Danger Close (John Taylor #7) - Chapter 15

“So that’s where we think he’s hiding,” Taylor said, summing up everything they’d learned so far.

Gathered in the commander’s office were Lt. Colonel Simmons, Chenier, and Inspector Davis. Although word had started leaking out to the soldiers of at least a basic outline of what had happened, the army had decided to still keep everything as close to the vest as possible. Taylor wasn’t sure that was going to be possible, considering they’d shortly have several hundred men out combing the desert for their commander, but he never put it beyond the army to outdo its ingrained paranoia.

“So you want us out here, running patrols as if we’re looking for him, right?” Chenier asked, pointing at an area miles east of the hunting lodges Deputy Morris had identified as the best place to find Lane.

“What? Why wouldn’t you just load up your men and go get him?” Davis asked.

“Because they’re worried General Lane will hear them coming and he’ll make a run for it. There’s only one road up into this area pretty far into the foothills, and there isn’t a lot of cover until you get to them. He’ll be able to see us coming from miles off if we come right at him. Remember that behind him is a labyrinth of hills and scattered woodland that he’s already scouted and set up supply caches in.”

Taylor was impressed. He’d tagged Simmons as coming up through a rear unit path, maybe through the signal or engineering corps before he became a glorified functionary. Apparently, he’d either paid enough attention in training or had enough field experience to see why Lane would have picked that spot. Davis, of course, had neither.

“So what, you’re going to go in there by yourself?” he said, looking at Taylor. “Looking to get more glory and end up on some more newspapers?”

“Why would that happen? I thought your whole thing was to keep this under the radar. I don’t care how remote it is, you don’t think someone’s going to get wind of a couple of companies tearing through the desert towards a national park in Humvees?”

“We can explain it as maneuvers. What matters is not letting General Lane escape. The only way to do that is overwhelming force.”

“If you haven’t figured out from how we spent the last twenty years, and Vietnam before that, overwhelming force is shit for finding someone who’s gone to ground. This is a simple extraction. We’ve done it before and I’m comfortable on this kind of ground. We can swing south and come in on foot from the south. We’ll hit the wooded area well before we get to the lodges, allowing us to move on him unseen. If Chenier makes enough noise to make a search seem credible but not close enough to be an immediate concern, he should be focused that way, and not notice us.”

“I know you were trained for this, but she wasn’t,” Davis said, pointing at Whitaker. “At least bring a squad with you. You need to take this seriously.”

“I am taking this seriously. The difference between us is that I know what I’m doing and you’re way out of your league. The units you have here now are national guardsmen and units half made up of replacements, all of whom are trained to roll around in Humvees and knock shit down. None of them are trained for this kind of thing, and neither are Chenier’s MPs. Whitaker has at least done this kind of thing with me before. No offense Colonel, but I’ll take her over your men.”

“It’s your call. It was made clear to me last night that we are to defer to your expertise.”

“You can’t …”

“We can. There’s nothing left for you to do here, Mr. Davis. You should head back to Washington and let us take care of business. You came out here to put an end to the black market ring, and it’s over. Nothing else’ll go missing. It’s time to pack up and leave.”

“I won’t …”

“You will,” Simmons said. “I may only be acting commander, but you’re a visitor on this base, and I think Agent Taylor’s right, your visit’s over. Go back to DC, and file your reports.”

Davis looked red and opened his mouth to say something before Taylor interrupted him, “Remember what I said the other night Davis. Whatever threats you’re about to make, keep it in mind, because I was dead serious. We’re going to get out of this clear and you’ll be able to claim you were part of the team that helped fix it. Take the win, because you won’t like it if you keep going.”

Davis shut his mouth, glaring at Taylor before he stomped out of the office.

“He’s not going to let that go,” Whitaker said.

“We’ll deal with that when we need to. It doesn’t matter anyway. Even after we catch General Lane, the army’s not going to want to shine a spotlight on everything that’s happened. They’ll just drop it and act like it never happened. Sweeping things under the rug is a pentagon specialty. Right now we have real work to deal with.”

Simmons shrugged. He was getting old enough that he’d probably never get to full colonel, so he didn’t seem that concerned. Davis wouldn’t be able to stall his career any more than it had on its own, so it didn’t matter to Simmons if Davis tried to screw over Taylor, given the chance.

