by Jack Rogan
She arched an eyebrow. “And you think that’s why you’re weird?”
“Wow. I’m guessing when you were a kid your parents told you that you were funny.”
“Absolutely.”
Herc sipped again. “They probably also told you that you were the smartest girl in the world, that you sang beautifully, and that you’d be president someday.”
Andrea grinned. “Nice. One jolt of caffeine just wakes you right up.”
They stepped into the monitoring room. Three rows of terraced desks, each with its own personal monitoring station, faced walls of video screen that could be configured a thousand different ways. Right now, two of the three video walls in the hexagonal room showed familiar satellite views of foreign topography, mostly but not entirely Middle Eastern. By the right-hand wall, however, half a dozen people were gathered at the base of the screen, discussing what could only be an American highway, with cars and trucks racing in both directions, a shopping mall on one side and a sprawling townhouse development on the other.
One of the analysts turned toward the first terrace of desks. “We don’t need this,” he said. “Pull way back, put a map overlay up, and just keep track of the signal.”
The woman at one of the desks gave him a thumbs-up and started tapping keys; the screen responded accordingly.
“What’s going on?” Herc asked Andrea.
She rattled the ice in her coffee cup. “Orders just came in. We’re tracking a cell phone GPS.”
“Whose?”
Andrea cocked her head, maybe tipped off by his tone that this was not an idle question. Herc kept his face neutral.
“Phone belongs to an FBI agent. Something Chang. Why?”
“Just curious,” he said, trying not to show his reaction to the name. He raised his iced-coffee cup. “Thanks for this, Andrea. Happy hunting.”
He fought the urge to hurry back to his office, walking slowly and then closing his door without slamming it. Alone in the room he took a deep breath, cursing silently, and took out the Hot Line. No, no, not that one. Your name won’t come up. They won’t know it’s you calling. Instead he used his own cell phone, the one with the account in his name. Both Hart and Chang had left him their cards, but he couldn’t call the FBI agent if her cell was being monitored, so he called Agent Hart, listening in growing frustration as it rang without answer.
Shit. He had to warn them that their movements were being tracked, but he didn’t dare leave a message. Herc killed the call and stared at the phone a moment. Then he set it down and picked up the Hot Line.
Herc searched the contacts list, pressed a button, and, on the third ring, Cait McCandless answered.
“It’s Herc,” he said, glancing nervously at the door. “Listen, they’re tracking Agent Chang’s cell. Once they figure out where she and Hart are headed, they’ll know where you’re headed. You’ve got to hurry.”
“Thanks, Herc,” Cait said, “but we don’t need to rush.”
“You’re not listening—” Herc began.
“We’re fine, Herc. We’re already here.”
Cait sat in the back of a truck, listening to the groaning engine and mourning lives she had yet to take. In Iraq, it had been simpler. And last night was even more straightforward than that—defending her baby, killing to survive. But this was different. It would still mean killing to survive, but she knew going in that some of the people she would have to kill meant her no harm and were not a part of the conspiracy. They were veterans, like her. In another life, she might have gotten out of the service and been hired by a firm like Black Pine, who scouted for personnel with exactly her skill set.
But they came for you last night, you and Leyla, and if these guys had been there, they would have followed orders, just like the others. No way could she be judge and jury for every Black Pine operative. But you’ll have to be executioner, she thought, pain twisting in her heart. She told herself they were baby-killers, or worked for baby-killers. If the guards on the building had never done Black Pine’s monstrous wetwork, they had done other hideous things.
It didn’t help much. The only thing that soothed her at all was the little photo of Leyla she had brought. She sat on a box of copy paper in the back of the office supply truck, stared at the image of her daughter, and told herself she would do anything for Leyla—and for all the War’s Children out there, still breathing, as well as those yet born. And if God existed and the blood she was about to shed stained her soul, she would just have to live with that.
The truck had come from what remained of a motor pool at the Resistance warehouse. In addition to the truck—the doors emblazoned with the name and phone number of a fictitious office supply company—there had been a battered taxi and a four-year-old Buick that looked brand new. The truck had been so perfect for what Cait had in mind that if it hadn’t been there, she would have stolen one.
Now she listened to the engine grind as Lynch downshifted, then slowed to a halt. Considering he’d taken a bullet the night before, he must be in serious pain, but he had not complained about having to drive. Either the old man was even tougher than he looked, or he had good painkillers. Or maybe both.
With a low beeping, the truck began to back up. Cait kissed the photo of Leyla and slipped it into her vest, then ran her hands over her body, softly tapping each weapon to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be. When the truck halted again and Lynch shut the engine off, she heard him open his door and the creak of the shocks as he climbed out. Right now he would be walking to the back of the truck, maybe waving amiably to the guards that would be waiting on the loading dock.
She stood and pressed herself behind a pallet of boxes strapped to the wall. A newly oiled AK hung across her back, pressing into her hip. Her fingers opened and closed on the Sig Sauer in her hand. On the other side of the door, she heard muffled voices—Lynch talking to one of the guards. Her temples throbbed with the beat of her heart and sweat beaded on her forehead and trickled between her breasts. So damn hot in the back of the truck. An oven.
