Dark Spies

by Matthew Dunn

  The officer sighed as he continued his leisurely patrol. The sun started to break through clouds, and he tilted his cap to shield his eyes. The weather was turning for the better, but that was no compensation for the probability that this morning his patch was going to turn to shit.

  Pete Duggan was tense and alert as he exited the Friendship Heights metro to take up position farther up the avenue. Every five minutes, he and his seven HRT colleagues rotated locations to avoid arousing suspicion, not that they stood out—the metro and the street were bustling with civilians, many of whom were dressed like them and were carrying bags. Above him, out of sight on the rooftop of the Microsoft Corporation building, was a SWAT sniper and spotter who had a clear sightline to the Metro entrance. Two other sniper teams were farther north and south on the avenue. He could hear them communicating with each other in his earpiece—brief, calm updates about the movement of vehicles and people in the vicinity.

  Helos with additional SWAT snipers were hovering low over the city, but not too close to the avenue. They couldn’t be visible or audible to Cochrane when he came here, but they could reach Wisconsin in one minute if needed.

  Traffic was crawling along the route, and that was a good and bad thing: good that Cochrane couldn’t attempt to do a speedy drive-by of the metro to see if Hallowes was standing outside; bad that all mobile law enforcement units would be severely hindered by the traffic.

  The fact that there were hundreds of plainclothes and uniformed officers in the vicinity gave Duggan little comfort, because he kept hold of the thought that he was hunting a man who could expertly take down four fit and alert cops, whereas he’d only managed to train his gun on two of the injured officers before the remaining two had gotten the drop on him. During his time in SEAL Team 6, he’d been graded as an outstanding operator, and within HRT he was considered the agent who was the best with a pistol and submachine gun. And he was up against someone who was better than him.

  Of course, Cochrane stood no chance of survival this morning. But collateral damage worried Duggan. There were so many civilians in and around the avenue; so many opportunities for them to get caught in crossfire.

  He checked his watch.

  Five minutes past ten.

  Marsha Gage was in a van with three of her agents. Like them, she was wearing jeans, a bulletproof vest underneath her Windbreaker jacket, and tactical boots. She said to her colleagues, “Time for you to get on foot. Keep your distance from the metro, and don’t stand in one place for too long.” After they’d left, Marsha returned her gaze to the Friendship Heights metro. She was south of the station, and in between were hundreds of people; a few of them were her colleagues, most were not.

  How much easier her task would’ve been had she been able to evacuate the avenue of all but personnel carrying guns. But if she’d done that, Cochrane wouldn’t have come near the place. She had to make him feel at ease, keep things normal, make him think that he was an anonymous pinhead in a sea of dots.

  It seemed like she’d been tracking him forever, and she couldn’t help but feel deep professional admiration that he’d evaded capture—and not by fleeing, but by coming toward her. Part of her felt it was unfair that she was now using a sledgehammer approach to finally bring him to justice. Still, she had a job to do, and the bottom line was that Cochrane needed to be taken off the streets.

  She spoke into her throat mic. “Five minutes until zero hour. Everyone: stand by.”

  Scott, Oates, and Shackleton looked every bit like politicians stepping out of their offices to grab some breakfast or coffee—dark woolen overcoats, sharp suits, white shirts, silk ties, brogues, and hair that was just the right length to make female voters respect their professional appearance but also make them a bit wobbly at the knees. Not that any self-respecting woman would vote for men like this if she knew how they really spoke and thought when not pretending to be wealthy businessmen or politicos.

  As they walked along Wisconsin Avenue, their smiles showed off their immaculate white teeth, and they were talking in American accents they’d borrowed from the multitude of Hollywood movies they’d watched while waiting for the right time to kill people.

  They felt exhilarated. None of them had any fear, despite being fully cognizant of the dangers around them. In part, this was because their entire adult lives had been suffused with the threat of death; after a while, worrying about it got boring. But more important, they were fatalists who knew they’d die by the bullet; it would happen today, tomorrow, or some other time, but it would happen. It was a liberating feeling because it gave them certainty. That was crucial, because men like this needed to be in control at all times.

  They were two hundred yards from the metro and knew full well that they were walking toward eight undercover HRT operatives, Marsha Gage’s vehicle, other FBI agents, and a SWAT sniper post.

  None of them cared.

  What mattered to them was that Will Cochrane was due here in less than two minutes.

  The D.C. beat cop walked from north to south down the avenue while wondering if he should join in if there was any action to be had. Nobody had told him one way or the other what to do, and he was sure that other cops like him were in the same ignorant position.

  Treated like mushrooms.

  Constantly in the dark and fed shit.

  As he drew nearer to the Friendship Heights metro station, he tried to spot undercover law enforcement agents lurking near the two lanes of nose-to-tail traffic that was now barely moving, or on the crowded sidewalks. But a cop like him didn’t have the skills or experience to clock such agents.

