by Barry Eisler
I looked and saw that he was right. Larison was at the edge of the woods. He burst onto the lawn in a sprint. The Suburban revved its engine.
Horton placed the Barrett back on its wall mount. “Never got around to properly leveling that lawn,” he said. “Moles and gophers out there, too. Daniel would have noted all that on his way to the woods.”
The driver threw it into gear, and the Suburban barreled toward Larison. A man leaned out the passenger-side window and took aim with the same model HK Larison was now carrying. But Horton was right—the vehicle was bouncing, and as it picked up speed, the bouncing got worse.
Larison stopped as suddenly as he had appeared, the HK at eye level, his stance balanced and aggressive, his demeanor as calm and focused as though he were on a gun range, not facing down a charging Suburban with someone inside taking aim at him. The gunman leaning out the window must have recognized that Larison, stationary and still, had the targeting advantage, and let off a long automatic burst that tore up the grass five feet to Larison’s left. For all its effect on Larison, it might as well have been soft music. The Suburban hit another bump and bounced high. The instant it set down, Larison let off a three-round burst. The guy in the window jerked back and let loose a long burrrrrp of suppressed fire, all of which went high. The Suburban was thirty feet away now and still accelerating. Larison adjusted his aim and fired a long burst. The windshield exploded, and Larison dove left just as the Suburban overtook his position. He rolled to his feet and brought up the HK, but the Suburban was past him now, barreling toward the woods. It crashed into a cluster of trees and stopped. Larison raced up behind it, the HK up, stopped ten feet out from the rear and slightly to its right, and stitched a long burst across the passenger side, the AP rounds punching through the metal like it was cheese.
I stared for a moment, impressed as always by his coolness and precision. “Don’t think that’s going to buff out,” I said.
Larison circled around to the driver side, hosing it down with a one-second burst that put probably ten more AP rounds inside the vehicle. He dropped the HK, pulled out the Glock, sidled up close, and glanced inside. Then he yanked open the door with one hand, the other keeping the Glock up and ready. Whatever he saw inside, it merited a pair of two-round bursts. Then he scanned the area and headed back to the house, brushing a few pine needles from his shirt as he moved.
I looked wordlessly at Horton. He smiled and said, “Did I mention I trained him?”
A moment later, Larison called out from the top of the stairs. “Everyone cool? I’m coming down.”
“We’re good,” I called back. “You didn’t even give us a chance to get our cleats on.”
He snuck a peek from behind the bannister and, seeing that it was just Horton and me, proceeded down the stairs. He stood looking at us for a moment.
“What is this, cosplay?” he said. “You guys are dressed as, what, soldiers?”
Jesus, I thought. This is worse than having to put up with Dox.
He flashed the shark’s smile. “Just giving you a hard time. I actually needed the workout.” He looked at Horton. “I haven’t had that much fun since you tried to kill me in Costa Rica.”
Horton nodded. “A mistake I’m not likely to repeat.”
“We need to get the hell out of here,” I said. I looked at Horton. “Tell us who’s your contact. Because you and I know he’s the one who sent those men.”
There was a pause. Larison tilted his head for a moment as though listening to something.
“Oh, shit,” he said. “Helicopter.”
chapter
fourteen
LIVIA
Livia and Phelps headed into the snack room and turned on CNN. The network was playing stock footage of Boeing 737s—the model that had crashed. So it seemed no one had managed to film anything with a cellphone camera. Not surprising, since the plane had gone down over the middle of a lake at roughly four thirty in the morning.
But a husband and wife had been on the lake fishing, and a network talking head was interviewing them live on their boat. “I saw a huge ball of fire,” the husband said. “Way out over the lake. I said, ‘Honey, look, what the hell is that?’ And then we heard a boom, and we watched this thing fall out of the sky. I hadn’t even had my coffee yet, I didn’t know what to think. A UFO? A comet?”
The wife added, “Now you’re telling us it was an airplane. My God, those poor people.”
Rescue efforts were underway, with helicopters over the crash site and divers in the water. So far, there were no survivors. Just some floating wreckage. The FAA was working to recover the black box, but apparently the lake was nearly a thousand feet deep at the crash site, so expectations of a speedy resolution were low.
Livia’s mind was telling her, Come on, just a coincidence. But her gut was saying, This is extremely bad.
After a few minutes, the talking heads started repeating themselves. Phelps, still watching the screen, said, “What the hell do you make of that?” It wasn’t clear whether he was talking to Livia or to himself.
“It’s your investigation,” Livia said. “You tell me.”
Phelps nodded. “It’s . . . Jesus. It’s a hell of a coincidence, I’ll say that.”
Phelps’s cellphone buzzed. “Strangeland,” he said. He put the phone on the table and pressed the speakerphone button. “Hey, Donna. We’re watching CNN.”
“Livia, are you there?”
“Right here, LT.”
“If Detective Phelps is done with you for the night and you no longer need to be sequestered, I’m coming to pick you up myself and make sure you’re safe.”
“I don’t think—”
“I don’t want to hear it, Livia. I do not want to hear it. I’d rather have people laugh at us for being conspiracy theorists than take a chance with your safety. Phil, are we on the same sheet here?”