“We’ll take a Humvee if that’s okay. I don’t wanna get too close but we also need to swing well southwest of him before we turn north, so we’ll have to backtrack a bit and I don’t know what the terrain will look like.”

“Fine, just make sure you get him. They’ve already redirected all units scheduled to train here, and it won’t be long till they assign a new commander, and you can bet he’ll be closer to Davis’s attitude.”

Taylor couldn’t disagree with that. General Leland and the secretary might be giving him some leeway right now, but if they went for Lane and missed, that room to maneuver would end really quickly. The only thing either of them really cared about was protecting the service, and the secretary at least would have Davis sending him reports that would probably explain how Taylor and Whitaker actually screwed this all up.

Today, as with everything else they’ve dealt with, the only thing that mattered was success. They left the office and packed up the Humvee with all the supplies they might need. Taylor requisitioned a real weapon, but Whitaker opted to stick with her sidearm. She had never really trained with long arms, so it made sense she’d want to stick with what she knew. Taylor had spent years with an M4 and wanted to have the versatility if they ended up in a firefight which seemed likely, considering the weapons and ammo Lane had managed to get off base for his fake black market.

They waited until early morning before the sun came up to leave. They both still needed more sleep and Taylor didn’t want to try and go up against Lane in the dark. Even with low-light equipment, they could have borrowed, Lane had almost certainly walked the terrain several times, learning it. He would have planned his fallback knowing his pursuers would track him there. While Taylor was convinced his plan was to run for it if he found the army or law enforcement was closing in, Lane had enough experience to know that might not be possible, which is why he took all those weapons with him. He’d have the lay of the land, giving him the advantage if they went for him in the dark.

Taylor and Whitaker drove in silence west out of the base for two and a half hours, most of it on a local farm road that was empty except for the random dump truck hauling who knows what from the mining operations. Finally, they turned north on a dirt road they’d traced out before leaving. It ran more or less parallel to the hunting lodges up into the mountains. The Humvee had standard army GPS units and Taylor had worked out the grid points where they needed to make turns. Instead of streets and businesses, the maps they were working off of were more or less topographical. It was better than the ones Taylor had used several years ago when he was still in the service. It was showing roads and markers for structures, which none of his had had.

The last part of the drive was off-road, skirting along the river bank and up into the foothills, bouncing around as they drove over uneven ground. It was slow going, since Taylor didn’t want to damage the vehicle by pushing it too hard. Even though they left at first light, it was well after lunch when he finally pulled the Humvee to a stop and shut off the engine. It was February, so the heat wasn’t going to be overbearing, but they still had three miles of moderately rough terrain to hike before they got to the hunting cabins where Lane was most likely hiding. They’d driven near the wooded area, but Taylor had made the call to stop in a dip in the terrain, which would help keep the noise of their vehicle from being overheard. Although they could probably go a little further before anyone at the cabins could hear them, Lane would still be on high alert and listening for any indication of pursuit and Taylor didn’t want to risk it.

Whitaker was also finally dressed for this kind of work, still wearing the borrowed BDUs and army-issued boots. While it was strangely different from her normal cookie-cutter G-man look, or G-woman in this case, it was at least practical. On several previous cases, she’d had a rough time going through bad terrain in clothes not meant for that kind of environment.

Taylor led the way, carrying his weapon in his arms at the ready, eyes scanning back and forth as they walked. They were traveling very slowly, Taylor occasionally stopping them to look at something and then continuing on without a word. After almost an hour spent traveling only halfway, Whitaker pulled on Taylors’ arm and signaled for him to lean in so she could whisper to him.

“Why are we creeping up like this? We’re still more than a mile away?”

“Lane’s had too much time to prepare. He may be expecting us to just drive up directly at him, but he would have prepared for someone to do exactly what we’re doing.”

“This far out, though? I get it, you’re being careful, but every minute we delay is another minute he could be making a run for it.”

She turned to step past him, lifting her foot up, only to be yanked back hard by Taylor.

“What the …” she started before stopping as Taylor held up a hand and kneeled down.