  Even though he was wearing shades to protect his eyes from the glaring sunlight, he had to squint as he glanced at the rooftops. He couldn’t see a police sniper anywhere, but guessed the whole point was that they weren’t to be spotted.

  Police sniper.

  It was a sad reflection of the times that it could be considered policing to shoot a man in the head from five hundred yards away, rather than walking up to him and talking him out of doing something bad.

  He supposed his style of policing was on the wane. Soon all cops would be kitted out like Judge Dredd; enacting justice with the dispassionate and unwavering logic of a robot.

  He nodded and smiled at passersby, walked past the metro and parked vehicles—empty sedans and a van with a woman behind the wheel—and continued walking through the crowd toward three men who looked like young politicians or investment bankers.

  It surprised him that he felt unwanted and invisible, on a patch that belonged to him.

  That was a sad thought.

  He checked his watch.

  Ten fifteen A.M.

  The men who looked like politicians passed him and kept walking toward the station.

  He sighed again, because it was time to go off duty and leave this beat to visiting tourists, Republicans and Democrats who were out grabbing a cappuccino, and cops who didn’t know these streets.

  They were the thoughts of an honest beat cop who’d devoted his life to ensuring that a square mile of land was kept safe.

  Not that Will Cochrane would truly know how that felt.

  He was just playing the part.

  Will spun around, pulled out his sidearm, shot the Irish assassin in the leg, turned back, and ran south while shouting, “Three armed men! Get to cover! Run!”

  Chaos erupted.

  “Shot fired! Shot fired!” Duggan dropped to a crouch, ripped open the Velcro cover on his packsack, and withdrew his Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. He shouted into his throat mic, “All units. Metro station. Go! Go!”

  Every cop, Bureau agent, SWAT operative, and HRT agent had been given the green light to race to the place where gunfire had sounded.

  “Get down! Down!” Duggan was dodging screaming pedestrians as he sprinted while holding his gun at eye level. His HRT colleagues were close by, moving in exactly the same way. “Bravo One. What do you see?”

  Bravo One. The SWAT sniper.

/>   Bravo One responded. “One man down. Civilian clothes. Pistol in his hand. Two guys with him, also armed.”

  “Are they FBI?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  Marsha dashed out of her vehicle, her handgun drawn. She looked up the street. Thirty yards away, with their backs to her, were the three men the SWAT sniper had referenced. One was lying injured, the other two were by his side with weapons drawn.

  Her heart pumped rapidly and she said into her mic, “I can’t see their faces! If anyone’s hearing this and is injured, for God’s sake say so now because otherwise you’re likely to have your head taken off by Bravo One!”

  What had just happened? She looked in the other direction. Uniformed cops were now on the avenue, rushing toward civilians to get them to cover, barking orders; everywhere was movement, noise; people were abandoning their cars and running; police sirens were sounding from every direction.

  One of the uniform cops was running away from the scene, shouting at people to get to cover, his priority to get people to safety, knowing that the area around the metro was a kill zone.

  Maybe he was the beat cop who’d passed her transit vehicle moments ago.

  A man who was now running.

  Away from the scene.

  Shit!

  “Bravo One. Uniform cop! Running south. I think that’s Cochrane!”

  She sprinted after him.

  “This is Bravo One. Which cop? Every cop I can see is running in different directions.”

  Marsha cursed. The cop was at least two hundred yards away, appearing and disappearing in the writhing mass of hysterical bodies that were between him and her. She ran faster, desperate not to lose sight of him.

  Scott was calm as he placed a hand on Shackleton’s shoulder and said, “Head shots to all the fuckers.”

  “Damn right.” Lying on his uninjured leg, Shackleton pointed his handgun at the approaching HRT operatives while ignoring the screaming civilians all around the trio of assassins.

  Scott winked at Oates. “Time to go loud. Be a good chap and take out the sniper for me.”

  Both secreted their handguns and pulled out from under their overcoats SCAR-H 7.62 mm battle rifles. Not only could the devastatingly powerful weapons be fired on automatic, just one round could penetrate body armor and kill a man.

  Scott stepped forward, his gun held high, and squeezed the trigger. The sustained volley tore through four HRT operatives, three FBI agents, and six civilians.

  Oates got to his knee, took aim, and sent shorter, controlled bursts at the sniper nest on top of the Microsoft building. He smiled because the sniper and spotter were now dead. He stood up and opened fire at everything in front of him.

  Marsha was near breathless as she shouted, “SWAT helos: I need you over Wisconsin now! In pursuit of a cop. Possible target. He’s heading south, two hundred yards ahead of me. Now, now, now!”

  She crashed into a civilian, fell, rolled, got to her feet, and continued running. “Bravo One. Update!”

  Silence in her earpiece.

  “Update!”

  It was Duggan who answered. “Bravo One’s down! We’re in a firefight with three unknown hostiles!”

