Chapter Thirty-One
Don't Get Too Close
It's Dark Inside
It's Where My Demons Hide
It's Where My Demons Hide
Roughly about 10:00 Massachusetts Time
Travis Quinn quickly grabbed his duffle bag from just inside the plane as he hurried down the steps to hit the ground running. He had a car waiting for him by the small service building not far from the runway where his contact had just landed his plane. He needed to hurry as his contact had just gotten some info that the field was about to be closed for the day for some maintenance work and they didn't need to be around in case any of the workers became suspicious of their sudden arrival.
He watched as his friend quickly closed the doors and he worked to pull the steps away from the plane himself to be sure he had enough room for takeoff. He hurried to the waiting jeep and quickly tossed his bag in the backseat before jumping behind the wheel. He watched the plane take off and smiled as he his friend disappeared into the blue sky.
He reached for the keys hidden in the visor and was just about to start the car when someone wrenched the door open and he was being pulled from the vehicle. He felt his head being rammed into the back door and he fell to the ground spurting blood from his nose.
He feigned confusion for a second to assess the situation and he could tell there was more than one someone. At least three by the sounds of their breathing. He spit out blood as he ran his tongue over his teeth to check they were all accounted for.
"You really shouldn't have done that." He said as he slowly turned to face the three men. "You really shouldn't have done that at all."
"Why? What are you gonna do Quinn?" The one closest to him taunted.
The man was roughly the size of a Mack truck, Quinn thought with a smile. He liked them big. Meant they were more vulnerable in certain spots of their anatomy. He smiled a bloody smile at Mack and slowly moved to sit up with his back against the jeep.
"Well, you seem to know my name, but I don't know who the hell any of you are. Care to enlighten me?"
Mack just smiled as he reached behind him and pulled out the cuffs from his belt. "Sorry. Not part of the plan."
Quinn could see the other two were armed with what looked like military grade assault rifles and they were staying behind Mack, so he knew he'd have a little more trouble bringing them closer, but hell he'd faced off against worse. He continued to smile as he quickly brought his right foot up to connect with Mack's left kneecap and he had the pleasure of both feeling and hearing the snap as it gave way.
The big man howled in pain and went down hard. He lost the cuffs and his face hit the ground which gave Quinn another pleasurable feeling when he heard the crunch of nasal cartilage giving way.
The man moaned but didn't move. Quinn didn't spare him another look as he quickly jumped to his feet to take the other two down. He grabbed one man's gun and used it to bring it into his ribs to feel some give way from the hit. He felt a bit of satisfaction at that as the man stumbled back and fell to the ground holding his right side. Quinn didn't waste time watching the man as he turned to face the third man with the rifle still in his hands.
This man seemed to be at least somewhat smarter as he quickly moved behind the rear of the jeep and began firing at him. Quinn had nowhere to go, but down. He dropped and just as he was rolling under the Jeep, he felt the bullet tear into his left leg from behind before he was pulling himself under the vehicle for cover. He paused as he managed to maneuver himself around onto his stomach and pull the rifle up under him.
He watched the man's legs at the back of the Jeep and just as the man dropped down to look for Quinn, he fired. Quinn fired two quick bursts and saw with relief as both bullets tore into the young man's face as he fell backward dead.
Quinn didn't stop to celebrate as he quickly turned his body back to the side where he'd rolled under to check on the other two men. Mack was still down for the count, but the second man he couldn't see. He looked all around him searching for the man's legs and didn't see anything. Either the man had grown wings and was on top of the car, in which case he would have felt the car shift from the weight, or more likely he'd turned tail and ran.
He slowly rolled out from under the car and looked to see the man was indeed running for an SUV parked not far from him. He couldn't let the man get away in case there were others out there, but he hadn't taken a man down like this in a long time. Quinn had no qualms about killing to save himself, but he didn't like shooting someone in the back.
He raised the rifle and sighted at the man. Just as he was debating on pulling the trigger, the man reached the SUV and turned back to face Quinn. Quinn didn't hesitate; he pulled the trigger and watched through the sight as his bullet hit home and the man went down with the bullet wound still smoking from between his eyes.
