Chapter 28

CHAPTER 28

P RU JACKSON LOWERED HER MONOCULAR and studied the modest home in the middle of the woods. Three men were inside. She had observed all of them through various windows. She didn’t know who the other two were, but, really, only Travis Devine interested her.

She walked back to her electric and virtually silent e-motorcycle. This was the stealth piece of equipment she’d had delivered to her rental home along with the SUV. Because of its limited range, she had followed Devine to Ricketts in her SUV with the motorcycle in the back. She had deployed the vehicle when she had seen the two men take him. Later, she had tracked him to here.

She had saved his life tonight, primarily because Jackson didn’t want anyone else killing him.

Yet there was another reason. The attempt on his life had felt familiar to her in a way that might turn out to be personally beneficial.

Jackson was not really speculating on this.

After shooting out the tire of the SUV in pursuit of Devine, she had fled, but once she had reached the main road, she had reentered the woods and watched as Devine’s 4Runner flashed past her. Then Jackson had made her way back to where the encounter had occurred and subsequently filmed everything she had seen with a long-range camera.

The two men who had abducted Devine were placed into body bags by a group of other men and loaded onto the SUV, while the damaged tire was repaired.

Travis Devine is one helluva killing machine , she had thought.

The area was processed to remove as much evidence as possible. She had continued to watch as two men conferred on things. One of the men then made a call and talked for about a minute. Jackson wished she’d had a listening device capable of picking up the conversation at this distance. Then the vehicle had sped off and she had followed, eventually leading her to a property of cleared land about three miles away.

There, Jackson watched as a gate manned by an armed guard in a brown uniform opened and the SUV passed through. In the darkness she could make out shapes of various buildings, some of them quite sizable.

Ten minutes later a chopper appeared in the sky and landed near one of the buildings. The body-bagged men were swiftly placed in the chopper, which lifted off, but not before Jackson also took a video of it. She’d seen a bird like it before and even ridden in one. All black, even the rotors. From its shape she knew modifications had been made to the “dog house,” or the nose, which contained the gear box and engines, as well as the motor’s intakes and exhaust system; the latter had an infrared suppressor, designed to reduce its radar signature. She also observed it had a unique canard configuration, which would give it enhanced maneuvering capabilities and an increased top speed. Its fuselage was covered with canted flat panels, again to reduce its radar cross-section. And the main rotor was hinge-less and she was certain the tail rotor had no ball bearings, all to reduce vibration with the ultimate goal of diminishing detection.

As it soared away, its visual, radar, infrared, and acoustic signatures were substantially minimized. In a matter of seconds it vanished into the night sky.

There was really only one conclusion to all this.

My old agency, CIA, is involved somehow.

As she had sped off, Jackson’s mind whirled far faster than her wheels.

The chopper she’d seen only reinforced what she already suspected. The hit put out on Devine tonight was one that she recognized because it had been done to someone close to her, an ally in the intelligence service of another country friendly to the United States. The reasons for it were political, convoluted, a cover-up of past transgressions with an unhealthy dash of ego. The blame for the murder had then been placed on a tried-and-true enemy of America.

Jackson had told her superiors about some of their own colleagues’ involvement in the person’s death, and she had been assured that heads would roll. And unfortunately, hers eventually had.

They set me up all the way.

The very next week Pru Jackson had been left behind in hostile foreign territory because she had blamed some at her agency for the murder of her ally. With that knowledge she could bring down people in high places. High enough that those very same people would probably gut their own grandmothers to save themselves. That was what power did to you. It allowed you to rationalize anything you ever did or would ever do, no matter how wrong or cruel.

As she stood here now observing the trailer, Jackson mused, So why is CIA apparently involved in this family drama of the Odoms, with their little house in the woods on one end and big, bad Danny Glass on the other? And Travis Devine trapped smack in the middle?

She would have to find out that connection. And Jackson also well understood that Devine was no doubt going to do his best to accomplish the same thing. And whoever got there first, without being killed, might get the grand prize.

Jackson had risked her life for a spot in the American intelligence service. If she had perished in the line of duty, she was supposed to go up on the Memorial Wall at Langley, which honored those men and women who had given their final, full measure serving their country.

And I would have been honored to be on that wall. Then they betrayed me. Well, now it’s my turn.

Jackson twisted the throttle, and the bike soared silently down the lonely, cold road, with only a billion stars in a cool, vast sky as silent witnesses.