The click of a lock—the big padlock was a huge part of the illusion—followed by the ratcheting back of the handle, and then the door rattled upward on its tracks, splashing light into the rear of the truck.
“Sorry, my friend. Left the clipboard in the back, here. Getting old, y’know? Keep forgetting it.”
The voice of a guard. “No problem, man. But you can’t take anything out of the truck till we see the delivery manifest.”
Cait held her breath.
“Sure, sure,” Lynch said. “I gotcha. Lemme just …”
She felt the truck shift as he started to climb into the back.
“Oh,” Lynch said, voice getting very small. “Oh, Jesus.”
So claustrophobic back here in the truck. Too hot, no air, even with the door open. The smell of musty paper, sitting for years on those pallets.
“What the fuck, old man?” The guard, unsure, as Lynch crumbled to the pavement. “Are you … damn it. Billy!” he called to his partner, who’d be up on the dock still, in the little metal booth, trying to find something on the computer about a delivery from Spiral-Bound Office Supply. “I think the old guy’s having a fucking heart attack.”
Two seconds. The guard in the booth deciding whether to call the ambulance first or check it out; these guys would be trained to handle things themselves whenever possible. Four seconds. Billy coming out of the booth … Please, Billy, come out of the booth.
Sweat ran down the back of Cait’s neck and she shivered, then wet her lips and prayed to a God she had never truly believed in to forgive her.
She heard the zap of the Taser, and the first guard’s grunt as Lynch shoved it against his throat, turned up to brutal voltage. Before the guy could even hit the ground, Cait stepped out from behind the pallet and the whole picture spread in front of her in vivid colors—Lynch on the ground in his oversized yellow company shirt, the guard in navy blue with the Black Pine logo in red and white on the shoulder
, bright sunshine, green weeds growing wild where the pavement met the concrete base of the dock, and here came Billy down the side stairs from his silver metal booth, just realizing that they had fucked up, eyes widening, reaching for his gun.
Cait set her feet, took aim, tracked him as he moved, and shot him in the head. Billy fell down the last few steps as Lynch zapped the other guard again to make sure he was unconscious. One life we won’t have to take today, she thought. If they were fast and lucky, there would be others.
Lynch ran up the steps to the metal booth, fishing into his pocket for the one piece of tech they had brought with them. They both knew their way around a computer, but neither was any sort of hacker genius. Half of the tech Lynch’s old comrades had left behind mystified them both, but he knew what this particular item did. There were at least a dozen of them in a plastic bag back in the warehouse. It wasn’t subtle, but it didn’t need to be.
Cait kept her gun trained on the building’s rear entrance while Lynch ducked into the booth and popped the cap off the little black plastic that looked like an ordinary flash drive. He plugged it into the computer’s USB port. She heard a crackling noise, and then he turned and gave her the go sign.
Cait jumped down from the truck, almost landed on the discarded Taser, and ran for the stairs. Every computer in the building would be fragged and all the cameras down, but the scanners on the doors would still be active. They were separately wired, not a part of the computer grid. Right now, everyone inside would be trying to figure out what had shorted out the system, and if fortune was with them—if no one had looked at the delivery dock surveillance camera in the seconds between Lynch faking a heart attack and fragging the computers—they would have two minutes, maybe three.
She knelt by Billy, took his key card, then raced up onto the dock, where Lynch waited. He tore off the yellow shirt, revealing a Kevlar vest that matched Cait’s and a pair of guns at the small of his back. He drew one as she slid the key card in, and covered the door as she turned the knob and pushed it inward. Lynch went in low, Cait high, and suddenly she felt like she was in Baghdad again—clearing rooms, every doorway holding the potential of a bullet or a bomb, or hostiles with intent to kill.
Swift and silent, they hustled down the short, wide corridor. It jogged left, and she knew from the plans that the service elevator lay around that corner. Lynch stopped, pressed himself against the wall, and waited. They could have tried a ruse of some kind, but every second counted. She stepped around the corner.
Two guards—one male, one female. Cait shot the woman in the thigh and the man in the throat even as Lynch came around the corner and put a bullet in the female guard’s left temple—an extraordinary kill-shot. It made Cait want to vomit. But Leyla’s picture was tucked inside her vest, right against her heart, and she knew there could be no going back now.
The silenced guns had done little more than whisper, but they couldn’t risk one of the guards getting a shot off.
Cait handed Lynch the key card as she watched both ends of the corridor. He ran the card through and punched the call button, and they heard the elevator start to hum as it descended toward their level. It would be more difficult from here on out. No one would invest the kind of money required to have thumbprint or hand scanners on every door, but Lynch seemed certain there would be tighter security inside.
How long now? How much more time would they have before the cameras came back online? Every second they stood in front of the elevator felt like an eternity.
The doors shushed open and they stepped on. Cait punched the button for the top floor—seven—and pointed her gun into the blood-spattered corridor they’d left behind as the elevator doors closed. This was their most vulnerable moment. If the camera system rebooted now, they would have a deadly welcome waiting for them upstairs.
