Curtis Woodman Ch. 01

Charley nodded his head and left.

Constance went to the liquor cabinet and poured herself a large one. She downed that in a single gulp; and, with speed I wasn't expecting from her, she threw the glass against the far wall. I watched the remnant of what was in the glass make its way down the wall.

This time Constance was looking at me. "How are you going to find Rick?"

The emotions in her voice were barely under control.

"I'm not. He's Halo now and no one is going to find him until he is ready. I'm going to let him find me."

"I'm sure I don't need to remind you that my daughter and grandchild are still missing?"

I didn't take offense at her remark, if anything, I understood that she needed to get that out.

"Judging by the way Cooper is sticking like glue to this case, I would say that's Cooper's department, not mine. You sent for me to find Halo; and, I suspect that from what I've seen so far, you need an unbiased sounding board."

I made sure we were looking at each other before I finished with. "Just remember, I said sounding board, not whipping boy."

The murder in her eyes eventually started to dissipate and I'm sure her husband was as relieved about that as I was. Slowly she nodded her head.

"I make no apologies for my past actions in this room Curtis." This time she made an effort to smile, and for that I was oh so grateful. "A sounding board you shall be."

This time she sat down and her husband and I followed. I then went into detail. I was going outside to get my second in command on my cell phone. Using the memories of the last time I was here, I told Constance that I wanted the guard dogs locked up at night, until Halo surfaces again. My people would be watching the gatehouse and I would set up a fire over by the creek that ran through the property and sit and wait for him.

After a pause her brow creased and then she asked. "Is that it? That's your master plan?"

"I'm not turning your estate upside down looking for him Constance. Even with the aid of tracker dogs, I wouldn't get anywhere near him. This is Halo, he may have been out of the loop for a while now but he's still got all the instincts he had before he retired. So I'm not wasting time on that. He will come to me once he realizes we're here."

Constance wasn't impressed, but she knew there wasn't any alternative. For a start, no one even knew if Halo was even still on the estate. Charley came back while I was leaving; he got out of his vehicle and I waited by Constance, just in case.

"The boys and I have talked Ma'am. This estate is not only our livelihood but our home. All our families live around here and it would be hell moving again. We made a promise to our wives and we're making the same promise to you Ma'am. We're staying, but please remember, Franklin came to us when Douglas moved to be close to his wife's folks."

He paused for just a second before he drew himself to his full height and said. "Give me the right to hire and fire and we will do everything in our power to make this estate air-tight."

Constance had used the time to calm down, and then nodded. A small smile came to her and she nodded to Charley.

"Agreed, although I make no apologies for my outburst. I'm sure you understand why. When the dust settles we will go into details on our new agreement."

Charley nodded and headed back to his vehicle. I stopped him at his car and we talked for a moment. He was uneasy with what I asked of him, but right now he was a realist, and we all knew we had to find Halo and find out what he knew. Charley agreed to lock the dogs up at night and the night guards were going to be restricted to the gatehouse only until we got Halo back.

*******

Just how do you catch a ghost? The boss has me watching him through my night scope; I just wished he would sit still. Every damn time he moves my scope whites-out because of the fire he's built in front of himself to keep warm, and to let Halo know he was here of course. Yes, how do you catch a ghost?

It was time to tense and relax my muscles again, I'm too hyper for the role of a sniper. It was Bradley that taught me to do this; every fifteen minutes, or I could run the risk of my body being inactive when I needed it to be active. The boss moved again and instinctively I closed my eyes to save my night vision. I was about to pull air into my lungs when I had the strangest of feelings.

The hairs on the back of my neck sprang to life and I desperately had to calm that fight-or-flight instinct. My Sig was too far down my body, and a dead give-away that I was reaching for it. I let go of the rifle grip and pulled my knife out. When I went to roll away something stopped me. It was big and black and stood over me. I had rolled against a leg. Instinct made me strike out with my knife, but the grip of whatever was stood over me, held on tightly. The form above me suddenly knelt down on my stomach, forcing the air out of me and for the first time in my life, I was afraid. The form's other hand came out of the blackness and my whole world went dark.

