Chapter Forty
Hagan woke to Roxana shaking his shoulder and tearing the covers off. “What the hell?” He covered his face with a pillow. “Go away.”
“Get out of bed,” Roxanna demanded.
“Now,” Jason added.
He ripped the pillow away, glare bouncing between them. The hard edge in Jason’s voice had sent shivers down Hagan’s back. Their looks brought him to his feet. Hagan ran a hand over his face and realized he’d fallen asleep in his clothes. “What?”
Jason stepped aside, and Hagan followed his sister into the living room, feeling as though they’d roughed it for miles. The television’s volume played on low. Like his nightmare years ago, the on-screen banner served a sucker punch.
First Family Under Attack
He snatched the remote and turned it up. Hagan collapsed on the couch. Roxana sat by his side.
“—only just now learning that FBI negotiators are already on the scene.”
Grainy surveillance still shots showed Amanda, Halle, and her mother. A timestamp clocked the date and time as last night.
“What’s happening?” Hagan didn’t recognize the sound of his voice.
“Something about Mandy—” Roxana winced. “Amanda and her mother. The business partner was never who she said. I’m not sure.” She rested her hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry. About this—and yesterday.”
His mind spun to catch up. The news cut to a mugshot. Acid churned in Hagan’s stomach.
“Authorities have confirmed that this may be related to the explosion at Washington College five years ago. William Taylor Morris was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the terrorist organization that injured Amanda Hearst and killed US Secret Service special agent Dylan Carter.”
“Confirmed that it may be related,” Roxana snapped. “What kind of reporting is that?”
The news continued, “Morris is reportedly in a medically-induced coma as his late-stage cancer requires the use of a ventilator.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for him?” Hagan couldn’t watch anymore; he needed to talk to Boss Man. “Where’s my phone?”
As if on cue, he heard it vibrate on the kitchen table. Hagan hustled down the hall and grabbed it. The caller ID said War Room.
Hagan answered, “Yes, sir.”
“Are you ready to move out?” Jared demanded.
Questions flooded his mind, but he managed the only words that mattered. “Yes, sir.”
Their orders were clear. Get in. Eliminate the possibility of a catastrophe like Ruby Ridge. Get out. No one would be able to tie the ACES team to the scene—except for the First Lady and Amanda. But they wouldn’t.
The helicopter blades silently sliced through the night.
Hagan didn’t need to see his teammates’ faces to know they had concerns.
They still watched him under their night-vision goggles, wary and reticent about what to say since they’d rendezvoused.
The lead-lined tension promised that Jared had offered a colorful explanation of how Hagan was to blame.
The full force of the federal government, an alphabet soup of labor from the Secret Service to the National Guard to FBI negotiators, had coalesced as one unit on the side of a Shenandoah Mountain, ready to assist with the hostage negotiations and facilitate a prisoner exchange.
If all went according to Titan’s plan, the Feds wouldn’t have to raise their weapons, and Hagan would forever be in Jared’s debt.
“Hagan, if you want …” Camden stomped his boot and ground the floor like he’d crushed a cigarette. “I’ll take care of the asshole for you.”
If anyone would put their hands on William Taylor Morris, Hagan had first dibs. He cracked his jaw and ignored the offer. Too much hung on the line to let his concentration break.
“I mean,” Camden’s voice crackled over their comms. “After this is all said and done. Just say the word—”
“Shut up,” Chance growled into his mic. “Get focused.”
Stay focused. Hagan dropped his head and replayed the plan.
“Midas, do you copy?” Parker called from Titan Group headquarters.
“Roger that, Zulu,” Chance answered.
“Ground force commander’s continuing to hold their position.”
Hagan rubbed the back of his neck. Their success depended on ground command’s patience. They had to have faith in the negotiators. The negotiators had to believe what they were doing was right.
“Boreas,” Parker spoke to the pilot, “target vehicle approaching, westbound.”
“Roger that, Zulu.” Boreas gained altitude.
“No visual.” They hovered above a rest stop west of Charlottesville and waited to sight the ambulance.
Once in view, it wouldn’t be hard to miss, even without flashing lights.
The US Marshals followed closely, facilitating the prisoner’s transportation down the interstate in the middle of the night.
“Possible visual.” The radio garbled the transmission.
“Zulu, one bus. Three JPATS. Target confirmed.”
“Copy that. Stay with ’em,” Parker said.
“Already am.”
Hagan hadn’t felt the forward propulsion and imagined the stealth copter was invisible to the fleet of news choppers that had followed the ambulance from afar since it left Butner Federal Medical Center.
“Smooth skills,” Camden mumbled.
