Читать книгу John Doe on Her Doorstep - Debra Webb - Страница 9

Eastern Virginia

The early morning weather was perfect. The sun was shining now, spilling its glow over the evergreen landscape, the air clean and brisk from the October morning’s frost. Not a cloud in the sky.

A perfect day for vengeance.

The first phase of his mission had been completed.

Adam slowed and took the next exit off I-95 South. His destination was centrally located between Alexandria and Richmond. Ten miles west of a small town called Hickory Grove, in Virginia’s Caroline County.

Estimated time of arrival, he glanced at his watch, 1200 hours. Interrogation wouldn’t take more than thirty minutes, termination about two seconds.

Then it would be finished.

His lips compressed into a grim line. Part of him would just as soon someone else from Center had been selected for this particular assignment. He was trained to put all emotion aside when it came to his work. Emotion had no place in this business. Thus, the paradox of today’s mission. Director O’Riley had insisted that he was the best choice…the only choice despite the emotional connection. There was no question about that, Adam knew. No one at Center was better than he was. It wasn’t ego; it was a simple fact.

So, for the first time since his activation eight years ago, Adam’s mission was personal. Under normal circumstances Center ensured that an Enforcer’s targets were unknown to him on a personal level. But not this time. He was more than simply familiar with the target’s profile.

Adam summoned the image of his target. She wasn’t the kind of woman a man could easily forget…even if he wanted to. He’d dreamed of those dark eyes and lush lips too many times to count. That would never happen again. He gritted his teeth now at the mere thought of her. The dream had turned into a nightmare. A nightmare that should never have been allowed to escalate out of control.

Today it would end. Justice would be served and the Judas would be cut down.

A muscle flexed rhythmically in his tightly clenched jaw as he considered the man, an innocent, good man, who had lost his life because of this traitor. Adam still faulted O’Riley, Center’s operations director, for not anticipating this threat. He should have had Archer protected, at least for a while after his retirement. O’Riley damn sure should have known that Archer was keeping a copy of his research files at his private residence. What kind of security was Center running these days?

Adam had just returned from a mission in South Africa. He regretted his two-week absence now. Never before had he experienced such intense remorse. Had he been here, perhaps he somehow could have prevented Archer’s death, though he couldn’t see how immediately. There had to have been a way. No matter. It was done.

But he was here now, and he would avenge the death of his mentor. One of those involved in the murder had been taken care of already, which left at least one other key player besides the Judas. The identity of that second key player had not been confirmed at this point. But the Judas, his next target, was someone he knew well. Fire rekindled in Adam’s gut. She had levied the ultimate betrayal, had pretended to love Daniel Archer. There would be no swift execution for this target. A slow, painful death was in order. Adam knew precisely how to make that happen.

Center had narrowed down the possibilities of who was behind the move to obtain Archer’s research. A secret coalition called the Concern was the most logical culprit. Intel about the group was sparse, their leader ambiguous. What little Center did know about the group was not good. The few members tagged thus far were connected to scumbag Third World leaders. Concern’s base of operations was thought to be in South America, but Center had not pinpointed the exact location yet.

Bastards. Fury tightened Adam’s throat. He intended to be on the team that brought down every single member of that ruthless group. But that undertaking had not been sanctioned by the Collective yet. For the time being, Adam would have to placate himself with his current mission—terminating the Judas who had betrayed Archer.

Daniel Archer had been more than his mentor, he had been Adam’s friend. Archer was the scientist who’d taken the Eugenics Project from the brink of failure to unparalleled success. A great man who cared deeply for his work, whose compassion went beyond friend and family to mankind in general. How ironic that his betrayal had come at the hands of the one person whom Archer trusted the most, loved the most—his own daughter.

