The Treadstone Resurrection Page 3

  “Thought you were off today,” the man said, looking down at the clipboard.

  “Sally called, said she had a buyer flying down to look at the Smith house.”

  “No one told me.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Go on up, I’ll get this sorted out,” the guard said.

  Hayes nodded and rolled through the gate, taking his first left onto Eyrie Drive. The stately homes with their emerald-green lawns and dazzling white picket fences reminded him of a scene from a John Hughes film. Even the pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses talking to the couple outside of the tennis courts seemed right.

  He followed the road around the corner, and there, perched atop the cliff at the end of the street, was the Smith house.

  The first time he saw the two-story Cape Cod, it was on the verge of being condemned. The roof leaked, the eaves sagged, and all of the exterior wood was rotten. And that was just the view from outside. When he’d met the realtor selling the property, she had looked at him like he was crazy. “Full disclosure, there isn’t another contractor in the area who would take this project. You sure about this?”

  He’d never taken on an entire house and knew it was a daunting task. But there was something about it that wouldn’t let him go.

  “Absolutely,” he’d told her.

  Hayes backed the Suburban up the drive and parked next to the pallet of plywood and rolls of plastic. He grabbed his tools from the back, bumped the cottage gate open with his hip, and followed the brick path to the sliding glass door at the rear of the house.

  The door rolled open with a screech and Hayes stepped inside. Need to oil that, he thought, setting his tools on the bare concrete pad before heading back out for the plastic sheeting and tar paper.

  Hayes set the Springfield on the counter next to the sink, plugged in the radio, and got to work stapling the plastic across the doorways so he wouldn’t dirty the rest of the house. He covered the floor with a layer of Visqueen and tar paper and turned on the air compressor before going outside for the plywood.

  He carried the first sheet of plywood to the corner, made sure that it was flush with the wall, and used concrete nails to secure it to the slab. There was something therapeutic about working with his hands. Something about hard work and attention to detail that let him shut off his mind. Forget about his problems.

  Hayes settled into a routine and had half of the subfloor laid down when there was a knock at the front door. He left the air hammer on the ground, hoping it was the flooring crew here early.

  “Hold on,” he said, getting to his feet.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  He brushed his hands on his pants and peeled back the corner of the plastic sheeting. It was a straight shot from the kitchen to the front door, but instead of the flooring crew, Hayes saw one of the Jehovah’s Witnesses from the street standing at the door. The man offered him a smile and a wave.

  “Let me turn off the radio,” he said, ducking back into the kitchen, missing the second missionary sneak past the kitchen window, a suppressed H&K MP7 held at the high ready.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  “Damn, dude, isn’t patience one of y’all’s virtues?” Hayes grumbled.

  He had just stepped out of the kitchen when the squeal of the back door being pulled open triggered the instinctual part of his brain.

  Get down, the voice in his head ordered.

  Hayes dropped to the floor a heartbeat before the suppressed thwaaaaaaaaap of a submachine gun on full auto opened up behind him.

  2

  LA CONNER, WASHINGTON

  The bullets tore through the plastic sheeting and hit the wall, spraying Hayes with chunks of drywall and masonry dust. He was caught in the open and crawling toward the living room when the second Jehovah’s Witness booted the front door.

  Hayes ducked into the living room and reached for the pistol on his hip. But instead of the reassuring steel of the 9-millimeter Springfield, his hand closed around thin air.

  The counter.

  “Bang out,” the man yelled in Spanish.

  As Hayes scrambled into the center of the room, the dark canister that ricocheted off the dining room wall robbed him of any chance of pursuing the thought. He dove to the floor. A split second later, the flashbang hit the ground in front of him. Hayes had just enough time before the canister exploded in a blinding flash of magnesium to close his eyes and open his mouth, so the overpressure wouldn’t blow out his eardrums.

  The concussion hit him like a freight train, the heat scalding his skin, filling the room with the gagging stench of burnt hair. He tried to get to his feet, but the blast had wrecked his equilibrium and he stumbled like a drunk sailor with a weekend pass.

  Stretching his arms out in front of him, Hayes found the wall and managed to get out of the room. Bullets buzzed over his head like angry hornets. He staggered into the den, cracked his shins on the coffee table the decorator had staged in the middle of the floor, and went down.

  His sight was the first to return, and then his hearing. The dull roar in his ears was replaced by a high-pitched whine. Hayes smelled smoke, and a glance at his shirt showed that he was on fire. He dropped to the floor and was rolling the fire out when a bullet shattered the mirror above his head.

  Find a weapon. Anything.

  “I am disappointed, Adam Hayes,” the shooter taunted him from the kitchen. “I was told that you were a real body snatcher.”

  How does he know me?

  But the sight of the shooter’s green, aiming laser, made visible by the smoke, told him this was not the time to try to answer questions.

  The laser hit the far wall, as the shooter worked it into a circle. Hayes knew the man was signaling his teammate. Letting him know that he’d pinned their quarry to the right side of the room.

  Usually this was done with infrared, but the fact that he was using the green laser was telling. He’s overconfident, thinks I’m already dead.

