Allison Brennan - If I Should Die

“ETA?” asked Noah.

“Fifteen minutes to first explosion site by team Bravo, twenty-two minutes by team Charlie.”

Noah and Omar were apparently team Alpha. “We need all available agents at the site of the abandoned Kelley Mining Company.”

“Negative. I can send Team Delta your way. Twenty to thirty minutes.”

“Sir,” Noah said, “we have the alleged bomber’s vehicle in sight. We believe he has a hostage who is a minor: Paul Richard Swain, Junior.”

“A hostage or an accomplice?”

Noah wanted to give the Swain kid the benefit of the doubt, but he had to respond truthfully. “I can’t say for certain, but we believe he’s a hostage who has sympathy for his kidnapper.”

“Understood,” Candela said. “I’ll see if I can reroute anyone your way, but the lives and safety of the local citizenry are our priority. There are four separate structure fires, and a small forest fire they’re hoping to contain quickly. The main road into town has been roadblocked-no one is getting in or out.”

Omar could hear the conversation and said, “There are a dozen ways to get off this mountain without even setting a wheel on the main road.”

“Sir,” Noah began.

Candela said, “Give me a few minutes to set it up. But you’ll still be dark for fifteen minutes, minimum.”

“Understood.”

Noah hung up.

Omar said, “You know we can’t just sit here on our butts for fifteen minutes.”

He knew, but he didn’t like strategically planning with only a hotshot ATF agent as his backup.

“And we don’t have time to talk about it,” Omar continued. “Callahan knows we’re here. It’s pretty damn obvious, don’t you think?”

Noah put aside his dislike of Omar Lewis and made swift decisions. “We exit the vehicle. You go left along the perimeter, I’ll go right and engage. You said he was the only person who knew you were undercover, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Stick to the shadows and focus your sharpshooter skills on the bad guys. I’m trusting you on this, Agent Lewis.”

“You can.”

Omar squelched the indoor lights before they opened the doors. He disappeared quickly, blending into the dark of night. Noah took the direct approach.

“Jon Callahan,” he shouted, “this is Special Agent Noah Armstrong with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I just want to talk.”

He put his hands up to show he came in friendship.

“Jon, I’m here to help you.”

He surveyed the surroundings. He didn’t see anyone, but could feel eyes upon him.

He walked toward the building at the base of the hillside, near the mine entrance. The moon gave only a little light, but the fires to the northeast made the sky glow a deep orange.

The door was open; the place had been emptied. Whatever C-4 and equipment was inside was now either set to detonate or hidden elsewhere by Callahan.

Noah cautiously skirted the outside of the building. In his left periphery, he saw movement. It could have been Omar, but it didn’t feel right. The ATF agent was too skilled to be spotted.

“Jon, I’m a friend of Sean Rogan. You know Bobbie has him, right? We don’t know where she is or what she’s planning to do to Sean. She sent someone to kill both me and my partner, Lucy Kincaid. You met her already. Sean’s girlfriend.”

Noah passed the building and glanced into the truck. The C-4 wasn’t inside.

“Jon, you don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“Hold it.” The voice was to his right, just on the other side of the truck. “Keep your hands up,” said Jon. “I don’t want to shoot you, Agent Armstrong, but if I have to I will. Bobbie is on her way, and this ends tonight.”

“Correction,” a female voice came from the hillside above them, “Bobbie is here, and you’re going to give me my money and my C-4 or die.”

Patrick had studied the area earlier in the day and decided they’d approach the mine from the back, which would take longer but give them better cover. Lucy deferred to her brother, but was nervous that they were taking too long to get there. They couldn’t drive the entire way, and jogged a half mile to the mine, almost all uphill.

They regrouped behind an entangled overgrowth of blackberry bushes.

“Voices,” Patrick whispered, nodding his head toward the mine entrance.

The clearing in front of the mine was a semicircular hard-packed area roughly the size of a football field. The mine was cut into the hillside, and based on the elevation of the ventilation shaft Sean had fallen in earlier, the tunnels inside must be graded downward. The building where the C-4 had been stored was on the opposite side of the entrance from where Lucy and Patrick were hidden, built up against the hillside. Above it, the hill sloped up gradually about five feet, then leveled off where the trees began.

The glowing sky behind the mine illuminated the area, but details were hard to identify. Everything was framed by shifting shadows. Distant helicopters and the trill of emergency vehicles broke the silence, but here, at the mine, they had no backup.

“We need to get closer,” Lucy said. She looked around for a way. “We’ll go around the boulder near the entrance.”

“If they see us we’re sitting ducks.”

“We’ll only be exposed for a minute or two. As soon as we step into the mine, we’ll be covered and much closer.”

Lucy didn’t wait for Patrick to concur. She started out, her heart pounding. She skirted the rock face, neither fast nor slow, until she made it to the entrance.

Someone was already there.

Gun drawn, she aimed it at the figure standing flat against the inside of the rough cave.

“Identify yourself,” she demanded, in a coarse whisper.

“Don’t shoot me. I’m Ricky Swain.”

Lucy let out a quiet sigh of relief. “Lucy Kincaid.”

“You’re Sean’s girlfriend.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No. But my aunt Bobbie is outside somewhere and I’m worried. Jon thought-” Ricky shook his head. “I don’t know what he was thinking. No one knows Bobbie better than me, and I told him this wasn’t going to work. But I want to help him. I know how he feels.”

From Ricky’s vantage point, Lucy could see the small building and Jon Callahan’s truck about thirty yards away. Bobbie Swain was on the roof of the building, a gun on Noah and Jon who had their hands up. As she watched, a white-haired man emerged from the shadows. It was Reverend Carl Browne, she thought, though she couldn’t see his face. Browne disarmed Noah and Jon. She glanced around quickly. Where was Omar Lewis? Was he in a position to shoot? He was a sniper, he could take Bobbie and the reverend down immediately. Or had he abandoned them?

Patrick stepped in behind her. “Dammit,” he said when he saw what was happening outside.

“Ricky, this is my brother, Patrick. What is Jon planning?”

“He’s going to kill Bobbie.”

“He already lost his advantage,” Lucy said.

Ricky didn’t say anything for a moment.

“My mom told me if I had an emergency, call Jon. And he would fix it. He’s fixing it.”

“This isn’t protecting you, not now. Jon is no longer the man your mother trusted. Look at his grief-Bobbie killed the woman he loved.”

Lucy glanced into the dark mine. Two tunnels blacker than a moonless night, branched off. One of those led to where she found Victoria’s body.

“Lucy,” Patrick said and pointed to the ceiling.

C-4 had been pressed into the crevices around the mine entrance. Blasting caps were inserted into the C-4 at regular intervals, the wires all coming out to merge into one small box with a blinking red light.

“Does Jon have the detonator switch?” she asked.