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To Sharon for everything you give to me.
To Frank, Alex, Ursula, Isabelle, Paul and Tiggr for everything they gave me.
Table of Contents
Other Books by K.G. Lawrence
Chapter 1
FBI Special Agent-in-Charge, Joan McGowan, and her team of Travis Meyer, Erica Jensen, Arnold Davidson, Tommy John (TJ) Eccles and Miranda Wong, rode in her van. James Torres and his team followed in their SWAT van. The lights of both vehicles were off. It was exactly 11:30 pm on a moonless August night when she entered the Crowley farm east of Portland. Maple trees lined both sides of the gravel approach road. Travis rode shotgun. He was looking at the buildings through his night-vision binoculars.
“Shit.” He pointed to her left. “It looks like they have a machine gun nest on the roof of the barn.”
Arnie confirmed through his binoculars. “I see a square of sandbags six high with two heads sticking up above it. One of them is watching us through binoculars. Joan, we’re not prepared for—”
A fusillade of bullets penetrated the passenger side of the van. Erica cried out, grabbed her side and slumped against TJ.
“Find cover.” She stopped the van and jumped out.
Another round of fire struck both vehicles as Travis and TJ dragged Erica out of the van.
She looked for the SWAT team, but had to duck back behind the driver’s door when three bullets zipped past her head.
Torres and his crew were scrambling for cover. They were dragging two of their men toward the trees away from the line of fire and into greater darkness.
A series of explosions set the maple trees on fire one after another creating a line of torches that illuminated her team and made them easier targets.
Travis hollered at her though he was only two feet away, “Erica’s dead. We’re in the kill zone; we gotta move.”
The machine gun on top of the barn opened fire on Torres’ unit. Two more SWAT crew were hit.
Two others had raced back to their van and were pulling out whatever gear they could get as fast as they could. One of them was shot in the leg. Before the other could drag him away, the SWAT van exploded.
“There.” She pointed to a pasture of tall corn.
Torres and what was left of his unit were already entering the cornfield. They had left three of their own behind.
Gunfire came from everywhere. Her team’s arrival had been anticipated. They had been surrounded using precise military countermeasures conceived to be rapid and overwhelming.
“Joan, come on!” Travis grabbed her to get her going.
Arnie came to her, but dropped to the ground at her feet before he could say anything. TJ and Miranda had made it to the cornfield and Torres’ unit.
Travis pushed Arnie off her foot. “Joan, come on!”
Gunfire began sweeping across the cornfield from all directions.
“There were only supposed to be three of them,” she muttered.
“Fuck that.” He tried to pull her over Arnie, but suddenly jerked back, twisted and fell sideways against the van.
She fired her AR15 into the darkness through a 180 degree arc. It sounded like she had only hit tree trunks.
Powerful explosions started going off all over the farm. Fireballs shot into the sky, adding additional haphazard lighting to the scene.
An explosion on the other side of the van rocked it into the back of her head and knocked her down onto Arnie’s body. She tasted blood when she pushed herself back up. Something had struck her right cheek. The gash was about two inches long and almost as wide as her finger. Blood had run down from it into her mouth.
Torres’ people returned fire sporadically, but mostly they were just trying to find better cover than stalks of corn.
She checked for the flash of the machine gun to see where it was aiming, but it stopped firing. A moment after that, the nest exploded and set the barn on fire. A brief cry of victory erupted from the cornfield before even heavier crossfire strafed it again.
There were only supposed to be three suspected terrorists at the Crowley farm. They weren’t supposed to be this well trained and equipped . . . or reinforced.
She ducked under more gunfire aimed at the van and checked Travis. He’d been struck in the neck just above his bulletproof vest. He spit up blood when he tried to speak.
“San Francisco.” He coughed and sagged down into death. The apology and regret in his eyes hadn’t been necessary.
She peeked out from behind the driver’s door toward the farm buildings. The barn was fully engulfed in flames. The farmhouse was dark.
“Joan,” TJ called from across the drive. He was signaling there was cover back toward the entrance to the farm.
Another burst of gunfire swept through the cornfield. Another one of her team cried out.
A man lunged from the darkness at TJ, then another. They knocked him to the ground and clubbed him. Each one looked at her before they dragged TJ up to his knees, grabbed his hair, raised his head so he could face her and then decapitated him with one hard swing of a machete. They were doing all this for her, a display for the commander of the operation. One of them picked up TJ’s head and prepared to toss it at her.
She aimed and fired. They both exploded in flames and dropped onto TJ.
Two more men running along the access road opened fire on her. They passed through the light of each burning tree and vanished into intense darkness only to reappear again at the next tree. They were dressed in the same gear as the other two: cargo pants and hunting vests. All the pockets were likely stuffed with incendiary explosives.
Martyrs to their cause: to attack at the heart of American law enforcement and security. Michael and Shana would never be told how she died. Her casket would need to be kept closed after they were through with her. The critical incident report would be classified Top Secret for reasons of national security and available for high-clearance level Internal Review Only.
She laid down on Arnie and returned fire. Neither man tried to avoid being hit. They were determined to be the one to get the commander. Radicalized young men, they were already the exalted dead.
She squeezed her eyes shut and kept firing. First one man exploded into a running fireball, then the other just ten feet from her. A piece of burning vest with two ribs and tissue stuck to it bounced off the van and landed beside her. A pair of burning legs dropped to the ground three feet to her left.
Spotlights shone down on her as two helicopters flew in.
Miranda stood across the access road just looking down at TJ and the burning remains of his two killers. She was covered in blood.
When Joan detected movement to Wong’s right, she launched herself across the road, but a bullet struck her right shoulder and knocked her back against the van. She could just see Miranda moving in and out of the blazing light while fighting off two men wielding machetes. Lights came along the access road just before everything went dark.
She woke up to Deputy Assistant Director Lorne Wozniak asking, “How did we end up with this debacle? Our intelligence was valid and reliable; now eleven of our own are d
ead.”
She was in the back of an ambulance with bandages on her right shoulder and her right cheek and an IV in her left arm. The rear door was open. It was morning.
Wozniak was questioning Torres and Wong. “Just how many were there?”
“We’ve counted what could be nine,” Torres replied. “There may have been more. It felt like there were more.”
Wong, her arms and hands wrapped in bandages, said, “They all wore vests containing thermite. There is little left of any of them but ash and smoke.”
Torres glanced at her. “They used tunnels to surround us.”
“Tunnels and eleven of us dead in less than fifteen minutes,” Wozniak said. “You’d think we were in Iraq.”
Joan laid back and closed her eyes. She was out again in seconds.