The Buried by Brett Battles Read Free Book Online

rails, but there was no denying it had taken one of the strangest turns. She periodically checked her mirrors for anything unusual, but the cars behind her were an ever-changing mix and nothing stood out. Soon she was turning down the street where her office was located.
    During the day, the street-level entrance was usually open, allowing people to drive down a ramp before reaching the main gate, but at this time of night, a metal curtain cut it off. She pulled up close to the control box and pushed the button to lower her window so she could flash her pass in front of the reader.
    As the glass moved down, she heard the roar of an engine and started to turn toward it. Before she could see anything, she was rocked sideways, the air filling with the groan of twisting metal and the screech of rubber.
    She swayed in her seat, momentarily dazed, before her training kicked in. Fumbling open the central console, she grabbed for the pistol she thought she’d never have to use, but the muzzle hadn’t even cleared the container when she heard the muffled thup and felt something hit her neck.
    Her hand shot up to the wound. She expected to find blood and a bullet hole, but instead her fingers touched a small metal tube.
    The world suddenly pulled away, everything growing distant and muted and unreal. The metal tube fell from her neck into her hand, its sharp tip pricking her palm. It was like she knew what it was, but didn’t at the same time.
    Within seconds, dark clouds began to move in, narrowing her vision to a point of light, and then nothing.
    __________
     
    I T WAS THE job of the security officer on duty in the monitoring room to alert his supervisor and the overnight director of anything unusual.
    Which is exactly what that evening’s officer would have done if he’d been in the room to witness the takedown of Director Cho via the cameras mounted outside the garage. But the drops that had been put in his coffee fifteen minutes earlier by one of the very men he reported to had resulted in an emergency trip to the toilet, leaving the monitoring room temporarily unattended.
    By the time he returned and saw Cho’s smashed sedan abandoned in the street, the director was already crossing the Golden Gate Bridge toward Mill Valley.
     
    BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON
     
    T HE SQUAD ASSEMBLED at 4:20 a.m. in the parking lot behind St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in the Clyde Hill section of Bellevue, a few blocks away from the target house.
    They were eight in number—four each from offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The Bay Area team had arrived first, their jet touching down at 3:42. From there, they transferred to a helicopter that flew them to the eighteenth fairway of the Glendale Country Club, where a black Suburban waited for them by the clubhouse.
    The L.A. crew landed ten minutes later and followed the same route.
    Though the two groups did not share a home base, they had worked together many times and were familiar with each other’s strengths. Stevens, as senior officer, was squad leader.
     He held up the tablet computer that displayed the diagram of the safe house each man had memorized on the trip north. He pointed at the sliding glass back door. “Red one and red two, here.” Red was their team designation, with Stevens as red seven and the man assigned to remain at the vehicles as red eight. Stevens pointed at the garage. “Red three and red four.” And then moved his finger to the front door. “Red five and red six. Questions?”
    No one spoke up.
    Stevens looked at his watch. “Transit time to site is three minutes. Once everyone’s in position, wait for my mark and then we go. I want this done and us out of there by 4:35 latest.” He paused, then said, “Mic check.”
    Comm gear was switched on, and in team order, each man said, “Check, check.” They then piled into the Suburban and headed to the safe house.
    According to the info packet Stevens had read on the flight up, the house had been seized years