But it proved to be an interesting idea. Pogue continued, "You've got medicine and vehicles and paint and clocks, computers, processed food, you name it. Think about them. Giving mercury as medicine or leaching blood out of people. Or making airplanes that crash and bridges that collapse. Engineers and scientists just flailing around, trying to get it right, killing people, themselves included, in the process. Failure after failure after failure."
"I suppose that's true."
"But weapons? They're efficient from the git-go." An accent, slightly Southern, protruded.
Efficient . . .
"You couldn't have a sword that broke the first time you used it. You couldn't have a musket that blew up in your face--the men who made those made 'em right the first time. No luxury for error. That's why you can still shoot guns're two hundred years old and some of 'em are pretty damn accurate."
"Natural selection."
Pogue said, "Darwinian gunsmithing."
Some heady thinking from a man who, even if he wasn't technically a government killer, protected them for a living.
We fell silent, not because of the conversation, but because Ryan Kessler was limping down from the house like a bear just out of hibernation.
Pogue and I nodded toward him.
"Anything?" The detective eyed the outbuilding.
"Not yet."
We stood in silence. Ryan's hands were in his pockets. He stared down. His eyes were red.
"How's Maree?"
"Holding up okay."
More silence.
Then came the snap of a lock as the door opened. Ryan jumped. Pogue and I did not.
Joanne stepped out and announced, "I've got it. I know where Amanda is."
Without another word she started for the house, walking ahead of us, as she used disinfectant wipes to clean the blood off her hands.
Chapter 59
IN GAME THEORY the concept of the grim trigger is an interesting one.
This occurs in "iterated" games--those in which the same opponents play the same game against each other over and over again. Eventually players settle into strategies that achieve the best common good, even if it's less than perfect for their own self-interest. For instance, they learn in the Prisoners' Dilemma the best outcome is to refuse to confess.
But sometimes Player A "defects," breaks the pattern, by confessing, which means he gets off scot-free while Prisoner B gets a much longer sentence.
Player B then might play grim trigger, abandoning any semblance of cooperation and defecting forever.
Another way to put it is that if one player decides even one time not to play by the rules, the opponent from then on plays exclusively--and ruthlessly--for his own self-interest.
There was no cooperation involved between Henry Loving and me, of course, in this deadly game we were playing but the same theory applied. By kidnapping a teenager to torture her and extract information, as far as I was concerned, Loving had defected.
I was now playing grim trigger.
Which meant unleashing Joanne Kessler--in her incarnation as Lily Hawthorne--on Loving's associate, McCall, to lift the information from him. Whatever that took. My interrogation skills are good but it would take time to get somebody like McCall, terrified of Henry Loving, to talk.
I needed somebody he would fear more.
Hence my subtle request to Joanne in the living room twenty minutes before, using chilling euphemisms, which she picked up on instantly. I could see from her eyes.
Appeal to his sense of decency?
As Amanda's stepmother, yes.
She and I had then gone to the outbuilding. We'd found McCall looking up from the heavy chair, scared, yes, but resolute in not betraying Loving. As I'd gestured Ahmad out, McCall had barked an uneasy laugh. "You're giving me that voodoo look, Corte. What's this about?"
Joanne Kessler definitely wasn't giving him any looks. She was just studying him.
"Why isn't anybody saying anything?" His voice caught.
The sense of threat in the room reminded me of the Zagaev interrogation Bert Santoro and I had conducted not long ago.
Only this was real.
Joanne had nodded to me and I'd gone to a control panel in the wall and inserted a key and hit several buttons. I'd told her, "No communication out or in. The video's off. You're invisible."
"Look, Joanne," McCall had said desperately. "I just can't help you out, I'm sorry. I wish I could but I can't. I feel for you, I really do. If there was any way . . ."
She wasn't paying any attention to him. She'd turned back to me and asked, "Any tools here?"
"Under the sink. Nothing fancy."
"That's all I need." Joanne had then closed the door.
