by Barry Eisler
“A conscience?” Livia said.
Mostly shit like that didn’t bother Larison. But that one did.
He looked at her. “You know,” he said evenly, “there’s a lot we don’t know about each other, Livia. The difference is, I don’t pretend to know. And I don’t judge you based on the pretense.”
“Hold on,” Dox said. “Everybody hold on.” He turned to Livia. “I know where you’re coming from, and you know I respect it. But you can’t talk to people like that. Larison’s right. You don’t know him. Just like he doesn’t know you. And if we fall into the habit of thinking the worst of each other instead of being generous, the Hobbses and Rispels and Schraders of the world won’t have to kill us. We’ll do it for them. So let’s all just take a deep breath, keep talking, and most of all keep listening to each other. Okay?”
Larison appreciated the support. He’d seen Dox back Livia before and was glad it wasn’t just a reflex. “The Cleavon Little version was better,” he said. “But thanks.”
Dox laughed. They were all quiet for a moment. Livia looked at Larison and said, “I’m sorry.”
She was a proud, prickly person, and maniacal when it came to protecting children. Larison knew the apology wasn’t easy for her. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “But look, I still don’t understand the plan. Yeah, if the intel is good, we could kick down the door, shoot some people, and drag out Schrader. We could take that risk. Hopefully none of us would get killed in the process. But for what? What’s the upside, compared to doing nothing?”
Livia started to say something, but Dox, maybe worried she might be impolitic again, jumped in. “If those videos get released, it’s not just the men in them who’ll be all over the Internet. It’ll be their victims. That’s a whole lot of innocent lives permanently ruined.”
The truth was, Larison didn’t care. He didn’t know the girls. He didn’t know the circumstances. And while he might feel sorry for them in the abstract, it wasn’t enough to motivate him to risk his life. And if Livia wanted to judge him for that, she just wasn’t thinking clearly. He didn’t see her on a crusade to feed the hungry or house the homeless or whatever. As far as he was concerned, everyone had their own shit, picked their own battles, and did their own cost-benefit ratios.
But there was no point in having that argument. So all he said was “All right. What about an anonymous tip to the Marshal Service? How would that hurt these girls?”
“I had the same thought,” Livia said. “The problem is, one, we don’t know how soon they’d go in. If they wait, Schrader’s dead-man switch could upload something more damaging than the initial warning. And two, whenever they go in, they’d be going in as law enforcement. Playing by rules that could wind up with Schrader dead—either in the crossfire, or by action of whoever’s holding him. It sounds safer, but it’s not.”
Larison wasn’t buying it. “You just don’t trust anyone else.”
She looked at him. “Do you?”
It was a fair question, and there was no point in answering it. “I still don’t see the endgame,” he said. “Even if we break Schrader out, Hamilton says he has to operate the system himself. From one of his houses. His own voice. Now maybe you could record his voice and that would work, though maybe not, and if it didn’t, you wouldn’t have a lot to fall back on. So what we’re talking about is his live voice, presumably reciting a secret phrase, and with no stress in it. How are you going to overcome all that? In the end, that dead-man switch is just going to do what it was made to do.”
“Kanezaki can get us drugs,” Dox said. “Beta blockers and other anti-anxiety agents.”
“You’re shitting me,” Larison said.
“Nope. He says CIA has studied this kind of thing, and that with enough Klonopin and Propranolol, Schrader could have a shotgun to his head and there’d be as much stress in his voice as if he were dozing in his favorite recliner.”
Larison shook his head. “Your tax dollars at work.”
“So if we can get him out,” Dox said, “and get him to one of his houses, and give him a beta-blocker cocktail, we can reset the system. And buy Maya and Evie time to figure out how to take control of it.”
Larison still didn’t see it. “To what end?”
“One possibility is evidence,” Livia said. “In court, those videos will be sealed. The girls’ images, their identities—it can all be protected.”
