The Rescue(86)

“No passports,” said Decker. “Thank you for flying us out of there.”

She barely nodded and kept her attention on the dark-blue sky in front of them.

The young girl in the passenger seat turned to him with tears streaming down her face. “Is our daddy gone?” she said.

“Leah,” said her mother. “Don’t.”

“It’s okay,” said Decker. “I’ll tell you all about your dad when we land. I want to let your mom pay attention to the flight. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said, sniffling.

Larissa looked at him and nodded a thank-you. A few minutes later, she eased the Cessna into a lazy left turn, straightening on a course aimed at the largest gathering of distant ground lights visible in any direction. “We’ll be on the ground in twenty minutes,” she said.

“What should we do about the weapons?”

“How did you get to the airfield?”

“Taxi from our hotel.”

“Have a taxi wait for you at the VFW lodge at the south end of the airfield, on Route 170,” said Larissa. “I’ll bring you as far south as I can on the runway and you can make a run for it. It’ll be so dark on the field nobody will see you. Tell the taxi driver you’re DEA. They’re always up to stuff around here.”

“Sounds like a solid plan,” said Decker, looking back at Pierce, who nodded.

Once the taxi was arranged, he settled in for the rest of the flight. The twenty minutes passed quickly, his mind racing with ideas about how they would proceed once they got clear of Sweetwater. He guessed the plan would very likely depend on the contents of Aleman’s thumb drives.

Larissa executed a flawless, near featherlight landing at Avenger Field, taxiing them to the opposite side of the runway, where she turned the Cessna so the cargo door faced the southern boundary of the field. Decker opened the door, pushing it up against the bottom of the wing. He nodded at Pierce, who scooted along the metal floor and pulled himself out of the cabin, landing on the concrete runway.

Decker did the same but leaned back into the aircraft as soon as his feet hit the tarmac. The two boys crammed against the opposite side of the cargo compartment expanded to fill it now that they were gone, and Leah peered over the passenger seat headrest. They were obviously expecting him to say a few words about their dad. He glanced at Larissa and found her eyes welling with tears.

“I need to tell you guys something before I leave,” said Decker. “I served with your dad for many years, and he was the bravest person I ever met. He helped rescue dozens of kids, just like you, so they could see their families again. He risked his life over and over again to do it, because he couldn’t bear the thought of parents like your mom never seeing their kids again. Your dad was a hero in every sense of the word. Don’t ever forget that.”

Larissa wiped the tears from her face and took a deep breath before extending a hand between the seats. He took her hand, squeezing it tight.

“Where will you go?” she said. “What will you do now?”

“Whatever it takes to make sure you and your kids can live a normal life. That we can all live normal lives again.”

“Kurt always said you were one of the best things to happen to him,” she said.

“Second to you, I hope!”

She laughed. “That goes without saying!”

“Keep your eye on the news. We’re going to take this thing down, whatever it is. My guess is it’s bigger than any of us ever figured.”

She squeezed his hand and let go. “I better get out of here. I didn’t call ahead to make this landing.”

Decker nodded, giving each kid a thumbs-up. “Remember! Your dad is a hero!”

Larissa’s daughter, clearly the oldest of the three, rose in her seat. “Is he gone?”

“He’s gone,” said Decker. “Unfortunately, that’s the risk of being a hero.”

He shut the door and saluted them before racing to catch up with Pierce, who had already taken off for the waiting taxi.

“That was nice of you,” said Pierce, when Decker finally caught up.

“What was I supposed to say?”

“I didn’t mean it that way. They just lost their dad. And the way they’ve been living?”

“I know,” said Decker. “I hit the ground wanting to kill Kurt—in front of his family. When I saw how they’ve been living for the past two years, everything changed. He was just as much of a victim of this as everyone else.”

“I’m still pissed at him.”

“Not me,” said Decker. “Not anymore. I’m refocusing all of my rage.”

“Where?”

“I won’t know until we access Kurt’s files,” he said, reaching under his vest to retrieve the thumb drive. When his fingers gripped the plastic drive, he stopped in the middle of the open ground between the departing aircraft and the fence.

“This isn’t a good place to stop,” said Pierce.

Decker showed him the thumb drive, which crumbled in his hand. Pierce scrambled to produce the copy from his vest, which appeared to be intact when he opened his fist.





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Gunther Ross paced the warehouse, pointlessly checking his phone every several seconds. Green was gone. There was little doubt about that. Aleman had sacrificed himself so his family and Decker could escape. A last-moment transmission over the radio suggested that an aircraft had emerged from an underground bunker north of the Alemans’ homestead seconds before the explosion. He hadn’t heard from anyone assigned to the mission since the call disconnected, leading him to conclude that the blast had consumed everyone.