“I’m . . . still processing.”
“You think this is a coincidence?”
“I don’t know what the hell to think.”
“Well, you figure it out. You clear this case and prove what happened to Livia tonight had nothing to do with that plane crash, no one’s going to be happier than me. But until then, if you’re done with Livia, like I said, I’m coming to pick her up. I don’t want her walking out of that building by herself.”
Phelps looked at Livia. “I’m done with her. And yeah, we’ll wait for you together.”
“Do that. Thank you.”
Twenty minutes later, Livia was getting into the passenger seat of Strangeland’s Crosstrek. The parking lot of the Airport Way Center facility was empty.
Strangeland nodded to Phelps, who held the door for Livia. “Thank you again, Phil. You learn anything, I want to know.”
Phelps nodded. “I get it.” He closed the door and Strangeland drove off.
Livia didn’t bother with her seat belt. At the moment, she was more concerned about being able to react to another attack than she was about a car wreck. “My place is in Georgetown.”
“I know where you live. You’re not going home tonight. Or this morning, rather. You’re staying with me.”
“LT, you really don’t have to—”
“Don’t you tell me what I have to or don’t have to do,” Strangeland said, giving the Crosstrek an angry burst of gas and cutting the wheel hard as they turned out of the parking lot. “I don’t believe in coincidences and neither do you. This whole thing stinks, and until we know more, we’re not taking chances. Now. You tell me what you didn’t tell Phelps.”
“What do you mean?”
Strangeland glanced at her, then back to the road. “I’ve always respected your mysteries, Livia. You know that. I know some things about your past, the rest I can guess, and I have some ideas about how it all affects your present. I’ve never pressed you on any of it. You’re a good cop. You’re a good human being. The world would be better off with more people like you, not with one less. Now tell me what you know about this thing that y
ou didn’t tell Phelps. If you don’t, there’s no way I can help you. And don’t you fucking dare put me in that position.”
Livia didn’t know how to respond. She really had told Phelps everything about the Child’s Play op. Other than the part about reaching out to Little. Little knew too much about her, about Bangkok, and she didn’t want to emphasize that connection.
On the other hand, Strangeland was already acquainted with Little. He’d gone through department channels, seeking out Livia to work on the anti-trafficking task force that had taken her to Thailand. Livia had used the opportunity, and the access to federal intelligence that came with it, to return to Bangkok and track down and kill the remnants of the gang that had trafficked and raped her and Nason. She didn’t want Strangeland to know she was still in touch with Little. Didn’t want to close that circuit. But if she didn’t, and Strangeland found out some other way . . . it wouldn’t look good.
Shit. She’d always been so careful. She’d worked so hard to keep things separate. The cop and the other thing. The dragon. But this . . . for all she knew, the two people who had tried to kill her tonight were connected to the traffickers she had taken out in Bangkok. Or to the senator. The FBI had investigated his demise in Bangkok, she knew that. The powers that be had decided to cover up the actual manner of death with a story about a heart attack. Better that than revelations about how this pillar of the Washington establishment had spent the entirety of his illustrious career raping children right under the noses of everyone around him, and maybe even with their complicity.
But a cover-up in public didn’t mean someone wasn’t intent on payback in private. In fact, the cover-up might have been specifically chosen with payback in mind.
Obviously, she couldn’t tell Strangeland anything like that. But she had to tell her something.
“I reached out to Little,” she said, telling herself she wasn’t revealing anything the lieutenant wouldn’t figure out for herself. Of course she would reach out to whatever federal contacts she had. Who wouldn’t? Besides, Strangeland had even encouraged her earlier to do so.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Livia was ready for the question. “I know you don’t trust him.”
“Do you?”
“Not really. But he’s the only high-level federal law-enforcement contact I’ve got. Anyway, he told me he’d work his Bureau Rolodex and see what he could find. So there was really nothing to tell you yet.”
“Why do you play it so close to the vest with me, Livia?”
She was ready for that one, too. Or at least some version of it. “You said you know about my past.”
“Enough of it, I imagine. Yeah.”
“Maybe you don’t know this. My own parents sold me. And my little sister. I was thirteen. She was eleven. The rest is probably what you imagine.”
She hated saying even that much. Hated that it could still make her feel . . . ashamed. And tainted, because of everything it was connected to. And she especially hated using Nason as . . . fuck, as some kind of cover. But she had to give Strangeland answers the lieutenant would find emotionally satisfying. Or she’d keep pressing.
Strangeland nodded slowly. She didn’t take her eyes off the road, and Livia sensed that in not looking over at that moment, the lieutenant was showing her a kind of compassion. Respect for her privacy, an acknowledgment of the intimacy of what Livia had just related.
A moment passed. Strangeland cleared her throat. “I am more sorry than I will ever know how to say.”
Livia didn’t respond. She’d spoken about it only once before. With Dox, who she called by his real name, Carl. When their lives had depended on it. To get through that conversation, she’d shut down her emotions, thrown the circuit breakers on every feeling connected to the past, to those memories, to everything. It had been exhausting. And afterward, what she’d managed to wall off for long enough to tell Carl what he needed to know had burst out of confinement, scalding and searing and fresh. She wasn’t going to say more. She couldn’t go through that again.