“Come on,” Larison said. “Look what the powers that be did when Diaz had Schrader arrested. And now you’re talking about, what, prosecuting the attorney general? The director of National Intelligence? What country do you think you’re living in?”
“There’s another possibility,” Dox said. “In my opinion, a better one.”
“What?” Larison said. “Build a time machine and stop all this before it even happened?”
“Maya and Evie,” Livia said. “If they can scrub out the girls’ faces, we can release those videos ourselves.”
The room was quiet for a moment. Larison looked at Livia. “You’d be okay with that?”
She made a fist and the knuckles cracked. “More than okay.”
Larison thought about it more. It was elegant, he had to admit. Audacious. And had just the right amount of fuck-you frisson. “If it could be done,” he said, “it could solve a lot of problems.”
“And not just ours,” Dox said.
They were all quiet again. The more Larison considered, the more he liked it.
“Maybe Kanezaki can get us armor,” he said.
No one responded.
He shrugged and added, “I mean, if we’re going to be kicking down doors, I’d like to be wearing something thicker than just my rain parka.”
Livia looked at him. “Then you’re in?”
“I guess so,” Larison said. He shook his head. “Release the videos ourselves. I mean, what kind of plan is that?”
Dox smiled. “The chaos kind.”
chapter
fifty-five
DOX
They drove in the minivan, Diaz behind the wheel. Dox would have preferred Livia, who was their best driver, but they needed three shooters. So when Diaz volunteered, even Larison’s protests were pro forma. And regardless, Diaz had quickly put those to bed by pointing out that she’d been driving even before she had a license, and learned how on the streets of Washington Heights and the Bronx. “You have your credentials,” she’d said to Larison, “and I have mine,” earning herself a nod and a respectful smile from the angel of death himself.
Kanezaki had given them the coordinates of where to pick up the gear they needed, and told Dox his contact would be the same person who’d supplied him the last time he’d been in the area. Dox remembered a black woman so grandmotherly she was about the last person he would have made for an operator. That time she’d been waiting in a coffee shop, but this morning the pickup would be on the side of the road, along a stretch of the city known locally as the Jungle because, Livia explained, it was impenetrably forested, home to countless homeless encampments, and largely impervious to the local government’s authority.
Diaz knew the exact spot—a street called Beacon Avenue South, just east of I-5. It was getting light as they crossed the overpass, and Dox could see how the area had earned its name. There was something primeval about it, brambles and pine needles and swirling, thick mist, a serpentine carpet of green that made the support pylons of the elevated roads above it look weak and temporary by comparison. Here and there, nylon tents and garbage piles appeared amid the vegetation like hilltops breaking through fog, but their presence only emphasized how much more was likely hidden.
Fifty yards beyond the overpass, Diaz did a U-turn and pulled over. Dox got out and crossed the road, his breath fogging in the still, moist air. He stopped to listen. Morning birdsong. Traffic from the nearby interstate. A dog barking in the distance. He looked around and on both sides of the road saw nothing but green. It was strange—to the northwest, he could see the cityscape of downto
wn Seattle, but where he stood, everything felt entirely rural.
The drop-off had been set in motion too recently for anyone to have had a real chance at an ambush, but still he had the Wilson in hand inside his jacket as he walked along the shoulder. In less than a minute he saw her, sitting on a tarp just below the guardrail. If he hadn’t been looking, he would have gone right by.
“Oh, it’s you again,” she said. “Tom told me.”
He nodded, amazed. He recognized her face, but . . . last time she had looked like a well-fed grandmother. Now she was dressed in filthy rags and seemed . . . well, not emaciated, but at least in need of a square meal. “I guess we don’t need the bona fides anymore,” he said, glancing around. “Pardon me, ma’am, but are you all right?”
She smiled, and for a second she looked the way he remembered. “Sonny, I don’t know where you went to school, but didn’t they teach you to blend?”
“I like to think so, yes, but not as well as they must have taught you.”