*******

I heard a slight rustling as a couple of bushes parted to allow someone access. When I looked, Halo had JoJo over his shoulder, the sniper rifle in his hand. When he got close enough he tossed me the rifle and I grabbed it out of the air while he gently placed JoJo by the fire. Until I figured out how he wanted this to go, I stayed sitting.

"A woman, Curtis. What the fuck?"

When he stood up again I tossed him a cup and he grabbed the coffee off the fire and made himself comfortable.

"She's going to be real pissed at you when she wakes."

"Oh yeah, and how the hell was I supposed to know you now had a woman in the team. What the hell happened to Desmond?"

My inward smile brought back those very memories, and I told Halo that Desmond walked into my office one afternoon and told me he had had enough, or rather his soon-to-be-wife had. I couldn't blame him. She had a child on the way and she wanted the child to know the daddy.

"I talked to the Boss and we got him a full time job; he's an instructor at the sniper school now."

This time we both smiled, that was the job that the Boss wanted to give to Halo if he came back to England. Instead Halo stayed in the States and married Brooke. A thought came to me just then, and I wondered if his mind had already shifted her name back to Kitten while he set about killing anyone in his way to finding her.

A low moan from JoJo brought us both back to this moment. We both watched as she slowly rolled onto her side, adjusted her legs before moving onto all fours, and then lifted her torso so her back was straight; she was now staring directly at Halo.

Her Sig appeared in her hand faster than I could tell her to stand down. The look of pure hatred for the man sitting next to the fire sipping from his cup was plain to see by the fires light. The click of her Sig and the chamber opening and locking in the empty position led me to breathe a sigh of relief that Halo had thought to remove the magazine's rounds and the round already in the chamber.

She was too good an operator not to know an empty from a loaded Sig, JoJo must be really bent out of shape at the moment and clearly not thinking straight. JoJo simply threw the Sig at him and practically leapt on him, her legs wrapped around his waist and her hands went around his throat. I was up and out of my seat as Halo shot his head forward and butted JoJo. Blood spurted from her nose and instinctively her eyes closed. That shocked her for the second it took me to pull her off the man who was about to kill her and toss her flailing body the other side of the fire.

When she sprang to her feet I was standing between them both. I pointed to Halo and shouted. "You, sit back down and behave." She was quick, but I had expected her movement and my boot came up and tripped her, when she fell to the ground I put my foot on her chest and pointed at her before shouting. "And you, calm down, and I damn well mean it."

When peace returned to my corner of the world I radioed Bradley to bring him and his medical kit with him. For the next few minutes I sat and watched them both glare at each other. Bradley sure wasn't in stealth mode when he came crashing through the undergrowth, took one look at the scene, sneaked a quick nod over to Halo, and then set about trying to stop the blood seeping from JoJo's nose and busted lip.

*******

There are times like these that I sure felt I was getting too old for this shit. I've got two of the best people I know wanting to have at it and I'm sitting in the middle trying to keep them apart. Bradley had packed out JoJo's nose. She looked ridiculous and I felt sure that Bradley would agree with me. I asked him if she would be carrying a couple of black eyes for a day or two, but there was no way in hell was I about to point that out to her.

Because I'm paranoid, I left Chad watching the security office with Jackson if he needed back-up. The rest of us were sitting around the fire when Constance walked into the light. She clearly hadn't slept at all this night.

Although she spotted Rick sitting next to me with his hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, her stare was at JoJo.

It took a moment but she walked over and held out her hand. "Come with me." She then looked at me and said. "Make sure the fires out when you're done here. Since you've locked my security team in, it's down to you to form a perimeter around my house. I'm getting a doctor for this."

She was nodding her head at JoJo who had already stood and Constance had anticipated her reluctance and grabbed the sleeve of her combats and disappeared into the darkness once again.

I looked at Halo and said. "Well I'm glad we cleared up that awkwardness."

