Fractured State: Rogue State Part 3

"I've never driven anything bigger than a minielectric," said the tech.

"Then it's time to grow up and drive a real car. You'll thank me for it later," said Riggs.

He walked to the master bedroom, where he kept the duffel bag with his personal weapons kit. One the way, he dialed Flagg.

"We've located Jon Fisher in Missoula. I have the jet spooling up for takeoff. We're out the door in less than three minutes. Travel time-"

"Twenty-seven minutes. I know all of this. I'm patched into the tech team's feed. He's using a Starbucks on the northern outskirts of Missoula, stuck in between several chain hotels. It's less than two miles from the airport."

"Perfect," said Riggs. "With a little luck, we'll nab him before he finishes his coffee."

"Don't count on it. He's likely staying at one of the hotels, in a room paid for by someone we haven't connected to him."

"The computer b.i.t.c.h is pinging his laptop. We'll find him wherever he hides."

"That computer b.i.t.c.h is one of the best in the business," said Flagg. "I'd like the option of employing Miss Keane again, so don't p.i.s.s her off."

"Copy that," he said, lifting the duffel bag onto the bed.

"Remember, Riggs. I want Mr. and Mrs. Fisher alive. Don't jump the gun on this. You bring me the Fishers, and I'll let you burn their house down."

Riggs grinned. Flagg knew how to make him happy. "Kidnapping is one of our specialties," he a.s.sured him. "We won't f.u.c.k this up."

"That's why I hired you. Notify me the moment you land in Missoula," said Flagg. "And Chris?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful up there. Stuart Quinn remains off the grid. Jon Fisher's his best buddy. Quinn could be anywhere in the country by now."

"Understood," he said, seeing that the call had already disconnected. "Hot d.a.m.n," whispered Riggs, shouldering the bag and returning to the two-story great room.

Nissie zipped her black leather jacket when he arrived and grabbed her laptop case.

"Miss Keane. See you in the parking lot shortly."

He paused for a moment before walking toward the front door-wanting nothing more than to burn that smug look off her face.

CHAPTER 5.

Stuart Quinn squinted at the upcoming highway sign, still unable to read the words. He waited a few seconds. ST. JOSEPH 28 MILES. Three days ago, he could have read that sign from twice this distance. Exhaustion was taking a c.u.mulative toll on his senses, which came as no surprise. He'd been running nonstop since the night he'd unearthed the sordid details linking the international conglomerate the Sentinel Group to Cerberus International, the secret paramilitary group hunting down his son and Nathan Fisher.

Disappearing from the grid and mustering the initial resources necessary to help his son in the short term had taken more time and effort than he'd expected. Acquiring a vehicle with no link to him hadn't been easy, or cheap, and stepping into a clean ident.i.ty had been no less complicated or costly thanks to the recent proliferation of state and city governmentinstalled facial recognition systems (FRS). It was no longer good enough to hit the streets with a shiny new set of source-quality, undetectable counterfeit IDs. You had to emerge looking different enough to fool FRS, and the deception had to be consistently maintained in public if you wanted to remain hidden.

Federal law enforcement agencies devoted significant funding to co-opting munic.i.p.al and state FRS feeds, posing a significant detection risk. The Department of Homeland Security maintained a ma.s.sive persons-of-interest FRS database, reportedly tracking the real-time movements of nearly a million people. He'd be surprised if his profile hadn't been added to the database-flagged top priority thanks to patrons of Sentinel.

Thanks to a longtime friend and former CIA identification counterfeiter, he could roam the streets freely as Devlin Rhoades, as long as he followed a few rules. He had to wear opaque, color-changing infrared contact lenses to foil a quick eye scan, one of the most common detection methods. A pair of microbattery-powered sungla.s.ses that modified the bridge of his nose and matched any alteration of his body temperature attacked the second most common identification marker. A mouthpiece raising his cheeks and widening his jaw distorted the skeletal framework markers. On top of this, they'd waxed and reshaped his eyebrows, covered his bald head with a surprisingly stylish hairpiece, and taught him a few subtle makeup tricks. It now took him longer to get ready than his late wife had.

