“Yeah, I saw them,” I said, seizing on the chance to grind on the man a little more. “You really think you could drag a Delta operator into your little game and not have to deal with everything that comes with it?”
It was obvious that he had believed just that, that his years in politics had insulated him so much from the front lines that he had forgotten just what we were capable of.
A fact I was more than happy to point out for him.
Looking out to either side, I raised my right hand, spreading my fingers wide. I paused there a moment, letting the goons standing by see that it was empty, before reaching into my back pocket and extracting a single device no larger than a pack of gum.
“This is what you get instead,” I said, holding it out before me and taking a single step forward.
Jacoby’s first reaction was to recoil, his eyes growing larger, before realization set in. “What the hell is that? Something incriminating you want me to be seen accepting from you?”
The thought had never occurred to me, though that being his first response made it apparent the level of paranoia he was dealing with.
Good. That was the general idea for the meeting.
“It’s a thumb drive,” I said, “detailing everything Skye Grant has on you, including what she just pulled from that supercomputer over at Northwestern.”
Another moment passed as Jacoby stared at me, flicking his gaze from me to the drive, incredulity spreading across his features.
“Take it,” I said, wagging it once in his direction. “Mass graves, villages destroyed, untold death at the hands of a crusading Armed Forces Committee Chair. Trust me, it’s a fascinating read.”
Continuing to stare as if the drive was a gun capable of firing on him at any moment, pretending he hadn’t heard a word, Jacoby said, “What the hell is this? I brought your woman here. I held up my end.”
I didn’t bother glancing to Rae, knowing the look that would be in place at the reference to her being my woman.
“And I’m ensuring we actually get out of here,” I said. “This is a copy. In another two hours, once we are gone from here, I will call you with the location of Skye Grant and the original.”
It was clear from the look on Jacoby’s face that he didn’t believe a word I said.
To be fair, if I were him, I wouldn’t either.
Still, under the time constraints and the circumstances, it was the best I could come up with.
“Just like we originally discussed,” I said. “You called me to deliver Skye Grant, and I am doing that.”
Once more I wagged the thumb drive his way. “And because neither one of us want to spend the rest of our lives looking over a shoulder for the other one, I am doing so with interest.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Otis Dawson’s first reaction was to laugh.
He’d told Jacoby, and Celek, and anybody else that would listen, that there was no way Laredo Wynn was showing up with the girl. No self-respecting Delta would ever dream of walking in to someplace without having a clear exit strategy, and given what Dawson knew about the situation at hand, the only way Wynn and Sommers were leaving alive was if they maintained something that Jacoby wanted.
That meant the girl had to stay behind.
For all his attempts at making his employers understand, they would hear none of it. So trapped in the narrow, political-based world they had grown accustomed to, they were certain that the power differential at hand would ensure Wynn did as they wanted.
Not once did they consider it was that very differential that meant he had no choice but to use underhanded tactics.
With everybody connected over the same intercom system, he wasn’t able to share any of these thoughts out loud, though there was largely no need to. His men, without a doubt, would all be thinking the same thing.
Ditto for Jacoby and Celek, now that everybody could see Wynn and Sommers walking away.
Standing alongside each other, they moved with a swagger that Dawson recognized, again finding himself begrudgingly having to respect.
Nobody, in any walk of life, was ever born carrying themselves in such a manner. That kind of stature only came through years of training and self-reliance, on being tested in the worst crucibles the world had to offer.
Even amongst a crowd as large as the one gathered in the park, these two stood out. Neither one looked to either side or even at each other as they went, both standing ramrod straight.
Even the limp that Sommers displayed, a result of the round he had fired, was composed and maintained, not an outright disavowal but a definite message that it would not slow her in any way.
Standing just back from the cluster surrounding the park bench the meeting had taken place on, Dawson waited until the two were gone from view, swallowed up by the throngs of people nearby, before turning his attention back to the assembled group.
Allowing some of the tension to flee his body, he moved his hand from the butt of the gun tucked up along his hip for the first time in almost half an hour, feeling the cool breeze as it passed over his features.
“Where the hell have you been?” Jacoby snapped, still seated on the bench, glaring up at him.
Seated to his left was Celek, with Roush, Ramirez, Minkus, and Henry all grouped up around them, forming an impromptu human wall, blocking out wind and insulating the angered sound of Jacoby’s voice.
“Watching them go,” Dawson said, the truth as good an answer as any. From where they were, it would be impossible to track their movements, or even watch where they exited or what car they got into.
What he could do, though, was get a measure for his opponent, taking this opportunity to see him in person for the first time.
It was exactly as he had expected, a near copy to all the other Deltas he had known in his days.
The scowl on Jacoby’s face deepened as he stared up at Dawson, trying to formulate the right response, the words eluding him.
For a moment Dawson considered asking if the man were now unable to communicate without a speechwriter telling him what to say before thinking better of it. Moving so he was standing directly between Jacoby and Celek, he buried his hands into the front pockets of his windbreaker.
