Дэвид Балдаччи - King and Maxwell

Sean patted him on the shoulder. “Your son is safe for now. We bought some time. If we can just–”

Sean broke off when his phone buzzed. He looked at the screen.

“It’s Edgar. Maybe he worked his magic with the satellite or found a way to track Grant’s car.”

Edgar, however, had not accomplished either of those things. Yet he did have something else.

“I was looking through Jenkins’s file and found something that might help you.”

“What?” asked Sean.

“Real estate tax bill for a piece of property other than Jenkins’s home.”

“Where is it?”

“Ten acres in Rappahannock County, Virginia. I looked it up from an old real estate listing online. It’s a cabin. Very remote.”

“Does it have an address?”

“I’ll email you the directions right now. Good luck.”

Sean clicked off and filled in Wingo on what Edgar had just told him.

“You think it could be where they’re holding Tyler and Kathy?”

“Rural and isolated. Maybe that’s where Grant was when our email flushed him out. It’s well over an hour away.”

“What do we do? Go charging in?”

“No. We have to do this the right way.”

He glanced at his phone and then called Michelle. It went straight to voice mail. She might still be at the hospital with Dana, he thought.

He punched in another number. A voice came on the line.

“Special Agent Dwayne Littlefield,” said the voice.

“Agent Littlefield, it’s Sean King.”

“Did you just drop off the planet or what? My ass is sitting out with the president of the–”

Sean broke in. “I think I might have a lead on Tyler and Kathy.”

“Where?”

“There’s going to be firepower if the kids are being held there.”

“We have people who specialize in this, King. How solid is your info?”

“Won’t know until we get there.”

“We? No, you let the Bureau handle this.”

Sean had the phone on speaker mode, and when Wingo heard this last part he snatched the phone before Sean could stop him.

“It’s my kid and I’m going to be there. I don’t give a shit what you say.”

“Who the hell is this?” Littlefield paused. “Sam Wingo? Is that you? Do you know how much trouble you’re in? And Sean King? Harboring a fugitive? Obstruction of justice. And I’m not even warmed up yet. Your ass is mine, King.”

Sean jerked the phone back from Wingo and gave him a withering look.

“Look, Dwayne, let’s just focus on getting the kids back safe and sound. You do that, I think the president will once more look favorably on the FBI. And then we can work out these other little details.”

“Little details?”

“Focus, Dwayne. The kids?”

“I can send in HRT. [46] HRT – Hostage Rescue Team. They got firepower like nobody else.”

“No, we’re not going to do it that way. You fight fire with fire, everybody ends up getting burned.”

“Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?” snapped Littlefield.

“The former president’s niece was kidnapped. Remember that?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, my partner and I were the ones who got her back safe and sound, so we’re not exactly thumb suckers on this. We can help.”

“This is way out of protocol.”

“This whole damn thing is way out of protocol.”

“So how do you want to do this then?” asked Littlefield.

“Me and Wingo. You and McKinney. We go in fast and with no warning and we get the kids.”

“What about your partner, Maxwell? I hear she can kick ass like nobody’s business.”

“I tried to get hold of her. But we need to move fast.”

“I’d rather go in at night.”

“And that’s right when they would be expecting something. We go in while it’s still light, we catch them off guard.”

“I don’t like this.”

Sean looked at Wingo. “We got a guy here who’s Special Forces. We got you, me, and McKinney. Not one of us is an amateur. These guys have to be running out of manpower by now, so I think the guns on their side might be a little light. We can do this, Dwayne. I’m getting floor plans of the cabin sent to me right now. We’ll walk through it, do our recon, and then hit it.”

“If you’re wrong–”

“Then my ass is yours. But for now, we do it my way.”

“Okay. Tell me where and when.”

Sean did and then put his phone away.

Wingo looked over at him. “You as confident as you sound?”

“Not even close.” Sean put the car in gear and tore off.

TWO HOURS LATER THE SKIES opened up and Sean looked to the heavens and thanked the man upstairs. It was a quick thunderstorm but it was making a lot of racket. It would be over and done in about thirty minutes; the skies would clear to a spectacular, cleansed blue, and the winds would calm. But right now bucketing rain, heavy, howling winds, and booms of thunder were covering every sound of their approach to the cabin.

He and Wingo had hooked up with Agents Littlefield and McKinney. The man from DHS had been even more skeptical than his FBI counterpart but came around when Sean pointed out the likely scenarios for him. They rescue the kids, they’re heroes. If the kids weren’t there, then they had Wingo, and Sean as an aider and abettor.

But as Sean made his way slowly up the hillside to where the cabin stood in its tiny footprint, his gut was screaming at him that the kids were inside its walls.

Wingo was on his right flank. They had their guns inside their rain jackets to keep them dry. McKinney and Littlefield were approaching from the other side.

Edgar had emailed him the interior floor plans of the cabin that he had dug up somewhere online. It was amazing what the gentle giant could do with his keyboard and a mind filled with more stuff than just about anyone else’s.

Sean wished they could afford him.

There were two rooms in the place of equal size. Sean was pretty sure the kids would be held in the back room because the front had the only exit door to the place. You didn’t put prisoners in a room with a way out. And when Sean drew near enough to the cabin to see the rear window, his deduction was confirmed. There was plywood nailed over it.

He looked at Wingo. “You see that?”

Wingo nodded. “Problem is, we try and get the boards off, the guards will gun them down.”

“Not if we take care of the guards first.”

“There might be one in the room with the kids.”

Sean eyed the vehicle parked in front of the cabin. It wasn’t Grant’s Mercedes, unfortunately.

“Four-seater,” said Sean. “Chances are we have two guards. They have to move the kids, that makes four seats.”

Sean had a comm pack that was wired to units McKinney and Littlefield had. He spoke into his headset.

“We’re in position.”

“Roger that for us too,” replied McKinney.

“Looks like we got two guards and the hostages in the back room.”

“We have eyes on it. How do you want to do this?”

Sean edged closer to the cabin. What he was trying to get was a direct sight line through one of the front windows. But the storm, while covering their approach, was making a visual pretty hard to come by.

He looked back at Wingo and waved him forward. The soldier scampered toward him seeking cover along the way, just as he no doubt had done in the Middle East.

He stopped next to Sean. “What’s the plan?”

“Treat it like combat. What would you do?”

Wingo eyed the surroundings. “Normally, you’d want to draw fire, revealing their position, and then follow up with focused fire or call in an airstrike.”

“Fresh out of F-16s, my friend. Too bad one of our Federal friends didn’t bring a thermal imager. We could see where the body heat was arrayed in there.”