She laughed at that. “Well, thank you.”
“You sure you’re all right? You don’t need a ride or anything?”
“Oh, I’m not nearly as helpless as I look. If you keep walking, ten yards up, right under the guardrail, you’ll see a large olive duffel bag. It has everything on your shopping list. You know, I’m always expecting you to ask for a sniper rifle, but you never do.”
This time it was his turn to laugh. “Tom’s been talking about me, has he?”
“A little.”
“Well, he’s right. I do prefer gunfights to be conducted at a proper distance, but circumstances don’t always oblige. You mind my asking how you’re able to get ahold of such great toys on such short notice?”
“I do, actually. A woman should have her secrets.”
He shook his head, amazed. “That’s fair. Please understand, I was asking out of sincere admiration.”
“I know you were. Now, you should go. Good luck to you, always. Maybe we’ll get to meet again.”
“I hope so,” he said. Then he smiled and added, “I think you could teach me a thing or two.”
She returned the smile. “I’m way too old for you to flirt with, young man. But thank you anyway.”
Had he been flirting with her? He hadn’t meant to. Or had he? He gave her a little bow and walked off.
A minute later, he was back in the car and they were moving again. They distributed the contents of the bag. Modular breach charges and tape. KDH Magnum TAC-1 vests. Suppressors. Armor-piercing rounds—9 millimeter for Livia and Larison, .45 for Dox. Tactical gloves. Pry bar. Flashbang grenades. Hemostatic bandages and other medical supplies. Bolt cutters, in case Schrader was chained to a wall. Flex-ties. And a backpack-carried, Agency-issue multispectrum Technical Surveillance Countermeasures unit, which could detect microphones, cameras, and pretty much anything else that bled an electronic signature from up to fifty feet out, through a Bluetooth-connected pair of binoculars.
While Diaz drove, the three of them geared up. Dox hated that Livia was going in with them. He knew what kind of shooter she was—better than he was with a pistol, truth be told, which was saying something, though not as good as Larison—but the whole point of bringing in Larison and stopping Manus was to keep Livia out of this, not to drag her deeper in. But that ship had sailed. The best thing he could do now was to get on his game face, drop everyone in that house, and come out with Schrader.
The Airbnb website had been a big help, given that they included numerous photos of the property, interior and exterior. The plan was to approach through the woods behind the house, use the TSCM gear to confirm no cameras or other electronic countermeasures, and then for Larison to use the external stairs to a second-story porch, where he would use the breach charge to blow a hole in a wall while Dox and Livia went in through a first-floor window, preceded by a flashbang. They’d sweep the house, neutralize the opposition, and hustle Schrader out.
That was the plan, anyway. How it went would likely be another story.
chapter
fifty-six
LIVIA
While Carl was picking up the gear, Livia connected her phone through Carl’s satellite hotspot and called B. D. Little, a contact with Homeland Security Investigations. Not long before, she’d helped him solve the crime that had changed the course of his life—the loss of his teenaged daughter. They knew each other’s secrets. He was one of the few people she trusted.
He laughed when he heard her voice. “Been reading the news from out there,” he said. “I had a feeling I might hear from you.”
She smiled at that. “How’ve you been?”
“Better. Thanks to you.”
“I need a favor.”
“Anything.”
“You heard about Andrew Schrader?”
He laughed again. “Yeah. Busted out of prison. Like I said, I had a feeling I might hear from you.”
“I might need to pay a visit to his Bainbridge Island house. I need to know whether it’s being watched. The Marshal Service, FBI, whoever. Can you find out?”
“That’s easy,” he told her. “We have a central database now. I can check other federal law enforcement deployments right from my desk. Can you hold on?”
“Of course.”
It took him only a few minutes. “It’s clear,” he said. “My guess is, it’s such an obvious place, no one thinks he’d be stupid enough to go there. Besides which, there’s so much interagency finger-pointing on his escape I bet no one’s even put together a coherent plan for recapture. I can monitor things and let you know if anything changes.”