Moving gently, Taylor swept away some dirt and debris on the ground, revealing a barely covered filament line that was only visible when the light hit it just right. Taylor moved his finger along the path of the line, not touching it, until he pointed at a small collection of stones at the base of a tree.

“Shit,” Whitaker said, realizing what had almost happened.

“This is the first one I’ve seen, but I’m betting there are more.”

“Should we keep going this way? He’s had years to put these out here. Who knows how many we’ll run into?”

“No, he would have started laying these after he ran. He didn’t know when he was going to get figured out and he couldn’t have these out here during hunting season. He’s a sociopath, so he wouldn’t have cared if he blew the legs of some hunter, but he would care about the attention military ordnance turning up in this area would bring. He’d have to abandon using this as a fallback position and find a new place to move his supplies to.”

“Okay, then it tells us we’re on the right track. If he wouldn’t have set these before he ran, then he has to be out here, right?”

“Right. Still, stay behind me and only step where I step. If you thought before was slow, you’re going to hate the rest of this walk.”

Taylor wasn’t exaggerating as their progress slowed to a crawl, with the pair stopping every few steps to check the area thoroughly before they continued. While it took them almost two hours to cover the rest of the distance to the cabins, they’d also managed to avoid six more traps along the way. Taylor made a mental note to have the army come and clear the area when this was all over. If they’d found seven explosive traps, there had to be dozens more out there , since Lane would have covered the entire rear area of his hide except for a narrow escape route for himself.

Finally, they were at the edge of the wooded area, looking at a clearing that led to only a small semi-circle of four one-room cabins all facing a small gravel cul-de-sac.

“Is he in one of those?” Whitaker whispered, kneeling next to Taylor.

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s off in the tree line. It’d be more comfortable in the cabins, but if the army came at him heavy, he wouldn’t want to cover that open ground under any serious fire.”

“So do we circle around and see if we can find him?”

“I don’t know. I’m thinking. If we circle around, we’ll have to be really quiet and keep watching for traps. Going to the buildings might be just as bad though. If he isn’t in them, he’ll have rigged them for sure. What we need to do is find the clear escape trail he would have made for himself and come at him through that, so he doesn’t bolt on us. With all these traps, he would have essentially put himself in a cage, since the only out then would be down the road, which puts him in the open.”

“Okay, so circle around it is.”

They backed up so they wouldn’t be working their way around right on the edge of the tree line and made slow progress around, Taylor working very hard to keep from stepping on anything that would make a sound. After an agonizing thirty minutes of slow going, avoiding several more traps, Taylor pulled them to a halt, tracing a trip line back to a claymore mine, which he carefully uncovered.

So far, all of the tripwires and mines he’d seen were facing away from the buildings going out in a semi-circle. This was the first one that was different. Its wire extended out almost perpendicular from the others he’d seen, as did its attached claymore. It hadn’t crossed over any of the others, but if it extended out further, it would have.

Taylor signaled Whitaker to sit tight and took a few slow steps, moving parallel with the cabins. He stopped between each one to not only check for additional wires or traps, but to look down the tree line towards the cabins. The ground was very uneven with several fairly extreme dips and rises covering the last hundred yards between him and the edge of the tree line.

After another step, Taylor saw what he was looking for. Facing in the opposite direction from the last claymore he’d seen, pointing perpendicular to the cabins, but in the opposite direction. That made this path Lane’s escape path away from the cabins.

Using hand signals, Taylor indicated the two sides of the path and that they would go forward down the middle. They’d still go slow, although this time more to keep from alerting Lane than from the danger of setting off a mine.

Taylor had his weapon up, moving forward in a low position, and Whitaker had moved off to his right to clear her line of fire. Taylor didn’t think about it at first, since he was still moving slowly, trying to keep clear and silent, but Whitaker was not used to moving in heavy foliage like this and normally didn’t worry about how quietly she was walking. FBI agents usually pulled up with TAC teams and banged on someone’s door instead of creeping through a wooded hillside. It wasn’t until a branch snapped to his right that Taylor realized his mistake. He saw the movement and reacted, tackling Whitaker to the ground right before shots rang out, snapping over their head.

