When he was wrapped inside the sleeping bag, Travers flicked off the flashlight. As he lay on his side and listened to the rain falling on the roof, he stared into the darkness above him. Was Kaashif involved with what had happened today? His instincts told him yes. At least that gave him a place to start. He needed to get in touch with an associate. He needed cash and a secure location. This shack had its purpose, but he couldn’t conduct operations from it. It was too far from anything to be effective.
Travers shut his eyes and forced himself not to think of all the issues facing him. There would be plenty of time to think — and act — tomorrow. But right now he desperately needed to recharge his body.
Moments later he was unconscious. It was a technique he’d learned in the foxholes of Iraq and Afghanistan from an older Marine vet. The guy had taught him to force himself to get sleep in any situation. An exhausted soldier was a poor soldier, and the trick to the technique was turning off the mind and all the bad thoughts it fired at him when there were no distractions.
But Travers never turned off his mind completely. It was always there to warn him of danger.
He bolted upright in the darkness and peered around the shack’s interior. He couldn’t see anyone, but he sensed a presence. Unfortunately, the warning had come too late.
Before he could draw his pistol, someone stepped on his wrist, immobilizing it and his ability to draw his weapon. Then a brilliant light bathed his face, and he shut his eyes tightly against the powerful rays.
“We meet again, Major Travers.”
Travers recognized the voice. “How?” It was all he could think of to ask.
“Turnabout’s fair play, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what the hell you—”
He didn’t finish. The dart was fired from nearly point-blank range, and it dug deeply into the side of his neck. Electricity flooded through his body as he dribbled around the floor.
CHAPTER 11
“Are there any RCS associates who would help Maddux even though he’s gone rogue and they know it?” As the private plane eased down into the thick cloud cover toward Westchester Airport, it shuddered slightly. Troy buckled his seat belt when the turbulence hit. “And would they do it without telling you? Maybe do it even when you specifically told them not to?”
It had happened exactly as Troy anticipated. A few minutes after the situation outside Minneapolis ended with the last terrorist igniting a suicide bomb in his backpack and taking several law-enforcement people with him, a young aide had knocked on the door and informed them that the president would not be able to meet with them again after all. The guy apologized halfheartedly and then left the situation to four Secret Service agents, who had immediately escorted Troy and Bill off White House grounds. Because of the Holiday Mall Attacks, security had been tightened another notch around the president, and all visitors were being escorted out. Even some of the regular staff had been told to leave and not return until they were contacted.
“I hate to say it,” Bill admitted, “but all those things are possible. Maddux was smart about getting to know a few of the other associates even though Roger and I tried to block him from doing that. And I’m pretty sure he did them a few favors to entrench himself.”
“What kinds of favors?”
“One of the associates was having a problem with his daughter’s fiancé. The guy was abusive. He was beating her almost every night, and—”
“Don’t tell me,” Troy interrupted as the plane broke through the low clouds. He glanced out the window. It had been raining in Washington when they left, but it was snowing here in New York, he could see in the plane’s lights. “The guy went missing.”
“No, they found him all right. He was floating facedown in the East River. They pulled him out of the water down off Alphabet City in Lower Manhattan. It was ruled an accident, but nobody has any idea how he got in the water or what he was doing in that part of town. It’s a rough area, and he lived up in White Plains.”
“Jesus,” Troy muttered. Maddux had pushed the vigilante deal for his own purposes after all. After promising Troy he never had, the liar — if Bill was telling the truth. Mind games, Troy thought as the plane rocked again. Always the mind games in this profession.
“Another one of the associates was having a problem at one of the companies he owned. He was pretty sure the chief financial officer was defrauding him, but he couldn’t prove it.” Bill looked out at the thin layer of snow on the ground as the plane touched down. “What do you know — one day, out of the blue, the CFO walks into the associate’s office and voluntarily admits everything.” Bill glanced from the window to Troy with both eyebrows raised. “I wonder why.”
“Damn.”
“The guy’s face was badly bruised. He claimed he’d been in a car accident the day before. That’s what I was told, anyway. I was curious, so I checked. There was no record of a car accident where the guy said it happened.”
“Well, at least you know which associates they are. You can monitor them.”
Bill shook his head. “That might not be all of the associates who are helping him, and I can’t do anything about the ones I suspect are. These are very wealthy people, son. Each of the twenty associates has a personal net worth of at least a hundred million dollars, and most of them are much wealthier than that. It would be impossible for me to figure out what was going on in their personal finances without a SWAT team of forensic accountants analyzing and dissecting every wire and money transfer they’ve made in the last two years. And of course, that won’t be happening. I won’t ever get that kind of access even though I know them all very well.”
Every associate has a net worth of at least a hundred million dollars. The words echoed in Troy’s mind.
It was the first time he’d heard his father even vaguely put a number on the net worth. It was no secret that the family had serious money. His parents’ mansion outside Greenwich was over ten thousand square feet, and it sat in the middle of five hundred acres of pricey Connecticut real estate along with a stable full of expensive Thoroughbreds his mother loved to ride. The mansion’s back porch, which they were sitting on when Jack had been shot, was a hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep. And the family maintained several other homes around the world. Troy had used two of them when he was on missions — so had other Falcons.
He glanced around the beautiful interior of the plane. This was the family’s G450 they were flying on tonight. No wonder Bill could afford it.
“Can’t you just tell them not to help him?”
“I wish it were that easy,” Bill answered. “These people respect me as the leader of the associates, but they aren’t accustomed to being told what to do. And they’re very loyal when it comes to someone who takes care of a problem they’re having. Particularly like the ones I just described. They don’t like getting their hands dirty, if you get my drift. So they appreciate people who will and who will stay quiet about it.”
“Of course.”
“Which means Maddux has at least somewhat of a support system,” Bill continued. “When it’s only a few agents Maddux has with him, two or three associates would be plenty to support him. He’s smart. He probably wouldn’t have defected without arranging it. He’s a front-line guy, but he understands and appreciates the need for logistics.”
That was true. Maddux had always preached to Troy about the need for warriors to be well-supplied. How heroics and grit only went so far.