She thought Anna could pull it off, but she couldn’t. She was relieved when Rob had pulled one of her flannel shirts from the back seat on his side. She put it on, grateful he had thought of that too.
“So, nobody is going with us. We’re going to have a night to ourselves. Ma said that if we didn’t even make it back home tonight, she’d be ok with that too.”
“Oh my God, where would we go? We haven’t drank until sunup since before Harry…”
“Who said we were going to drink all night long? There’s a hotel room about forty minutes away with a Jacuzzi in it that I reserved…”
Angelica turned red in the face, but she was smiling wickedly. “You might have to run inside and check on the order. I’m not sure I can get the flush off my face in time,” she said as they pulled in.
Doc Khamenei knew he would only have a few moments. The store had been expecting the farm's box truck and they had everything staged and on a pallet near the gate. It had been his luck to get a heads up that they had left in a personal vehicle instead of the cube van. Now all he had to do was get the firebrand of a woman to open her door or crack her window. He hadn’t been given a reason why the higher ups wanted to snatch someone from the farm, but they did. They promised to fill him in, it was part of a larger plan they were going to read him in on.
They didn’t want to continue to be outmaneuvered by the group that owned the Langtry farm, that much Khamenei knew. Everybody seemed to have a personal beef with them in the higher ups. Doc figured that they were examples of what happened when somebody got lucky and pushed back enough. He didn’t think the group he was working for wanted that to spread. What Doc Khamenei did know, was where they were going to be taking anybody from the farm they could. Kelso county was a quick five-minute drive from the WWII Rohwer internment camp.
“Excuse me, miss?” Khamenei asked, wearing one of the store's work shirts. “Do you want me to load your truck for you? I believe you had some bulkhead fittings you called in yesterday?”
“Sure thing,” Angelica had said.
Alarm bells never rang when she saw the kindly looking older man knock on her door. She’d cracked the window and talked to him, not surprised in the least that they had the order pulled and ready to load. The group always paid ahead of time and the store here seemed to really appreciate their business. Yesterday they’d had the order pulled and ready to load when she’d been there with Anna.
“Sure thing, do you want me to move the truck?”
“Actually, I can load a pallet right in the bed, but if you could help an old guy out, my shoulder has been bugging me. I can run the forklift fine, but the tailgate…”
“Oh no problem!” Angelica bounced out of the truck and was halfway to the back when she felt a stinging sensation on the back of her neck. She tried to slap at the pain, but she was already falling.
“Good afternoon sir, how can I help you?” the farm store manager asked Rob.
“Doing pretty good. I’m here to pick up the last of the order for the Langtry Farm.”
“Excellent. Actually, the guys outside should be loading up your box truck right now. We just need you to sign the receipt that you picked up the order.”
“I drove my personal vehicle,” Rob muttered, signing his name to the will call sheet.
“That’s fine. The boys outside seem to know the folks at your farm well, so I’m sure they’re already working on things.”
“That’s great. Which way is your restroom?” Rob asked.
“In the back of aisle 18,” the manager told him.
Rob nodded and gave him a smile and headed back to take care of business. He was already mentally planning a romantic night, and thought Angelica would be pleasantly surprised.
“Do we wait and snatch the husband?” ‘Sammy’ asked Doc.
“No, the workers already figured out that the farm sent a different truck. We can’t risk a gunfight right here. We have to pick them off one by one, quietly.” Doc Khamenei’s words were whispered from the back of an old cargo van with a defunct electrical company’s name on the side.
“Why are we still sitting here then?”
“Patience,” the words were spoken to the man sitting in the front seat. “I’m making sure the sedative is stable. We need bait for our trap, and I want to make sure it’s lively.”
“Don’t you think the group will just go to the news like with everything else they have done?” Sammy asked.
“They didn’t release the tapes of your tar and feathering, did they?” Doc asked Sammy pointedly.
“No, but that was the threat,” Sammy’s words were said with bitterness.
“Then have faith in the plan. Our bosses get things right once in a while.”
“I don’t work for the CIA,” Sammy said. “We have normal rules we have to follow.”
“Sammy, your special team… did you really think you were operating as Homeland Agents? That’s funny, considering the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t kidnap and assassinate US citizens, yet you’ve done both.”
Sammy had nothing to say to that. The other two agents who had
