The Shack: The Milk Run

All things considered, that made encountering Emma all the more ironic.

We'd just rounded the corner to head for the stairs when we walked right into her. And, of course, per policy, she promptly stopped what appeared to be a heated discussion with a White House liaison officer I vaguely knew and began talking with us.

Tess's reaction was flawless. "Ma'am, aren't you the executive assistant director for the National Security branch?"

Emma gave a perfect smile. "I take it you've studied the Bureau." She looked over at me, apparently with no recognition at all. "If you have a moment, I can talk with them for a few minutes. I was due at a meeting five minutes ago, but they won't start without me. So we can talk unless you have a schedule to keep."

The White House Liaison gave a sour grimace and did everything but stamp his foot impatiently, which made it easy for me to shake my head. "We have plenty of time."

That earned me a slight side-eye from Tess when she realized she wasn't the only one with a talent for accents and voices. It'd been a while, but I easily slid into an old Connecticut accent, which oozed good schools and affluence, although not at Emma's Swiss boarding school level. I kept my voice a bit higher, with a slight quaver, the voice of retirement. It was far from my normal central Virginia accent. She showed no sign of recognition at all.

Emma had one of her aides grab an empty briefing room and gave what I, at least, considered an outstanding bit of community engagement, despite the fact that I really wanted to be almost anywhere else.

The girls played their parts, asking typical questions and mostly looking fascinated. Delaney asked the usual question we get from kids. "Have you ever had to shoot someone?"

Emma didn't so much as twitch. It's a common question; it would have been a little unusual if none of the girls had asked it or at least thought of it. Each agent handles it differently. Emma gave a solemn nod. "When I had to, to save myself or someone else. It isn't something I'm particularly proud of, but it had to be done."

"My Dad was a Soldier; he says the same thing. Sometimes you have to do what has to be done." There was a depth to Delaney's voice, perfectly in synch with Emma's solemn tone. For that moment, they sounded eerily alike.

I remembered my conversation with Mackenzie. More than ever, I was sure Delaney had been forced to make those final decisions, probably more than once.

"We do our best to avoid those situations, but we can't all the time." She gave a practiced, slightly sad smile. I doubted she actually regretted pulling the trigger when she had to, any more than I did, but it was the right thing to say; although, perhaps not with these particular young women.

"It doesn't happen as often as it does in the movies. Most agents go through their whole career without ever having to engage in a firefight with a suspect."

Despite the obvious impatience of the White House liaison officer, Emma took her time and talked to the girls for a solid twenty minutes. Part of that was probably to piss off the liaison officer, but most of it was just, well, Emma. She believed in the FBI at a level that was beyond dedication; she fiercely wanted the FBI to be what it should be, what it aspired to be, beyond politics or petty bureaucratic concerns.

She sent her aide to her office to bring back FBI lapel pins; she solemnly pinned them first on the girls and then on me before making her apologies for having to leave for her meeting.

We waited until they were out of sight before moving to the stairwell.

I had an almost irresistible urge to break out in a very un-deputy-director-like giggle but managed to bring it up short. The girls chattered loudly and excitedly about how cool it was to meet the EAD for National Security. But the excitement never quite reached their eyes; deadly cold and serious, they scanned relentlessly.

Tess did a silent count before checking around the corner and gesturing us into the stairwell.

We walked up slowly as I lectured about the history of the FBI. If anyone ran into us, we'd just keep going and project that we had every right to be where we were.

Michael used to joke that if you want to be left alone in the Army, carry a clipboard and look busy. Anyone with any sense will stay clear just to avoid getting dragged into whatever task you've been tagged with.

Not everyone in the FBI was as enthusiastic as Emma about the engagement policy I had put into effect. Most would simply walk by an obvious officially sponsored tour and try desperately not to make eye contact to avoid getting pulled in and disrupting their already packed schedules.

I was careful to keep my "voice" in character. Regardless of what the movies show, it is extremely difficult to maintain a fake accent or voice pattern over any real length of time, even with professional training. Like Tess, I'd always been a natural mimic, but even with that advantage, I could only push it so far.

The fact that I was basically giving part of the speech I gave to every FBI Academy class was both good and bad. All too easy to remember, but all too easy to fall back into my natural voice and speech pattern.