Undeniable proof that relying on one’s emotions was a mistake. A mistake Adam had no intention of ever making himself. It wasn’t likely that he or any of the other Enforcers would ever find themselves in that kind of up close and personal relationship. Still, they were only human. He laughed, the sound strangely loud after the hours of silence. Despite their superior genetic coding, he supposed it wouldn’t be impossible to fall into an emotional trap.

He never allowed his emotions to show, not even remotely. It wasn’t that he lacked a full range, to some degree; it was simply that he maintained a strict control over himself. Discipline was the key. That was just one of the reasons he was so good at his work.

He smiled, thinking of what his friend Cain would say about who was the best Enforcer at Center. Adam knew there were those who would like to argue, but the proof was a matter of Center record. Number of failed missions: zero. His skills were unmatched, his instincts always on the money. He was the man for this job. O’Riley wasn’t taking chances with this mission. He wanted it done right the first time, and Adam would see to it that it was done with the cold, exacting precision of a surgeon’s scalpel.

He forced away the memories of how Daniel Archer had doted on his supposedly loving daughter. Those heartfelt stories had worked their way under Adam’s skin. Made him feel as if he knew the woman himself. And he did, on the outside. He would know her anywhere he saw her. Knew the music she loved, the movies she watched, even her favorite foods. But he hadn’t known the evil that had lurked inside her. Even her father hadn’t known that.

Tension radiating inside him, making him restless, Adam glanced at his watch once more. It would be over soon, he reminded himself. He took a deep breath and forced himself to relax. He would put this chapter of his life and all its memories behind him after today…but he would never forget. He would keep the coming moment tightly compartmentalized, only to be opened when he needed a reminder of what love and trust could do to a man. Of how emotions could betray even the strongest or most innocent of the species.

A car parked on the side of the road a mile or so in the distance dragged his attention from his less-than-pleasant thoughts. The hood was raised. Engine trouble. Adam slowed only slightly and surveyed the situation as he approached the vehicle. There were no houses on this section of the two-lane road. Traffic was sparse. In fact, since leaving the interstate he hadn’t met the first vehicle. There might not be another one coming along for several hours.

A woman, twenty, twenty-five maybe, stepped slightly away from the front of the car as he slowly passed it. She held a small child in her arms.

A scowl tugged at Adam’s brow as he pulled over to the side of the road in front of the woman’s car. He scanned the area once more in his usual cautious manner as he emerged from his rental car and adjusted the Glock at the small of his back. He closed the door, taking another quick look at his watch. He didn’t like delays, but he couldn’t leave the woman and child stranded on the side of the road. He doubted even Cain would be that heartless. Adam smiled to himself. Well, maybe Cain would have driven on without stopping.

But not Adam. The least he could do was allow her to call a friend or family member for help on his cellular telephone. Five minutes, tops, and he’d be back on his way.

The woman shaded her eyes from the sun with her free hand and peered up at him as he approached. The child studied him curiously, a half-empty bottle clutched in his hand. Or maybe it was a girl. Adam hadn’t spent any time around kids. Babies all looked alike to him.

“I don’t know what happened,” the woman explained. “It just died on me,” she added, gesturing to the engine. “I barely got it off the road. I’m sure glad you came along. I was afraid I’d be waiting half the day.”

Adam sensed her uneasiness. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man. This was a deserted stretch of road. She had a right to be uneasy. But at the moment, in her eyes, he supposed he was the lesser of the two evils, even if he did make her a little nervous.

He didn’t look directly at her as he stepped between her and the car. No point in making her any more jumpy than she already was. He took a look at the exposed engine as he reached into his jacket pocket and fished out his cell phone.

“Why don’t you call a friend?” he suggested. He offered the phone in an effort to set her at ease as he surveyed the engine. Something wasn’t right.

“Thank you.” Her voice still sounded a little uncertain, but she took the telephone from him.

His gaze narrowed as his senses assimilated a number of inconsistencies. No heat rising, no ticking sound of the engine cooling.

The engine was cold.

“Have you been waiting long?” He cut a look in her direction as he waited for a response.