“I’m sorry for pressing,” Strangeland added. “Like I said, I’ve always known not to.”
Livia shook her head, not thinking, not feeling, just disconnecting.
When she’d gotten it tamped down the way she needed to, she said, “I’m only telling you because it’s not easy for me to rely on people. If you want to know where my lone-wolf routine comes from, start there.”
“I think I get it.”
“I don’t know if you do. I don’t know if I do. But . . . that’s the way I deal with personal shit.”
“Well, on this thing, you’re going to have to rely on someone. If this is all a coincidence, then fine. But we’re going to need resources to make that determination. Someone who can reach out high-level to the Feds.”
“LT, if this wasn’t a coincidence, we’re talking about people who brought down an airplane. What do you think, we’re looking for some King County Council member?”
Strangeland grimaced. “You’re saying this was the Feds.”
“If it’s not a coincidence, that’s my working theory. I just don’t know which ones. Or why.”
“Maybe Homeland Security. Maybe the Bureau. Jesus, I feel insane just talking about this. The one thing I’m sure of is that we need to make a public stink.”
“How do you mean?”
“Okay, if we’re really going to put on our tinfoil hats here, someone just brought down a plane, and tried to have you killed, to stifle what you might know about Secret Service agents being part of a child-pornography ring. We get the chief involved, the mayor, hell, maybe the governor. A lot of people asking a lot of questions in a lot of places. Make the conspirators understand they missed their chance. The cat’s out of the bag. Worse, in fact. Because if something happens to you, it’s further proof of the conspiracy and they’d just be bringing more heat on themselves. Hell, I’d call a goddamn press conference, but we’re probably going to sound crazy enough just running this up through chain of command.”
Livia said nothing. What Strangeland was saying made sense. And even if it didn’t, she doubted she’d be able to talk the lieutenant out of it. But she still didn’t like it. She didn’t want all this attention. She was afraid of where it could lead. She wished there were some way she could just handle the whole thing her own way, before any of it could lead back to Bangkok or anything else.
And then she realized. Maybe there was.
chapter
fifteen
RAIN
A moment later, I heard it, too—the distinctive rhythmic buzz of approaching rotors.
Horton dipped his head toward the stairs. “That’s an MH-6,” he said. He stepped into the gun room and flipped a wall switch. The steel trapdoor swung open with a mechanical whine and a light came on from below. “Could have a chain gun or minigun. Could even be loaded up with rockets. Come on, we don’t have much time.”
We followed him into the gun room and he secured the door behind us. A second later, there was a concussive boom and everything shook. Then a second. I hadn’t been mortared in decades, but the teeth-rattling, jarring terror was instant total recall.
“Rockets,” he said. “Goddamn it, you know how long it took me to build this place? I told you, no good deed.”
Under the trapdoor was a steep riser of stairs. We headed down, Horton in front, Larison bringing up the rear. At the bottom of the stairs was a wall switch. Horton flipped it and the trapdoor closed above us.
It was a safe room, as I had suspected, about the same dimensions as the gun room above. With the three of us, it felt cramped because the walls were crammed with supplies: Food rations. Water. Medical equipment. Rebreathers. More weaponry, including a Stinger portable antiaircraft missile launcher I recognized from a lifetime earlier in Afghanistan. One wall featured another steel door secured with four heavy bolts. Horton pulled the slides as two more explosions shook the room, then tugged hard on the handle. The door slowly opened. Be
yond it was a dirt-walled tunnel, reinforced by periodic steel beams, narrow but tall enough to walk in upright and leading about fifty yards in the direction of the road. Along the ceiling were fluorescent overheads and a series of pipes that I assumed, based on the notably nonmusty air, provided ventilation.
Another explosion rattled the room. “Oh, you motherfuckers!” Horton said. He pulled the Stinger from the wall, secured it around his neck and shoulder with the attached canvas strap, and started jogging down the tunnel.
Larison and I glanced at each other. He shrugged and followed Horton. I started after him, then paused. There was a scoped GM6 Lynx portable .50-caliber rifle on the wall. I’d read about the weapon but never used one—the firepower of the Barrett, but relatively lightweight and with a specially designed barrel that supposedly absorbed enough recoil to make it possible to fire accurately from the shoulder.
Better to have it and not need it.
I grabbed the weapon, checked the load, and saw red- and silver-tipped rounds—incendiary and armor-piercing.
But shit, I really hope I don’t need it.
I stuffed a spare magazine into my pants and headed off behind Horton and Larison. There was the sound of another explosion, less concussive now because we were no longer under the house. I wondered why they hadn’t just started off with the helicopter, and realized they thought gunmen would be more certain, and certainly lower profile. Using the helicopter for more than spotting and surveillance was a plan B.
At its end, the tunnel split off into two more corridors, forming a Y. We followed Horton down the left side, which dead-ended about fifty yards on. A steel ladder led up about ten yards to another trapdoor, presumably camouflaged on the other side. I estimated we were about eighty yards from the house, just inside the tree line, and maybe a quarter mile from the road.
