Free Sold Out (Nick Woods Book 1) by Stan R. Mitchell Page B

his son.
    Above
all, Nick knew it was important the man not find anything memorable about his
situation, and part of how he kept that from happening was by making certain
his situation didn’t seem strange.
    Thus,
Nick chatted with the man, keeping up the guise that he had nothing to hide.
    While
the man droned on, Nick had been thinking. Unless he was totally mistaken, he
figured that in some media outlet somewhere, the story involving him and his
spotter’s work in Afghanistan had been published recently.
    He
had the old man drop him off at a shabby motel in Oak Ridge. Nick didn’t even
see a name for the place, just a red lit vacancy sign in the window of the
office. Perfect. He handed three twenty-dollar bills to his driver and then met
the old man’s eyes with a stern, serious look.
    “Sir,”
Nick said. “I’m going to be real honest.”
    The
man suddenly looked worried, more than likely preparing for the worst. Was Nick
some kind of criminal, Nick could see him thinking.
    “I’ve
had some trouble with the law, and I’m running from the police.”
    The
man’s face tensed, and Nick could feel him taking in his features, etching them
in his mind for when he had to describe his passenger. Shit, Nick thought,
maybe this idea had been stupid. Well, he couldn’t give up on it now.
    “Basically,”
Nick said, “a man I thought was my friend got to fooling around with my wife. I
found out about it, and well, you know, had words with him, so to speak. It was
a little worse than I planned, and he had some injuries. My wife kicked me out,
and the law wants to throw me in the pen for assault charges.”
    The
man looked relieved to hear such a trifling story.
    “Sounds
to me like he had it coming,” the man said. “It figures that a man who’d cheat
on his friend’s wife would try to deal with his problems through the courts.
Gutless bastard. You just hang in there, son. God will take care of you.”
    Nick
met the man’s eyes again and nodded thoughtfully. The man seemed to have bought
Nick’s acting.
    “Sir,
you have a good day,” Nick said. And with that, he grabbed his pack from the
man’s truck and headed into the office of the motel complex.
     

 
    Chapter
20
     
    Back
in Washington, in his Pentagon office, Whitaker sat with his legs propped on
his desk. He was pissed. It had been two days since the raid, and they hadn’t
found Nick Woods.
    While
he didn’t know where he was, what he did know was that Bobby Ferguson was dead.
Some of his men had tracked Bobby after the local and state police had cleared
out and found the trail leading into his cave. And in the cave were heavy drag
marks.
    So,
Bobby had reverted back to the old Nick and in retrieving his cache had become
the highly touted Nick Woods. Sniper legend among CIA insiders. Unknown Marine
among the military community.
    Now,
Nick had been alerted. And, he had disappeared. Just like that.
    As
soon as Whitaker had received the call from the FBI reporting that Bobby Ferguson
wasn’t at home, he had scrambled his forces.
    Every
available person in his organization not already assigned, even those that had
recently entered retirement, had been called up. Thirty-one of his undercover
people, varying in age from twenty-two to sixty-six, had closed in on Grainger
County.
    They’d
tried every known trick. They had sat in restaurants, driven along back roads,
and asked clerks in gas stations about a friend that had broken down and was
traveling on foot.
    Waiting
for the call that Nick had been spotted by these undercover agents were three
eight-men strike teams parked strategically throughout the county in undercover
work vans. Whitaker's boss had asked the FBI to assist in the light work since
they were definitely involved now.
    Since
they had already been shot by one of the “Ferguson family,” they were more than
happy to assist. So the FBI watched friends, family, every known acquaintance
of Nick’s. Whitaker didn’t expect Nick to make such a