She shook her head, her eyes carefully averted from his. “Five minutes, maybe less.”

She was lying.

“I’m just glad you came along,” she repeated, her voice too cheery as she pressed a series of numbers on the keypad, then lifted the phone to her ear.

Not enough digits. Any local call in this part of the state would be a long distance one on his phone, requiring one and the area code. When she made no move to redial his suspicion was confirmed.

The sound of frosted grass crushing beneath a heavy footstep came from his left.

Adam started to reach for his weapon.

“Don’t move, man!” a male voice commanded.

Young, nervous.

Adam felt the unmistakable cold, hard barrel of a pistol press between his shoulder blades.

“You don’t want to do this,” Adam told him quietly. There was no way to disguise the element of danger in his tone. It was instinctive. The shakily exhaled breath behind him told him the guy had noticed it as well.

“What’re you doing?” the woman asked, her voice rising with hysteria as she flung the cell phone to the ground. “You didn’t say nothing about guns, Jimmy!” The child in her arms whimpered as if he sensed her anxiety.

“Shut up,” the guy, Jimmy, growled. “You said my name, you stupid bitch!”

“Put the gun away, Jimmy, and we’ll forget this ever happened,” Adam suggested. He didn’t have time for this crap. He thought highwaymen had gone out of style about a hundred years ago. The last thing he needed was a nervous one. If he could distract the guy, he might have the opportunity to go for his own weapon.

The scrape of a boot heel in the gravel on the side of the road sounded a few feet away.

Adam stilled, listening. Jimmy hadn’t moved. Neither had the woman. Someone else had joined their little party.

The distinct scent of cheap aftershave hit Adam’s nostrils.

Another man. Jimmy wasn’t wearing any deodorant, much less any aftershave. Adam could smell his sweat. Jimmy was scared…the other guy presented an unknown variable with his silence. Adam knew instinctively that the unknown enemy was a far more serious threat. His tension escalated to a new level.

“What’s he doing here?” the woman protested. Her child’s perpetual fretting underscored her mounting fear.

“Say good night, big guy.”

Not Jimmy’s voice. The other man’s.

Adam reached for his weapon. His fingers curled around the pistol grip at the same instant that he prepared to pivot toward the threat.

Something crashed into his skull before he could turn. White flashes speared through his brain. His knees buckled. Another blow. He jerked with the impact of it. Brilliant points of light stabbed behind his clenched lids. He had to…

But it was already too late.

Ghost Mountain, Colorado

Center

RICHARD O’RILEY scanned the latest report on the Judas mission. One target had been eliminated, but not the second. He looked up at the man seated on the other side of his cluttered desk. “Still no word on our man?”

Dupree, Center’s top analyst, shook his head. “Nothing. Either his TD has malfunctioned or he’s dead.”

O’Riley’s jaw clenched. Adam was the best Enforcer they had. And O’Riley wasn’t ready to give up on him yet. Electronic devices malfunctioned from time to time. It wasn’t impossible, just not probable. With the tracking devices neurologically implanted, they stopped functioning only when the host stopped breathing. Unless, of course, there was a malfunction, which had to be the case now. O’Riley refused to believe anything else at this point.

“He’s only been out of the loop for twenty-four hours,” O’Riley pointed out. “No matter how it looks, we’re going to keep an open mind. I know Adam. Whatever has gone down on this mission, I can assure you he’s been in tighter spots. He’ll figure a way out.”

At least Dupree had the good sense to keep his mouth shut instead of arguing. O’Riley was well aware of how he felt. Dupree had weighed the known data, ran simulations and assessed all the variables, but O’Riley didn’t give a damn. This was his operation. He would say when it was time to give up on Adam, and that wouldn’t be anytime soon. A team had already been dispatched to retrace Adam’s steps.

