Brett Battles - The Destroyed

Olsen laid his briefcase on his desk. “Did something happen?”

“They have her.”

Olsen froze. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. One of my teams tracked her down in Switzerland about four hours ago.”

“Four hours?”

“I didn’t know myself until just before you arrived. Apparently there was a bit of a dustup, and they weren’t able to contact me right away. The good news is, in the middle of it all, they were able to sneak her on a plane. She’s on her way here now.”

“Wait, what? Here? No. We don’t want her here.”

“I already okayed the order to do that in the event she was caught.”

“I never gave you permission for that!”

“Your instructions, Mr. Olsen, were to make sure we had her this time, that there were to be no ‘fuckups.’ ”

“That has nothing to do with bringing-”

“That has everything to do with bringing her here. I want to see her right in front of me. I want to take a sample of her DNA and her prints, and I want to prove beyond a doubt that the woman we have in custody is Mila Voss. I thought you wanted the same thing.”

“We can’t have her here,” Olsen insisted.

“It won’t be for long. I’ve routed the plane to a private strip about thirty miles northeast of here in Virginia. No one is even going to know she’s in the country. We’ll put her on a second plane that’ll be standing by, and process her. You just tell me where you want her flown after we’ve got what we need, and that’s where she’ll go.”

Olsen mulled over the plan, then said, “All right, all right. We can make that work. It’s actually not a bad idea.”

“Thanks,” Peter said, not hiding his annoyance.

“I’ll have to run it by the senator and Mr. Green, but unless you hear from me otherwise, it’s a go.”

“If it is, I assume you’ll want to be there, too.”

“Absolutely.”

The neutral look on Peter’s face remained unchanged, but inside he cracked a smile.

VIRGINIA, THIRTY-FOUR MILES NORTHEAST OF WASHINGTON, DC

The private jet descended toward the airport. As instructed, the flight crew had remained behind the locked cockpit door. There were no other crew members on board.

“Last chance if anyone wants out,” Quinn said.

There were no takers.

He, Nate, and Orlando were dressed in forest camouflage outfits, with dark brown ski masks resting on their heads. Daeng was wearing a dark suit and holding a pair of tinted glasses. Mila was the only one still wearing the clothes she’d been in earlier.

Quinn touched her arm and said, “It’s time.”

“Okay,” she replied, nodding.

“It’s going to be fine.”

“I know.”

“Shall I?” Nate asked. He was in the seat next to her.

“Thanks,” she said. She gave him the pair of handcuffs she’d been holding, and then raised her hands in front of her. Once the cuffs were secured, she took a deep breath.

“Daeng will be with you the whole time,” Nate said.

Another nod.

From the angle of their descent, Quinn knew they were almost there. “Shades,” he said.

They moved quickly through the cabin, closing all the window shades so no one could see in after they land.

After they were all seated, Quinn thought through the revised plan one more time. They had taken every precaution possible, but there were still at least a million ways it could go wrong. The number one being if Peter decided his interests were better served elsewhere and screwed them over. They’d know the answer to that soon enough.

The plane bounced as its rear wheels hit the runway, then stayed down. Once the front gear settled on the ground, the engines wailed as they worked hard to kill the momentum that had carried them across the Atlantic Ocean. Once their speed slowed enough so that the plane could safely turn off the runway, everyone but Mila jumped out of their seats.

As soon as Orlando turned off the interior lights, Quinn raised one of the shades a few inches and peeked out.

There were two medium-sized hangars, and a long, one-story building that fit with the description of the terminal Peter had given him. On the tarmac near the terminal was a plane not much different than the one they were in, and in front of it was a single car.

So far, so good.

“All right,” he said. “Looks like we’re a go.”

Peter pointed at the distant white dot moving toward them in the afternoon sky. “There she is.”

As soon as Olsen spotted it, he nodded. “I want this transfer to go as quickly as possible.”

“That’s the plan. Once she’s transferred to the other plane, we’ll proceed with identification. That should take no more than fifteen minutes. After that, she’ll be back in the air.” Peter had hired Steven Howard and Rickey Larson at Quinn’s request to serve as “protection” for Olsen and the former Office chief, and to handle the identification process.

Peter’s explanation seemed to satisfy Olsen. He touched his hands-free earpiece, waited a moment, then said, “It’s Olsen, sir…Yes, almost here…How’s the visual there?…Good, good… Call me if there’s anything you want to ask her.”

Tucked half a mile away in the woods was a trailer, but not the kind someone would take camping to Yosemite or the Rockies. It was a high-tech surveillance station, complete with monitors; recording equipments; microwave, satellite, and radio receivers; several comfortable chairs; and a stocked refrigerator.

The trailer had been moved into position three hours prior to the scheduled landing time, ready for its guests to arrive.

This had been the hardest part of Peter’s end of Quinn’s plan. Hardest, that was, next to agreeing to help in the first place. If anything went wrong, they were all doomed, but knowing what Mygatt and the others had done, there was no way Peter could just stand around and do nothing. The secret world was not always the most moral of places, but there were lines that should never be crossed. Mygatt and Green and Olsen hadn’t just stepped over one of the lines, they had rocketed miles onto the other side.

After convincing Olsen that bringing Mila to Virginia was the right thing, Peter had waited thirty minutes, then offered up another idea.

“If you’d like, I could have cameras set up, and the senator and Mr. Green could watch the identification remotely.”

As Peter knew would be the case, Olsen loved the idea.

In a hesitant voice, he added, “We could do a satellite feed or even route it through the Internet. It all depends on how worried you might be about someone hacking the signal.”

Again, Olsen’s reaction was predictable. “That is something that cannot happen.”

“Chances are, everything will be fine, but if you’re asking for an absolute guarantee, I can’t give you that.”

Olsen frowned. “We’ll just record it, then. They can watch it later.”

“Sure, that makes sense.” Peter paused the appropriate amount of time, then said, “There is another option, if you’re interested.”

“What would that be?”

“I can get access to a remote surveillance trailer that we can set up close to the airport, and use a microwave link to relay the feeds. No one will be able to tap in. It’s the most secure way if they’d like to watch live.”

Olsen said he’d ask, and when he came back ten minutes later and said both Mygatt and Green would like to utilize the trailer option, Peter wasn’t surprised. When presented with an opportunity to micromanage an important event, he had found that people in power seldom said no.

The plane landed with a squeal of rubber. The roar of the engines took over, and finally the aircraft settled down to a pedestrian pace as it headed over to where Peter and Olsen were waiting.