First Family (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 4)

A moment later Michelle was lifted off the floor and her head fell against Sean’s chest. He spoke to her, urgently, but she didn’t answer.

Sean laid Michelle on the bed, took the photo from her, and covered her with the sheet and sat next to her. He put his hand out and she instinctively gripped it. As the minutes went by and the sun came up, her sobs started to subside. Finally, her grip around his hand loosened and fell away as she slept. He tucked her hand up under the sheet.

Sean lay next to her, a finger sliding against her wet hair. He watched her until, exhausted, his own eyes closed and he fell asleep.

CHAPTER 58

QUARRY MARCHED across the dirt in front of his little house, Carlos behind him. The big man stopped and pointed to the berm.

Quarry said, “The camera feed goes right to where you’ll be. The TV monitor is all set up. I checked it out, works fine. It’s an exterior shot only, though. No way to hide it inside the house.”

“Understood.”

They had been over this several times already, but Carlos had learned that the one thing that Sam Quarry lived by was repetition. Like the pilot he was, the man’s firm belief was that going over it and over it was the only way to extract out as much potential error as was possible.

“The camera sight line is dead-on,” Quarry added. “But I’ll check it right up to the last minute.”

“Chances of it being discovered and taken out of operation?”

“Slim at best given the time parameters, but if it does you’ve got to resort to the backup.” Quarry slipped a pair of heavy binoculars from his knapsack and handed them to Carlos. “An old-fashioned decent pair of optics and two good eyes. I’ve got a sightline for you that won’t reveal your position. You just slide the lever I showed you in the bunker open, like a gun turret.”

Carlos nodded in understanding. “And the other thing?” he said, eying the house, the treeline, and the critical ground in between.

Quarry smiled. “That’s the beauty of the whole damn thing, Carlos. It’s all activated when you hit the one button.” He grinned like a schoolboy who’d just won the science fair. “Took me a while to build, little tricky, works off a split feed, but I got there. And once you push it, Carlos, there ain’t no going back, my friend.”

“And how do I contact you at the mine?”

“First, you’ll contact me whether things go right or go to hell. And you’ll do it with this.” Quarry handed him a boxy device. “Like a SAT phone,” he explained. “The call will get to me, even up at the mine. I’ve already tested it. But the slit in the hole you’ll be in has to be open so it can communicate with the satellite. But it’ll only take you a few seconds to make the call. No long-winded messages, just yea or nay.”

Carlos held the phone. “Where did you get this?”

“Built it out of spare parts.”

“But the signal from the satellite?”

“Piggybacked on an existing platform. Went to the library and got some info off the computer that showed me how to do it. Easier than you might think if your mind works that way. Hell, Carlos, all this stuff I did here is easy compared to what we had to jury-rig in’Nam. So this way saved me a lot of money. Money I ain’t got.”

Carlos looked at him in unconcealed awe. “Is there nothing you can’t do?”

“There’s lots of things I can’t do. Most of them important. I’m just a working man. Don’t know squat about shit.”

“So when is all this going to go down?”

“I’ll let you know, but it’ll be soon.”

Carlos once more looked over at the knoll. Quarry watched him closely.

“You’ll be hidden, but exposed at the same time,” Quarry said. “Close quarters.”

“I know this,” answered Carlos, whose gaze shifted to a buzzard making lazy ovals in the sky.

“It’s only an issue if they make it one. Otherwise you walk away.”

Carlos nodded, but kept his gaze on the bird.

“You want me to switch with you I got no problem with that, Carlos. But I’ll ask this one time only.”

The wiry man shook his head. “I told you I would do this and I will do this.”