Burying the Past Read online

  “I don’t know if this is going to work. It’s hard to get a clear view from here.”

  He reached into a pouch on his belt and pulled out a fairly small pair of binoculars, handing them to Taylor.

  “See if these help. We can edge a few feet further, but much more than that, and someone looking into the forest might spot you. I wouldn’t risk it.”

  They moved a few feet closer and then stopped near a large up-growth of underbrush that helped to further hide them. Taylor put the binoculars to his eyes and began to slowly pan across the direction of the buildings. Much of the view was blocked by trees, but the binoculars helped bring the slivers where there was still a clear view into focus. It took him a few minutes of going across the entire scene several times before he got a clear picture of what might be happening.

  The first thing that stood out to Taylor was the building was definitely occupied, as he could see two older model cars behind the building. They weren’t overgrown and the windows were clean, which meant they probably weren’t just abandoned by the previous owners.

  The buildings themselves were just as dilapidated as promised, although he thought the description of them as warehouses was a bit too generous. They looked more like old barns than anything else. They were perhaps a little longer than what he’d pictured when he thought of a barn initially, but they were much too small to be called warehouses. There were very dirty windows in a row along the top of the buildings right below the roof, most of which were broken. He could also see several sections of the roof along with the corners of the buildings with notable holes. Given their smaller size and obviously bad condition, he could see why none of the locals ever used the buildings themselves, and why it would seem odd for strangers to be using them now, at least not without a major overhaul.

  “I think there’s still people in there and I don’t think they’re locals,” Taylor said, turning to Whitaker.

  “We need to bring the tac team up before we move in. The guys at the water treatment had assault rifles. If there are more people here I don’t want to try and take them on by myself.”

  “We don’t want to just have the helicopter drop them on the building or land out in those fields across the road from them. It would leave our guys sitting ducks and any chance at surprise would go right out the window.”

  “I can call around and get a few guys I know to meet me at the airstrip with some cars. We should be able to get them all back here before long.”

  “Let’s do that,” Taylor said. “I’ll let them know what’s going on and have them standing by and ready. Bring them up through the woods like you brought us, and we can take the place from behind. If we move out of the trees fast enough we should be on them before they have much of a chance.”

  “We’ll stay here and keep an eye on the buildings,” Whitaker said.

  The ranger turned and headed back the way they’d come, standing up, he began almost jogging once he was a little further into the woods but no longer visible from the buildings themselves. Whitaker pulled out her radio, and called in instructions to the team to expect the ranger with local transportation for them and giving a brief rundown of the situation. Given their bad position, they couldn’t actually see enough to form a tactical plan or find out what kind of setup the people in the barn had, which frustrated the team leader who clearly was used to more planning.

  Coming from the Special Forces where they planned for months for an operation he couldn’t fault the man, but he’d also been through chaos enough times to know this is how things sometimes went.

  “You know he and the sheriff could have been right, and these are just some guys cooking up meth. We’d end up with a bunch of paperwork and nothing to show for it.”

  “Do you really think that’s what we’re going to find?”

  “I don’t know. Except for running across the Bennett girl yesterday, our luck hasn’t been great on this case so far. Although I’m not sure if it would be lucky to find someone tied to Qasim, probably armed to the teeth or lucky if it turned out to be locals making drugs and not packing assault rifles.”

  “It could be terrorists who aren’t heavily armed,” Taylor offered.

  “Like that’s how it ever goes.”

  “I’m just trying to be an optimist.”

  Whitaker lifted an eyebrow and gave him a doubtful look, “Since when have you been an optimist?”

  “We can’t both be negative. I figured since you went all doomsday I should pick up the slack.”

  She gave him a smile and said, “I guess if you’re going to go all 'team player' on me, I’ll let it pass.”

  Taylor was about to reply when movement caught his attention. Lifting the binoculars back up to his eyes, he saw three men walking from the now open door at the back of one of the buildings with containers, headed towards the waiting cars. Pulling out the radio again, Taylor turned its volume down and contacted the tactical team leader.

  “What’s your ETA?”

  After a brief pause, probably to check with Officer Shelby, the man responded, “Just under ten minutes. We’ve loaded everyone out, and we're headed your way.”

  “Shit,” Taylor said looking at Whitaker. “If these guys were able to get out every time the sheriff came to check on them, there’s no way we have ten minutes.”

  “Probably not. Have the tac team just come straight in and skip the sneaking behind through the woods. We’ll go now and try and hold them until backup gets here.”

  “They’re in buildings or behind cars and we’re in a not very dense wooded area. This is a shit tactical situation.”

  “It’s also the situation we have to deal with.”