  “He is just another pendejo, like Ford,” the second shooter said.

  Ford?

  The mention of his friend’s name hit him like a slap to the face, but before he could get his mind around it, the second shooter yelled, “I’m reloading.”

  Hayes knew he had to focus if he wanted to end this day with the same number of holes that he’d started with. Get in the game.

  The fact that the two shooters had conducted a simultaneous breach, taken the house, and managed to pin him down in the den in less than sixty seconds told him all he needed to know. They were pros.

  Tier 1 pipe hitters, and Hayes knew from experience that men like that weren’t cheap.

  Whoever wanted him dead had the means and connections to make sure it was done right.

  But instead of finishing the job, they had decided to toy with him, and Hayes was determined to make them pay for it.

  He scooped a sliver of glass from the floor and snagged the metal accent bowl sitting atop the coffee table. Pressing himself against the wall, he angled the mirror into the laser’s path, bouncing it to the opposite wall.

  The second shooter acknowledged the laser with a double tap of his own. “Moving,” he said in Spanish.

  In the den, Hayes angled the mirror and the laser to the floor, but the hopelessness of the situation blossomed in his mind. He was half deaf from the flashbang and going up against a professional killer with nothing but a ten-dollar bowl he’d picked up at Pier 1.

  This is a terrible idea.

  Hayes offered a quick prayer to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, and then he waited—the thousand things that could go wrong at the forefront of his mind.

  The shooter entered the room with the confidence born from thousands of hours of real-world experience. Trusting that his teammate had the right side locked down, the man hooked left, eyes and muzzle finding nothing but thin
air.

  Hayes was on him in a flash.

  He slammed the bowl against the back of the man’s head. The blow would have knocked him out if the cheap bowl hadn’t crumpled against his skull. The shooter stumbled forward, dazed, but not out.

  He tried to turn, but Hayes grabbed a handful of hair and slammed his forehead through the drywall.

  “Emilio, you good?” the voice from the other room demanded.

  Hayes stomped down on the man’s knee, heard the bone snap as his hand clamped around the man’s mouth, muffling the scream.

  He was reaching around for the man’s MP7 when the second shooter appeared in the doorway.

  The shooter didn’t hesitate, and Hayes barely had time to twist the man in front of him, using him as a human shield before his partner opened fire.

  Thwaaaaap.

  “Fuck!” the man screamed as the six-round burst stitched him across the chest.

  Hayes heard the clatter of his submachine gun hit the ground. He knew there was no chance he was getting the weapon now. His only hope was to close the distance. Get his hands on the second man.

  Hayes rushed the shooter, muscles screaming against the deadweight of the man’s partner as he pushed him into the kitchen. When he was a foot from his target, he tripped over the dead man’s legs and felt himself falling. Hayes managed to shove the body forward, but the shooter sidestepped his dead teammate and attacked.

  The shooter came in fast and hard. He was too close to Hayes to bring the MP7 to bear, so he used it to club the side of Hayes’s head, dropping him to his knees. Hayes was still shaking the sparks from his eyes when the shooter tried to punt him in the face.

  Hayes saw the kick coming, but all he had time to do was twist his head out of the way. The force of the blow bowled him back into the island.

  Now on the defensive, he fired a short kick at the man’s groin, felt it make contact, but the shooter didn’t even flinch. Hayes scrambled to his feet, ducked a sweeping haymaker, and stepped inside the man’s guard.

  The fight was up close and personal, all elbows and knees. Hayes knew he had to gain control of the MP7 and grabbed it by the suppressor. The hot metal scalded his fingers and filled the room with the bacon smell of burnt flesh.

  Take the pain.

  Hayes pushed the submachine gun toward the floor, stepped in, and drove his forehead into the man’s nose. The cartilage exploded with the snap of wet celery, his blood splashing hot on Hayes’s face.

  But the man kept coming; the only sign that he’d been hit was the angry grunt in the back of his throat.

  If you don’t end this fast, he is going to destroy you.

  On cue, the man lowered his shoulder and, using the MP7 like a ram, bulldozed Hayes over the island. Hayes landed on all fours, saw the fire extinguisher in front of him, and ripped it from the mount.

  Hayes tugged the pin free and got to his feet. He stuck the nozzle right in the man’s face and squeezed the handle, emptying the extinguisher in a whoosh of white retardant.

  The shooter stumbled and Hayes vaulted the stove. He drove the extinguisher into the man’s gut, folding him over.

  Ummmmph.

  The smoke alarm screamed to life and the shooter managed to rotate the barrel up and fire before Hayes could club the MP7 from his hands. He winced against the burn of the bullet and heard the submachine gun clatter to the ground.

  Hayes dropped the fire extinguisher and bent to scoop the MP7 from the ground. But before his fingers closed around the grip, the shooter stripped a knife from his belt and slashed at his face. Hayes saw the blade glint in the overhead light, sucked in his stomach, and jerked his body to the rear a moment before the cold steel sliced across the front of his chest.

  Hayes hit him with an elbow to the face and heard the grate of broken teeth when it landed. He grabbed the man’s wrist and was trying to twist the knife away when the shooter kicked him in the side of the leg.