Another thing about the outbuilding. The designers completely soundproofed the place. The reason for this was so that the principals couldn't hear threats or demands coming from the outside.
The corollary was that neither could you hear screams from inside.
Night was around the compound as we gathered on the front porch of the safe house. Joanne seemed no more agitated than someone who'd survived a bargain basement sale at a mall store, standing her ground at the popular sizes and snagging the best.
She said to me, "They've taken her to an old military installation on Route Fifteen near Leesburg, a mile south of Oatlands."
I knew Oatlands. A venue for Renaissance fairs and dog shows. Peggy and I had taken the boys there once.
She continued, "The facility's about a hundred yards west of Fifteen down an unmarked dirt road, in the side of a hill, like a bunker. McCall doesn't know why they want her. It's very secret. He would've told me if he did."
Joanne was speaking loudly. She realized this and reached up and extracted the cotton balls from her ears.
"Loving'll be there soon and in about an hour the primary or the people who work for him will too."
"Nothing at all about why they want her?"
"No. He said it wasn't hard to find or kidnap Amanda. Anybody could have done that." Her voice was rock steady as she said, "The reason they hired Loving was that nobody else was willing to torture a teenager, if it came to that."
Ryan gasped. I noted that Joanne and her husband had not looked at each other since she'd left the outbuilding. He'd glanced inside to see her handiwork. There was a lot of blood on the floor. The reaction on her husband's face was one you don't see often in a police officer.
Joanne continued, "The three men who took her are minders. They might work for the primary or maybe Loving hired them. McCall doesn't know. Only the primary knows what information to extract. Even Loving doesn't."
I asked, "Does Loving expect McCall?"
"No. He's supposed to stay here, within cover."
This was good. If he'd been required to, say, report to Loving every fifteen minutes, that would have been a tactical problem.
But now it was our move.
What strategy was best?
Rock, paper or scissors?
Joanne turned to Pogue. "A G team?"
I'd never heard the term but it wasn't hard to deduce.
The operative said, "Two, three hours. We're not as mobile here as we used to be. More New York and L.A."
I glanced at Pogue. "You and me?"
"I'd say." He cast an eye toward Joanne and for a moment it occurred to me that while he may not have been the partner on the Pakistani deli hit, there was history between them.
A voice said firmly, "I'm going too."
Ryan Kessler.
I said, not unsympathetically, "This isn't your expertise, Ryan."
"Because I've been sitting behind a desk for six years, watching my ass spread? I've been on tac ops in the past. I know what I'm doing."
"No. Because you're involved. She's your daughter. You can't engage a hostile if you're involved. It's not efficient."
"Look," the man said, sounding reasonable. "It's no risk my being there. He doesn't want me, Corte."
I pointed out, "He could use you as an edge t
o get Amanda to talk."
"She's a sixteen-year-old girl," Ryan muttered. "He doesn't need an edge. He barks at her and she tells him what he wants to know."
That wasn't the Amanda Kessler I'd seen.
"You're too emotional. There's nothing wrong with that. But you'll have to stand down."
"That's a dirty word to you, Corte, isn't it? 'Emotion.' Tough being a robot, isn't it?"
"Ryan, honey, please," Joanne said, reverting to the good wife she'd been earlier. Or, more accurately, the role of the good wife she'd been playing.
I didn't argue with Ryan. How could I? He was 100 percent right.
He walked close. "Maybe it's time to take the gloves off, Corte. And be honest. It was all bullshit, wasn't it? What you said?"
I could see what was coming.
"You've just been patting me on the head, haven't you? The way you've been handling me? Is it out of the bodyguard's manual of tricks? Give your principal some busywork. Lie to him. Tell him he's going to help you save the day. 'We'll take down Loving together, just wait till we're someplace else.' Then send him off to guard a field of fucking daisies and ragweed. In Fairfax, at my house, you knew Loving wasn't going to come at us from that direction, didn't you? You had me guard it to keep me occupied."
I hesitated. "Yes, I did."