It was also pointless as we didn't run into a single person. I could take some justifiable pride in that; one of my few contributions to the girls' planning process. The FBI, like every other large bureaucracy, has patterns. Work hours, lunch times, external drivers, distribution of subordinate and implied tasks, along with the driving need for internal communications, all work to force most meetings into a relatively narrow band. At times, the halls are crowded with passers-by. There are also times, even inside the FBI, that you'd never know that anyone worked there. Emma running late had been a fluke of timing.

We reached the door, and I prayed for two things; that the key card would work and that no meeting had been scheduled for the room. It was rarely used, but bad luck happens, and coincidences can kill.

I scanned the card, held my breath and pushed the door open.

Empty.

The energy-saving motion-detecting lights kicked on as I stepped in. The room smelled a little musty in that oddly specific way; that peculiar smell of an abandoned room.

It was the perfect place for Michael to have left me a message. I figured he had probably put it on the shared folders on the computer.

I smiled as I headed for the computer kiosk; all I had to do was figure out the name of the file or folder. We'd shared a lot of secrets, a lot of private thoughts. We practically had our own secret language. I knew it would be something I'd recognize instantly.

Long time lovers can do that. Build those private worlds that only they know.

I... I stopped.

The kiosk was empty. The various data lines, audio and video cords, USB and other cords were sitting randomly across it, like tentacles of some dead ultra-modern sea creature.

Delaney came up on my left and stared at the empty space where the computer was supposed to be. "Fuck."

"Fuck." I echoed her. She was clearly a bad influence on me. But then, even on reflection, I couldn't think of a better word to use.

Mackenzie visibly deflated as she took in the view of the empty kiosk. Tess moved slowly and looked around darkly. "Was that the only computer?"

"Yes." I sighed and stared at the ceiling. "That was it."

I felt the walls closing in. I'd been wrong on every count. We'd have to exfiltrate, and then I needed to find a way to get out of the US. I was putting everyone I came in contact with at risk.

What the hell was I even thinking? Teenage girls playing bodyguard? Sneaking into the FBI with Girl Scouts? Jesus.

I looked around. Delaney was watching the door, jaws clenched, struggling to keep her annoyance in check. Mackenzie was putting on a brave face, but I could see she'd taken a hit.

Tess... Tess wasn't annoyed or disappointed...she was scanning, breaking the room into sections and looking it over methodically. She looked up at me with a calculating, almost machine-like expression. "Where were you exactly when you met him?"

I looked over the room. "Over there at the table, but there's no computer there."

She shook her head. "There's plenty of dust on the kiosk where the computer used to be, but no outline. That computer was long gone before this ever started. Nobody has been in here for months. He had to know that."

She was already moving to the chair I'd pointed to; she pointed to Delaney. "Stay on the door. Mack, I need a light."

Delaney gave a curt nod and moved closer to the door, in a position to "accidentally" temporarily block entry. Mackenzie reached up into her hair and pulled out a hair clip that turned out to be a miniature flashlight. It would have looked like any other hair clip on the backscatter x-ray we'd passed through.

With one quick look at the door, she was on the floor and scooting under the table.

It took her about thirty seconds, and only that because either Michael or me had misremembered the precise location. Embarrassingly. It was probably me; I'd been a Special Agent at the time, so I probably hadn't been as far up the table as I "remembered."

She rolled out with a high capacity flash drive in her hand and gave me a smile with a wry twist as she held it up to me. "You know anyone named 'Legs?'"

I felt myself flush red. Michael's nickname for me had only ever been spoken when we were alone. Usually completely undressed.

All three girls shot me quick, sly looks. Mackenzie smiled knowingly. Delaney glanced down over my legs and snorted. "Figures."

I concentrated on the flash drive for a long moment; right up until Mackenzie plucked it from my hand and tucked it into her hair.

Exiting was far easier than I expected. For a change, everything went smoothly -- passing through security on the way out went without a hitch. We even stopped at the gift shop.

A few minutes later, we were on the crowded sidewalk and headed to the parking garage.

*****

Wolves in the Darkness

*****

We made an effort not to look like we were hurried or rushed, but we moved with a definite sense of purpose.