“That’s why they call me the wind god.” Boreas chuckled as though this were any normal black op job. “Sit tight and enjoy the ride.”
If Hagan hadn’t been about to face his brother’s killer, he might even have smiled.
“BamBam Rescue,” Parker announced. “Ready to deploy.”
ACES unfastened and stood. Each checked for last-minute gear adjustments.
Chatter between Boreas and Zulu crackled.
Their altitude decreased, and the hatch opened for the low-altitude drop.
They had precisely ten seconds to land five men on the ambulance as it rumbled over Mechums River on a bridge the length of a football field.
“BamBam Rescue, to the door.”
Liam handed Sawyer and Camden a line, kept one for himself and Chance, then handed the third one to Hagan.
“Ready, BamBam Rescue?” Parker asked.
“Affirmative, Zulu.”
“Boreas?” Parker said.
“Traveling steady,” the pilot answered. “JPATS remain close.”
Hagan had no idea what the prisoner transportation officers would do when ACES descended, but he’d been told not to worry.
“BamBam Rescue, you’re a go.”
“Copy that,” Chance said.
They fell into the night like black knots on a weighted thread. Inch by inch, they lowered to the base of the line. Hagan held his post and stared down. The broken white lines blurred as the headlights groped ahead. No one knew that ACES would rain in from above.
“JPATS slowing,” Parker called. “Pulling back.”
“Copy that.”
Anticipation mounted. The interstate dipped into a valley and climbed. The Shenandoah Mountains weren’t too far ahead. The ambulance rounded a bend.
“Zulu, JPATS outta sight,” Boreas announced. “River’s dead ahead.”
“Green light,” Boss Man commanded. “Go.”
Hagan sighted the bridge in the ambulance’s headlights. The Black Hawk dropped. If he pointed his toes, he’d touch the roof.
“Midas,” Parker called. “At your command.”
“Romeo One,” Chance directed their next move.
They released the safety carabiners that attached them to the line. Hagan’s blood rushed. His muscles contracted. The bridge was almost under their feet.
“Mike, Mike, Two,” Chance ordered.
They dropped like rain on the roof as the ambulance rumbled over a joint expander. Road noise echoed over the bridge.
“Go, one,” Chance counted their moves the same as he counted down the seconds. “Two.”
Sawyer and Camden went right. Liam and Chance left. They stayed in the blind spots.
“Three.”
Hagan crouched center line, above the ambulance doors.
“Four.”
Liam and Sawyer dropped to the back of the ambulance as it roared over the highway.
“Five.”
They opened the back hatch.
“Six.”
Hagan rolled over the roof, dropped inside, and double-checked the metal partition that separated the prisoner from the ambulance cab. The driver and attendant couldn’t see the patient except through a video feed that Parker had already doctored and played on a loop.
Chance hoisted himself inside the ambulance on Seven. Camden dropped inside on eight.
“Nine.”
Hagan secured the door. The ambulance jostled over a pothole and another bridge joint expanded.
“Ten.”
Outside the ambulance, Sawyer and Liam were to reach for the Black Hawk’s dangling lines.
“Airborne,” they announced.
“JPATS headlights rounding the bend,” Boreas warned.
“Copy that,” Parker said. “Get over and out.”
Hagan caught his breath, decompressing from the exertion, and it wasn’t until he turned in the tight quarters and saw William Taylor Morris comatose that he remembered how to be human again.
The worst of humanity roared to mind. Hagan tasted revenge.
This man had stolen Dylan’s life. In a way, he’d taken Amanda from him, too.
“Two minutes,” Parker announced.
The ambulance slowed and exited the highway.
Road noise mixed with the slow-and-steady suck and whoosh of forced air into the man’s lungs.
There wouldn’t be much time left, and Chance and Camden hadn’t said a word.
Hagan’s heart slammed against his ribs, and a cold sweat broke out on his back the same way it had when he’d testified at the sentencing hearing, promising that life in prison wasn’t enough.
Hagan could hold Chance and Camden back if they tried to stop him. He could simply flip the ventilator’s switch, and it would be done.
“BamBam Rescue, hold your position,” Parker ordered. “JPATS falling back.”
The ambulance slowed, stopped, then crept forward again.
“Field coordinator waving you through,” Parker explained.
Hagan tried to picture the compound on the side of the mountain where Halle had taken the First Lady and Amanda and how Halle thought this would end. What would she do with her dying partner? He didn’t know how they could escape and survive.
Then it struck him. What Boss Man hadn’t explained. What his teammates already realized. Halle had no intention of going anywhere. ACES wasn’t only ensuring the safe delivery of the first family, but preventing an additional murder-suicide.