by M. A. Lawson
The big, loud .45 that Callahan had used to kill Brown was on the floor near Callahan’s right hand. Otis kicked the gun away. He turned and said to Quinn, “Make sure nobody else is here. Take the door-knocker in case the offices are locked.”
Quinn nodded and picked up the door-knocker, which Brown was still clutching in one dead hand.
“Get the safe out of the wall,” Otis said to McCabe.
McCabe was looking down at Brown, holding his MAC-10 down by the side of his leg. “Jesus, I can’t believe he got Ray,” McCabe said.
“Goddamnit! Get moving!” Otis said.
McCabe pulled Brown’s body out of the doorway and pushed the dolly and toolbox into the office. He opened the box and removed a battery-powered DeWalt Sawzall—and attacked the wall surrounding the safe. The Sawzall had blades that could cut through metal, and he’d brought plenty of extra blades. In the toolbox was also a portable acetylene torch kit and a canister of gas, which meant that McCabe would be able to cut through any metal he couldn’t saw through. Otis really hoped they didn’t have to use the torch because then he’d have to figure out how to disable the smoke detectors.
Unless there were other people on this floor, Otis wasn’t too worried about anyone calling the cops. They’d used weapons with silencers and the round Callahan had fired had been loud, but he’d only fired once. He figured that if there were still people in the building on the floors above and below them, they might have heard the shot, but when they only heard one, they would have dismissed it as some sort of urban anomaly.
Otis couldn’t help but think that he’d been a fool to take the job, no matter how much the damn guy was paying them. He never, ever worked this way: with no planning, no reconnaissance. And now Brown was dead and he had no idea how long it was going to take McCabe to chop the safe out of the wall.
Otis had one cardinal rule, a rule he’d lived by since he was seventeen: Don’t let greed get you jailed or killed—and he’d broken his own rule.
While the Sawzall was chewing through the wood and aluminum frame holding the safe into the wall, Otis opened the bag that had contained the weapons and started dumping everything on Callahan’s desk into it. He’d been told to take all the papers in the office, as well as any computers, flash drives, or disks.
Quinn was back. “There’s nobody else here,” he said.
“Get his phone,” Otis said to Quinn, pointing at Callahan. He could see the phone on Callahan’s belt, an old-fashioned clamshell phone, not a smartphone.
Otis placed Callahan’s laptop and phone in the gym bag along with all the papers. He opened the drawers of the desk but didn’t see any disks or flash drives. Based on the type of phone Callahan used, Otis got the impression that Callahan wasn’t a high-tech type. He was surprised when he opened one large drawer and found it filled with bottles of booze and a carton of cigarettes. Then all he could do was wait for McCabe to finish with the safe.
Fifteen long minutes later, McCabe was done. Fortunately, he hadn’t had to use the torch. McCabe pulled two three-foot-long crowbars out of the toolbox and handed one to Quinn, then he and Quinn jacked the safe out of the wall and let it crash to the floor. If there was anyone on the floor below, they definitely would have heard that. The good news was that the safe wasn’t that big. It didn’t look like it weighed more than a hundred and fifty pounds. “See if you can pick it up,” Otis said, and McCabe and Quinn easily moved the safe onto the dolly.
From the beginning, Otis had planned to leave all the tools and the toolbox, and he’d told McCabe to wipe the tools of prints. All he could do was hope McCabe had done a good job, and if there were any fingerprints, he hoped they were Brown’s, because he was going to have to leave Brown, too.
“Let’s get out of here,” Otis said.
“What are we going to do about Ray?” McCabe said.
“What the hell do you think we’re going to do?” Otis said. They weren’t Marines. They didn’t take their dead with them.
“Jesus,” McCabe said, “his sister is gonna go batshit.”
That was the same thing Otis had thought, but he’d worry about Brown’s crazy sister later.