Tess pushed me into the van, and we rolled out before I could even get my seat belt buckled.

I looked around. "Where's Delaney?"

"She's meeting up with us later."

It chilled me that I hadn't even noticed her drop out of our group. "I don't like leaving her..."

"We didn't leave her." Mackenzie was insulted, but she kept her tone even, if a hair clipped. "You're paying us to do our job. At least, I hope we're getting paid. Just let us do it."

She moved the van through traffic as smoothly as any driver I'd ever had assigned, and we'd escaped just ahead of the heaviest surge. Rush hour is a kind of obsolete concept in DC, but there are heavier and lighter moments.

We were well south when I sensed a change in Mackenzie. She hadn't done or said anything, but it felt like the temperature had shifted. Tess caught it too, raising her eyes only slightly from her laptop.

Mackenzie finally spoke. "They are definitely on us. About a half mile back; silver sedan and black SUV closing slowly."

"They'll wait a while. Catch us out where there isn't any traffic. Less chance of police interference." Tess had a map up on her laptop, and I could just see the corner.

"That's what I would do. They have to know this van can't outrun anything." Mackenzie scanned the road.

We were another five miles down the road when Tess spoke. "Five hundred meters. They're waiting for traffic to clear. Probably another three miles."

She shifted her laptop, and I realized she had activated the backup camera on the van somehow. Mackenzie kept looking straight ahead. "Got it. Are you buckled in?"

I realized the last question was for me. "Yes."

"We have a plan for this. Just hang on."

After a few more miles, Tess glanced at Mackenzie, then back at the screen.

"They're moving up. One hundred fifty meters." Tess pulled a handgun out of the glove box and passed it back low between the seats to me, followed by two extra extended magazines. "Hang on to it just in case."

I looked down at it for a moment. A Glock, but not one I'd ever handled before. Distinctive, almost unique factory barrel porting. I twisted it and looked at the rear left of the slide. A selector switch for full automatic. "An 18C."

Tess didn't blink. "Twelve hundred rounds per minute with three magazines; armor piercing. If this goes wrong, use it. We'll hold them as long as we can. You get free. Contact K2."

"If you have to fight, fight like you're the third monkey on the ramp to Noah's Ark, and it's starting to rain." Mackenzie's laugh sounded all too much like Delaney's, and I had no doubt where that saying had come from.

Our pursuers continued to close quickly as Tess called the distance. "Fifty meters. Two in the sedan, four, maybe five in the SUV."

At twenty-five meters, Mackenzie took a deep breath. "Now."

Tess straightened up and looked directly back over her seat at our pursuers, and sat back down. I choked in shock. It was a completely unprofessional move; there was no way our hunters could have missed her looking back at them through the untinted windows.

To make matters worse, Mackenzie stomped on the accelerator, pushing the van to its pathetic limit as we pushed past the last of the traffic, an old battered pick-up truck. We sure as hell weren't going to outrun them, but now they knew we'd seen them.

The blatant amateurishness was so completely out of character I could only sit and watch in horror.

We pushed ahead, and they followed, leaving the few remaining vehicles behind.

Then I noticed that Tess was smiling. So was Mackenzie. Not normal, happy teenager smiles. A hunter's anticipation.

"Is it him?" Mackenzie's voice sounded like a hungry growl, and I wondered for a moment if Delaney's feral nature was contagious.

When Tess answered, the predatory sound made me was certain it was. "It's him."

Before I could ask what the hell they were talking about, Tess went on coolly.

"Do you think he wants her alive or dead?" The casual tone in Tess' voice was disturbing, especially if I focused on the fact that I was the "her" that Tess was so casually asking about.

Glancing in her mirrors, Mackenzie gave a half frown for a second. "Dead. All the windows just came down, and I saw a long gun barrel. The sedan gets ahead of us, boxes us in, the crew in the SUV shoots us up and finishes us off after we wreck. Not that it matters."

"Not real creative, are they?" Tess twisted in her seat, eyes sparkling with something like glee but hungrier. She caught me looking, and her smile widened a bit more. "Spooky says a friend of hers has a saying."

Mackenzie gave a soft, almost mocking laugh. "Wolves are the most dangerous of prey. Because they always hunt you back."