Rick had the decency to look a little embarrassed; although I needed to give him some major slack since his wife and child were out there someplace. Up until we turned up, he simply didn't know who to trust. Keeping the two at the gate was not negotiable and so with some creative thinking between Freddy and I we got the outside perimeter of the house secure while Rick walked into the house.

Chad called a half an hour later that Cooper was at the gate with another person in the back of his car. The car crawled up to the house and stopped. Both people got out and walked to the door. Constance opened it and stood to one side before closing it once they had gone in. The reverse happened close to forty minutes later. It would be sun-up in just over an hour and Freddy and I would have to have a chat soon, dependent of what was going on in the house.

I was checking my watch once again when the door opened and Constance came out and leant against the support rail for a moment before walking about halfway to the paddock and stopping. I joined her a few minutes later.

"Pull your team back Curtis, I'm sending Rick out and he's going with you, but I'm keeping JoJo here with me in case of concussion. You can have her back later in the afternoon once the doctor has checked on her again."

Even in the darkness she seemed to pick up on my reluctance.

"It's ok Curtis, despite what we found yesterday, I do actually trust my security team. If it all goes south then I will call on Cooper and his people but I need you away from here and back at the airfield. Rick has information that Cooper has tried to drag out of him and so far he's refusing to talk."

The iron in her voice returned with a vengeance when she said. "Talk to Rick. You can have JoJo back later, then I want my daughter and my grandchild back Curtis. Once you're done and gone from this country, my husband and I plan to burn certain individuals to the ground for this and we can't have you here when we do."

Although I nodded my head, I doubt she could see me do it. I touched my comms button, walked back to my position, and we all met up at our transport. We paused by the gate for the last two of my team to get in and then I had a 'fuck this' moment, and got out of the vehicle. Freddy followed me into the security hut.

My eyes scanned the room, looking for the one in charge. Charley stood and nodded his head before walking outside with us both. I stopped and turned to Charley; Freddy stood directly behind him.

"You're ex forces, I can tell by the way you walk."

The head of security nodded his head once but still remained tight lipped.

"Don't let the accent fool you." I pointed back at the house, nestled in the trees and only just becoming visible in the slowly growing light of dawn. "That's our family back there and it's their security I'm placing in your hands. We're all entitled to make one mistake as long as we learn from it."

It felt like a staring competition, then his hand came up and he nodded his head. I held his hand and we shook on it. We both left that spot knowing that if I and my people ever had to come back for more than a social visit, then he and his team would be history.

*******

Cooper was waiting for us all when we got back to our hut. We all knew, and I will even place Halo in that statement, that Cooper had a job to do. Just as we all knew that somewhere along the line, he was going to need plausible deniability if his career was ever going to proceed.

"I got Freddy to give me the sizes of all your team, so there are H.R.T. uniforms in the back of my car. Cameras are just too common now to get away with British uniforms on our streets."

Freddy and I liked his logic. He didn't like or want us here, but he knew that when we were done and gone, his own team would reap the benefits. My mind did wonder if he was ready for the fall-out once Constance got to the bottom of all this as well.

JoJo made her appearance around mid-day; she walked up to me and asked for a moment, I turned to Freddy and nodded to him. He would keep our people busy while JoJo and I walked and talked. I was in no hurry, this was her moment and I let her have it.

"I will understand if you return me to my unit when we get back home. I let you down. What I did was grossly unprofessional and I will apologize to Rick when I see him as well."

I tried to take the heat out of her emotions when I said. "Rick has that effect on people from time to time."

She stopped and I turned to look at her, my heart went out to her but I still kept my mouth shut. The emotions that played across her face were interesting to watch. I'd seen some of them on various missions. When she wiped away a tear I saw one emotion I've never seen in her since I've known her; fear.

"My concentration was on you and my surroundings last night and I never heard his approach." She shrugged her shoulders and added. "Hell, I didn't even feel him, sense him, nothing until he stood over me."

JoJo looked down and uttered the words that made her human and she was now being forced to recognize that emotion. "I was afraid."

It took her a moment but she looked up at me, resigning herself to whatever punishment I was going to give her for what happened that evening. She knew that I had her in this unit long enough to know that had Rick not taken the rounds out of her Sig, she would have emptied the whole thing into him.

