The Final Twist

by Jeffery Deaver

  “Just sore is all.”

  Her eyes widened slightly as she saw the slash on his hand, the messy blood.

  “It’s okay.” He walked to his bike, lifted the seat and got a bottle of alcohol. He poured it over the wound, exhaling at the hot pain that radiated up to his jaw. She tore open the bandage he’d taken out, and when the liquid had evaporated off, she pressed on the skin and smoothed the edges.

  “Droon?” She nodded toward the woods.

  Shaw shook his head.

  “I was going to say sorry I missed him. But worked out better this way, right?” she asked, in a soft voice.

  Yes, Droon had been his. It couldn’t end any differently.

  He was about to ask her a question, when he suddenly sensed that the ambient sound had changed.

  The parking lot had been filled with the white noise of traffic. San Bruno is bordered by the 101 and 280, both multilane Silicon Valley arteries and as busy as can be at all hours.

  He’d been aware of the sticky rush of traffic. Been aware of the guttural whine of aircraft descending toward or departing from San Francisco and San Jose airports. Been aware of the wind in the pine and maples, a distant dog complaining.

  Then, rising, rising, was the sound of a vehicle engine, growing louder.

  Insistent.

  He found his Glock in the brush, and he thought: Helms, Stone and Braxton had had their phones in the chaotic moments after she figured out the trap. She might have a speed-dial button on her mobile: need backup or distress.

  Shaw’s team had a good defensive position where they were.

  But the black Escalade was plowing unexpectedly over a pedestrian trail.

  “Ty!” Shaw called. “Hostiles.”

  The big man nodded and clicked off the safety of his H&K.

  He glanced at the Colt in Victoria’s grip and, digging into his pocket, handed her ten loose shells. She reloaded and slipped the live shells in her pocket, then crouched, looking toward the approaching SUV.

  A smoke grenade spiraled from the window of the SUV and popped, filling the area with dense gray cover. Shaw couldn’t see for certain but he believed at least two men were out, firing automatic weapons—loud, unsilenced—in three-shot bursts. Shaw and Victoria rolled to cover behind a fallen tree. Ty was behind a low berm of grassy earth.

  But he and Shaw lowered their weapons. It was impossible to acquire a target. Shaw squinted through the raw, pungent smoke, Victoria too. She said, “Flank them?”

  A nod. He started left, she right.

  But they got only a few feet before the relentless machine-gun fire tore into the air and ground around them, spitting dirt and rocks and branches high into the air. The stream of slugs swept toward her.

  “Victoria!” Shaw called, as he saw her go down.

  69

  Too much incoming fire, too much smoke to acquire targets.

  Angry shouts from the attackers. “Move it, move it!”

  Both Victoria and Ty were hidden from sight by the smoke.

  “Victoria!”

  No response. Shaw’s heart was slamming.

  He tried to find a target. But it was impossible to see anything clearly through the thick, creamy cloud.

  He knew they were in the SUV because the machine-gun spray had ceased. Shaw couldn’t hear the doors slam—the weapons fire had partially deafened him—but he knew the Escalade was speeding away along another trail, a narrow one.

  He stared in that direction but holstered his Glock.

  Never discharge your weapon without a clear target . . .

  He turned back. “Victoria!”

  Still no response.

  Jesus . . .

  He’d gotten her into this.

  Coughing, spitting out the vile fumes, he strode through the cloud to where he’d seen her fall.

  “Victoria!”

  Still nothing.

  Come on, come on . . . Please.

  He pushed through the smoke.

  No body, no blood trail.

  Had she been wounded and then snatched by one of the attackers?

  Then . . . Did he hear a voice?

  Again: “Here.”

  “Victoria.”

  A bout of coughing.

  “Here!”

  Then he saw her on her knees in a clump of sedge grass. He ran to her and helped her up. She clutched her torso. Then lowered her hands. No blood. No bullet wounds. She’d fallen hard to the ground, it seemed, the breath knocked from her lungs.

