Manhunt in the Wild West Read Free Page A

involved a prison meat wagon backed up to the morgue where they’d been stood up by Rickey Charles, the contact who was the key to the next stage in their getaway. And it definitely hadn’t starred a pistol-whipped woman hanging limply in his arms…and three seriously nasty terrorists glaring at him like they already regretted involving him in their jailbreak.
    Not that they’d had a choice. He’d made damn sure of that, with help from Jane and some of the other agents working underneath her. She headed up a national security agency so secret it didn’t even have a name, one that was organized along the lines of the very terror networks it hunted, with each agent functioning as a separate cell, not knowing who else might be involved, or how.
    For this particular op, Jane had gotten Fax arrested for murder, constructing such a deep, seamless cover that even his mother and brothers had written him off. That had been the only way to make him useful to al-Jihad, just as orchestrating an escape had been the only way they could come up with to flush out the high-level terrorist’s suspected contacts within Homeland Security itself.
    The deaths of the prison guards and the morgue attendant were regrettable, but Jane had chosen Fax for the op because she knew he could function in the bloodiest situations and deal with an acceptable level of collateral damage—and innocent lives lost—if it meant getting the job done. It was cold, yes, but necessary.
    Jane had honed that level of detachment, perhaps, but he could thank his wife, Abby, for setting him on the path. She’d been dead five years now, and he thought she would’ve hated what he’d become. No way she would’ve accepted the part her betrayal had played—she’d never been big on personal accountability. But even as he thought that, Fax was mildly surprised to realize it’d been some time since he’d last thought of the woman who’d been his high-school sweetheart, and later his wife. In the past, her memory had driven him, haunted him, made him into the bloodless man he’d become, the one Jane had needed and wanted.
    Now, it seemed, even the warmth of anger was fading, leaving him colder still.
    “You gonna kill the bitch or dance with her first?” Lee Mawadi asked, nodding to the woman in Fax’s arms with a sneer.
    Then again, Lee seemed to do pretty much everything with a sneer. Fax was pretty sure it covered some major insecurities.
    Fax didn’t know any of his fellow escapees well, because the 24/7 solitary confinement at the ARX Supermax tended to cut down on social discourse. He’d met the three terrorists in person for the first time just an hour earlier, when they’d awoken from the drugs Jane had smuggled to him, which had mimicked death close enough to pass inspection for twelve hours.
    Almost immediately upon awakening, Fax had pegged the thirtysomething, blond Lee Mawadi as a wannabe, a follower. Lee had grown up a rich, pampered American, but had developed a love of violence along the way, a desire to kill, and be part of a killing squad. He’d hooked up with al-Jihad and had found the leader he’d been seeking. He’d played the part of a businessman, married a photographer and lived the American dream, all while working as a member of al-Jihad’s crew, following orders without question.
    Lee was a lemming, but Fax suspected he was a nasty critter, the sort that would bite you before it ran off the cliff in pursuit of its leader.
    “No need to kill her,” Fax said in answer to Lee’s question. “She’s out cold.” He shifted the woman’s deadweight, figuring on dumping her off to the side, out of harm’s way. The younger, male morgue attendant was beyond help, but if Fax played it right, he could probably leave the woman alive without attracting too much suspicion. Motioning to the van with his chin, he raised his voice and called to the other members of the small group, “Let’s get out of here. Our cover’s blown to hell