“Orders?”
As with most things on the afternoon, he already knew the answer to the question, but had to ask it anyway.
A look of unbridled hatred crossed Jacoby’s face as he looked at Dawson, the animosity roiling through him pulling him to a standing position. Grabbing at his hat, he smashed the oversized piece of canvas down onto the bench, revealing the full flush of blood coloring his cheeks.
“Wynn claims in two hours he is going to call us and tell us where Grant is. The second he does – and I mean the millisecond – you grab her, and you grab them.”
On the last words, he jabbed a finger past Dawson toward where Wynn and Sommers had just departed.
“And if he doesn’t call?” Dawson asked.
“If he doesn’t call, do the same damn thing anyway.” Scowling deeply, Jacoby flicked a gaze to Celek. “Just like we should have had you do from the beginning.”
Without another word, Jacoby strode off at a diagonal across the park, shedding the oversized trench coat he was wearing as he went and dropping it to the ground, not giving a damn for who saw it.
Watching him go, Dawson had to admit it was the first time he’d felt even the slightest twinge of respect for the man since meeting him.
Chapter Fifty-Six
I let Rae take the front seat. There was no outward sign of how bad her leg was beyond the slight hitch in her gait, but I could tell from the look on her face, the glacial rigidity in her features, that it had to have been aching. Without even asking, I folded myself into the rear seat of the Taurus and let her have the expanded room in the front.
“Drive.”
The car lurched slightly as Skye hit the accelerator, swinging us all against our respective seats as she passed through an amber light and headed on towa
rd Lakeshore Drive.
In just the short time since our arrival at the park the afternoon traffic had somehow managed to triple, the lanes moving at little more than a crawl. If we were actually trying to make a fast getaway the arrangement would have been nothing short of a nightmare, but given the situation and the fact that we wanted Dawson to see where we were going, it served our purposes well.
Our only concern for the immediate future was the growing darkness, making it easy for our blue sedan to blend in and be lost in a sea of brake lights.
Again, normally that would be a good thing, but in this instance it would expose a major flaw in our plans.
We didn’t necessarily want them following us at arm’s length, but we needed them to know where we were, to make it look like we were falling back to regroup.
“How did it go?” Skye asked, unable to resist her inner concerns, gripping the wheel tight as she checked and rechecked the rearview and side mirrors.
For a moment there was no response, me letting the conversation reside in the front seat before remembering who was riding shotgun.
“We’re both here and alive,” I said. To that I added nothing more, knowing neither one of us should be breathing at the moment. There was no way the plan, if such a clumsy design could even be called one, should have worked.
The only thing I could figure was that the discovered existence of Skye Grant presented a much greater risk to Meyers Jacoby than any of us had previously realized.
“So he bought it,” Skye said, more a statement than a question, thinking out loud.
“Not exactly,” I said, shifting in my seat to turn and stare at the traffic behind us. Within seconds I turned back around, unable to see anything beyond the glare of headlights aimed in our direction.
“But he wanted that thumb drive,” Skye said, a tiny bit of triumph in her voice.
“Not exactly,” I repeated.
“Was there anything on it?” Rae asked, the first words I’d heard her say outside of “YO” since leaving the elevator in the Computer Science Building hours before.
At some point, I would ask her about her injury, and about the time she had been held, but not now. Doing so in front of Skye would only anger her, something I could already tell she had plenty of.
No way was I going to willingly throw myself out there, providing a target for her to aim it at.
Besides, I had someone much better in mind.
“Not one damn thing,” I said.
Glancing over to her right, Skye added, “Remember, I said that this sort of stuff isn’t easily copied or stored. It was all under high level encryption, saved on a specially designed thumb drive capable of handling it.
“Definitely not as simple as burning a CD.”
“But Jacoby had no way of knowing that,” I added.
All three of us knew what the stakes really were. From the moment Skye had called my motel room and those men had showed up to burn down our house, it was apparent that Jacoby had no intention of letting anybody out alive. Even pretending as much, trying to front like whatever was on a thumb drive had any bearing on that, would be foolish at best.
Instead, we had traded on the only two forms of currency we had – public exposure and Jacoby’s notoriety.
They had walked into what was obviously a fool’s errand and handed Rae back over to us because they didn’t honestly care. They knew that neither of us were going to make it to morning, so if there was even a chance that they could nab Skye or the information she held in the process, they had to take that chance.
Conversely, the only thing I had cared about was getting Rae away from them. Had they wanted to, they could have made things infinitely more difficult for that to happen, but again, their fear of a situation that was fast spiraling out of control kept them from doing so.
The fact that they also were burdened with a ticking clock to what was thus far the largest campaign event of the year didn’t hurt either.
“Plan?” Rae asked.
To that I remained silent a moment, seeing Skye’s eyes flash toward me in the rearview mirror. Up to that point, all I had shared were my thoughts for the meet with Jacoby, everything beyond that hinging upon what transpired.
