Deep Sleep (Devin Gray #1)(98)

“Hard to argue with not getting shot,” said Devin, and they set off for the road.

A short jog later, they arrived safely at the motel parking lot, where they immediately removed their tactical gear and stowed it in the back of the SUV, along with their rifles. Rich handed one of the rifles to Devin, along with a few spare magazines.

“Keep this out of sight, but accessible if I need it.”

“Still not out of the woods, so to speak?” said Marnie.

“I hate to break this to you, but we just stepped deeper in the woods with tonight’s stunt,” said Rich, shutting the rear liftgate. “Out of the woods means busting up this sleeper conspiracy.”

“Wonderful,” she said.

Devin opened the door to the back seat for Marnie, who hopped in and took the rifle. As soon as Devin shut the door behind him, Alex tore out of the parking lot, throwing him against the seat. He’d noticed that Rich’s people weren’t big on wasting time, even under the most mundane circumstances. Every second counted with these people, which was probably one of dozens of reasons why they were still alive. Most of them, anyway.

“We still need to pick up the third vehicle at Highway Marina,” said Rich, checking his satellite phone. “Berg will meet us there so we can balance out the vehicles. He’s still waiting for the speedboat. Should be there any minute.”

“Then what?” asked Devin.

“Then we get off these rural roads onto some kind of interstate highway. Get as far from here as possible by sunrise. The Ozarks will be crawling with law enforcement sooner than later,” said Rich.

“At some point I’m going to need some sleep,” said Devin.

“Why? You slept on the helicopter,” said Rich.

“Really?” said Marnie.

“He was out like a light once the shooting stopped.”

“I apologize if that’s a faux pas when your best friend is flying the helicopter. Something about the rhythm of the rotors or something just pulled me under,” said Devin.

“It’s actually pretty normal,” she said. “We’d take off with a platoon of Marines, headed for a hot LZ, and half of them would be out within the first five minutes—like they were in the back seat of a car on a road trip. Then again, they were always exhausted when we were flying them around.”

“That’s me right now,” said Devin. “Five minutes from passing out again.”

“We’re all right there with you,” said Rich. “We’ll pick a decent-size city we can reach by dawn and find a motel with a few sets of adjoining rooms. Rest up and go through what we collected on video. Scan the news out of Branson. Figure out our next move. Based on what we saw at the camp, we’ll have to up our game somehow. Convince some people at a much higher level to take a serious look at what we’ve assembled. We’re looking at somewhere around six hundred sleepers, most in positions we might not be able to figure out—until they’ve done their damage.”

“I don’t see how we’re going to crack this,” said Devin.

“Your mother did,” said Rich. “She put you and Karl Berg together for a reason. If anyone can figure out a way to pull this off, it’ll be him. Karl’s cracked a few major conspiracies before.”

“True America?”

Rich didn’t answer right away, which confirmed what Devin had suspected. Either Karl or Rich had had a hand in whatever had happened to True America. Possibly both of them.

“What did Karl tell you about True America?”

“He said it was a story for another time,” said Devin.

“Well. I’ll let him decide when that time arrives,” said Rich.

Devin let it go for now. He was too tired to pursue a dead-end conversation. Marnie put her head on his shoulder and held his hand, the two of them drifting asleep in the company of two shadowy mercenaries they’d barely known for forty-eight hours. Not coincidentally the same amount of time he’d been awake. Devin didn’t resist the sandman. He had a feeling Rich’s idea of rest would amount to an hour-long nap while they waited for him to wake up. He’d have to take whatever sleep he could get, whenever he could take it.





CHAPTER 56


Felix Orlov crawled up the muddy shore and shrugged off his rucksack, exhausted from the long swim. He rolled onto his back and rested in the fetid sludge, staring at the clear night sky. The fire raging across the lake flickered at the bottom of his field of vision. After he’d caught his breath, he turned his head to see who else had washed up on shore with him. One lay in the muck about forty feet away, where the lake broke off into a cove. He couldn’t tell if they were facedown or on their back. Another clambered out of the water between them and dropped flat. Ksenia, judging by the longer hair. Just two?

He propped himself up on his elbows to scan the lake. The third slogged through the water about fifty feet out, kicking and splashing hard enough to suggest panic. That had to be Lashev. The sniper had spent more time trying to convince them to somehow paddle one of the half-sunken pontoon boats across the lake rather than fessing up that he could barely swim. None of them had wanted to abandon most of their gear and swim several hundred yards to an unfamiliar shore, but the M249 machine gun Felix had chosen to leave in the helicopter had made the decision for them.