"And you still had the balls to tell me what a great job I'd done." He shook his head. "Oh, fuck, Corte. And when there actually was somebody to take down here--McCall--you didn't consider me, did you? You called in our friend." A contemptuous glance at Pogue. "You have a term for it, for keeping us principals busy? Making sure we sit in the corner with our toys and don't bug the adults? Come on, Corte."
"Ry, honey, please. You--"
"Shut up!" he snapped to Joanne. Then turned back. "So what do you call it?"
"Bait-and-switch."
"You son of a bitch," he muttered. " 'Guard the side yard, Ryan. Aim low, avoid his femoral artery. You're probably a great shot. . . .' "
"I needed to get you on my side."
"And sharing your war stories. How you got started in the business . . . your sign cutting, your orienteering. All lies?"
"No."
"Bullshit."
My heart went out to him. How could it not? A man who'd been robbed of a career he loved--and by his wife, no less.
Who'd been robbed of his status as a hero.
And lied to by me.
He whispered, "Give me this chance. I'm a good shot and the limp's nothing. I can move fast, if I have to."
Joanne said, "No, Ry. Let them handle it."
"I'm sorry," I told him.
"Well, I'm going anyway." He was speaking to me. "You can't stop me. I know where she is. After you're gone I'll just get in somebody's fucking car and go anyway." His hand strayed to his weapon.
A moment of dense silence. My eyes needed only to slip toward Lyle Ahmad, and the former marine stepped up behind, easing Ryan to the floor with a basic wrist grip on his gun hand. There was a countermove, by which Ryan, the larger of the men, could have escaped but, if he'd ever known it, he'd forgotten.
His eyes on mine, he growled, "Fucking coward. You couldn't even take me yourself, could you? Had to have somebody get me from behind."
I stepped forward and slipped nylon restraints around his wrists.
"No!" he cried.
"I'm sorry."
"She's my daughter!"
It was Joanne I was looking at, though. For the first time since I'd met her, tears were now streaking down her cheeks.
Ahmad got Ryan into a sitting position. I leaned down toward his thick, damp face, dark with anger. I said firmly, "I'm going to bring her back to you. This is what I do. I'll bring her back safe."
Chapter 60
ROUTE 15 IS a hilly road through the heart of Civil War Virginia, forty miles outside of Washington. Large, private estates on the capillaries of horse country fight against the encroaching cookie-cutter developments with streets named according to themes, like Camelot, flora, colonial New England.
You'll find oddities along the highway. Decrepit, abandoned farms whose owners aren't willing to sell to salivating developers or who have simply disappeared--often because they prefer staying off the grid for any number of reasons. There are also ominous structures, stained concrete or rusting steel, ringed with dire warning signs and sharp, equally rusty wire, blanketed with kudzu. They once supported various attempts at defense systems during the Cold War. We can't take down intercontinental ballistic missiles nowadays, much less fifty years ago, but that didn't stop the army or air force from trying. Some of these buildings were actually for sale but since most of them had served as weapons storage facilities, the toxic cleanup costs would be prohibitive.
I'd done a thorough run-down of our destination, USAF-LC Facility 193, a large concrete building only thirty or forty minutes from the safe house in Great Falls.
I piloted my car past the facility now and noted the concrete facade and the forty-or fifty-foot mound of earth, grass covered, that the building disappeared into. It was, as McCall had told Joanne, set back about one hundred yards. The gate was closed but the fences around the front and sides weren't imposing and didn't appear to be electrified or mounted with sensors.
I eased to a stop. Examining the place through my Xenonics night vision monocular, Pogue said, "Two SUVs, can't tell the tags. Some lights inside the building. One person outside, can't tell if he's armed. Assume he is."
I continued, pulling off the shoulder into bushes, then shut the engine off. It was 8:45 and dark. Normally the stars were striking here but tonight they were invisible, thanks to the blanketing clouds. Pogue and I climbed out, waited for a semi to burn along the road, spinning up dust and limp leaves in its wake. We crossed the road and moved toward the facility, using the dense brush and trees for cover. Pogue studied the place again through the monocular and held up a single index finger. Only one guard still.
