Never Surrender(13)

"What did he do?"

"Got caught up in the politics of war," Wade said. "Intervened to stop a nine-year-old boy from being raped by a villager and beat the shit out of the guy. Put him in the hospital. The villager pressed charges and the Afghan government put pressure on ours to do something. So to calm the situation down, they charged March with assault causing bodily harm, convicted him, and kicked him out of the army."

It disgusted Candace. "That's so twisted." He should have been praised for his actions, not punished.

"Yeah. Needless to say, he wasn't too happy, and now he's anti-government and looking to stir up shit by training his own militia to attack government installations across the state." His gaze shot to her grandma. "Sorry, Ruby." Apparently even Wade knew her grandma didn't like people cussing in front of her.

"No, something about this smells bad, so it's definitely shit," her grandma said. "He should have gotten a medal, not a conviction, but even though he was right to be angry, it doesn't excuse his current plans to arm and train people around here to attack the government. Does he pose a serious threat?"

Wade nodded. "Yep. And now word is, various agencies have been looking for him for a long time. He went off grid a few years back and no one's been able to find a trace of him since. Unless we did just that last night," he added, looking at the other guys.

"Got a file on him here," MacKenzie said, laying a manila folder on the table and opening it to reveal a picture of March.

Candace studied it. White male, early forties. Graying, light brown hair, blue eyes.

"Latest intel estimates his followers are numbered around a thousand or so, but it could be more. His ability to avoid detection and capture says a lot about his capabilities. Wherever he is, he's well stocked and has had lots of time to plan whatever he has in mind."

"Potential domestic terrorist attacks?" Maya asked him.

"Yes."

Candace glanced at MacKenzie, putting it all together. "And so you think maybe the site the guys found yesterday is possibly where this militia trains? Or that maybe March is using the old bunker systems?"

"We were told they were all destroyed at the end of the Cold War," her grandma said, her gaze sliding from MacKenzie to Wade.

"You ever go back there, after it was destroyed?" Wade asked.

"No," she admitted, looking pensive.




       
         
       
        
"Ruby, where did you say the entrance to the bunker system is?" MacKenzie asked.

"Somewhere around here," she said, circling an area on the map with her fingertip. "Not too far from that rock formation I told you about earlier."

"When's the last time you were down there?"

"Right after the fall of the Berlin wall. We went there to help clean it out before they destroyed the complex."

"They didn't destroy it," Wade said, face grim. "At least not the entire thing."

Struggling to take all this in, Candace gaped at her grandmother. "Does my dad know any of this?"

"Course he does. He's a senator."

"Then why the hell am I just finding out about this for the first time today? I've still got my security clearance."

Her grandma shrugged. "Never seemed important enough to mention before, and you never asked."

Candace gave Ryan a disbelieving look. "Unreal."

"What are the chances that anyone saw you?" MacKenzie said, and the guys all got quiet.

Too quiet.

Ryan shook his head. "We split up and searched the immediate area before setting up camp. There was no one else out there."

"You're sure?"

Ryan hesitated a moment, and Candace's heart sank. He glanced at Wade, then Jackson and Cam. "Not a hundred percent, no. It's possible he had cameras or some other kind of surveillance equipment set up that we didn't find."

So then a domestic terrorist might have seen them looking in the area. She reached for Ryan's hand, dread squeezing her stomach. He twined his fingers through hers, gripped in reassurance but it didn't make her feel any warmer.

"You gonna check it out?" Ryan asked MacKenzie, releasing her hand to wind an arm around her shoulders and tug her close. She wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned her cheek on his chest, told herself there was no reason for her to worry.

He nodded. "I'll call it into my local FBI contact and do some recon. At the very least we'll want to search the area and check out the site and the bunkers."

"No need." Maya pulled out her phone and stood. "I'll call my boss right now. He'll spread the word, get the right people in touch with you. They can have a team out here by morning."

MacKenzie gave her a nod. "Appreciate that." He glanced at the rest of them. "You're all here for another few days, if we need more for the investigation?"

"Until Sunday," Ryan said, running his fingers through the ends of her hair, the soothing motion doing nothing to stem her growing anxiety. 

MacKenzie closed the file and stood. "Thanks for coming down. I'll be in touch when I have an update. You all have a good night."

As he left, Candace looked up questioningly at Ryan. He gave her a gentle smile and cupped the side of her face in his free hand. "Don't worry, it's fine. Nothing's gonna happen."

It better not. They'd been through so much together already. He was her beating heart, her whole world. Which was why she felt it so keenly when he hurt her.

Ryan kept his arm solidly wrapped around her shoulders as they walked back to their room together, but she couldn't shake the worry that had taken root inside her. There was nothing she could do about that situation, however, so she let it go and focused on something she could control-finishing the talk she and Ryan had started yesterday morning.

So much of their future hinged on resolving her career issue, and she wanted his support in whatever direction she took next. She wanted to know they were on the same page with everything, and make plans for the future.

The moment they got back to their room, she was laying it all on the line.



* * * *



"We've got a problem," Lyle said through the phone.

At the grave tone, Eric braced himself for bad news. His second-in-command had been working with a few others all day to find out more information about their unwanted guests from last night, and clean up what they'd left behind at the training site. "Not my favorite words to hear, but all right then. What have you got?"

"I got IDs on all four of them, from someone working the front desk at the resort. We're still looking into two of them but I already got a hit on the others when I did a search and ran them past my contact, and it's not good news. Staff Sergeant Ryan Wentworth and Tech Sergeant Cam Munro are both AFSOC."

Shit. "And the other two are military as well?"

"Not sure yet, but the front desk clerk said they're supposedly all here for a wedding that's scheduled for Saturday morning. What do you think?"

"I think it's possible, but it still seems like one hell of a coincidence that they show up here snooping around right as we're getting to the end stages of planning the first operation. And I'd bet my favorite assault rifle that the other two guys are either military or even SOF-trained as well. You saw the way they moved." Just like he and his men used to back in Afghanistan.

Lyle pushed out a long breath. "Yeah."

Eric dragged a hand over his face, his mind whirling. "They've seen too much. There's no way they found all those casings, the tracks, and the shredded trees and didn't report it to someone." He shook his head. "We can't risk leaving things the way they are. This has to be dealt with. Tonight."

"All right." Lyle didn't sound too happy about it and Eric wasn't either. This was a risk none of them could afford, but he had to be proactive. "What are you thinking?"

"Some kind of a diversion at the resort. Something small-scale that looks either like an accident or a case of mistaken identity. We have to divert attention away from us and the site so we can evacuate the area." And he also wanted to make a statement. Let the government know he was a force to be reckoned with, hit at least one target before he went on the run. Those men who had found the training site would serve his purposes nicely.

Changing locations now, at this critical hour, was a huge goddamn headache and inconvenience he couldn't afford. It would take days for them to pull it off completely, but he needed a solid window of at least a few hours to dismantle the most critical equipment and get it to a safe house where he could hide.



       
         
       
        

Because cops and Feds would be out hunting him now, and it meant all his work and the painstaking precautions he'd taken in setting up headquarters here were finished. He was looking at months of disruption, of being on the run and changing safe houses every day to stay one step ahead of the authorities that had been hunting for him for the past three years. He had no choice.

"I'll call up some of the guys," Lyle said.