I turned to see what she was looking at. The SUV never had a chance. Our pursuers were locked on the van. Realizing we'd seen them and were running, they did what predators instinctively do.

They chased, trying to close the distance.

The old farm pickup truck we'd passed suddenly surged from behind, and Tess laughed and spoke in an eerily flawless Russian accent, in a beautiful angelic voice I recognized all too well. "And there are always more wolves in the darkness."

Police sometimes call it tactical vehicle intervention, although I'd heard the term tactical ramming used. These days, it is usually called a pursuit intervention technique. Or just a PIT maneuver.

The men in the SUV didn't catch on fast enough, although if they had, it probably wouldn't have made any difference at all; the truck was far quicker and more powerful than it looked. It pulled up until the front bumper was just even with the back of the rear passenger door of the SUV, then seemed to lunge into it, pushing the rear sideways, forcing it to spin out.

A police officer would have backed off as the SUV fishtailed, but the truck pushed harder, and it was both far heavier and more powerful. It forced them onto the shoulder and beyond.

The SUV driver was good; he tried to pull out of the fishtail, and turn it into a J-turn, but the narrowness of the road, the high center of gravity, the speed and the sheer power of the truck were too much. The SUV went into the ditch and crunched into a hard rollover.

Even if the crew weren't seriously injured, the SUV itself was done.

The truck neatly evaded the wreck and pushed ahead, far faster and more agile than an old farm truck should have been. The guys in the sedan reacted, but quick as they were, they had nowhere to go. Boxed in from the front by our van, their chance of evading the overpowered truck was near zero. They'd been caught by the same maneuver they'd planned to use on us. Their only chance was to get past us and run for it.

Mackenzie twisted the van slightly when the sedan tried to pass us, forcing him to compensate.

It was only for a fraction of a second but easily long enough for the vicious predator-truck to slam in and force them off the road and into the ditch, where it rolled. I caught a glimpse into the truck and wasn't at all surprised to see Delaney, her rage intensely focused, teeth bared as she slammed her vehicle to a stop next to the still rolling wreck.

Mackenzie had the van stopped, into reverse, and was back to the wrecked sedan before I could even react, bumper to bumper with the old farm truck.

Tess dropped out the door, moving low and fast, clutching something in her hand. I could see Delaney ahead of her, some kind of gun leveled at the wreck. The girls moved wordlessly in from the front, light and fast. It made sense, as the deployed airbags blocked anyone inside from seeing where they were as they approached.

Mackenzie was out, using the corner of the van as a prop to steady a rifle at the ready. They must have had a hide built into the van, as I'd had no idea at all that the heavy, magazine-fed rifle was there. A military nightmare of some kind; I didn't recognize it, but the shark-like profile, large scope and wide magazine all pointed to something that could go through a vehicle from end to end.

Delaney and Tess hit the open windows simultaneously, and I could hear the snap and stutter of police-grade stun guns.

"Two tangos, two down! Our package is on the passenger side." Delaney yanked the door open.

Rifle in one hand, dragging a bag in the other, Mackenzie rush to her side while Tess stayed focused on the driver.

An unbelievably short time later, Delaney and Tess roughly dumped a bagged, handcuffed, and duct-taped figure into the rear of the van while Mackenzie kept the area covered with her rifle. Delaney pulled what looked like silvery survival blankets out of a pocket, and they hurriedly wrapped him in them.

We pulled away, and Delaney gave a flippant wave as she pushed ahead of us.

A few minutes later, Mackenzie started talking. "We figured there'd be a good chance they'd acquire us at the FBI. That's what we would do. But we didn't figure it would be more than one or two vehicles because there are too many federal agencies in that area that might notice. They needed to keep a low profile."

"So you gambled. Too much. You didn't need the guy. We probably have what we need, and hired muscle isn't going to know anything useful."

A look shot between the two girls before Mackenzie turned to followed Delaney down a dirt road. "We created an apparent tactical opportunity for them and then exploited it. We know our limits. We had to maximize our advantages." She paused for a second. "And we have our reasons for taking this guy."

Tess shot her a warning look, and she stopped. I figured that was a pretty clear sign that subject was closed.