Quinn didn't take the time to worry about Mack, he knew the noise would have alerted someone, so he threw the rifle aside and managed to pull himself up and get inside the Jeep. He pulled his belt from his jeans and quickly made a tourniquet to slow down the bleeding. He found the keys and got them in the ignition on the third try after wiping the blood from his hands on his jeans. He got the car started and pulled out just as he saw another SUV pulling up behind the first one in his rear-view mirror.
He didn't know if this assault had been the result of his own doing or because someone knew he was coming to help find Spencer, but either way the men had been good. Not great, but good. He could tell they'd once been military, just not the best the military had to offer. Someone was after him one way or another and he needed to get to Ford's place as soon as possible, hopefully before he bled out.
He drove like hell until he hit the highway and then slowed so he wouldn't attract any attention, but he knew he wasn't going to get much farther if he didn't find help. He was already feeling the effects of the blood loss and he didn't really want to end up crashing the car. He took the first exit off the highway after giving it some thought, and he found he didn't know where he was. He'd been to Boston a lot, but never this far out and while Braintree wasn't a major metropolis, it was fairly large, and it was part of the greater Boston area.
He pulled the Jeep to a stop just outside what looked like a closed till further notice small business building. It looked like it had been some kind of nick nack or antique store. He reversed and looked for the street that led to the alley. He turned and found the back side of the building. Before getting out he fished out his cell phone.
He debated on who to call. He needed to call Vance, but he also needed to check with Kat. Vance could help, but Kat might have contacts here too that could help. Yet calling her could expose her and in turn expose Spencer, and he didn't want anything happening to Kat.
His mind made up, he punched in the number. He was waiting for the other person to pick up; when he heard the questioning hello, he spoke through a raspy throat that was threatening to cause him to lose what little food he'd had in the last ten hours.
"Vance...?" He tried but could barely hear his own voice. "Vance..." he tried again. "Um, I seem to have a problem...not gonna...not gonna make it to...to you right...right now."
"Quinn? What's wrong?" Vance's voice came through the phone loud and clear.
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Col. Vance stood in Nate's loft watching as Hardison worked on the information he'd gathered from the warehouse, while Ford himself sat at the table with the woman Sophie. The blonde was nowhere to be seen, but he figured it best not to know what that woman did to unwind.
Both Emma and Whitmore were across the hall at Eliot's loft. Vance paced with his cell glued to his ear. He could tell something was wrong with Quinn. He didn't sound good and he was having trouble speaking.
"Quinn? What's wrong?" He blurted into the phone. He ran a nervous hand through his hair. "Come on Quinn, talk to me."
Nate got up and walked over to him and Vance pulled the cell away from his ear and hit the speaker button. They both could barely hear the retrieval specialist's reply to Vance.
"Can't make it...shot...three of 'em at...airfield. Not sure if...if my fault or..."
They could make out the sounds of traffic nearby. "Quinn, where are you? Tell me and I'll send someone to you."
"I'm fine. Just losing a little blood...nothing major. Gonna hole up and... get fixed. Gotta find Kat, Vance...she's... she needs our...help."
Vance and Nate heard what sounded like a horn blasting then really close to the phone. They winced at the noise but didn't disconnect. Nate grabbed Vance's cell much to Vance's surprise and rushed to Hardison.
He handed the phone to hm and said simply, "trace it."
Hardison looked surprised, but quickly pulled out a cord and plugged into Vance's phone and attached the other end to his laptop. He began pushing buttons on the keyboard.
Vance came up behind the hacker and reached to pick up the phone trying not to disturb the cord. "Quinn, where are you? I'm going to send help for you."
Quinn tried hard to focus on his surroundings having pulled his head away from the steering wheel where he'd set off the horn. He tried to focus on the numbers over the back door of the building he'd found. "Not sure. Still in Braintree...first exit off highway 95...abandoned building...number is..." He tried to focus harder on the numbers. "Looks like 3...9...5...8...don't know the street."
Nate reached over and spoke into the cell. "Quinn, this is Nate Ford. Where is your contact Kat? Where does she have Eliot?"
But there was no reply. Just the sounds of a car door being opened and then some muffled voices. Voices. More than one voice was suddenly coming through the line.
"Quinn?" Vance tried as they listened to what was the unmistakable sound of someone moaning and someone trying to offer comfort. "Who's there? Tell me what's happening!"