Otis handed Quinn the bag containing the papers and the laptop. McCabe pushed the dolly out of the office with Quinn following. Otis would make one more sweep to make sure he hadn’t missed anything. And he’d put a couple of bullets into Callahan’s face just to make sure he was dead—and as a little payback for Ray. Callahan was going to have a closed-casket funeral.
2
DAY 1—7 P.M.
Kay Hamilton rode the Farragut North Metro station escalator all the way to street level, letting the escalator do the work. Normally she was too impatient, and would have walked up the moving stairs, passing people too old, tired, lazy, or infirm to walk. She was taking her time today because of what she was about to do: She was on her way to Callahan’s office to tell him she was quitting.
A year ago, Kay had been employed by the Drug Enforcement Administration.
She’d been a good agent—hell, she’d been a great agent—but the DEA fired her. She had to admit that she hadn’t been an ideal employee—she didn’t play well with others—but when she broke a drug dealer out of jail to exchange him for her daughter, who’d been kidnapped by a Mexican drug cartel, and then went to Mexico and killed the leader of the cartel . . . well, she couldn’t really blame the DEA for handing her a pink slip. In fact, she could have gone to jail for some of the things she’d done, but fortunately the bureaucrats didn’t want the media heat that would accompany a trial.
She ended up with the Callahan Group when her best friend in the DEA—who was, incidentally, the woman who fired her—told her that there was a certain organization in Washington that valued her talents and wanted to hire her. Kay had assumed that this organization would be one of the intelligence agencies, as she had the ideal skill set for intelligence work—and it turned out she was right. Except for one small thing. The Callahan Group was not a legitimate government agency.
Fifteen minutes after leaving the Metro stop, Kay reached the Group’s building on K Street. When she’d told Callahan she needed to speak with him—she didn’t want to tell him on the phone that she was quitting—he’d said to come to his office after seven, that he’d be there until at least nine. Callahan often stayed late, maybe because he didn’t want to go home to his shitty, empty apartment.
Kay noticed the U-Haul parked in the loading zone but didn’t think anything of it; she figured someone was moving into or out of the building. She even noticed the driver sitting in the truck: a guy with a thick mustache wearing blue coveralls, a blue baseball cap, and sunglasses. It was odd that he was just sitting there with the truck idling and not helping the crew who was doing the moving. Then she was through the door and didn’t give him another thought.
When the elevator reached the seventh floor, the first thing Kay noticed was the smell: The corridor smelled like a shooting range. But before she could process what her nose was telling her, she saw two men walking toward her, one guy pushing a dolly supporting a safe, the other man holding a black gym bag. What she noticed most, however, was that both men had MAC-10s. The one pushing the dolly had his weapon on a sling over his shoulder so he could push the dolly with both hands; the one holding the gym bag was holding his MAC in his right hand, the bag in his left.
As soon as the man holding the bag saw Kay, he dropped the bag and started to raise his weapon—and she immediately reached for the Glock she wore under her blazer. She realized later that the thing that saved her was that the man was left-handed; after he dropped the bag, he wasted a millisecond or two transferring the weapon from his right hand to his left, and fired before he could really aim. As the bullets from the MAC-10 flew past her head like a formation of pissed-off hornets, Kay shot the guy twice in the chest.
By now the other man had unslung his MAC from his shoulde
r and was in a position to fire, and Kay thought: Gotta find cover! The elevator door had closed behind her, but just down the hall from her and to her right—away from the man with the MAC—was an alcove with vending machines. Without really aiming, Kay fired four times at the second man as she ran for the alcove; she didn’t expect to hit him, she just wanted to distract him—and she did. He returned fire as he was simultaneously dropping to his belly and attempting to use the safe on the dolly for cover. His bullets chopped up the walls and the ceiling of the corridor, and before he could aim more accurately, Kay dove into the alcove.
• • •
OTIS HAD JUST finished his sweep of Callahan’s office and was taking a stride toward Callahan to shoot him a couple more times when he heard shots coming from what sounded like a handgun. Since Quinn’s and McCabe’s MAC-10s had suppressors, he knew it wasn’t his guys firing. Son of a bitch! He sprinted out of Callahan’s office to see what was happening. His men weren’t in the hallway, which meant they were in the corridor heading toward the elevator. As he entered the corridor, he caught just a glimpse of a woman with a long blond ponytail firing at McCabe from a room farther down the hall.