  Arm around her shoulders, he helped her out of the haze. They were both coughing and wiping tears from the smoke, which wasn’t the sort from wood or paper; the grenades spewed corroding, chemical fumes created by burning potassium chlorate or hexachloroethane and zinc. While not intended to debilitate, the thick clouds stung and choked.

  “Ty!” Shaw called, looking around.

  The broad-chested man was staggering from the berm behind which he’d taken cover, coughing and spitting as well.

  Now that the smoke was drifting away on the breeze, they could see, probably a hundred yards away, the SUV was rocking along the pedestrian trail, about to turn out of sight.

  Shaw said to Victoria, “You okay to go after them with me?”

  She nodded. Shaw looked to Ty, who did the same.

  The three of them started out of the dissipating cloud.

  Then, suddenly, the Escalade lurched hard to the left, narrowly missing a tree. Something had flown from the right front tire.

  A muted boom rolled over the landscape. Shaw knew it would have been much louder had his ears been functioning better. Then the windshield of the SUV blew to pieces. Another boom.

  The Escalade stopped entirely. Several more booms, several more lurches.

  Shaw said, “Engine’s gone. It’s dead.”

  You can’t shoot a car motor by hitting the block, not with ordinary rounds. But all it takes is one well-placed bullet to destroy the delicate electronics under the hood that make today’s cars such miracles of modern transportation—and so vulnerable to hackers.

  Ty, Victoria and Shaw moved forward slowly, using trees for cover.

  Shaw called, “Everyone, out of the vehicle now!”

  Ty: “This is your last warning. Weapons on the ground. Step out with your hands raised. Now!”

  A moment passed.

  A huge ring as another rifle slug hit the driver’s side door, low, tearing into the seat just beneath where he sat.

  As the echoing report of the shot from the rifle rolled over them, all at once the doors opened and guns flew out. Soon everyone was on the ground.

  “Let’s get them bundled up.”

  While Victoria covered them with the Python, Shaw and Ty searched the whole crew: the Latino driver and another BlackBridge op, a redheaded, muscular ex-military sort, as well as Braxton, Helms and George Stone. Zip ties for the newcomers. The other three remained bound.

  More vehicle noise, another SUV approaching, coming down the trail. This one was a Lincoln.

  Its arrival didn’t trouble Shaw in the least. Or surprise him.

  The driver climbed out and walked toward Shaw and the others, leaving in the vehicle the McMillan TAC-338 sniper rifle he’d been using as he covered the takedown. He now had his own pistol in hand. He saw that the hostiles were down and slipped away his gun.

  Shaw introduced Victoria to his brother.

  70

  Two hours earlier, as Shaw had sat in his father’s Naugahyde chair, having learned that the San Leandro lead to finding the identity of the SP family had not panned out, he had glanced around the safe house and his eyes rested on the tape recorder.

  With little time left until the family died, he’d forged a plan to ensnare Braxton and Droon and force them to abort the attack on the SP family.
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br />   He’d needed someone he could trust, a woman, and someone who wasn’t afraid of combat. Russell’s resourceful Karin was not a tactical op, and his group had none available. So Shaw had called Victoria Lesston and wondered if she’d help him out in an operation he was putting together.

  She’d replied, “There’re two types of people, Colter.”

  He’d laughed.

  She said, “I’ll get the next flight out.”

  “No time. My brother’s organization’ll send a chopper for you.”

  “Organization. What is it?”

  “Don’t know. He’s tight-lipped.”

  “Have to say, Colter, with you not here, I’ve been feeling antsy. Not used to staying in one place for very long.”

  A Restless Woman . . .

  He explained what he had in mind. Her role was to pretend to be Julia, the audio analyst Russell had called from the diner in Quigley Square. Victoria would call Shaw on his iPhone, which was compromised. If Braxton didn’t tip to the fact he was using this phone, and not the encrypted Android, she would learn that there was incriminating evidence on the cassette and about the furtive meeting between Shaw and “Julia” at the park in San Bruno. She’d learn too that Russell was elsewhere—an assurance that only Shaw and the audio engineer would be present.