There was the sound of rustling and then there was nothing. The phone went silent.
Both Quinn and Ford looked at Hardison who shook his head. "Not enough time. Best I've got is the general location and he's somewhere like he said just off the highway in this general area." He pointed to his computer screen showing a general map of Braintree as it overlapped with the outskirts of Boston.
"Damn it!" Vance said as he tossed his phone onto Hardison's table.
"Colonel," Hardison began as he picked up the cell. "I can still keep trying if you can get him back." He handed the cell back to Vance who took it gingerly.
"I don't have his number. He never gave it to me, and it comes up unknown on the ID screen."
Hardison smiled at the man. "No number is unknown." He took back the phone and pulled out a different cord and switched it with the first one. "I hope you don't have any deep military secret calls on here, cause I'm about to go fishing."
Vance just shook his head in wonder. "No wonder Eliot likes it here." He watched as within minutes Hardison had a long list of calls made to his phone within the last twenty-four hours. "Whatever you find on there, Hardison better stay just within us. I got calls from my wife and her mother on there."
Hardison looked up at the man. "You get calls from your mother-in-law?"
Vance laughed at the guy's expression. "Oh, yeah. Been married to her daughter going on 18 years and she still finds time to let me know when I'm doing things wrong."
"Hardison, what if we can't get through to Quinn's cell? Cab you still trace it?"
Hardison shook his head. "Not unless it gets answered." He looked at Nate as he saw the fear in the man's eyes. "But," he began as he moved through the list of numbers. "If the Colonel can help me eliminate the numbers he knows and we go with the times that we know Quinn has already called him, then when I have Quinn's number, I can start a search on his calls. It'll take longer since I don't have his actual phone to plug into, but if I hack his carrier, I might be able to find this Kat's number and we can try calling her. I can't trace her number without her phone either, but if she answers our call then I can trace the phone call from our phone." He smiled as his fingers danced over his keyboard.
Nathan Ford smiled for the first time in over twenty-four hours. "Make it happen, Hardison. Make it happen."
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"He got away, sir." The voice said into the phone that Evan had locked to his ear. "But we've got men out searching for him. He won't get far. Frank winged him and he was losing a lot of blood." The man knelt to look at the blood drops on the ground where the Jeep had previously been parked near the small airfield.
"And your men?" Evan asked, not really caring, but knew he needed all the details.
"Ted is on his way to medical, broken knee, nose and concussion. Billy's dead and so is Frank. Both brutal, but precise kills. The man is as good as you said."
"I told you Spencer trained him." Evan paused as he took in the info. "Authorities have been diverted?"
"Yes sir. This has become a military investigation. I've got three teams searching the surrounding area in a 10-mile radius. We'll find him."
"Good. I want him ASAP. He's the one that damned nurse was contacting." Evan smiled as he thanked his electronics expert at being able to post not just one camera in Eliot's room, but three. He had three angles of the woman texting what seemed to be innocent messages. His expert had taken his sweet time, but he'd just come through with the two numbers she'd contacted. One was scrambled and led them all over the country, but he was working on narrowing it down. The other had been a burner cell that he'd traced from overseas to the airfield and Evan through his contacts had discovered who was being dropped off at that airfield.
The nurse somehow had connections to the military just as Eliot had. It was ironic that he got a nurse for his brother that just so happened to have had a brother under Eliot's command as well as this Travis Quinn he'd discovered. She had to know who Eliot was to begin with and had somehow gotten herself assigned to work with Dr. Richards. There were just too many coincidences to this whole thing. And Evan didn't believe in coincidences. All things happened for a reason.
"Let me know when you have his location. Don't kill him, bring him to the warehouse. I'm almost there now; I got sidetracked by Riley with the info on Quinn. Liam still isn't answering his cell either, so send a team to start searching for hm in case he's not at the warehouse where he's supposed to be. And when you find him, kill him. He's been nothing but trouble really."
"Yes, sir. Anything else?"
Evan thought about that. "Send a team to Ford's place. I want to start keeping tabs on them. Word is they've brought in outside help and Liam's team isn't responding; the one he was supposed to have on them. If he had any on them." He thought about something else. "And have Nelson keep tabs on Dayan; make sure she's heading to the city. She's another lose end if she doesn't follow through."
"Yes sir."