Chapter 7 #2
“Potential domestic terrorist attacks?” Maya asked him.
“Yes.”
Candace glanced at Taylor, putting it all together. “And so you think maybe the site the guys found yesterday is possibly where this militia trains? Or that maybe March is using the old bunker systems?”
“We were told they were all destroyed at the end of the Cold War,” her grandma said, her gaze sliding from Taylor to Wade.
“You ever go back there, after it was destroyed?” Wade asked.
“No,” she admitted, looking pensive.
“Ruby, where did you say the entrance to the bunker system is?” Taylor asked.
“Somewhere around here,” she said, circling an area on the map with her fingertip. “Not too far from that rock formation I told you about earlier.”
“When’s the last time you were down there?”
“Right after the fall of the Berlin wall. We went there to help clean it out before they destroyed the complex.”
“Except they didn’t destroy it,” Wade said, face grim. “At least not the entire thing.”
Struggling to take all this in, Candace gaped at her grandmother. “Does my dad know any of this?”
“Course he does. He’s a senator.”
“Then why the hell am I just finding out about this for the first time today? I’ve still got my security clearance.”
Her grandma shrugged. “Never seemed important enough to mention before, and you never asked.”
Candace gave Ryan a disbelieving look. “Unreal.”
“What are the chances that anyone saw you?” Taylor asked, and the guys all got quiet.
Too quiet.
Ryan shook his head. “We split up and searched the immediate area before setting up camp. There was no one else out there.”
“You’re sure?”
Ryan hesitated a moment, and Candace’s heart sank. He glanced at Wade, then Jackson and Cam. “Not a hundred percent, no. It’s possible he had cameras or some other kind of surveillance equipment set up that we didn’t find.”
So then a domestic terrorist might have seen them looking in the area.
She reached for Ryan’s hand, dread squeezing her stomach. He twined his fingers through hers, gripped in reassurance but it didn’t make her feel any better.
“You gonna check it out?” Ryan asked Taylor, releasing her hand to wind an arm around her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her head on his chest, told herself there was no reason for her to worry.
He nodded. “I’ll call it into my local FBI contact and do some recon. At the very least we’ll want to search the area and check out the site and the bunkers.”
“No need.” Maya pulled out her phone and stood. “I’ll call my boss right now. He’ll spread the word, get the right people in touch with you. They can have a team out here by morning.”
Taylor gave her a nod. “Appreciate that.” He glanced at the rest of them. “You’re all here for another few days, if we need more for the investigation?”
“Until Sunday,” Ryan said, running his fingers through the ends of her hair, the soothing motion doing nothing to stem her growing anxiety.
Taylor closed the file and stood. “Thanks for coming down. I’ll be in touch when I have an update. You all have a good night.”
As he left, Candace looked up questioningly at Ryan. He gave her a gentle smile and cupped the side of her face in his free hand. “Don’t worry, it’s fine. Nothing to worry about.”
There better not be. They’d been through so much together already. He was her beating heart, her whole world. Which was why she felt it so deeply when he hurt her.
Ryan kept his arm solidly wrapped around her shoulders as they walked back to their room together, but she couldn’t shake the worry that had taken root inside her.
There was nothing she could do about that situation, but it increased her urgency to finish what she and Ryan had started yesterday morning.
The moment they got back to their room, she was laying it all on the line.
“We’ve got a problem,” Lyle said through the phone.
At the grave tone, Eric braced himself for bad news.
His second-in-command had been working with a few others all day to find out more information about their unwanted guests from last night, and clean up what they’d left behind at the training site.
“Not my favorite words to hear, but all right then. What have you got?”
“I got IDs on all four of them, from someone working the front desk at the resort. We’re still looking into two of them, but I already got a hit on the others when I did a search and ran them past my contact, and it’s not good news.
Staff Sergeant Ryan Wentworth and Tech Sergeant Cam Munro are both AFSOC. ”
Shit. “And the other two are military as well?”
“Not sure yet, but the front desk clerk said they’re supposedly all here for a wedding that’s scheduled for Saturday morning. What do you think?”
“I think it’s possible, but it still seems like one hell of a coincidence that they show up here snooping around right as we’re getting to the end stages of planning the first operation.
And I’d bet my favorite assault rifle that the other two guys are either military or even SOF-trained as well.
You saw the way they moved.” Just like he and his men used to back in Afghanistan.
Lyle pushed out a long breath. “Yeah.”
Eric dragged a hand over his face, his mind whirling. “They’ve seen too much. There’s no way they found all those casings, the tracks, and the shredded trees and didn’t report it to someone.” He shook his head. “We can’t risk leaving things the way they are. This has to be dealt with. Tonight.”
“All right.” Lyle didn’t sound too happy about it and Eric wasn’t either. This was a risk none of them could afford, but he had to be proactive. “What are you thinking?”
“Some kind of a diversion at the resort. Something small-scale that looks either like an accident or a case of mistaken identity. We have to divert attention away from us and the site so we can evacuate the area.” And he also wanted to make a statement.
Let the government know he was a force to be reckoned with, hit at least one target before he went on the run.
Those men who had found the training site would serve his purposes nicely.
Changing locations now, at this critical hour, was a huge goddamn headache and inconvenience he couldn’t afford.
It would take days for them to pull it off completely, but he needed a solid window of at least a few hours to dismantle the most critical equipment and get it to a safe house where he could hide.
Because cops and Feds would be out hunting him now, and it meant all his work and the painstaking precautions he’d taken in setting up headquarters here were finished.
He was looking at months of disruption, of being on the run and changing safe houses every day to stay one step ahead of the authorities that had been hunting for him for the past three years. He had no choice.
“I’ll call up some of the guys,” Lyle said.
“No. I want just you and our three best soldiers.” He typed in some commands on his laptop and pulled up his personnel files.
After scanning the reports and spreadsheets he kept on each member, he named the three men he wanted for this op.
The best marksmen with the most trustworthy backgrounds.
“Call them now and alert them to be on standby. Then I want you in here immediately so we can plan everything together. Once we know what the diversion will be, you’ll meet up with the others and outfit them at a staging area. ” One well away from this site.
“Got it.”
He checked the time. “I want this planned and the boys ready to go by oh-two-hundred hours.” The timing was critical. He had to be out of here and in the clear before the Feds or whoever else arrived.
“Understood. I’ll be there shortly.”
Eric disconnected and checked all his security cameras surrounding the entrance to the bunker system, and farther out around the inner perimeter.
Nothing moved in the view of the infrared cameras and no alarms had been tripped, but the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach was growing stronger by the minute.
He was out of time, and everything hinged on him getting this place sanitized before he left it. The best defense was a good offense, so he was going to strike before anyone could come after him.