  And the “evidence”? None of the science, which Victoria had fabricated on the fly, was real. There was no such thing as hiding voices in static.

  But Shaw had figured, rightly as it turned out, that Ian Helms, Braxton and Droon were so desperate to make sure that the lurid details of BlackBridge’s operations went undiscovered that they couldn’t take any chances; they had to assume the evidence was real and destroy it, then kill the audio analyst and Shaw.

  He had considered bringing in the law but still didn’t know the extent of BlackBridge and Devereux’s reach. He’d called Tom Pepper once again and told him his concerns. The former agent didn’t know anyone in the San Francisco FBI field office, and so he couldn’t vouch for them. But he did have some trusted agent friends in Denver. A team was being assembled. But Shaw and Russell needed to move fast to nail Braxton and Droon and stop the assault on the SP family. So he and Russell and Victoria put together their own private takedown.

  “Citizen’s arrest, you could call it,” Shaw had told his brother.

  Russell’s response: “Hmm.” Then: “It’s a good plan, Colt.”

  And for the first time since they’d been in each other’s company, the dourness had faded from his brother’s face, replaced by what could pass for enthusiasm.

  Russell had enlisted Ty to play the part of a state ranger; it wouldn’t be suspicious for him to be in the park just making the rounds, spending time on his mobile, which was connected to sophisticated recording equipment that would suck up the conversation of the BlackBridge ops who came to meet Shaw and Victoria—certainly Braxton and Droon, perhaps others. He hadn’t hoped for the other fish they caught: Ian Helms himself.

  Russell took a high-cover position in the park with the sniper rifle on a bipod and covered them for the takedown. They hadn’t expected a backup SUV, which, in any case, arrived via a tree-covered pedestrian trail; he’d had to move fast to get into a new position to sight in on the Cadillac and disable it.

  When the FBI arrived from Denver, in about an hour, they could take this crew into custody, along with the tape and statements from Shaw, Russell, Victoria and Ty.

  Shaw said to his brother, “Let’s do some horse-trading.”

  Russell looked around and said, “We’re black on the perimeter here.” He looked to Ty and Victoria. “I’d get on the west and south.”

  “That’s a go,” Victoria said. She snagged one of the machine guns, checked it and scouted out a position to the west. Ty took the south.

  Shaw and his brother walked to where Braxton and Helms were sitting on the ground, hands in restraints. Legs in front of them. Braxton surprised Shaw by saying in a raw, wounded voice, “You didn’t need to kill him. He would have surrendered.”

  Shaw didn’t respond. It would have been a push-pull conversation, since, no, Droon would not have surrendered and was a second away from shooting Shaw, in the first case, and stabbing him in the heart, in the second. The strangulation too.

  The woman was clearly shaken by Droon’s loss. This seemed out of character for her, a person who’d ordered the torture or handled the execution of any number of people. Maybe there’d been more to their relationship. Shaw had to admit that he found it bordered on unpleasant to picture romance between them, but who was he to judge when it came to matters of the heart, thought the Restless Man, whose track record in love was not stellar.

  As Russell remained standing, a guard of sorts, Shaw crouched in front of Braxton and Helms, who said, “I’m not saying another word without my lawyer.”

  “We’re not cops. We’re not recording anymore. This isn’t about evidence.”

  “Then?” Braxton muttered.

  “We assume the SP hit is off now. Can you confirm that?”

  A pause. “The what?” she asked.

  Shaw looked from her to Helms. “If that family dies, it’ll come back on you. We’ll make sure of that. If the motive is to kill a witness, that’s capital murder. Death penalty in California.”

  Helms appeared perplexed.

  Russell said, “Give us the name.”

  Shaw, again in the good-cop role: “We’ll tell the U.S. attorney you cooperated. That’ll go a long way in your favor.”

  “Who the hell is SP?” Helms muttered. He turned to Braxton, who shook her head. She too seemed confused.

