The Hit - David Baldacci Page 0,64

the trees and accelerated his pace. The house was a mile back.

His hideaway. His safe haven that the agency didn’t know about.

But Julie knew where it was. So did Nicole Vance. But that was it.

Robie actually regretted their knowing about it, but there was nothing he could do about that now.

He disarmed the security system, ran upstairs, packed a bag, and went out to the old barn next to the house. He unlocked the door and slipped inside. In the single bay of the barn was a pickup truck. It was fully gassed.

Robie pushed aside the hay that covered the floor, revealing a square panel of wood. He lifted this up and hurried down the exposed set of stairs.

He had not built this room under the barn. The farmer who owned it originally had done so back in the fifties, no doubt hoping that a veneer of wood and hay would somehow protect him against a Soviet thermonuclear strike. Go figure.

Robie had stumbled onto it by accident one day while looking through the barn after buying the property under an alias. He had outfitted it with things that he might need from time to time. This was one of those times.

He packed the gear in a large duffel and slid it into the bed of the pickup truck, which had a locking cover. He opened the barn door, drove the truck out, and locked the barn door. He drove out onto the main road and hit the gas.

He hoped for many things from this trip. Most of all he hoped he would run into Jessica Reel. And if he did, he hoped he was ready for whatever she threw at him.

CHAPTER

38

THE OLD WOMAN SHUFFLED THROUGH the security line at the airport. She was tall and thin, her hands covered in age spots. Her back was bent and she seemed to be in pain with each step. Her hair was white and cut short. She stared at the floor as she passed through the magnetometer without it making a beep.

She recovered her bag and kept shuffling.

She rode in coach in a window seat. She stared out the window and didn’t engage in conversation with the passenger sitting next to her. The flight was smooth, the landing unremarkable.

When they arrived the sun was shining and the sky clear. It was a welcome change from wet and cold D.C.

She deplaned and shuffled to a restroom.

Twenty minutes later she reappeared, younger and straighter, and she no longer shuffled. Her disguise was carefully packed away in her carry-on.

She had one bag to claim at baggage. It was a large roller bag, and inside were two metal boxes, both locked tight.

One held two different sets of ammo.

The other held her Glock.

She had lawfully declared it at check-in in her old-lady disguise.

The airline personnel at check-in had merely assumed she was an old woman who liked to protect herself.

There were also a lot of plastic parts and other pieces of metal and springs strewn throughout the nooks and crannies of her luggage.

She picked up her bag and rolled it to a car rental counter. Twenty minutes later Jessica Reel was driving out of the airport in a black Ford Explorer.

Her Glock was in a belt holster, fully loaded and ready to go.

She hoped not to have to use it. Or the other weapon she had brought.

Most of the time those hopes were not realized.

She had perhaps a dozen disguises that her former employers were completely unaware of. She had made certain it stayed that way even when she was working for them. She was not a trusting person—particularly with an employer who would disavow all connection to her if she failed on a mission.

She found the right road and headed west. It was not a populous area. It became even less inhabited with every mile she drove. Following the GPS, she turned off the main road, and ten miles of curves and switchbacks later the GPS failed her. Fortunately she had manually mapped this area previously, and in her mind’s eye she followed the turns on her internal compass until she was about a mile from her destination.

She passed the turnoff she would later take and kept going.

It was time to do some necessary recon.

She followed the road around and then saw another turnoff, which she took. She rode it up as far as she needed to. She had to engage her four-wheel drive to do so, but she came away satisfied. She retraced her route and

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