Chapter 16

Carry continues the Narrative:

“I think that you will find this next bit of information as interesting as I did,” Tony began again.

“The man behind this extensive development is none other than the son of the man who ran Diversified,” Tony told us to shocked expressions from Chris and me. He was holding up his hands and indicating for us to hold our seats.

“Now here is the really amazing part, at least to me. He apparently has absolutely no idea that it was Bill who killed his father and most of the Board of Directors of Diversified, and caused the seizure of the company by the Federal Government. It just appears that he was able to gain control of the land adjacent to yours and wanted your land to complete his grand design for this subdivision,” Tony finished with a smile.

“You’re sure of this?” Chris and I both demanded in harsh voices.

“As far as we have been able to determine, he has no idea that Bill is the one who wrecked Diversified,” Tony told us.

“What about this Greg Hawthorn character?” Chris asked following that.

“We haven’t been able to locate him, and he hasn’t returned to the Agency’s offices there. We are monitoring the lawyer’s offices but don’t have anything from that either,” Tony told us before handing us a folder containing Hawthorn’s biography and several pictures of him.

“That information may be less than complete based on what we have learned recently,” Tony added.

“We will need to call our dad and let him know about all of this,” I told Tony, as we all rose from the sofa.

“We expected that you would want to do that,” he told us before adding, “Report here to me on Monday morning, and we’ll see what may have developed over the weekend.”

Following that exchange we quickly left Tony’s office, made our way out of the building, and back to the trucks.

“Do we dare call from here?” Chris asked, as we both looked at all of the antennas and dishes on the roofs of the buildings.

“No, let’s go somewhere else, but not to the apartment. Somewhere away from both of those locations,” I advised.

“Let’s head into the city,” Roy suggested. “There will be lots of cell phones in use there, and they will have more difficulty separating our call from the others.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Chris agreed before we loaded into the trucks and left the Agency’s compound.

Some time later in a small city park, I used my cell phone to call the house. The phone rang a number of times before someone answered.

“Hello,” we heard a voice say, it was our mom.

“Mom, Carry. Is dad there? We have learned some very important information that he needs to know first hand,” I told her.

“No, he and Bill Jr. are out working on sensors presently. Can I have him call you when he gets back?” Ashley asked.

“I guess we’ll have to do that, if you don’t know when they’ll be back,” I told her in a voice filled with anguish.

“I’ll have him call you as soon as they return,” Mom told me and was ready to disconnect when she paused.

“Hold on, Carry, I think they are back now,” she told me, and for a short time there were only garbled sounds on the phone.

“Carry, what’s up?” came from the phone shortly in dad’s voice.

“Dad, we had a meeting with the Director of Operations this morning and have learned something important,” I told him before relating what we had learned. The identity of the subdivision planner came as a real surprise to dad.

“I’ll be dammed!” dad said before Chris had a question for him.

“Do you know anything about this guy Hawthorn,” she asked.

“No, his name doesn’t ring any bells. Of course, I’ve been away from the Agency for a long time now, so that isn’t surprising,” dad told us. “But he sounds like one of those Headquarters coordinators or controls and a REMF. Someone who always gets someone else to do his dirty work for him,” he finished.

“Tony, the Director of Operations, gave us a folder with his biography and pictures. We’ll send it to your e-mail in a bit on a separate call. We have been on this one too long now as it is,” I told him.

“Yes, do that and watch your backs up there. We’ll be taking some extra precautions down here,” Dad told us before disconnecting. We left the park then and checked out some of the sporting goods stores in the area before heading back to our apartments. It was time for lunch anyway.

Marge was waiting for us when we reached our apartments.

“You guys have an early appointment this morning?” she asked on seeing us.

“Yes, we had a meeting to attend,” Chris told her, and Marge’s eyebrows went up.

“A meeting?”

“It concerned some people who want our family’s land near Atlanta,” I told her.

“Let me know if you need any help,” she volunteered.

“We and they can handle it,” I assured her before we all entered the apartment that Chuck and I share.

“Marge has good intentions, but she isn’t bullet proof. That was demonstrated in Florida,” Chris said, as we settled in the living room.

“I’ll use my phone to send the information to dad,” she volunteered following that. “Just in case they were able to track your conversation,” she finished. I laid out the pages from the folder so she could take pictures of them with her cell phone to send dad. We all had lunch following that, but didn’t have much else to do that day.

Later that afternoon, Marge knocked at our door again.

“Have you guys tried the gym here?” she asked.

“Gym? What gym?” Chris and I asked.

“The one that is supposed to be in the basement,” she told us.

“No one mentioned it to us,” we told her.

“Sonny and I were going down to try it out, you want to go too?” she asked.

“Let us change, and we’ll all go with you,” Chris told her. We quickly collected our guys, changed clothes, and were ready to go in a few minutes. It turned out that the gym in the basement was very well outfitted, and we had it to ourselves on a Saturday afternoon. By the time we left the gym a few hours later, we were all in need of a shower, but we felt better than we had in a while, plus we were also hungry again.

Sunday, we worked out again for a short time early in the morning before going out for a run together, and that was when we ran into the local cops. They pulled up to the six of us with their lights flashing and were soon joined by a second car.

“Why are you people armed?” they demanded, pointing guns at us, as they exited their vehicles.

“We are Federal Agents and are authorized to go armed at all times,” Chris told them, and we all presented them with our Federal IDs and badges. They naturally called this into their precinct to check it out. It required several minutes, but things were eventually straightened out

“Try to be less conspicuous with the weapons. We had three calls about the six of you,” the cop told us.

