The First Lady - James Patterson Page 0,30
arms folded before me and see the three agents are staring at me. I shrug. “Now we wait.”
“How long?” Brian asks.
“As long as we have to,” I say, and then I check the setting on the Motorola XTS 5000 radio attached to my belt—along with a set of handcuffs, pepper spray, my SIG Sauer P229 pistol, and ASP expandable baton—and then I toggle the microphone at my wrist and say, “Scotty, Sally calling.”
This is an encrypted channel, and I don’t like fooling around with code names that can be forgotten under pressure. “This is Scotty, go.”
I say, “We’re going to have visitors coming shortly. Send them along.”
“Got it,” he says. “What about the stable’s owners? They’ve already come around once, wondering where … someone is, and why I’m out here.”
“Tell them … damn, I don’t know,” I say. “Tell them something. Sally, out.”
When I lower my wrist, my phone rings, and I check the incoming number and whisper an obscenity. “Todd, this is Sally. What’s up?”
Todd Pence, my neighbor and a Navy vet, says, “Sally, I’m sorry, but I gotta leave in a few minutes.”
I turn away from the other three agents. “What’s going on? Is Amelia okay?”
“Oh, she’s great,” he says. “But my older sister Phoebe … she lives alone and is older than me and is on the Social Security, and her damn water tank is leaking. She tried calling a plumber but the rates they charge—”
“Todd, please …” I take a few more steps. “Put Amelia on, will you?”
Some seconds pass and a sweet voice comes on and says, “Mom? You busy?”
Good Lord, what a question. “Um, yeah. Look. Mr. Pence says he has to leave ahead of schedule. Are you okay with that?”
I can sense her eye-rolling through the tone in her voice. “Oh, Mom, I’ll be fine. Honest.”
“Okay. You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snaps back. “But … when do you think you’ll be home?”
“As soon as I can, hon, as soon as I can,” I say. “But make sure the doors and windows are locked and that you carry the phone around with you, okay?”
“Yes, Mom,” she answers, putting about a ton of attitude into each syllable.
“Good girl,” I say. “Put Mr. Pence back on.”
My neighbor and child-care provider—last year Amelia got angry with the term babysitter, and I promised never to use it again—comes back on the phone and we have a brief conversation. I put the phone away just as the sound of the helicopters reaches us.
Two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters come into view, low, over the near trees, the branches whipping around from the wash coming from the spinning blades. They land downstream at a wide, grassy spot, and as the engines slow down, I run to the near one. A gold banner encircles the low part of the fuselage, where black block letters read HOMELAND SECURITY.
The side door slides open, and a man jumps down, wearing a dark-gray jumpsuit and black combat boots. Around his slim waist is a black leather utility belt, holding a handheld radio and a pistol holster that’s also strapped to his muscular upper thigh. He pulls off a pair of sunglasses to reveal a face that is flush and rugged, and his sandy brown hair flutters from the moving air. A name tag says ANDERSON, and we exchange a brief handshake as we move away from the engine noise.
“Randy,” I say.
“Sally,” he says. “All right, let’s get to it.”
I take a very deep and troubled breath. “I need … a search mission. Up and down this river for a white female, midforties.”
His gray-blue eyes bore right into me. “A search or a recovery?”
“A training mission, remember? That’s what this is. An unannounced training mission.”
His gaze doesn’t flinch. “I might need a higher authority than you, Sally. I’m sure you understand.”
I say, “How does Parker Hoyt sound?”
Two more helicopters approach and land on the other side of the river. Randy lifts his voice. “Sounds pretty heavy.”
“Yeah, like lead.”
We stare at each other for a moment, and he says, “I’ll leave Mr. Hoyt alone for the moment.”
“That’s wise.”
A nod. “All right, just remember, back in Santiago … you warned me off that woman at the bar, at the Ritz-Carlton. You were pretty damn insistent, and I put up a fight, but later … the bitch turned out to be working for Cuban intelligence. Ruined the lives and careers of three other agents. But we’re now even.”
“Agreed,” I say. “We’re even.”
He takes the handheld radio, turns and mutters