Then Otis saw Quinn lying on his back.
• • •
KAY WAS THINKING, SHIT! Not only was the guy firing a machine gun, the vending machine alcove was on the right-hand side of the hallway, which was a problem because she was right-handed. In order for her to shoot accurately, she’d have to step partway out of the alcove. She transferred her Glock to her left hand and dropped to one knee. She planned to poke her head out, but she didn’t want it to be at the height the shooter would expect.
She stuck her head out—like a really fast turtle poking its head from its shell—and fired a three-round burst from the Glock left-handed. As she was firing, she saw another masked man—how many of them were there, for Christ’s sake!—running toward her. Fortunately, he was holding a pistol and not a machine gun. As soon as she fired—all three of her shots went high and to the left, not even coming close to the man hiding behind the safe—both men fired at her, the guy with the machine gun just holding down the trigger, emptying the magazine and chewing up the wall near the alcove.
Kay pulled her head back into the alcove before it was blown off. She had another problem: Her Glock held thirteen bullets—and she’d already fired nine.
• • •
OTIS REACHED MCCABE AND QUINN. “Goddamnit,” he said. “Who is she?” But he was really wondering why the woman was armed, just like Callahan. Who were these fucking people?
“I don’t know,” McCabe said, answering his question. “She just stepped out of the elevator.”
“Gotta keep her pinned down.”
Otis looked down at Quinn: His eyes were wide open. He looked dead. It appeared that the woman had put two bullets right into his heart. Although he knew it was a waste of time, he touched Quinn’s throat and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one.
“We need to get out of here,” McCabe said. “She could be calling the cops right now.”
Otis shoved his 9mm into a pocket and picked up Quinn’s MAC-10; he wanted all the firepower he could get. “Give me a clip,” he said to McCabe, and McCabe handed him a fully loaded magazine. Otis ejected the magazine from Quinn’s weapon and inserted the full one.
“You push the dolly,” he said to McCabe, and he picked up the gym bag with his left hand. He could fire the MAC with one hand while holding the bag in his other hand.
Otis pulled the trigger as he and McCabe started moving toward the elevator, sending a dozen bullets ripping down the hall. But because of the angle, he couldn’t shoot into the alcove. They reached the elevator a few seconds later, and the door immediately opened. It hadn’t moved since the woman had stepped out of it.
Otis fired another long burst at the alcove. Because he was farther down the hall, he hoped some of his bullets might actually enter the alcove and ricochet off something and hit the woman. He heard her cry out in alarm or pain. As he fired, McCabe pushed the dolly inside the elevator. Otis fired off one last burst and joined McCabe—and just as the doors were closing, the damn woman fired three shots into the elevator. It was a fucking miracle that none of the ricochets hit him or McCabe.
• • •
KAY COULDN’T DO a thing but crouch in the alcove as one of the men fired two dozen rounds at her; the wall around the alcove now looked like it had been attacked by a demented woodpecker.
She heard the elevator ding and she knew that the men were about to escape. Then the guy ripped off another volley; some of the bullets struck the Coke machine and fragments peppered the walls around her, scaring the shit out of her. But she wasn’t hit, and she wasn’t finished. She guessed at the position of the elevator and fired three more shots.
A moment later there was complete silence.
• • •
AS THE ELEVATOR DESCENDED, Otis said to McCabe, “Take off the ski mask.”
“I can’t believe Quinn and Brown are—”
“Goddamnit, get your head on straight! Take off the ski mask.”
It wouldn’t do to have people see them walking out of the building wearing masks and pushing a safe.
McCabe removed his mask, as did Otis, and they put the MAC-10s into the bag containing all the items Otis had removed from Callahan’s office. They then put on the baseball caps and sunglasses they’d worn when they’d entered the building. Otis noticed that the fake mustache McCabe was wearing was slightly askew, but he let it go.
