He hung up.
Travis considered what he’d heard. Audra. Alive. It wasn’t all that surprising. He might have guessed it if he’d thought about it, given what he’d realized at Garner’s place.
A few minutes later the motorcade pulled off the freeway. It took a series of turns and short jogs, and finally stopped. One of the front doors of the vehicle Travis was in opened and shut. The driver kept the engine running. Footsteps came around the back of the vehicle and then the rear window popped open. Travis heard the whine of jet engines powering up nearby.
Finn leaned in and stared down on him. He had the surviving cylinder tucked under his arm. In the dome light, the man’s eyes looked deeply troubled.
“What’s going to happen to you about an hour from now,” Finn said, “I despise more than anything there is. I wish to hell it could be avoided. But it can’t be, this time. There’s too much at stake. I need to know what you know, and who else you’ve spoken to. So please just cooperate with the interrogators. They’ll know if you’re being truthful. And it’ll be over sooner.”
His eyes stayed on Travis a moment longer.
“I’m sorry,” Finn said. He looked like he meant it. Then he closed the window again, pounded twice on the roof, and walked away.
Travis saw the glow of headlights swing through the side windows as two other vehicles backed out of nearby spaces and took the lead. His own pulled out and followed, and a few minutes later they were on the freeway again.
Chapter Forty-One
Fifty seconds before the first shots hit the motorcade, Travis was thinking about Paige and Bethany. They were all he’d thought of for the past hour. He imagined them trying to find shelter in the unbroken darkness of the ruins. Imagined their uncertainty and confusion when they hadn’t heard any shooting from the top of the building. Imagined their fear now, all this time later, the reality of their situation sinking in as deeply as the cold and the dampness of the October night.
The vehicle slowed and came to a stop. The procession had left the freeway a while earlier. It was traveling through dark countryside now, halting occasionally at what Travis guessed were stop signs at remote intersections. There was no sky glow to indicate a populated area nearby.
The vehicle accelerated again.
Travis thought of Paige touching his face, feeling it. Worried for him. He wondered what she thought of him right now.
Half a minute later—no doubt precisely a half mile on the regimented grid of roads out here—the vehicle slowed again. Travis imagined they were getting close to their destination.
The moment the SUV came to a complete stop, Travis heard something, somewhere ahead in the dark.
It sounded like a playing card in bicycle spokes.
Garner watched it unfold. It took fifteen seconds from start to finish, by which time he was convinced that every man on his Secret Service detail would’ve done just fine in the SEALs.
The six of them advanced on the vehicles, silenced M4 carbines trained on the shattered windows up front. The lead SUV, suddenly absent its driver’s foot on the brake, had coasted across the intersection and veered off the corner into a shallow ditch.
The team took another fifteen seconds to confirm that every hostile was dead—with the help of an extra bullet or two, in some cases.
One of the men, Dyer, called out to Garner. “Clear, sir.”
Garner came forward from the tree cover edging the road. He had his own silenced M4 in hand—a precaution in case things had gone badly, though his men had been adamant that he stay out of the initial attack. Given all he’d asked of them, he’d felt the point was worth conceding.
Two of the men had the big rear door of the last SUV open. They waved Garner over. He arrived to find Travis Chase lying bound on the floor. At the same time he heard the others calling out to report no captives in the remaining vehicles.
One of the agents leaned in with a knife to cut the heavy zip-ties binding Chase’s wrists and ankles.
Garner stood back and stared north along the dark two-lane. He could see the lights of the front gate at Rockport, a mile away. The sentries there couldn’t have heard the suppressed gunshots, but it still wouldn’t be smart to stay here any longer than necessary. The two cars Garner and his men had brought were parked on the shoulder, a hundred yards down the cross street.
Chase sat up in the back of the SUV.
“Paige and Bethany are dead?” Garner said.
Chase shook his head. “Not if we can help it.”
Travis gave Garner the basics as they ran to the cars. Garner cursed softly when he heard Paige and Bethany’s situation.
They reached the vehicles, two black Crown Victorias. Garner pointed Travis to a rear door of the lead car, then rounded the back and climbed in on the opposite side, next to him.
“How’d you convince your guys to go along with this?” Travis said.
“I told them the truth.”