Chapter 13

Two hours later

Ready Enterprises Manufacturing

Near Harborton, Washington

They were dead. All of them.

And not just dead, but slaughtered. It looked like someone or something had torn through the men at the warehouse methodically, almost mechanically. Ben could detect no signs of gunfire or that the heavily armed Bratva inside had even managed to draw their weapons. The bloody patterns spattering the greasy concrete floors and steel walls indicated to him that some sort of bladed weapon had been used

“Lizzie are you picking this up?” asked Ben through his headset.

Lizzie was running coms and digital intelligence from the Ranch. He, Sarah, and Dimitry were first into the warehouse, where they had thought to find Nikki’s husband Yakov, and their two sons. Aestra was providing overwatch from outside with her accurized M14 sniper rifle with Maria as a spotter and rear security.

“Cameras are all working fine. Overhead infrared from the drone is showing no hotspots except for you three, but Ben- stay safe in there, this is really weird” replied Lizzie. “Any sign of the principals?”

“No, and thank the Gods for that.”

The inside of the shop looked like a surreal painting of red-painted mannequins systematically disassembled with the world’s sharpest blade. Ben had to agree with Lizzie, this was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He had to get another opinion on what had happened here and most importantly, they had to find the children ASAP, This was no longer just a typical case of parent abduction.

“Maria, please bring up Kelly and Belle and give them a heads up that we have 6 casualties with no survivors, and no sign of the kids or the husband.”

Over his extremely vociferous objection, both Kelly and Lauren’s mom refused to be left out of the operation. They reasoned that if the children were found injured they would be needed immediately. It was all he could do to get them to agree to hold back with John and Carl until he and the breach team could ensure it was safe. He knew they were right, and he knew that he now needed some medical expertise to understand what had happened here, but he didn’t like having his wife and unborn child anywhere in the vicinity of an operation, even one that had been, until now, relatively routine.

Ben heard two clicks in acknowledgment from Maria’s comms and he could picture her waving in the Escalade SUV with Kelly, Belle, and their escort.

“Over here Ben,” said Sarah with a gesture.

She had cracked open a door toward the rear of the shop that looked like it led to a small office. Ben strode over and saw another dead man lying on the floor, but the young, Hispanic appearing man hadn’t been sliced open. Instead, he had a small neat bullet wound in the forehead.

“He must have been killed earlier,” said Sarah.

“Yeah it looks that way,” replied Ben. “Lizzie, any sign of Yakov’s vehicle?” said Ben as he keyed his headset.

“My bots just reported a traffic cam shot of his SUV headed away from his residence in a westerly direction about 2 minutes ago,” said Lizzie over comms.

“Shit, we have to intercept him. Wait a minute, that’s away from the major highways. What’s out there?”

“Nothing for miles. Hold on. Didn’t Nikki mention that Yakov sometimes chartered a plane from the county airport out that way?” said Lizzie.

“Good girl Lizzie, that has to be it. We have to get there first.”

“Ben there’s no way. You are physically much closer to the airport itself, but they have a headstart and your route is nearly as long,” replied Lizzie.

Ben took a deep breath and came to a decision. For an instant, he recalled a leadership lecture in Quantico delivered by a retired Marine Colonel. He said there are three types of snap decisions you can make in a crisis: The right decision, in time; the wrong decision in time; or the right decision too late. Avoid the last one at all costs.

“Sarah, Dimitry, with me,” said Ben as he rushed out of the building.

He reached the parking lot at the same time as Maria, Kelly, and Belle

“Kelly, you and Belle please try and figure out what happened to these men. I have a bad feeling that we are going to need to know all we can. Maria, lock down this area and keep everyone safe- we don’t know what’s happening but there are dangerous hostiles of an unknown origin in the vicinity,”

Maria gave Ben a brief nod. “You got it. I have the con here,” she said tersely.

“Of course Ben, where are you headed?” replied Kelly.

“We are going to try and intercept Yakov and keep him from flying away with Nikki’s kids,” said Ben.

Ben hated the idea of dividing his team in any situation, but more so when he had no clear idea of what was happening, but there wasn’t a choice. He wasn’t going to let these kids remain in danger a second longer than necessary.

“Lizzie, I think I have a way to get there ahead of them,” said Ben into his mic as he, Sarah, and Dimitry scrambled into Ben’s old blue Jeep Cherokee. “Pull up your map of the airport and look along the eastern edge of the main runway.”