  Taylor grimaced but couldn’t disagree with her. Keying on the radio he relayed her instructions to the team leader, who vehemently disagreed with the plan. Like most people on swat teams and the like that Taylor had dealt with, they thought anyone not on the tactical team should let the ‘professionals’ deal with it. Whitaker had to finally take the radio and order him to follow her instructions. Since she’d been explicitly put in command the team leader had little choice in the matter although he promised to submit his exception in a written report.

  Taylor wasn’t sure how much stock the Bureau put in things like that but it didn’t give Whitaker any pause so he guessed she wasn’t overly concerned. Handing the radio back to Taylor she pulled her service weapon and moved from the kneeling positioned they’d been waiting into a crouch.

  Taylor followed suit and said, “We should separate a little. Give me a minute to move down and get in position. If they move away from the car, we’ll wait until they go inside. Otherwise, we need to move in quickly, drop them fast and get to the closest car. We’re going to want it before they are able to get those rifles up. We’re exposed out here. Without adequate cover the rifles will take us apart.”

  “Sounds good. We’ll go on your signal.”

  Taylor reached out and gripped her shoulder, letting her know how much he loved her, before he turned. He moved at a slow crouch to put him roughly twenty feet away from her, giving one of them a better chance of making it through, if the men by the car did manage to get their rifles up.

  He waited for a beat watching the men but it became readily clear none of the three of them were going back inside. They were also not getting into the car and were all looking back towards the building they’d come from, suggesting there was at least one, if not several, more suspects unaccounted for.

  While he’d prefer to not charge targets that outnumbered him who were also better armed this seemed like the best chance they’d get. If these three weren’t going back inside and there were more inside, then the odds could only get worse. They also had the best chance of surprise right now, that they were going to get. None of the men were looking their direction, and all of them had their rifles slung, which meant once the action started he and Whitaker would get a few free shots in before they could return fire.

  Taylor signaled Whitaker an
d then pushed himself forwards, taking off at a fast walk. With the thick underbrush, that was as fast as he was able to move until he got closer and it started to thin out. Since each step cleared his field of fire a little more, he ran with his weapon up and in shooting position but held fire as long as he could to ensure he hit what he aimed at.

  He didn’t get as long of a reprieve as he would have liked. Seconds after he started moving one of the men, turned to look towards the woods, Taylor couldn’t see his face to gauge a response but that became clear as he started to slide the rifle off his shoulder.

  Taylor fired, clipping a tree. A second later he heard Whitaker’s weapon discharge and the man dropped as a mist of blood sprayed over one of his two friends. The man covered in blood froze, either from the suddenness of the violence or shock at the sight of the back of another man’s head exploding.

  Taylor increased his pace as the underbrush thinned and fired twice more as the third man who hadn’t paused began pulling up his rifle. The first bullet smashed into the door frame of the car but the third was finally on target, smashing into the man’s right shoulder. It didn’t knock him down but it did cause him to stagger back and release the rifle. While he didn’t drop the weapon entirely, he had released the grip and was now just holding the weapon by its stock.

  The third man, who now that Taylor was closer he could see was a teenager much younger than he’d at first thought, decided he didn’t want any part of what was happening. Dropping his weapon on the ground the young man threw his hands in the air.

  Taylor kept his weapon still trained on the injured shooter who, after seeing his partner drop his weapon leaving the pair of them effectively unarmed, followed suit. Taylor was just clearing the edge of the forest when the door to the dilapidated warehouse banged open and a new shooter appeared, his weapon already up and pointed in Taylor’s direction.

  Even though the teenager and the injured man stood between the hostile in the doorway and himself, Taylor could see the wild look on his face and knew the man wasn’t going to hesitate. Taylor threw himself on the ground in the direction of the car and shouted a warning to Whitaker just as the man opened fire. Taylor watched as bullets ripped through the two unarmed men, their lifeless bodies dropping to the ground, both clearly dead before they finished falling.

  Taylor crawled towards the car to get more cover, and looked over his shoulder to where he thought Whitaker would be. He couldn’t see her and hoped she’d dropped to the ground behind a tree before the man opened fire. Taylor just reached the car as the man’s weapon clicked empty. He lifted himself into a couch, his weapon finding the shooter even as the man slapped in a new clip and worked the bolt.

  Taylor had the thought that this man must have spent time in one of the training camps the terrorists used, since an American would have almost instinctively ducked back into cover before reloading. He’d always thought that if these guys ever took the time to learn to think tactically even a little bit, he’d be screwed. It’s what made Qasim and those he directly trained so dangerous since they did think that way most the time. They were just lucky he hadn’t been able to bring over more of his own people and had to rely on more poorly trained members of other terrorist cells.

