Chapter 17

Chris resumes the Narrative:

Roy and I were awakened in the middle of the night by Carry beating on the door, ringing the bell, and shouting at us. It not only woke us, but probably our neighbors also.

“Chris ... Chris wake up, there is trouble!” she kept repeating. I immediately hoped out of bed and almost fell on my naked butt as I tripped over all of the clothes on the floor by the bed where Roy and I had left them earlier that night.

“I’m coming,” I called to try to calm her down, but it didn’t appear to do a lot of good, as she continued to beat on the door. Pulling on a robe, I turned on the lights and hurried toward the front door while Roy got up and put on some clothes also. I finally made it to the front door and opened it.

“What’s wrong?” I asked my frantic twin, as she barged into the apartment.

“Close the door,” she told me, as she collapsed on to the sofa still looking frantic.

“Calm down for a minute so you can talk sensibly,” I told her. She sat there breathing deeply for a short time.

“Now, what’s wrong? Why are you so frantic?” I asked.

“The family was attacked tonight, I got a call from dad a short time ago. He said they have nine bodies down in the garden,” she told me and looked ready to cry.

“Are they all right?” I demanded in a frantic voice of my own on hearing this news.

“He said that they were, but needed help getting rid of the bodies. What are we going to do? We need to get down there and help them,” Carry said in a frantic voice. I took a couple of deep breaths to steady myself before answering her. My own instincts were to jump in our car immediately and rush home, but that might not be the best or fastest solution.

“I’ll call Tony and see if he can get a clean-up team out to the farm,” I told Carry who looked a little better on hearing this. Tony had given us his personal cell phone number in case of an emergency, and this certainly seemed to qualify.

On retrieving my cell phone from the bedroom, I pulled his number up and dialed it. The phone rang a number of times before someone answered.

“What’s the problem?” a male voice asked.

“Tony, this is Chris Kincade, someone hit our family tonight. Dad told us that there are nine bodies in the garden at the bottom of the hill. We need to go down to them and were wondering if we could get any help,” I told him in a rush of words.

“Slow down, Chris. Let’s take this one point at a time.

“First, who attacked them?” he asked, and this stopped me in my tracks.

“I’ll need to ask Carry since she was the one who spoke to dad,” I told him before turning to Carry --- a still upset Carry.

“Did dad say who attacked them?” I asked her, but she only looked at me with a blank expression.

“The mercenaries,” she said after a few seconds.

“It was the mercenaries, Tony,” I told him.

“Second, how many bodies are there and where are they?” he asked.

“Carry said there were nine bodies, and they were a couple of hundred yards from our house at the bottom of the hill where the garden is,” I told him remembering that much.

“All right, now listen carefully. You will not go rushing off down there in a panic in your car. I will have a clean-up team from the Atlanta office out there shortly after 0730 hrs in the morning since it should be getting light by then. Call your father and advise him of that, we don’t need any more surprises.

“Next, both of you pack your things and meet me at my office at 0500 hrs. I will arrange for a plane to take you to Atlanta. Someone will pick you up at the airport and take you out to your family’s place,” he told me.

“Can Roy and Chuck go with us?” I quickly asked.

“Yes, they can go with you, I suppose. I’ll have the Atlanta office loan you a Suburban then,” he told me. “Return to Agency Headquarters when you have things settled, and if you should happen to find that traitor Hawthorn, we don’t care to see him again. Now, I need to get up. All of you be in my office at 0500 hrs,” Tony finished and disconnected.

“We need to get up, pack and load our stuff in the trucks and the four of us need to be at Agency Headquarters by 0500 hrs,” I told Carry to start the explanation.

“Tony will send a clean-up crew out to the farm at around 0730 hrs, so we need to call dad also and alert him. Tony is getting us a plane to fly all four of us home, we’ll be there by early in the morning,” I told her. Roy and Chuck had also been listening.

“Let’s get busy. We can leave most of our clothes here and just take our fatigues, rucks, weapons and those two cans of ammunition,” I told all of them.

“Yes, those bastards are going to pay, starting with that slimy lawyer,” Carry said in an angry voice while rising from the sofa. We all got started following that, but I called dad first. His phone only rang a few times before he picked up.

“Dad, this is Chris,” I said before he could say anything. “We will be down there in the morning, the Agency is flying us down. Also there will be a clean-up team at the farm around 0730 hrs, don’t shoot at them. They will be removing the bodies, and we’ll see you as soon as we can,” I finished.

“Thanks Chris, both of you take it easy. We’re all fine if a little tired, but we’ll be up by 0730 hrs. and thanks again, sweetie,” dad said before we disconnected.

Roy had already started packing our things, and I started on breakfast. There was no way to know when we would get to eat again, or what we would need to do once we reached Atlanta. I finished packing while Roy ate, and then I joined him. I was sure that Carry would also be making breakfast for Chuck and herself. We were all ready to leave by 0430 hrs. and carried our things down to the trucks after locking up our apartments.