“Ben you have got to be shitting me,” said Lizzie a few seconds later. “There’s no way you are going to get down that fire road. It looks like it hasn’t been used by anything but deer for 40 years.”

“Old Blue has never let me down. But the FAA and the county are going to be very pissed off shortly. Can you reroute a drone in front of me to let me know what’s happening?” asked Ben.

“You got it, I’ll let you know when it’s on station,” replied Lizzie.

With that Ben tore out of the parking lot spewing gravel in every direction. Within a half mile, he made a hard left turn onto a heavily rutted, unmarked dirt track that led into the hills and dense forest that made up most of rural Mason County. It was only about 2 miles to the airport as the crow flies, but he wasn’t a crow and it was a leap of faith that his nearly ancient Jeep would hold up in the extremely rugged hills.

At first glance, Old Blue was pretty decrepit. Ben hadn’t even bothered to smooth out the dents from her last adventure when the Chinese Special Forces team had tried to take him out. His wives had been after him to use one of the sleek, nearly new, SUVs they had captured, but somehow that felt disloyal. Besides, the Fae had seemed to take great delight in maintaining the old jeep and had made a hobby out of tweaking her in ways that Detroit had never envisioned. Plus she ran better than ever. Just yesterday he’d been delighted when he started her up to make a run to town and discovered that her exhaust now smelled like flowers.

The old girl was about to hit her first test a minute later when they came around a muddy bend in what could only laughingly be called a road. The recent rains had left a neck-deep mud pit that could swallow a herd of pregnant hippos. The hole was surrounded by couch-sized boulders and there was no way around because of the dense trees along the trail.

“Satan’s hairy left testicle!” exclaimed Ben slamming his hands into the steering wheel in frustration.

“Uh, Ben what is that?” said Sarah pointing to his dashboard.

A small blue button shaped like a wave was now glowing from its place next to the cassette tape player.

“I have no idea, the dwarves were in here a few weeks ago, they prefer I discover things by accident,” replied Ben.

“Well, it looks like it wants you to press it,” said Sarah.

“I guess it can’t hurt,” said Ben as he gave the button a tentative tap.

Immediately they could feel the undercarriage rise and the sound of blowers from under the front and rear bumpers. Ben got the strange sensation that they were now floating over the ground and not on it.

“Hang on, here goes,” said Ben as he floored the gas pedal.

They shot across the mini pond leaving a substantial bow wake. Ben had expected water to flood in through the doors, but somehow they remained high and dry. In seconds they reached the other side and the blue button immediately shut off and they came to a halt. Ben could feel the undercarriage retract and the blowers shut off.

“Well, that just happened. Dang, I bet Gunny Jean is going to want her own LCAC now as well,” said Ben with a shake of his head.

He put Blue back into gear and they continued on their torturous route up a hill and through some underbrush that had grown up in the middle of the trail. Ben’s comm set chimed.

“Ben you have to get a move on. I was able to get a drone over the airport and I picked up Yakov’s SUV just down the road. They have company. It looks like 3 bogies are following them pretty closely” said Lizzie

“Shitfire, we are almost there. What kind of vehicles are following them?” asked Ben.

“Um, they don’t look like vehicles exactly,” replied Lizzie.

“What the heck are they then?” said Ben, his patience running short as he slammed into and through some Christmas tree-sized saplings and around a tight bend. He breathed a sigh of relief as he broke through the last of the brush and the runway fence stood in front of him.

“You aren’t going to believe this,” replied Lizzie.

“Angels? Powder my butt and call me a donut!” Sarah heard Ben exclaim into his headset.

Sarah had no idea what was going on, but she did know to trust Ben and her sister Lizzie. She glanced toward the backseat where Dimitry sat. No need to worry about him. With typical Russian stoicism and all the curiosity of a block of granite, he sat unperturbed but ready.

“Dang! I was hoping it would be a lot flimsier than this,” said Ben. “Hang on here we go.”

Ben revved the engine and then floored the accelerator. Sarah could see he had aimed for a single center post where two sections of the 8-foot-high chain link fence joined. The brush guard in front of Blue hit the post dead center with a loud bang- snapping the post off at its concrete base and flinging the heavy wire mesh sections apart.

Ben stopped the vehicle to get their bearings. The 5000-foot-long primary runway was to their immediate right and the small commercial terminal and corporate hangars were straight to the front. Nearly a mile of dirt, grass, and strips of tarmac separated them from a group of steel fabricated commercial buildings and a huge parking lot.