  That flashed through Taylor’s mind in an instant as he beat the shooter to the punch and fired twice, hitting the man center of mass. Taylor watched as he collapsed into a heap on the floor.

  Keeping his eyes on the doorway and pausing to make sure no one else would come through the warehouse door firing Taylor called out, “Whitaker?”

  “Yeah,” she said from somewhere behind him still in the trees. “I’m fine.”

  She came dashing out of the trees in a half-crouch until she was safely behind the car. She looked over at him and said, “That sucked.”

  “I think we should wait for the tactical team, and not try and clear the buildings. We can’t clear both buildings safely and keep an eye on their cars. Besides, while we're here on the vehicles, no one else will get far if there are more shooters inside.”

  “Works for me.”

  Taylor radioed the team leader, and updated him on the situation including where they were currently positioned to hopefully prevent a friendly fire situation. They only had a minute to wait before the Rangers SUV came tearing around the side of the buildings and skidded to a halt throwing a shower of rocks in Taylor and Whitaker’s direction. The team leader and two other team members, along with the ranger came piling out of the SUV and around behind it to work as cover.

  Taylor assumed the rest of the team was around the front of the buildings as he could hear a commotion in that direction.

  “You three wait here, while my people clear the building.”

  “You don’t have to ask me twice,” Taylor said, which earned him a serious glare since technically this was the second time the man had asked Taylor and Whitaker to stand down and let the tactical team handle the situation.

  The man chose not to comment however, and proceeded to ignore Taylor as he talked through his throat mike to the rest of his team. A few minutes later they heard a loud bang from the other end of the building. The tactical team leader took that as his cue and he and his two friends took off through the open doorway to the building, stepping over the terrorist Taylor had shot.

  After a few more minutes and a lot more shouting, the team finished clearing both buildings.

  As the rest of the men spread out to surround the buildings, Taylor assumed to act as security while they cleared the scene, the team leader headed over to Whitaker.

  “You’re going to want to see what’s in there.”

  Chapter 15

  Taylor moved around the edge of the car he’d been using as cover in case more terrorists had come out while the tac team was clearing the building and holstered his weapon. Considering the tac team leader and the man with him both had their weapons slung over their shoulders, Taylor assumed there wasn’t any immediate danger, at least not from anything that a gun could help with. Considering the urgency in the man's voice a few moments before, that didn’t mean there wasn’t any danger at all.

  Taylor was just walking past the bodies of the two terrorists gunned down by friendly fire, when he suddenly stopped and said, “Well, shit.”

  “What?” Whitaker, who had been headed around the other end of the car, stopped and asked.

  Taylor pointed at one of the bodies, causing Whitaker to also swear, albeit silently when she saw what he was looking at. Taylor hadn’t gotten a good look at the face of the terrorist who’d thrown down his weapon when the shooting had started, partly because he was obscured by trees and partly because there were more important things on his mind at the time, like avoiding being shot.

  Once Taylor had gotten a closer look and the situation had calmed down; Taylor recognized Justin Sampson, the boy who’d gotten involved with Mary Bennett. Taylor frowned as he looked at the young man. From how his parents had talked about him, it was pretty clear he’d gotten in over his head with the Bennett girl. The fact that, at the first sign of real danger, the teenager had thrown his gun down and surrendered was proof of that. While Taylor would have been happy to see the college student prosecuted for assisting terrorists, even if he’d been a dupe and not a true believer, he hadn’t wanted harm to come to the kid. Being shot in the back while you’re trying to surrender is a sad ending to the kid's sad life.

  Taylor made eye contact with Whitaker for a moment and was certain she was thinking similar thoughts about the kid. The moment passed and both headed towards the warehouse. While both felt bad about how the kid had ended up, they had a job to do.

  Inside the building was essentially a large open room with an interior door on the far end. The front of the building currently stood open, and looked to lead to an office or some type of reception area. The front third of the building was taken up with rows of sturdy looking benches. Several of them still contained what Taylor could only think of as scientific instruments such as burners,
beakers and large stoppered flasks.

  The team leader stopped them from getting closer to that area.

  “One of my guys got close to those tables and caught a whiff of something. He’s out front puking his guts out.”

  “Have you called paramedics?”

  “One of the guys on our team is trained as our team medic. He's checking our man over now. I called the chopper to come airlift him out, just in case. We’d been briefed on what happened in Amberville, and our medic has been prepared for similar toxins. He thinks my guy will be okay, but considering what might be in those containers, I think it's best if no one else goes over there.”