“We’ll do our best,” Chris told him, and we continued our run but cut it short and returned to our apartment building having only completed around four miles.

“Not like at home at all here,” Chris had said after we were out of sight of the cops.

“How do you mean?” Roy asked.

“We ran with our pistols out all of the time at home and never had a problem,” I told him.

“Of course that was further out in the country, too,” Chris added. There were playoff games that afternoon and evening, and we all had pizza while watching both games together. We had very quiet but separate nights following the last game.

Monday, we were up early, worked out, had breakfast, and were on our way to the Agency’s compound before 0900 hrs. There were still security guards at the elevator when we exited it, but they had our pictures there now and we were quickly allowed through.

“We have had some activity reported over the weekend,” Tony told us when we were shown into his office a short time later.

“What kind of activity?” Chris and I both asked.

“There is a report from one of our Florida offices that a number of members of a mercenary group moved north at the end of last week. I had alerted our offices in North and South Carolina as well as Florida to be on the lookout for things like that,” Tony told us.

“You don’t seem sure of where they were going,” I told him.

“No, we don’t normally monitor their communications, but we do keep an eye on their activities. We know that they left but not how many or where they were going. I have people still checking on both of those things,” Tony told us.

“How big is this group?” Chris asked.

“They are normally less than a dozen strong, but they could call on others to work with them if needed,” he informed us.

“We’ll need to let our dad know about this,” I reminded him.

“Yes, we understand that,” he replied and even offered us the use of his phone. We took him up on the offer and were soon speaking to dad.

“Dad, a group of mercenaries left Florida the end of last week. They could be as many as a dozen of them, but we don’t know where they are headed other than north,” Chris told him.

“Yes, they are probably here in Atlanta somewhere. We had someone testing the perimeter sensors on Saturday and Sunday nights, but nothing else so far,” dad told us calmly.

“Are you all going to be all right?” Chris asked in a trembling voice.

“Yes, nothing has happened here, and we are making preparations to deal with anyone showing up here,” he told us.

“Call if you need us down there,” Chris and I both told him over the speaker phone before he disconnected.

“Your father didn’t seem worried,” Tony said following hanging up the phone.

“No, dad is always cool as a cucumber,” I told him, but I was worried that the three of them were in more trouble than they could handle. Tony didn’t appear to be worried at all, and quickly turned to this week’s activities.

“While you are here with us for the next several weeks, you will be introduced to various parts of both the Operations and the Intelligence Departments. You will also work with several of their components for a short time. Additionally, you will be instructed on how to file Agent briefs in the field and about working in our various field offices both here in the States and overseas,” he informed us.

“We thought that you didn’t operate in this country, or so our dad told us,” Chris asked.

“Normally, we don’t operate in the U.S., but we do have offices here that keep track of various problems in their areas, and of people of special interest because of their views on certain topics. Normally, we don’t do more than observe and turn the data over to the applicable police agency, but as you are aware from Florida, we have clean-up teams to take care of unfortunate incidents,” Tony finished, dancing around the subject.

For the remainder of Monday and all of Tuesday and Wednesday, we visited the various parts of the Operations Department. All had still been quiet when we left for the apartments on Wednesday afternoon.

In Atlanta, things had not been that quiet.

Major Jones had sent out a recon team to check the perimeter of Bill’s land and learn where the sensors were located on Saturday night, Sunday, and Sunday night. They had located and set off a number of his sensors, at least the active ones. This had kept Bill and his son up late on both nights.

“See,” Bill told his son on Saturday night, “they are testing the perimeter sensors, but aren’t moving in and setting off the second line of sensors. They also don’t seem to be aware of the new passive sensors that we have installed since New Year’s.”

“They are working their way down the new entry road for the subdivision,” Bill Jr. told his father when he checked on Sunday evening. They had also detected the drone that had overflown their property that day.

“Yes, and when they finish that, I suspect that they will try to sneak in the back way. They will have a long way to move through all of that brush and trees. We’ll need to prepare a surprise for them when they do eventually come to call,” Bill told his son. “It’s a good thing that Grandfather Ed still has a few contacts,” he finished, and this was the reason that Bill wasn’t upset when the twins called him on Monday morning.

Also on Monday morning, Major Jones’s recon team reported on what they had discovered over the weekend.

“They have a line of sensors around the perimeter of the property and a second and third line of sensors deeper on the property,” the recon men reported.

“We found an area where some of the sensors appeared to be old and not functioning near the end of the new road. We were able to penetrate their property for quite some distance last night with no trouble. While the brush is quite thick in that area, there are at least two deer trails through it leading to an area where there appears to have been a large garden,” the recon leader reported with a smile.

“How far is it to the house from this garden area?” Jones demanded.

“A couple of hundred yards. There are some walnut trees near there, and we could make out the several buildings up the hill from the garden area,” the recon men told him pointing to the area on the new aerial photographs that the drone had taken.

“Fine!” Jones told them, “You finished that quicker than I believed you would. Go get some sack time. We’re still scheduled for Wednesday night,” he finished.

Greg Hawthorn came to visit Major Jones on Tuesday.

“How is your recon coming?” he demanded on arriving.

“The boys have finished it and found us a back way in,” Jones told him.

“So you are set for tomorrow night, then?” Hawthorn asked.

“Tomorrow night we’ll start infiltrating just before midnight and should be in position to start our assault by 0200 hrs. It shouldn’t take more than an hour, and I’ll have a man with a truck waiting to pick us up on their entry road when I radio him that we are about finished,”Jones concluded but with a frown.