“Yes. Please.”
“You need anything else?”
“Not right now.”
“I wish you did.”
“Well, it’s only right now. It could change.”
He laughed. “Let me know,” he said. “And good hunting.”
Livia had Diaz pull into White River Amphitheater, a place for open-air concerts with a large dirt parking area separated by a short stretch of woods from the house where Schrader was being held. Larison set out wearing the TSCM gear while the rest of them waited.
“Wish we’d gotten the intel just a couple hours earlier,” Carl said, double-checking a backpack with the flashbangs, bolt cutters, and medical supplies inside. “It’d still be dark now. Call me crazy, but I think this kind of job goes down better under cover of darkness.”
Livia gave him a small smile. It had been a good night. But he needed to set aside the afterglow. “Stop worrying about me.”
For a second, she thought he was going to argue. Instead, he nodded and said, “Told you you’re getting to know me well.”
“Remember,” she added, “I’ve probably breached more houses than you.”
He scowled. “All right, you’ve made your point.”
“I’ll be fine. And you’ll be right behind me.”
“I hate that I’m going in after you. Bad enough you made me ride in the damn rear on the motorcycle in Pattaya. Now this.”
“I’m a smaller target. And a better shot. You toss the flashbang, clear the glass, we check, you cover me, I go in, then you. It’s a good plan.”
She knew that was as much lecturing as he could take. But she was still concerned. She’d seen how cool he typically was in the face of danger. His nervousness now was a measure of how attached he’d gotten. She didn’t mind. She’d gotten pretty attached herself, though she found ways to fight it. But right now, they had a job to do.
They sat in silence, scoping the parking lot through the windows. After a few minutes, she saw Larison jogging through the woods in their direction. She slid open the passenger-side door and he got in.
“Good to go,” he said. He pulled off the backpack and tossed the accompanying goggles in the foot well next to it. “No countermeasures. And the curtains are all drawn. I didn’t see anyone looking out. Still, with three guys, they’d have to be pretty incompetent to not post at least one sentry. If we come in from the south
west side, we’ll have less than twenty feet of open ground to cover from the woods to the back of the house. If someone’s looking through those curtains when we move, they’ll spot us. If we take fire, I’ll cover our retreat to the woods and then you cover me. We good?”
“We’re good,” Carl said. He pulled on the backpack with the flashbangs and other gear.
Larison looked at Livia and she repeated it. “We’re good.”
“See you in five,” he said to Diaz. “Keep that engine running.”
“I’ll be here,” she said.
They headed out, the sun coming up behind them. Livia couldn’t deny that Carl had a point. The woods were thick, but she didn’t like the twenty feet of open ground Larison had described. Even if they were seen, they’d probably make it to cover before anyone could mount an effective defense. But they would have lost the element of surprise. It all would have been easier in the dark, with night-vision goggles. Well, you couldn’t have everything.
At the edge of the woods, they paused, scanned, and listened. Nothing but birdsong.
Larison looked at them. They nodded. He turned and fast-walked to the corner of the house. Livia and Carl aimed at the windows, ready to return fire if anyone spotted him coming. But everything stayed quiet.
Livia went next, joining Larison at the corner of the house. A few seconds later, Carl pulled up alongside her. Larison headed silently up the stairs. When he was in position, Livia and Carl moved laterally to the near first-floor window. Livia stopped at the edge. Carl got down low and elbow-crawled underneath it. When he was past, he stood on the other side.
They couldn’t see Larison from here, but she knew what he was doing: unrolling the modular breach charges. Taping them to the wall. Retreating down the stairs. When she and Carl heard the boom, they’d break the window and toss in the flashbang. Carl would sweep any remaining glass and cover the room, and in she’d go. People in the area would hear the breach charge explosion and maybe the flashbang, too, but even if anyone called 911, by the time first responders were on the scene, the three of them would be gone, Schrader along with them.