To that end, I wouldn’t say what had taken place was perfect, but it was pretty damn close.
“Have you noticed anybody tailing us?” I asked, meeting Skye’s gaze in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah,” she said, twisting her head just slightly, “about a thousand cars with their headlights on.”
To that I had no response, conceding she was correct, the question was foolish. Asking a novice to pick out anything under such conditions would be too much.
I just had to operate under the assumption that they were back there, and just as they had before, they would find a way to track us.
“Like you said this morning, the only way this thing ends is when we kill Dawson and do something drastic enough to make Jacoby call off his attack.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
There was no way he could actually hear the crowd, not perched in the penthouse suite on the 24th floor, especially not considering that the ballroom was downstairs on the ground level, right by the lobby entrance he’d walked through not two hours before.
Still, that didn’t keep the sound from managing to penetrate Meyers Jacoby’s psyche, the cheers of several thousand strong finding their way into his mind, bouncing off the inner walls of his skull.
Standing in front of the mirror, going through his final physical checklist, the same routine he did each time he stepped out to face the masses, he could feel that energy surging through him. The same intoxicating feeling he had grown so fond of, would never admit to anybody he might even be addicted to, pulsated through his body. It caused him to roll his face toward the ceiling, the hairs on his forearms standing up beneath the cuff of his personalized dress shirt, the veins on the backs of his hands bulging.
Any other time, and it would be a perfect night. A culmination of so many things that had broken his way in the preceding years, the final strokes of a plan first put into place decades before that.
The only problem was, it wasn’t a perfect night. So far from perfect in fact that his body would not truly succumb to the euphoria, could not enter that altered state that he loved so much, that place that made him the electric figure that had gotten him tapped for the VP nod in the first place.
Joining the sounds of the crowd in his head were the voices of Rae Sommers and Laredo Wynn, both so cocksure, both fully believing that they had any place in the same sentence as him.
One time after another he tried to push them from his head, first internally before resorting to violent shakes from side to side, but it was to no avail.
His body refused to relinquish its grip on reality. Somewhere out there were three people, any one of whom could bring him down.
And the problem, as he had seen far too often with his colleagues, had occasionally even helped to manipulate, was that the higher someone ascended, the further down they had to go.
With his collar flipped up on either side of his face, Jacoby was wrestling with his third attempt at knotting his tie when a knock sounded at the door. Knowing full well it could only be one of two people, both men that he had known in a previous life and who now headed up the different factions of his current one, he didn’t even bother to turn around.
Using the mirror to see back over his shoulder, he yelled, “Get in here!” making no attempt to mask the growing disdain in his voice.
Heightening it even further was the face of Bret Celek, the man’s silver mane poking through, followed only by his shoulders.
“Boss, got a minute?”
“Don’t give me that shit,” Jacoby snapped, forcing himself not to yell. “Get in here and tell me what you know.”
There was no sound from the hallway, everybody already downstairs for the start of the event, as Celek stepped inside. Still dressed in the same togs he’d been wearing since
the rendezvous in his room twelve hours earlier, a knee length coat swung free from either hip, his hair slight askew on his head.
Moving in a straight path through the room, he pulled up beside the small sitting area, stopping even with an end table, and began twisting the ring on his right hand.
“What, dammit?” Jacoby said, watching the man’s movements, his repetitive action only serving to heighten the vitriol within. “Have you heard from Wynn yet?”
“No,” Celek said. “Not yet, but Dawson is on him, says they have stopped moving.”
“Where?” Jacoby asked, giving up on the tie and leaving it to hang on either side of his neck, his collar still upturned as he shifted to look at Celek directly.
“Outside of town,” Celek replied, “pretty close to where the encounter took place with Grant’s cohorts yesterday.”
For a moment Jacoby pushed back the wrath within him to focus only on the words being delivered. Gone was any glimpse of the applause he’d been hearing just moments before, his mind trying to conjure what little instinct he could still recall from his time in a uniform.
“Trap?”
“Could be,” Celek said. “The area is certainly remote, wooded, and Grant would know it well, having eluded them once there already.”
Again Jacoby forced down any emotional response, focusing only on the information that was being relayed.
“So it could just be familiar terrain.”
“Could be,” Celek repeated, his eyebrows rising slightly.
“Could be? What the hell does that mean?”
Again Celek shrugged his eyebrows. “Means right now Dawson and his team are on it, and they are the best at what they do. They’ll call in when they know something or it’s done.”
Every part of Jacoby wanted to explode, to fly across the room and shoulder tackle Celek to the floor, to pound the man’s fleshy face until nothing remained.
Until he felt better about the entire situation, about the fact that Laredo Wynn had gotten the best of him in the park, trading out his girlfriend for an empty thumb drive picked up at Wal-Mart for ten bucks. About the fact that one broken condom in Burma twenty-five years earlier now had him dealing with this mess to begin with.
The Subway ; The Debt ; Catastrophic Page 57
