spies don’t get married. We have to be on the move all the time, and we don’t want to put the people we love in danger.”
“Don’t you get lonely?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah,” Carl said. He felt a tightening in his chest and had to struggle to hide his sadness from Ryan. “But, from now on, when I start to feel down, I’ll remember the fun I had at your house and I’ll cheer right up. I’ll be able to keep track of you guys, too. My intelligence agency will let me know how you’re doing in school and Little League. That’s why I want you to practice that curve. It would be great if I heard that you’d won a few games with the pitch I taught you. What do you think?”
“I’ll work on the curveball.”
“Will you help him, Ami?” Carl asked.
“Definitely,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
“School, too. I want you to do your best. Okay?”
“Okay,” Ryan answered solemnly as a tear trickled down his cheek.
Carl stood up. It took all his training to stay calm. “Let’s shake on it, then.”
Ryan held out his hand, and Carl’s engulfed it. Then Carl drew Ryan to him and gave him a hug.
“Wherever I am, you’ll be in my heart, Ryan.” His eyes met Ami’s. “You and your mom.”
“Will we ever see you?” Ryan asked, tears coursing down his cheeks now.
“I’d sure like to see you again, someday. Meanwhile, you take care of your mom, okay? She needs you, and you need her. And work on that curve.”
Carl tousled Ryan’s hair.
“I’ve got to go now. The president sent a special plane for me, and I can’t keep him waiting.”
Ryan wiped a forearm across his eyes.
“Keep safe,” Carl said. Then he touched Ami on the shoulder and walked through the door to the courtroom. The door closed behind him, and Ryan didn’t see the agents secure his handcuffs before leading him away.
“He’ll be okay, Ryan. You don’t have to worry,” Ami assured her son, her eyes still on the door to the courtroom. Then she looked at Ryan.
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.
Ryan nodded, embarrassed to be crying but unable to stop.
Ami knelt beside him. She had tears in her eyes, too. “It’s okay to be sad. He’s a good friend. And maybe he’ll get some time away from his job someday and you’ll see him again. The important thing is to know that he cares about you very much. You understand that, don’t you?”
Ryan nodded.
“And you also understand about keeping what Carl told you a secret.”
“I won’t tell,” Ryan answered solemnly.
“And I’ll help you with the curve and your schoolwork so Carl will be proud of you, okay?”
Ryan nodded.
“You know it’s a little late for me to shop for dinner. How about going to the Spaghetti Factory? You’ll need those carbs for tomorrow’s game. Coach is letting you pitch, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Gonna try the curve?”
“I don’t know if I have it right, yet,” Ryan answered. Ami heard the worry in his voice. She smiled and gave him a hug.
“You’ll never know if you don’t try, right?”
“I guess.”
“Then let’s go eat and you can practice with me before you go to bed.”
One agent had stayed behind to lock up. He let them out of the judge’s chambers and turned off the lights at the same moment an unmarked car with tinted windows drove out of the parking garage with Carl Rice in the backseat. The car headed for the airport where an FBI jet was waiting to take Carl to an undisclosed destination.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
It took Sam Cutler a week, and the small fortune he had paid to Robert Bloom-an FBI agent with a cocaine habit-to discover where Victor Hobson had stashed his star witness. After viewing aerial surveillance photographs of the Nebraska farm, Cutler told Wingate that he did not like the setup one bit. Wingate had answered that the FBI used this remote spot for a safe house because it was difficult to attack. The farm was miles from the interstate, so anyone driving to it would stand out like the Rockies in the flat landscape. A locked gate separated the dirt road that led to the farmhouse from a paved state road. On either side of the gate were miles of barbed wire. The dirt road ran like an arrow through fields of corn that could provide cover for the attack force, but the fields ended a distance from the farmhouse where Carl was living with an FBI security detail, and there was open land between the house and the cornfields that provided no cover.
Wingate and Cutler had discussed their options and decided that they had none. They didn’t know how long Rice would be kept at the farm. If Hobson moved him, they’d have to start all over again. So Sam Cutler had assembled the team of six men he’d used to grab Vanessa and had driven to Omaha, eschewing air transport because of video surveillance and paper trails that could eventually lead back to the General.
There was no moon on the evening of the assault. Cutler parked half a mile from the entrance to the farm. One of his men cut a hole in the barbed wire and the team moved into the shelter of the cornfield, where the tall stalks blocked the cold wind that had cut through the men as soon as they left the shelter of their car. Using a Global Positioning System, Cutler maneuvered through the rows of corn, stopping just before the open ground. He scanned the farmhouse through night-vision binoculars. A guard was smoking a cigarette on the porch. Another guard was patrolling the perimeter. Cutler was disgusted by the sloppiness of the security detail. Two of his men were deadly accurate with a sniper rifle and would be able to pick off the guards without making a sound before the attack force ever left the cover of the cornfield.
How many guards would that leave inside? The overflight that had given the team the aerial surveillance photos had registered heat signatures for six human beings: Carl and five guards. But the overflight had been more than twenty-four hours earlier, and more agents could have arrived.
Just as Cutler was about to command the snipers to kill the guards, the agent on the porch snuffed out his cigarette and walked inside, and the man who was patrolling the perimeter walked out of sight behind the farmhouse. Suddenly, no one was watching the ground between Cutler’s position and the farmhouse. He made a split decision.
“Double-time to the house,” he commanded. If they could cover the ground fast enough, they could use the element of surprise to take out everyone inside.
The men were halfway across the open space when Cutler’s two snipers went down and the assault team was bathed in light. Cutler was temporarily blinded and threw a forearm across his eyes.
“Order your men to throw down their weapons, Mr. Cutler,” a voice, amplified by a bullhorn, boomed out. “You’re surrounded and you have no chance of escape.”
Soldiers were beginning to emerge from the cornfields just as it dawned on Cutler that his wounded men had been shot from the farmhouse.
“We’ve had you under surveillance since you paid Robert Bloom for the location of this safe house. He’s under arrest, by the way. You’ve been set up, Sam, and there’s only one way out for you and your men-cooperation. So throw down your weapons. We’ll take care of your wounded, and you and I can have a talk.”
Cutler knew that he and his men would die if he opted for a shootout, so he told them to lay down their arms. Several medics attended to the wounded snipers. His men were cuffed and led toward the barn, while three soldiers walked Cutler to the farmhouse.
Ted Schoonover was sitting in the parlor in an overstuffed easy chair. A fire was roaring in the grate. Tiffany lamps sat on oak end tables, and an embroidered antimacassar covered the back of a sofa decorated with a floral pattern. On the wall was an oil painting of cows grazing in a field. Cutler would not have blinked if Ma and Pa Kettle