He sensed someone staring at him. A quick glance at the driver's seat confirmed it.

"What?"

"I can't get over your new look," said his son-in-law, smirking. "The eyebrows are a little over-the-top metro, but uh . . . man, I wish Carlie could see this. She'd laugh her a.s.s off. They should have made your hair blond. That would have been the icing on the cake."

"You done having fun?"

"It's gonna take a while to get used to the new you," he said.

"I knew it was a mistake to get in touch with you."

"You kind of look like a Cro-Magnon man slash alternative rock band promoter. Or maybe like-"

"I'll give you to St. Joseph, Missouri, to get this out of your system before I consider pushing you out of the car-while it's moving."

"Just busting your chops. They could have put you in blond curls and pink lipstick as long as it keeps you off the radar."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" said Stuart.

"Might be a little easier on the eyes," he said, laughing up a storm for several seconds.

Stuart stared at the road ahead, hoping his overt lack of interest would put an end to the jokes. Normally he appreciated Blake's sense of humor, but he was exhausted to the point of grumpiness. He'd arrived at a c.r.a.ppy, no-questions-asked motel west of Kansas City around one in the morning to catch up on some sleep before Blake arrived, but his siesta was cut short by dozens of anxious thoughts rattling inside his head, the most important being his son's convoy. It was no coincidence that he woke up minutes before the convoy was scheduled to leave Camp Pendleton. He knew sleep wouldn't come until David had confirmed they had safely arrived at Yuma. That call had never come either.

He'd spent the next four hours fading in and out of consciousness, loosely plotting a more permanent solution to the Cerberus problem. His biggest challenge was finding people with the right connections that he could trust. His list of people with the right connections was long. No problem there. Identifying people he could trust was a different story. At the moment, he was seated next to half of that list. Sentinel's reach was extensive, and he needed to do some more digging before he could risk approaching some of his more powerful connections.

His satellite phone beeped.

"About time," he said, s.n.a.t.c.hing the phone out of the center console.

"David?" said Blake.

"No. Jon Fisher," he said, accepting the call. "Will this be pickup or delivery?"

"Delivery. With a smile."

It was an easy-to-remember, effective code. Anyone guessing had a one in two chance of getting the question right, but that wasn't what mattered. The follow-on sentence obeyed a simple protocol. Always three words.

"Have you heard from the boys?" Stuart asked.

"No. I just tried a few minutes ago," said Jon. "Wait. You didn't talk to them yet?"

"I talked to David a few hours before the convoy left. I haven't heard from him since."

"They're probably being extra cautious about leaving any electronic trace. I'm sure they'll get in touch once they make some progress north."

"I don't know," said Stuart. "David was pretty clear about contacting me. I'll call Major General Nichols and shake the trees at First Marine Division. How are you and Leah holding up?"

"Pretty well. Scott let us out of the yard for a few hours while he runs errands. I just checked my account at Protekt. It appears you were right about getting out of the house right away. Someone broke into my house no more than two hours after we left."

Protekt? That's right. Home security monitoring. He'd recommended the service to Jon a few years ago. s.h.i.t. "I forgot about Protekt. Can you step away from your laptop? Preferably a few tables over. And please whisper."

A few seconds pa.s.sed before Jon spoke in a hush. "Did I screw up?"

Stuart might not have the time to explain. "How did you log in?"

"From my laptop, through a Wi-Fi signal."

"How long ago?"

"A few minutes."

"Good. Where are you, precisely?"

"At a Starbucks in Missoula. I screwed up, didn't I?"

"It's not a matter of you s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up. It's a matter of Cerberus having unlimited resources and zero scruples. If they discovered the security system, they probably hacked into Protekt and installed a log-in trace, which would give them the Starbucks IP address."

"I'm pretty sure they discovered the system," Jon said. "Protekt stopped receiving data several minutes into the break-in."

