20
Janet walked to the flashing alarm, reached out, and switched it off. Okay. So it all came down to now. That was Jack’s signal, the thing they’d been awaiting for weeks.
She walked into the kitchen, opened the freezer, and extracted two plastic baggies, one filled with one-inch meatballs and another that held three frozen syringes of blood. Making her way around the corner and up the stairs, Janet pulled the cord hanging from the hallway ceiling and climbed the steps into the attic. The computers and SATCOM equipment sat where they had since Admiral Riles had been killed, unused since the team had been cut off from any external support. Moving rapidly from system to system, Janet removed the hard disks and memory units, setting them in a pile around a pre-wired detonation device attached to a white phosphorous grenade. She smiled. Good old Willy Pete, as they had called it before her day, back in Vietnam. It burned so hot that almost nothing could put it out.
Within a minute, she was done and moving back down the steps to the second floor. In the office, she retrieved the ultra-thin laptop and placed it in her backpack along with the two freezer baggies. Then she opened the locker, grabbed the bulletproof vest and an M95 military protective mask, and slid into both.
Next, she retrieved a pair of green M-57 firing devices, more commonly known as “clackers” because of the sound they made when squeezed. These babies would produce the electrical signals that would set off the No. 2 blasting caps on the Claymore mines. And each of those lads had seven hundred little ten-and-a-half-grain steel spheres backed by a pound and a half of C4 plastic explosive. Soon enough, like the ancient Scottish broadsword from which they drew their name, the two Claymores downstairs and the daisy chain of four out back would cut her a path out of here.
Having completed these preparations, she retrieved one last toy, the Israeli Uzi 9mm submachine gun, stuffing several ammunition clips into her backpack. The Uzi wasn’t a Jack type of weapon, but she loved it. It was light, compact, and packed a hell of a punch. Somehow, cradled in her arms, it just felt right.
Janet walked to the inside corner of the room and slid down the wall until she was seated with her back pressed up against the corner. Her fingers found the twin pairs of wires that had been secured to the wall along the baseboard with a staple gun. A quick tug popped enough of the staples to give her the slack she needed. Then, a couple of quick twists of the bare leads fastened them to the connectors on each clacker.
Settling back, she could feel the click of the valve in the filter canister as she breathed in and out through the mask. It felt a bit claustrophobic, but she had felt that before. She just had to slow her breathing and follow the plan that Jack had laid out. The hit team would expect her to run if she was warned. If she didn’t run, they would assume she could be taken by surprise. She just had to wait for them to come to her. And that probably wouldn’t happen until they thought they already had Jack under control.
And so she sat there, grasping the clackers and her Uzi, waiting for the reckoning that was coming. If they thought they had Jack, they were in for an unpleasant surprise. Inside the clear faceplate of her gas mask, Janet smiled.