"The man had his wife and child stolen from him, he realizes that he doesn't know who to trust and I'm getting ready to blast him full of holes in an effort to exorcize my own demons. What kind of selfish bitch does that make me?"

"It makes you human."

She spun around to be confronted by her tormentor once again. Rick was standing less than three feet from us both, listening to everything. Neither of us had heard his approach.

"WILL YOU STOP FUCKING DOING THAT?"

It seems what JoJo screamed at Rick was like water off of a ducks back, the shy smile I recognized though and knew he was putting in the effort with his new friend.

We both watched his hand come out and say. "Rick Chalmers, pleased to meet you."

It was interesting to watch these emotions pour from JoJo; the screeching to a halt of her feelings as she looked at Ricks hand. This was a man that not long ago she wanted nothing more than to put as many holes in him as physically possible and be happy to bury the body, standing there, offering friendship.

Well if nothing else, life in this unit could sure get interesting from time to time. I turned and walked away while they had some sort of staring competition going on between themselves.

*******

My respect for Cooper grew over the hours and days I knew him; the man was a pit-bull. Now armed with the information that Rick gave him and the paranoia that seemed to come with this job, Cooper disappeared and came back two days later with a folder and a design drawing of a building not more than an hour's drive from here.

Freddy and I poured over the details with him and asked if we could keep everything on the table. It was clear he had no problem with that and left us alone for the rest of the evening. We did find out later that he went to see Constance and inform her of how far his own investigation had gone. Both mother and father had the hardest time at the moment; they knew where their daughter and grandchild were, but it was going to be left to us to get them out alive.

Constance came by first thing in the morning. Rick went with her and they spent an hour talking and sharing a pot of coffee. She came to see me before she left and we walked around some of the buildings; I was going to let her lead on this.

"This is the hardest part, I know that. I desperately don't want to heap any more pressure on you than there already is, so I will keep this simple. I brought you and your team here for one specific reason; if anyone can get my baby and grandchild out alive its Rick, you, Curtis, and your team."

This time she stopped and turned to look directly at me. "Those you don't kill I will do my best to make sure they spend the rest of their lives in jail. Do your job Curtis and bring my girls back, please."

I got a farewell hug from Constance before her car pulled up and took her away. Freddy followed me back into our hut and we set about pinning all the information we had been given from Cooper, onto the walls.

*******

"Boss, you've got to come out here and see this."

When I turned towards the door Chad was already walking away. When I looked at my watch I realized that the sound of gunfire had been going on for close to an hour now; with my attention on the finer details of the mission, I hadn't even noticed. Halo and JoJo were told to zero in the sniper rifles, but even I knew it didn't take that long.

As I cleared the corner of the hut, all but Lewis were watching from a safe distance. He was standing behind the two laying down, loading magazines from an ammo box on an upturned box. JoJo and Rick had placed a couple of sandbags together and were laying on the ground, their rifles pointed down the runway.

Freddy stood next to me and handed me a scope and pointed to the four cardboard targets.

"How far?" I asked.

"A thousand yards to the inch, they asked me to measure it out myself." He couldn't hide his smile as he did.

When I looked through the scope again it was obvious that those two were sure getting competitive. Every shot was either a head or chest shot and all on target, although I did notice more than an uncomfortable few holes in the groin area of JoJo's two targets.

I handed the scope back and said. "Tell them to knock it off before I make them run around the damn base in full kit."

No one saw me smile as I made my way back to the hut and the board I was looking at, trying to glean any other ideas that Freddy and I hadn't had yet, before we left this evening.

*******

Finally finding no more answers to my questions I called Freddy and we again bounced ideas off of each other. When we had exhausted even our own imaginations and 'what if scenarios,' Freddy set a final briefing in an hour. I went in search of Cooper and showed him what we had in mind. He kept his opinions to himself. That must have been the hardest thing he had done in a while. He even sat in on the briefing of my people and I watched his eyebrow raise a couple of times during that as well.