"That was sloppy of them."

"Not as sloppy as me."

"Maybe we can take advantage of this. They know you're in Missoula. We know where to find them."

"That doesn't sound like good odds."

"I brought an a.s.sociate."

"Someone you can trust?"

"I let him marry my daughter, so that puts him at the top of that list," said Stuart, glaring at Blake. "Though he's been getting on my nerves, and we're barely an hour into the drive."

"Does he have the skill set necessary for this kind of thing? I'd hate to get your son-in-law killed. I feel bad enough dragging David and you into this."

"He spent six years in the Marine Raiders, followed by a two-year stint with the CIA's Global Response Staff. I introduced him to Carlie when he got out of that line of work."

"h.e.l.l. We might slow him down."

"I suspect we will," said Stuart.

The Global Response Staff was a little-known CIA unit recruited exclusively from the special operations ranks. They provided on-site security for CIA case officers and installations located in high-risk locations worldwide. The work had a burnout rate close to 50 percent, with most members leaving voluntarily within a year. Two years was a long tour of duty with that outfit. Too many of Blake's friends left involuntarily-in body bags.

"Here's what I need you to do, Jon. Leave the laptop on the table and get out of there. If they traced the laptop, they'll ping the Wi-Fi antenna, turning it into a homing beacon. I'd say you have forty-five minutes to an hour before they arrive, unless they already have an a.s.sociate in Missoula. Then you've got between five and ten minutes. Call Scott and find a clean place where he can pick you up."

"What do you mean by clean?"

"No surveillance cameras. The side of a road or the back of a parking lot would probably be your best bet. Stay out of sight until he's close to picking you up."

"Got it," said Jon.

"Give me a quick call when Scott picks you up, so I know you didn't get nabbed. I'll plan to meet with you tomorrow morning-nowhere near Starbucks."

"I don't know how Scott is going to feel about that. I might send Leah back with him and stay at the town house. I can't ask him to drive me back into town tomorrow. Not with Cerberus around."

"Sounds like the right thing to do," said Stuart. "If we drive straight through, you can expect us around zero eight hundred hours. We'll come straight to the town house."

"Drive safe, Stu, and thank you again for all of this. I can't . . . uh-" Jon sounded like he was choking up.

"Don't get soft on me, Jon. I need Sergeant Major Fisher in the game for this one."

"He never left the game, my friend."

"Good to know. Now get the f.u.c.k out of there," he said, ending the call.

Blake's expression had changed from mischievous to pensive. "You think they made it to Yuma?" he asked without taking his eyes off the road.

Stuart shook his head slowly back and forth. "No. I don't."

CHAPTER 6.

Jon Fisher held Leah close, taking in faint traces of her favorite lavender-scented shampoo. They pressed tightly together, motionless except for the synchronized rhythm of their breathing. He tensed at the sound of the slow approach of Scott's Jeep, the parking lot gravel crackling under its oversize tires, then melted back into his wife's arms. Jon hadn't felt this way since his last wartime deployment. Like he needed to drag out the farewell as long as possible, because the homecoming might involve an honor guard delivering his casket. Leah squeezed him tighter. She understood the stakes, too.

"I guess this is it for a little while," he said.

"I suppose so," she responded, looking around them. "Not exactly your best send-off."

They had walked a few miles south of Starbucks along Reserve Street, taking temporary refuge in a ma.s.sive parking lot attached to Retz Brothers RV and Marine Showcase. Scott had directed them to the business, seemingly well aware that cameras didn't monitor the place. Rows of recreational vehicles and motorboats swarmed the lot, creating the perfect barrier from prying eyes. The tan Jeep appeared between two nearby mobile homes.

"Do you have everything you need?"

"Satphone. Pistol with three mags. Wallet with cash. I'm good," he said, kissing her forehead.

"What's the plan?"

"Get our boys and their families to safety," said Jon. "That's it for now. We can worry about the rest later."

She nodded, a painful smile on her face. "Can you try him one more time?"