  The blow landed with the snap of an ax, tripping the femoral nerve, and buckled his leg. The shooter landed a crushing backhand and Hayes’s head whipped to the right. Blood splattered across the freshly painted wall.

  The shooter drove Hayes to the floor, the blade inches from his neck. Summoning the last of his strength, he pushed back with everything he had, but the blade continued its march toward his jugular.

  Above him, the veins in the shooter’s neck bulged through the white mask of retardant.

  Hayes knew in that instant that neither the promises he’d made in the past nor the plans he had for the future mattered if he was dead.

  There was only one way he was ever going to see his family again.

  Kill him.

  He turned his head, saw the air hammer on the floor to his right, and bucked with his hips. He managed to get a knee between himself and the shooter. Just enough space to buy him another second.

  The man smiled down at him.

  “Die, motherfucker.” He leered.

  Hayes grabbed the air hammer and pressed it against the side of the man’s head.

  “You first,” he said, pulling the trigger.

  3

  LAS MANGAS, VENEZUELA

  Jefferson Gray stood outside the dusty Chevy Suburban and idly worked the toothpick to the corner of his thin lips. It was hot atop the low, flat hill, and the back of his shirt, like the sweatband of his straw cowboy hat, was already soaked through with sweat.

  He wiped the back of his arm across his face to clear the sweat, lifted the binos to his eyes, and scanned the landscape. To the east a breeze blew across the llanos—the grassy plains that covered southwest Venezuela reminded him of his home in West Texas and how far he’d come since joining the CIA ten years before.

  Before joining the Agency, the only thing Gray knew about the CIA was what he saw on TV or read in a spy novel. It wasn’t until after he’d become a case officer that Gray learned the truth: The CIA was actually a risk-averse bureaucracy, which is why his rise from a fresh-faced recruit to the head of the Critical Actions Program was nothing short of meteoric.

  But none of that mattered right now. His mind turned to the blood-spattered computer Black brought back with the bodies of his men.

  * * *

  —

  “Here,” he said, tossing it onto Gray’s desk, jaw muscles rippling beneath his skin.

  Gray opened the laptop and frowned at the dry rust-brown smear across the screen. “Couldn’t have cleaned it up?” he asked, tugging a Kleenex from the box on his desk.

  “I was a little busy bagging up Marty and K.P.”

  “Hmm,” Gray said, scrubbing at the screen. “Any idea what he sent?”

  “Did you hear what I said?” Black demanded.

  “Yes, I heard you,” Gray answered, looking up at the angry contractor standing in front of him. “They’re dead, which is why I’m asking you the question and not them.”

  Gray watched the anger blossom in Black’s eyes, his hand curl into a fist.

  “He deleted the files,” the man said through gritted teeth.

  Gray had worked enough sensitive site exploitation to know that unless a target physically destroyed the drive, the data was still on the computer. All he had to do was find it.

  It took an hour, but he managed to locate the images Ford had sent. Four files.

  The first three pictures were grainy and innocuous: a wide-angle shot of a dirt airstrip framed by a rusted hangar and an old DC-3, followed by one that showed men transferring pallets from the plane to the back of a truck. The third picture was barely in focus and it took Gray a moment to even realize that he was looking at the same truck as before, but this time the men were unloading the pallets.

  So far there was nothing to worry about. The pictures could have been taken anywhere, and there was nothing in the photos that could be traced back to Gray.

 
But the moment the fourth and final picture flashed on the screen, he knew there was a problem. Oh, fuck.

  Ford had taken his time with the last shot; the lighting and the focus were perfect and there was no mistaking the two men in the center of the frame.

  It was Gray and Colonel Vega, the head of Venezuela’s national intelligence service, and the one man his boss had ordered him to avoid.

  * * *

  —

  “Fuck!” he shouted, slamming his fist on the desk. Three years of work threatened by a fucking email.

  A crackle of static from the radio in the center console tugged Gray back to the problem at hand. “I’ve got eyes on,” Murph advised from the distant collection of rocks where the sniper had set up his hide site. “Helo, coming in from the west.”

  “’Bout damn time,” one of the men in the back said, gently stroking the assault rifle balanced between his legs.

  Gray lifted the binoculars to his eyes and panned to his left, squinting against the road-flare red of the setting sun. He thumbed the focus knob until he saw the small green dot on the horizon. A few moments later it grew into a Huey with Venezuelan markings.

  “Got a door gunner on the right side,” Murph alerted them.

  “If this shit goes sideways,” Black answered, “you use that Barrett to turn Vega into pink mist.”

  Gray lowered the binos and glanced inside the truck to see Black staring at him from behind his dark glasses. The was no mistaking the challenge in the man’s voice. He was trying to force Gray to state his allegiance in front of the whole team. Demanding to know whose side Gray was on—the team’s or Vega’s.

  But this wasn’t Gray’s first rodeo and he wasn’t here to play games, so instead of the confrontation that Black wanted, he sidestepped the issue.

  “This is going to go nice and smooth,” he said, as the pilot brought the helo directly over the Suburban, then pulled it into a tight arc.