  Shaw glanced at Russell. “Show them.”

  Russell took his phone and displayed the picture of the note that Karin had found on Blond’s body, the kill order.

  Confirmation from Hunters Point crew.

  6/26, 7:00 p.m. SP and family. All ↓

  Helms muttered, “I have no idea what that is.”

  Braxton shook her head yet again.

  Russell said, “The Stanford library the other day? The man with Droon? This kill order was in his pocket.”

  Braxton said, “He was just a friend of Ebbitt Droon’s. He was meeting him at the library to drop something off. Whatever that’s about, the note isn’t about one of our projects.”

  “He didn’t work for BlackBridge?”

  Helms said, “No.”

  The words—and the timbre of their voices—had moved Shaw from ten percent alert to ninety percent. He was in set mode.

  Shaw asked Braxton, “Who is he?”

  “Security. Works for a subsidiary of Banyan Tree.”

  “Name. Give me his name.”

  Russell crouched and leaned very close. His brother’s chosen method for retrieving information.

  “He’s . . .” Braxton thought for a moment. “I think it’s Richard Hogan.”

  Russell rose and said to his brother, “We got it wrong. Devereux’s the one that wants SP dead, not BlackBridge.”

  “So the hit’s still on.” Shaw looked at his phone.

  Three hours until the family died.

  71

  The brothers obtained Richard Hogan’s address nearly simultaneously.

  Shaw had sent a request to Mack, Russell to Karin.

  Shaw’s phone dinged first, but only seconds before his brother’s.

  The place where the hitman had lived was a yellow Victorian-façaded townhome in the shadow of Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill. An upmarket neighborhood. At first Shaw found this surprising, given Hogan’s career—muscle work and kill orders—but Shaw supposed that Jonathan Stuart Devereux paid well.

  Russell parallel parked on a steep incline and spun the wheel to chock the tire against the curb. Signs warned drivers to do this. Shaw supposed that the odds of a vehicle with an automatic transmission slipping ou
t of park were minimal, but why not go the extra step? The incline had to be twenty degrees.

  They climbed out of the SUV and Shaw dipped his head as two red-masked parrots zipped past. He noted several more, twitchily observing the street from the branches of a maple tree. Another pair was perched nearby too. The birds had made this neighborhood their own.

  He and Russell crossed the street and approached the front door slowly, in a tactical formation, away from windows and the door itself. Hogan was no more, and Karin’s information revealed he was single, but he might have had roommates, who were fellow Devereux employees. Or a lover in the same line of murderous work that he had pursued.

  It was just the two of them now. Ty and Victoria had to keep an eye on Helms, Braxton and the other ops until the agents arrived from Denver.

  Shaw and his brother looked through the windows, fast and carefully. The living space appeared unoccupied.

  “I can’t pick these.”

  Russell too examined the two deadbolts. He tapped his own shoulder and Shaw nodded.

  Stepping three feet back, the brothers paused and looked around. The street was deserted.

  Russell charged forward and crashed into the wood. The heavy panel slammed inward as if the hardware were skimpy tin.

  The men fanned out, guns drawn, clearing the sparse place. Lacking in furniture, that is, but there were weapons and ammunition aplenty, computers, tactical gear, phones—cellular and satellite, clothing and body armor.

  Russell held up an ID badge with Hogan’s picture on it. The subsidiary he worked for within the Banyan Tree family was Sequoia Pest Removal.

  The computers were passcode protected, as were the phones. Not impossible for an outfit like Russell’s group to hack, Shaw supposed, but SP’s family had only hours to live. Cracking the electronics would have taken too long.

  Shaw said, “The kill order was handwritten. Let’s look for paper.”

  They began rifling through stacks of documents that sat on Hogan’s kitchen table and a precarious card table that served as a makeshift desk.

  Shaw’s pile was mostly receipts, maps, instruction booklets for newly purchased weapons, company memos that had nothing to do with the kill order, checkbooks and ledgers that showed transfers into banks in the Caribbean.