McCabe pushed the dolly out of the elevator and Otis held the door open as he rolled it out of the building. McCabe positioned the dolly and himself on the hydraulic lift platform of the U-Haul; the platform ascended and McCabe pulled the dolly into the back of the truck. Otis shut the door and joined Simpson in the cab.
“Go,” Otis said.
“Where are Brown and Quinn?” Simpson said.
“They’re dead. Now drive.”
They needed to dump the U-Haul as soon as possible. By now the woman must have called the police and she might have seen the U-Haul sitting in front of the building. He noticed a parking lot on the street they were on. He told Simpson, “Circle around the block and go back to that parking lot.”
Since the safe wasn’t as heavy as Otis had expected, he and McCabe could easily transfer it to the trunk of a car. Simpson pulled into the parking lot and said, “What are we doing?”
“Look for a car you can boost. I want to dump this truck. We’ll leave it here in the lot.” Otis knew Simpson had used a fake ID to rent the truck; he also knew that Simpson could steal anything with wheels.
• • •
KAY STAYED WHERE she was for a moment after the elevator descended. Judging by the silence, she was sure they’d gone and she was alone. Holding the Glock, she stepped out of the alcove, ready to jump back in if she was wrong.
She had three options. Option One: Run down the stairs and try to catch up with the men before they escaped and maybe kill another one with the last bullet she had. But by now it was probably too late for that. Option Two: Call 911 right away and let the cops take over. Option Three: See if anyone was still alive on the seventh floor before she called the cops.
She selected Option Three. Because of the nature of the work performed by the Callahan Group, she’d just as soon not get the cops involved until she had a better understanding of the situation. And she needed to know if Callahan was still alive—although she was pretty sure he wasn’t.
Kay proceeded down the hallway until she reached the door that led to the Callahan Group’s suite of offices. It had been battered open. She passed through it and entered the reception area. During normal business hours, a man name Henry—an Iraq war veteran with a prosthetic right leg—sat at the desk in the reception area. Henry wasn’t your normal greeter; he carried a .44 Magnum revolver. Kay had feared that she
might find Henry’s body, but she didn’t. He might have gone home before the men with the MAC-10s arrived.
Behind Henry’s desk was a second door that was always kept locked; it had also been battered open. Kay stepped through and looked down the interior hallway. At the end was Callahan’s office and along the way were half a dozen smaller offices. Kay could also see a man’s legs sticking out of a doorway.
It turned out the legs didn’t belong to Callahan but to a man Kay barely knew. His name was David Norton and his white shirt was soaked red with blood. She’d only met Norton once but knew he was a lawyer. She felt for a pulse and confirmed that he was dead.
She took another couple of steps and came to another door that had been bashed open. As well as almost tearing the door off the hinges, somebody had fired shots through the door. She looked into the office and saw another body. She didn’t know the man. Again, she confirmed that he was dead before proceeding.
She finally reached Callahan’s office. His door had been knocked open like the others, and she could see the instrument that had been used to open the doors on the floor: a piece of pipe with handles welded on top. The wall next to Callahan’s door had also been perforated by bullets.
The first thing she saw in Callahan’s office was a big man lying on the floor, dressed in blue coveralls and wearing a ski mask. He’d been shot in the head. She then briefly took in the condition of the office: a raw hole in the wall where Callahan’s safe had been, tools all over the floor—a Sawzall, crowbars, sledgehammers, a large toolbox—whoever these guys were, they’d come prepared—and then she saw Callahan sitting on the floor, his back against the wall.
Callahan’s blue shirt, like Norton’s, was crimson with blood. She was certain he was dead, and she felt tears well up in her eyes. Callahan had been a deceitful, manipulative bastard—but an extremely likeable one. She stepped over to him and felt for a pulse—and, remarkably, found one. His heart was barely beating—but it was beating.
