Power and Empire

“Do I have a choice?”

Caruso grinned. “Not really.”

17

John Clark’s voice crackled over the radio immediately after Caruso repeated Naldo Cantu’s address. “We’ve got about twenty minutes if we’re lucky with traffic,” Clark said. “Everyone jump. I want to see what kind of intel we can grab before they get there.”

“Copy that,” Ryan said. The rest of the team confirmed they’d heard the transmission and were immediately en route.

Interstate 35 was a stone’s throw away from the FBI field office, around which he and the others were strategically parked so as to be close enough to pick up Caruso’s transmissions. His signal was garbled but readable. I-35 ran directly from Dallas to Red Oak, roughly eighteen miles away, which meant Ryan and the rest of The Campus could reach their objective in a relatively short time — as long as the evening traffic didn’t snarl. But the same held true for Special Agent Callahan and her task force. It would take a few minutes for the raid team to hit the head and gear up. Judging from the tone of her voice, this lady didn’t seem like the kind to mess around. She wouldn’t be far behind.

“You gonna try and get there sometime today or what, Jack?” Ding asked from the passenger seat.

Ryan accelerated south on the freeway. Traffic was heavy but moving, and going close to the speed limit.

Midas spoke next. He was behind the wheel in the car with Clark now, and his impatience at the traffic was evident in his voice. “They’ll be able to use lights and sirens to get through this shit. Caruso sure as hell better stall.”

Adara defended her boyfriend. “Dom will do what he can,” she said. “He’ll definitely let us know when they’re on the road.”

Ryan sped past a highway patrolman doing ninety. Mercifully, the trooper had already pulled over another vehicle.

It was dark and beginning to sprinkle by the time Ryan took the exit to Farm Road 644. Midweek traffic was light on the farm-to-market road, even at rush hour, and he poured on the speed, feeling the Avenger’s engine open up with a throaty roar. He’d been nearest to the interstate when Dom gave the address, so he felt certain Midas’s and Adara’s vehicles were somewhere behind him.

“Watch these wet roads, ’mano,” Chavez said as Ryan drifted around a corner, a mile away from their target residence now, according to the GPS on his phone.

“Nag, nag, nag,” Ryan said, and punched the gas.

Chavez flipped him off and hung on to the side handle.

A minute later Ryan slowed, driving past a white frame house set back off the road about five hundred feet. Barbed-wire fencing, meant to keep in cattle, ran in front of the property and a heavy gate made of rusted drilling pipe blocked the entry. The porch light was visible through the trees. Ryan took the first left past the target address. He was surprised to find Clark’s pickup truck already parked in the tall Johnson grass along the gravel road. He and Midas were nowhere to be seen.

“How the hell did you get here first?” Ryan said into his mic.

“Superior navigation, kid,” Clark said.

“Position?” Ryan asked.

“You guys are late,” Midas said. “We’re already moving up to the house.”

Clark suddenly gasped over the radio, whispering, “Midas, get up here. Everyone else stand by.”

• • •

John Clark had seen great evil in his life. He was no stranger to misery. He’d experienced unspeakable sadness and unbearable pain — in Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and hot spots around the world — but the worst of it, the incident that gutted him, had happened right here in the good old USA. Admiral James Greer had known the whole story, but he’d taken the secrets with him when he passed away. Sandy knew most of it, and she’d probably guessed the rest, though they never talked about it. Clark was able to suppress the memories for the most part — Pam Madden’s brutal murder and the vengeance he’d meted out against the pimps and drug dealers who’d done it. He dreamed of her sometimes still, not in a longing way as someone might pine for a lost love, but because he was so incredibly sorry that he’d not been there to save her. He was a former SEAL when they’d met, already entrenched in the ways of warfare and mayhem, but it was Pam’s death that pushed him into the instrument that he’d become. Knowing her, watching her turn her life around, and then seeing that life snuffed out, had changed him forever — and left a mark on his soul that could not be erased.