The sound was distinct three-round bursts from an M4, the same rifle he was carrying and the main weapon used by the US Army. Their trees were thin enough that from where he was, Taylor could see the cabins, which meant there also weren’t enough of them to make effective cover. Taylor and Whitaker rolled behind the thickest trees they could find, but considering they were on a downward slope with Lane shooting up at them, if they didn’t do something fast it wouldn’t be long before one of them caught a bullet.

Taylor had caught a glimpse of Lane’s hide, and it was well done, especially for someone who’d been out of the field for so long. If the cleared area followed a straight line down, he was off to one side of the path leading back toward the Guadalupe Mountains.

He hoped Lane was predictable in the way he laid out his mines as he had been with the creation of the rear cover and escape lane, which had been almost textbook in its application. Taylor motioned Whitaker for cover fire and waited until she started firing away to lean his head out enough to look down towards Lane’s hide.

It took time, almost to the point where he thought he might be wrong, when he finally saw the small mound that he’d made around each claymore to cover it. Whitaker stopped firing and he was forced back behind the large tree he’d been hiding behind, but he’d seen enough.

“I can’t see where he’s shooting from,” Whitaker said, also crouching behind a tree.

Bullets were starting to get dangerously close to them. While they were behind two decent-sized trees, they were not big enough to hide their entire bodies.

“It’s fine. We’re going to do that again. If this goes right, there will be a small explosion next to him. As soon as it goes off, shoot about five feet to the right of where you see the explosion.”

She nodded and gripped her weapon. They waited for a slight lull in the firing, probably caused by Lane switching magazines, and he gave her the nod. As she started firing Taylor rolled out and began to scan the trees above the mine, looking for a good target.

Despite what the movies would have you believe, you can’t just shoot a claymore and have it go off, since it was made with C4, which was a fairly insensitive explosive. He’d see a fifty-cal bullet punch through one and do nothing.

The ones they’d seen so far, however, had blasting caps in place with tight tripwires stung out and attached to an opposing tree. Taylor started firing, one bullet at a time, each carefully aimed, since his target was small and he didn’t have very many choices before Lane would force Whitaker back to cover. His bullets began tearing chunks out of the limb he’d picked as his target. Leaves and debris started falling with each hit, but it wasn’t until the fourth that he’d done enough damage to make it drop.

At first, he thought he hadn’t done enough and it was going to hang there and not fall, but finally, its own weight started to pull it down. Whitaker stopped firing and Taylor knew he was risking it to stay exposed, but he’d need to move as soon as his plan worked. From the corner of his eye, he saw the canopy Lane had strung up over the shallow hide he’d made lift up, as the general prepared to start shooting again when the branch hit the ground, setting off the claymore near Lane in a shower of dirt and debris.

Normally, a claymore is only dangerous within the first foot or so on the backside, and Lane had known this. He’d made sure his hide was thirty feet away from the explosive, closer than the fifty feet that the manual said to protect himself from the back-blast, but he probably hadn’t envisioned being in the covered foxhole he’d dug while the mine had a chance to go off. He had also, unfortunately, not considered the danger the rocks he’d piled up to hide the claymore created. The manual says you should stay about three-hundred and twenty feet away from the rear of an unprotected claymore to prevent being hit by secondary missiles just like the ones he created with his small mound of rocks. Had he been down in his foxhole, he probably wouldn’t have been hit, but he’d lifted himself up to take a shot at Taylor, exposing himself to the blast.

“Go,” Taylor yelled as soon as the mine detonated.

He could hear a scream of pain and saw Lane roll out of his foxhole and dash towards the cabins as he and Whitaker pushed themselves up and gave chase. Taylor fired several rounds after the general, but there were enough trees that with both men moving it was a tough shot.

They were on one side of the row of Cabins, meaning they could see straight down the side of the furthest one on this side, with everything to the right just open ground. This forced Lane to run to the left. Taylor saw him dash past the next closest cabin before turning and disappearing behind the next cabin. Taylor and Whitaker both ran straight behind the one closest to them, the sound of lead splintering against the rear cabin wall as Lane fired several bullets into that barely missed Taylor as he made it behind the wooden building.

“Taylor,” Lane’s voice called out. “I guess you’re rep isn’t blown out of proportion after all.”

“Turn yourself in General. You don’t have to let it end like this.”

