIA had gotten the Army to take the fall for Abu Gharif in Iraq.
This was because the compound was quite illegal as none of the twenty-four people being held there had ever been charged with a crime and had been secretly brought into the country. The compound did not ‘officially’ exist on paper. It was funded by the multi-billion dollar Black Budget that saw little government over-sight. The same budget that funded the Cellar.
Spotter was on the top of a mountain on the shoreline three quarters of a mile from the island. He and the Sniper had checked out the area extensively during their mission preparation. They’d spent three months getting ready before snatching the first girl, carefully preparing their primary plan and the numerous contingencies. Things were moving fast now. The lack of an after-action report from the Security in Virginia meant he was most likely dead.
This did not bother Spotter. Indeed, it had been anticipated that they would lose at least one of their number by now. The plan would still go forward. And death was preferable to what they had experienced in Colombia. And even more so for what they had experienced when they came back to the States.
He had a large spotting scope set up on a tripod in front of his field chair and had been using it to survey the island for the past twenty-four hours after arriving here from the Gulf Coast. The guards were good, rotating their patrol so that there was no distinguishable or predictable pattern to it. Also, one of the guards was on a small knoll on the north end of the island, the highest point on it, armed with a sniper rifle with which he could cover the entire island.
Frankly, though, Spotter didn’t care about the guards. He was more concerned with the people being held there. One in particular. This was the man who the scope was trained on as he sat at a small table, reading a book.
Spotter knew the man’s face intimately.
The small radio earplug in Spotter’s ear crackled with a brief break of squelch and he pulled his eye back from the scope and looked in the other direction, downhill. Within a minute the Sniper appeared, striding up the slope, a backpack over his shoulder and his black metal case containing his rifle in one hand.
The Sniper nodded as he came up next to Spotter, putting the case down and taking the backpack off. “Any change?”
“No.” Spotter vacated the seat. “He’s in the scope.”
The Sniper took the chair and put his eye to the spotting scope. He remained still for a long time, then pulled back. “You pin down where he sleeps?”
“Third building, second window. He’s the only one in the room.”
“Good.”
“Do you know what happened in Virginia?” Spotter asked.
The Sniper shook his head. “No after-action report, so I assume he’s dead. I wasn’t able to pick up much information. They’re not making it public, that’s for certain.”
“And the girl?”
“She’s in position.”
“The video?”
“En route with further instructions.” The Sniper leaned over and opened up the metal case, extracting the rifle. A thermal scope was mounted on top and a bulky suppressor graced the end of the barrel. He removed the spotting scope from the tripod and replaced it with the rifle.
“We should make him suffer first,” Spotter suddenly said, earning him a surprised look from the Sniper.
“We agreed. That’s not the plan. Too dangerous.”
“He’ll never know it was us,” Spotter argued. “He’ll die not knowing.”
“We’ll know,” the Sniper said. “That’s the important thing. And he’s only a bonus hit.” He tightened down the bolt holding the rifle in place. “Come sun-down, he dies.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The CIA hated the Cellar. At least, those with high enough clearances to know of the Cellar’s existence hated it specifically. The rest of the employees of the sprawling intelligence organization only heard whispers of the Cellar and few had ever encountered one of its handful of operatives. And such encounters were never welcomed. The CIA liked to think of itself as the biggest, baddest man on the block and the concept, even if whispered, that there was someone, not as big, but meaner, out there did not sit well. That someone from another organization could slap down anyone in the CIA riled its members.