The elevator opened on an ugly service corridor lined with doors the floor plan had identified as maintenance and storage closets and restrooms. They turned right, walking fast, not wanting to run for fear their urgent footfalls would rouse suspicion.
Again, Lynch put his back to the wall while Cait walked around the corner, weapon at the ready. There was only one guard this time—a big bastard. Two shots to his chest knocked him off balance, but still he tried to shoot her. Lynch put one through his forehead, then did it again to stop him twitching.
“Should’ve been another,” Cait said quietly as they both holstered their weapons. “No way they’d leave this to one guy.”
Together they hoisted him up, pressed between Lynch and the door, and Cait took the dead guard’s hand and pressed his thumb to the print scanner. The light above the unit turned green and she reached out and turned the knob. The big man’s weight pushed the door open and he slumped to the floor, blood immediately pooling beneath him.
Cait stepped over him, running now, past the time for stealth. A slick-looking suit, fiftyish but still with the military clinging to him, came out to see what the noise had been. Unlike the guards, he didn’t have body armor. She fired one shot to the chest—maybe not enough to kill him, but she didn’t need him dead. Just out of her way.
Lynch closed the door behind them, shot out the thumbprint scanner, then dragged a coffee table over to block the entrance. Cait hurried on. The rest of the offices she passed were empty, coffee mugs and paperwork abandoned, phones ringing. The second the cameras and the computers went down, all the executives would have been rushed to the safe room, taking it seriously only because they were professionals, not because they actually thought they were in any danger—which explained why the guy she just shot had remained in his office. He hadn’t taken it seriously—which meant no one had seen their work at the loading dock. No one had reported intruders yet.
Or maybe they were doing that this very moment; maybe that was why the phones were ringing like crazy.
She reached her destination. A plaque on the door read LEONARD SHELBY, CEO. The door was closed, with no illumination visible through the faux transom window above it. Cait rapped lightly—two short, one long, two short—and the door clicked and opened.
Detective Monteforte stood on the other side, her back to Cait, already moving across the room with her gun out, never wavering in her aim. All this time Cait had told herself Monteforte would be here, that it would go smoothly, but she had never really believed it in her heart.
“Is that guy dead?” Monteforte asked without turning around.
Cait glanced back into the executive suite, watching as Lynch darted in and out, making sure they were the only people left, then focused on the suit sprawled bleeding on the carpet.
“Might be,” she said.
“Clear!” Lynch called. “I’ve got the door.”
Cait gave him a nod, then followed Monteforte into Leonard Shelby’s office. Shelby looked just like his picture on the website—just as polished and soulless. He sat at a chair drawn five feet back from his desk—far enough that he couldn’t set off a hidden alarm.
Monteforte held her gun on Shelby. After today, the badge she wore clipped to her belt would be a useless piece of tin.
“Strange,” Shelby said, looking coolly at Cait and then at Monteforte. “This doesn’t feel like an arrest.”
“You didn’t tell me you were going to be shooting people,” Monteforte said, with an edge of panic in her voice.
Cait aimed her weapon at Shelby, steadying her right hand with her left. “I’m doing what has to be done, Detective. This is the guy who gave the order that cost your partner his life. He might as well have pulled the trigger himself.”
Shelby didn’t flinch. “I don’t know how many of my people you killed getting up here, Sergeant McCandless, but they won’t be the only ones dying today.”
Cait smiled, ignoring Monteforte, focused only on Shelby and the thought of everything he had taken away from her.
“No,” she said. “No, they won’t.”
All along, Monteforte had thought someone would stop them, that somehow Shelby would
know she was lying when she called him to arrange a brief meeting. But that hadn’t happened. Detective Monteforte had put in a call to Black Pine, claiming that she needed to speak with Shelby on what she had referred to as a delicate matter involving a former employee. She insisted that she required his opinion and a brief consultation, and then expressed reluctance to go into further detail over the phone. They had arranged a time—one p.m.—and when Monteforte had arrived, the guards had ushered her through security without difficulty or delay.
Monteforte’s end of the plan had been simple but troubling. During that meeting, she was to restrain Shelby, either physically or at gunpoint, so that when security went on the fritz and the rest of the executives were hustled into the seventh-floor safe room, Shelby would be unable to go with them. And with the door locked and the lights turned off, everyone would assume he was already out of his office. Monteforte had originally planned to cuff Shelby and duct tape his mouth, but the chaos had begun before she could get around to it. With those hard eyes and grim features, he did not seem as if he would be intimidated by her gun, but its presence—aimed at his chest—was enough to prevent him from crying out when a security guard knocked. But Monteforte thought half the reason the CEO of Black Pine played along had less to do with self-preservation and more to do with his desire to discover who had the gall to arrange for him to be taken hostage.
Of course he had guessed before Cait’s arrival.
And even now, with Cait holding her gun on him as well, he behaved like he was the one in control. Monteforte stared at Cait, wondering how long it would be before Black Pine security blew open the doors to the executive suite and killed them all. Any law enforcement agency would have to follow certain protocols to safeguard the lives of any hostages—Oh, my God, I took a hostage!—but Black Pine did not have to follow any protocols but their own. Would they worry about the life of one executive if it meant the humiliation of having their offices breached?