Dupree stood, clearly frustrated but lacking the necessary nerve to push the issue. “We’ll keep monitoring local law enforcement activities. We know Adam left Alexandria. Considering the time that his TD went down, I’d say he was about halfway to the primary target, maybe closer. If he’s been in an accident of some sort, we’ll hear about it soon enough. There can’t be that much going on along that sleepy stretch of country road. The recon team will be reporting in any time now. They hit ground zero about twenty minutes ago.”

When Dupree had left his office, O’Riley tossed the status report aside. Dupree was an uptight ass, but the best intel analyst on staff at Center. O’Riley released a heavy breath. This whole situation stunk. First, Daniel Archer is murdered; then, Donald Thurlo’s betrayal is discovered and Joseph Marsh is suddenly missing; now this. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something vital was missing from the scenario. Something he and all these highly trained, overpaid intel analysts were missing.

The Eugenics Project was far too valuable to risk for any reason. Anyone involved in this mess would be eliminated. Too tired to think as clearly as he should, O’Riley rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

He stood and turned to stare out the window of his office. The scene beyond the specially designed outer shell that encased the entire building was slightly distorted, but welcome nonetheless. Sometimes he hated the copper-lined walls and soundproof glass of this place. Hated it, but it was, undeniably, necessary.

Though Center was located on a remote mountain in Colorado, it was still vulnerable. Ghost Mountain was owned by the U.S. government, operated by the Collective and heavily guarded with state-of-the-art security systems. No one outside this building knew the identities of those who worked inside. But even with those extreme measures in place, secrets could still escape.

They’d just learned that the hard way.

A technology war had long since replaced the Cold War. They weren’t fighting the KGB moles and double agents anymore. Now it was the code war and some computer geek sitting in a dark room listening to their every uttered word and computer keystroke. The weapons of today were every imaginable kind of electronic and laser device for stealing bytes of communication via the Net, fax or any one of numerous other analog or digital means of transmission. Nothing was sacred anymore.

Of course, all secrets weren’t necessarily stolen. Some violations of security were merely mistakes.

Fatal mistakes.

Archer had known better. The risk he’d taken by keeping a copy of his files, encrypted or not, at home was a very dumb move for such an intelligent man. In the end, he’d had to pay the ultimate price for that error in judgment.

If Adam failed, which was a highly unlikely scenario assuming he was still alive, they would send another man to finish the job.

Adam had never failed before. O’Riley wasn’t ready to admit that he had this time.

He turned back to his desk and looked at the open dossier lying there. Adam. Thirty years old. Six foot two, one hundred and eighty pounds. The cream of the crop. IQ: immeasurable. Physical condition: perfect. Skill level: unmatched. No one in the program was quite as good.

Well, O’Riley confessed, there was one who could hold his own with Adam. Cain. But there was one key element that marred Cain’s track record. He was every bit as skilled as Adam but lacked any capacity for compassion or any other essential emotion. That missing component limited his usefulness in many situations. Thankfully, Archer had observed that deficit and all who’d come after Cain, the original prototype, were better for it.

Archer. It was still hard for O’Riley to believe he was dead. They’d worked together for more than twenty years. How could something as simple as a thoughtless mistake lead to this? He shook his head, weary of trying to make sense of it all. It was done. There was no way to change it. O’Riley could only see that the traitors were eliminated. The identity of the primary Judas made the situation unbelievable.

He refused to analyze it any further. It had to be done, regardless of his reservations or his personal feelings. No one regretted the decision any more than he did. Joseph Marsh would be next, if they could find him. Fury twisted in O’Riley’s chest. He would like to kill that son of a bitch with his own hands. He had to be guilty…otherwise, he wouldn’t have vanished into thin air. Well, Marsh could run, but he couldn’t hide forever. They would find him and when they did, he would die.

For the moment, O’Riley would be happy if Adam just reported in and let him know what was going on.

There had to be a reasonable explanation for why his tracking device had failed. O’Riley was unwilling to accept that he was dead.

Not yet, anyway.