I looked too. A youngish man with a close crew cut. He wore dark jeans and a sweatshirt. He kept his hand at his side and when he turned and made some brief rounds, I could see that he wore a semiautomatic pistol on his hip.
Still thirty yards away, Pogue slipped an earpiece in and spoke into his collar. I couldn't hear the words clearly but I deduced he was reporting in to Williams, Joanne's former boss.
If McCall was right about the times, the primary had not yet arrived. This conclusion was reasonable since there were only two vehicles here--Loving's and the SUV the minders had used to kidnap the girl. Amanda would be held for the time being, until the primary who wanted the information from her arrived.
The reason they hired Loving was that nobody else was willing to torture a teenager, if it came to that. . . .
What on earth could she possibly know? Something she'd learned about one of her father's earlier cases? Or something else? Like all teens in the D.C. area she'd have friends whose mothers or fathers worked for the government and for government contractors. Had she and a girlfriend read through files in a parent's computer, something classified?
But that question would have to wait.
Our job now was simple: Save the girl.
Pogue listened for a moment and whispered a few more words. Then he signed off. He eased closer to me and whispered, "Williams says you're in charge. How do we handle it?"
"I don't want to wait for the primary. I want to extract her now. Use nonlethal if possible . . . at least on one of them."
I wanted somebody alive to learn who was behind this.
"All right." He glanced at my gun. "You tapped?"
Meaning: Was my Glock threaded for a silencer? I rarely had reason even to draw my weapon, let alone make sure it fired in a whisper. "No."
He handed me his. "One in the bedroom. Safety's on."
He'd tell me this because Glocks don't have a safety lever; they have a double trigger that prevents accidental discharges. I was familiar with the Beretta, though, and slid the lever smoothly to the fi
re position. The Italians made as efficient weapons as the Austrians.
I was curious why he'd given me his gun. Then he said, "Cover me."
He opened his backpack and extracted some metal and plastic pieces. He assembled them into a small crossbow, steel.
The evolution of weapons . . .
It took two strokes to cock it. The bolt he loaded didn't have a sharp tip but instead an elongated tube.
"I should be a little closer," he whispered.
We moved forward. I was in the lead, using my training as an orienteer and amateur sign cutter yet again to keep our transit silent. I thought back briefly to that very long, very hot day outside San Antonio, leading the illegals to safety as quietly and as unobtrusively as I could.
Pogue and I eased into a compacted stand of weeds about forty feet from the guard. With a nod at the bow, Pogue said, "Stun gun. It'll immobilize him for about twenty seconds, so we'll have to get to him fast. I'll go first, you come behind and cover me with the Beretta. You're okay with that, right?"
Meaning killing somebody. I said, "Yes."
I aimed toward the doorway, where any reinforcements would come from.
"Go," I whispered.
Chapter 61
POGUE LIFTED THE weapon, looking completely at ease, like a man about to cast a fly into a clear stream.
He was compensating for gravity and the slight breeze. When the guard turned away from us, Pogue pulled the trigger. With a faint snap, the bolt zipped into the air in a perfect arc, hitting the man somewhere in the middle of the back. I didn't know how many volts the flying Taser had but it was enough. The guard went down, shivering.
Then we were on our feet, running in tandem. Pogue had dropped the bow and had a backup pistol in his hand. With the silenced automatic, I scanned the doorway, the building's windows and the area around us for signs of hostiles. There were none. Pogue hog-tied the guard with plastic restraints and slapped an adhesive gag over his mouth. He bent down and pocketed the man's phone and radio, after shutting them off, as well as his pistol, while I patted him down for other weapons. Even though tactical ops aren't my specialty, I knew you never left weapons for the other side to pick up later.
Take or trash, the saying went.
I dug the man's wallet out of his pocket. I was disappointed but not surprised to see he was a pro and there was no evidence of his employer or affiliation. He had four driver's licenses--different names, same picture--money and credit cards in those various names.
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