King and Maxwell (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 6)

Edgar had emailed him the interior floor plans of the cabin that he had dug up somewhere online. It was amazing what the gentle giant could do with his keyboard and a mind filled with more stuff than just about anyone else’s.

Sean wished they could afford him.

There were two rooms in the place of equal size. Sean was pretty sure the kids would be held in the back room because the front had the only exit door to the place. You didn’t put prisoners in a room with a way out. And when Sean drew near enough to the cabin to see the rear window, his deduction was confirmed. There was plywood nailed over it.

He looked at Wingo. “You see that?”

Wingo nodded. “Problem is, we try and get the boards off, the guards will gun them down.”

“Not if we take care of the guards first.”

“There might be one in the room with the kids.”

Sean eyed the vehicle parked in front of the cabin. It wasn’t Grant’s Mercedes, unfortunately.

“Four-seater,” said Sean. “Chances are we have two guards. They have to move the kids, that makes four seats.”

Sean had a comm pack that was wired to units McKinney and Littlefield had. He spoke into his headset.

“We’re in position.”

“Roger that for us too,” replied McKinney.

“Looks like we got two guards and the hostages in the back room.”

“We have eyes on it. How do you want to do this?”

Sean edged closer to the cabin. What he was trying to get was a direct sight line through one of the front windows. But the storm, while covering their approach, was making a visual pretty hard to come by.

He looked back at Wingo and waved him forward. The soldier scampered toward him seeking cover along the way, just as he no doubt had done in the Middle East.

He stopped next to Sean. “What’s the plan?”

“Treat it like combat. What would you do?”

Wingo eyed the surroundings. “Normally, you’d want to draw fire, revealing their position, and then follow up with focused fire or call in an airstrike.”

“Fresh out of F-16s, my friend. Too bad one of our Federal friends didn’t bring a thermal imager. We could see where the body heat was arrayed in there.”

A jagged strip of lightning struck a tree in the distance, severing it in half and setting it on fire. A deafening boom of thunder followed. The split tree toppled to the ground, where the flames were quickly doused by the heavy rains.

Sean watched the smoldering tree for a few moments and then looked at Wingo.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. Thank you, Mother Nature.”

Michelle was being escorted to the White House in a black SUV with four Secret Service agents, two of whom she knew.

“What’s the deal?” she asked one of them as they drove along.

The man shrugged. “Not my place.”

The other added, “You’ll know soon enough. The Man will tell you himself.”

The Man was President John Cole. And from the grim expressions of the four agents, Michelle did not think the Man was in a particularly good mood.

They had made her turn off her phone. No communications. No pictures. No recordings of any kind. She hoped Sean didn’t call while she was out of the loop.

They pulled into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and Michelle was taken to the Oval Office. She was told to wait; the president would join her shortly.