“You’re smarter than that. You have to have figured out what’s going on by now, not even you are stupid enough to not put it together. The UCMJ still has the death penalty for what I’ve done. I’d rather go out standing, and you would too if you were in my place.”

“I’d never be in your place,” Taylor said, signaling for Whitaker to circle around the front of the cabins, coming in on Lane from the other side. “Besides, you’re clearly nuts. They’ll probably stick you in some padded cell. Isn’t that better than a bullet to the chest?”

Instead of an answer, Taylor heard a crunch and then scratching from the gravel near the edge of the cabin. Taylor turned and scrambled away from the building as the primordial lizard brain that tells humans to run before they can process what’s actually happening kicked in. Taylor put together the case of missing grenades with the sound of something metallic rattling across loose gravel as he ran past the front edge of the building, throwing himself onto the ground.

Whitaker, who’d been quietly working her way around and was just at the edge of the second building turned and looked at him in surprise, only to duck herself as the grenade went off. Although she was well protected by multiple cabin walls, the shock froze her in place, which turned out to be fortuitous on multiple accounts.

Lane had proved he hadn’t made general just because of his political connections as he worked out all of the possible responses Taylor might have had to the grenade, working out that Taylor’s most likely choice of escape was the one that put the entire cabin between him and the explosive.

Taylor was just pushing himself off the ground, his weapon still on the ground a foot away when Lane came around the edge of the building, rifle up and ready to fire. Taylor could see his finger tightening on the trigger and knew Lane would have him dead to rights if Taylor had been by himself.

Lane had been too fixated on Taylor, however, to consider where Whitaker might have been, not noticing her right on the other side of the corner until he’d already cleared the building. As Lane fired, Whitaker’s hand smashed into the underside of the weapon, sending its bullets flying harmlessly over Taylor’s head.

Taylor had to give Lane credit for being fast, his bracing hand coming off the weapon to counter this new threat, but he wasn’t fast enough for Whitaker. Maybe if Lane was ten years younger he might have had a chance, but Whitaker was in her prime and had trained regularly for exactly these circumstances.

Knowing that the older man might still have a lead over her in raw strength, she used him being off-balance to her advantage, gripping the general’s free arm and wrapping her gun hand up on his shoulder and yanking Lane’s free hand forward and down, pulling him more off balance. As he stumbled forward, she leaped towards him, wrapping one leg around him and her other leg behind his left knee, using her momentum to pull him down, spinning around as he landed on the gravel, his arm locked in an armbar.

Taylor had watched her teach Kara this move not long ago, which she called a flying scissor take-down. She pointed out there were several problems with it, specifically with the attacker being partially pinned under the target, making the armbar weak and susceptible to counter by the defender. Of course, she hadn’t included a weapon in her hand when she’d demonstrated it on Taylor, to Kara’s delight.

How she held onto her gun, Taylor had no idea, but when Lane got his wits back and looked up, trying to free his arm he froze, staring down the barrel of her sidearm.

“Don’t move,” she said, holding one arm tight with her finger on the trigger.

***

Washington, D.C.

It was a beautiful day with a pale blue sky nearly clear of clouds. It hadn’t snowed yet, but the air was crisp and cold, a light breeze cutting easily through the tuxedo jacket.

Taylor barely noticed that or the scrapes and bruises he still had from the showdown with Lane in the desert. Even though they’d flown back just two days ago after arresting the general and working to clean up everything under the nose of several national news crews, it felt a lifetime away from where he was standing.

He and Whitaker had wanted a simple wedding with a few family and friends, neither loving attention nor a lot of hoopla, but President Caldwell wouldn’t hear of it, especially after they’d managed to help her out, once again. So instead of a quiet little ceremony, they found themselves one of only a handful of couples in the past hundred years to tie the knot in the White House’s Rose Garden. He had to admit, it was amazingly beautiful.

The grass was still a vibrant green despite it being winter and the white house staff had outdone themselves decorating everything, or so Whitaker had informed him. Taylor didn’t honestly care about any of that.

His entire focus was on the brown eyes staring back at him as the preacher recited words he’d heard before but never internalized until that moment.

“Do you, John, take Loretta as your lawfully wedded wife? To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, for richer or poorer, keeping yourself unto her for as long as you both shall live?”

“I do,” Taylor said, his chest tightening.

The End