The trip to Agency Headquarters was fairly quick since there was little traffic yet at this time of the morning. We breezed through the entry gate and the security grid, those on duty having apparently been advised of our arrival.

Ingrid was there when we exited the elevator and showed us to the Director’s office. Tony was at his desk and looked as fresh as a daisy in a crisply pressed suit and a tie, whereas all of us looked a little tired and disheveled in our wrinkled fatigues and boots.

“Well, you all certainly look ready to go to work once you reach Atlanta. Who are you planning on assaulting?” he asked in a sarcastic voice. We all stared at him in shock wondering where his head was to say that.

“You can’t just go charging in there and start shooting at people. You’re not in Ranger school now,” he reminded us in a soft voice. “You will need to do quite a bit of reconnaissance to locate the culprits, even your father understands that. You won’t need those clothes or anything like them for some time,” he finished.

“Yes sir,” I answered feeling foolish about having forgotten a number of the things that dad had taught us about acquiring intelligence on those that we were after.

“Go back and pack some of the clothing that the Agency issued you plus other clothing that you may need down there. Ingrid will follow you to your apartments and then guide you to the military facility where there is a plane waiting for you. It will land you at one of the small local airports around Atlanta, and there will be an Agency suburban there for your use. Try to be as discreet as possible when you eliminate those responsible,” he reminded us, finishing with a smile.

“Yes sir, thank you for your help. We appreciate it, and I’m sure that our dad does too,” I told him before we left his office. Ingrid was waiting for us outside the office and followed us out to the trucks. A sedan was now parked there also, and she followed us in it to the apartment.

We returned to the apartment’s parking lot with our suitcases after quickly packing them and followed Ingrid’s vehicle to a military installation. A twin engine jet was waiting on the tarmac there for us, and a ground crewman loaded our things into the cargo area of the plane, but we kept our weapons and the two cans of ammunition with us in the passenger compartment of the plane. By now it was 0630 hrs.

“We’ll return your vehicles to the Agency’s parking lot for you. They will be safe there,” Ingrid told us, and Roy and Chuck gave her their keys, but looked at their trucks with concerned expressions.

One of the pilots emerged from the plane, directed us onto it, and then to seats before closing and locking the cabin door. He next advised us to fasten our seat belts, before returning to the cockpit. The engines started after a few minutes, and we were soon in the air.

“Welcome to Agency Air, we’ll be landing in Atlanta at PDK (Dekalb-Peachtree Airport) in about an hour and a-half. Thank you for flying Agency Air,” the pilot informed us as we continued to gain altitude.

Now that we had time to look around, we discovered from a plaque on the cabin wall that the plane was a Gulfstream S-280, and we could see that this was a very richly appointed, even plush, airplane. It had accommodations for eight in large leather covered seats that faced each other with a large fancy folding table between them and a shared video monitor to the side of each set of seats. None of us were presently interested in any of this, and we all settled back in the comfortable seats and were soon asleep.

We were awakened later by the plane touching down at the airport, and it shortly taxied to a location away from the many buildings and hangers to an open area on the east side of the airport where three black suburbans and a number of people waited.

“Thank you for flying Agency Air. We hope that you had an enjoyable flight and will consider flying with us again,” the pilot told us over the intercom as the engines wound down when we had come to a stop. The co-pilot opened the cabin door, and we had already released our seat belts and were gathering our weapons and the two cans of ammunition, when a tall thin man boarded the plane.

“Welcome to Atlanta, I’m Agent Irvine, the AIC of the Atlanta office,” he told us, but seemed surprised to discover that we were so young.

“Has your clean-up team arrived at our farm?” I asked first thing. It was now just a bit after 0800 hrs., and I wanted to be sure that things were proceeding as we had been told.

“Yes, they arrived there about thirty minutes ago and identified themselves to the residents. They are just starting to remove the bodies. Just before I approached the plane, the team chief told me that the area looked like a major battlefield in a war zone,” Irvine told us.

“That sounds about right. Dad said there were nine of them and they took all of them out,” Carry told him, but she still looked uncomfortable.

“We have an SUV for you, and two of my people are unloading your luggage,” the AIC told us.

“Thanks,” I told him, as we exited the plane and headed toward the Suburbans. Two men were just finishing loading our rucks and suitcases into the back of one of the SUVs. Roy went to check that everything was there, and signaled that all was okay.

“Do you want us to accompany you?” the AIC asked in a strained voice.

“No, we’ll be fine, we grew up here in Atlanta and know our way around. We’ll return the vehicle in a few days,” I assured him, and he watched as we loaded into the Suburban. I drove as I still wasn’t sure if Carry was all right. We followed the other Agency vehicles off of the airport property and turned onto Clairmont Road and took it to Buford Highway where we left the other Agency vehicles and then worked our way to the Interstate to take I-85 north to where we turned off before reaching the big mall and headed east for home. It was 0900 hrs before we arrived at the turnoff to our property. Carry called the house as we neared the turnoff.