  Duggan dived behind a car as more bullets came his way and punched through the vehicle and the wall behind him. He knew the gunfire sound—SCAR weapons, upgraded to larger rounds; ones that don’t injure a soldier and require two of his mates to carry him off, meaning three combatants have been taken out of the battlefield equation. The bullets were killers, the same ones used by the British SAS. Lessons learned from fighting fanatics in Afghanistan who don’t give a shit about casualty evacuations of their injured comrades.

  He grimaced as shards of metal raced close to his face, crouched, and spun out of cover.

  A handgun bullet walloped him in the chest with the impact of a sledgehammer being swung full strength.

  But the bullet was no match for the Kevlar under his jacket.

  Duggan held firmly in position as he aimed his gun and sent two bursts of bullets into Shackleton’s head.

  He moved his gun’s sight toward the remaining two assassins, but they were largely obscured by men, women, and kids running around like headless chickens, or crouching or standing like statues, or draped over stationary cars while waiting to die. An FBI agent and uniform cop ran from his right flank toward the gunmen. The cop flipped backward as bullets smashed into his throat and face; the agent yelped and hit the ground dead as SCAR rounds turned his internal organs into mush.

  It was no good. Duggan decided he had to get much closer to the assassins.

  The noise around Marsha was deafening as she ran, holding her gun while shouting, “FBI! FBI!” in case any of the numerous cops or hundreds of civilians thought she was one of the hostiles. She could still see the policeman she was pursuing as she dodged through the crowd, flapping one arm to tell people to get down. But he was faster than her, and she was losing ground. “The policeman who’s running away from me! Stop him!” No one heard her. No one cared, because all that mattered to them was that farther up the street it sounded like a regiment of Russian airborne troops was advancing on Capitol Hill.

  Somewhere behind her she heard a helo.

  “Delta Two. We got visual on you, Agent Gage.” This came from the SWAT sniper in the helicopter.

  Thank God! “The uniform cop. About two fifty yards ahead of me heading south. Take him down!” Marsha tried to run faster, but her legs felt as if they might buckle from her exertions. “Take him down!”

  “One hundred percent confirmation cop is Cochrane?”

  “Negative.”

  “Then I’ve no clearance to proceed.”

  “Wound him then!”

  “Negative.”

  “What?!”

  “Bullet in the leg can still kill. Man might be a legitimate cop.”

  Jesus! The SWAT sniper was right, but she was now losing all hope. “Okay. Take out the gunmen in the north.”

  “Roger that.” The helo turned away.

  Marsha leapt on top of a stationary car and began running along the row of vehicles that had been abandoned by terrified drivers and passengers. The extra height gave her better visibility and the ability to move without constantly bumping into people. Either side of the vehicles was still chaos, with people racing into shops, falling over each other, wailing; and the drone of police sirens was all pervasive.

  She jumped to another car and saw the cop dash off of Wisconsin Avenue into a side alley.

  Scott and Oates were expertly holding their ground, covering angles, one of them opening fire while the other changed magazines, crouching while shooting, moving, sending short and long bursts of death at anything that might be a threat to them.

  The former SAS operatives knew there was no way out of this.

  It was their last stand.

  Their day of the bullet.

  And they were making it a memorable one for every person here.

  Duggan sprinted into open ground, shouting, “Out of the way!” at civilians he had to swerve around to get closer to the gunmen. Some of them did as he commanded, others dropped to the tarmac because assassins’ bullets had just entered their brains.

  “Delta Two. I got one of them in my sights.”

  Duggan yelled into his throat mic. “Do it! Now!”

  As the sniper’s high-velocity round bored a hole through Oates’s head, Duggan ran faster than he’d ever done in his life, and hurled himself through air to grab Scott.

  But the assassin sidestepped.

  Duggan crashed to the sidewalk and rolled onto his back.

  Scott was standing over him, his SCAR pointing at Duggan. “Got to be quicker than that, sunshine.” He smiled. “But I guess that was the point.”

  It was the point. Duggan’s clever strategy had laid Scott momentarily open to anyone and everyone. Even if it meant he was putting his life at the feet of a highly trained killer.

  But Scott knew he’d been
outwitted.

  He took his eyes off Duggan and looked toward the sky.

  Allowing Duggan time to lift his submachine gun.

  Scott closed his eyes.

  Duggan’s rounds hit Scott’s chest at exactly the same time as Delta Two’s sniper bullet entered the assassin’s head.

  Marsha had to slow down as she reached the entrance to the alley; her breathing was too fast, her legs felt like lead, but more than anything she felt abject fear as she held her gun in two hands and entered the dark and narrow passageway. She moved cautiously down the alley. Trash containers were sporadically positioned on both sides; fire escape ladders hung down the tall walls above them; water poured from roof gutters that were overflowing from the day’s earlier heavy rainfall. No one was visible in the alley, but there were plenty of places for a man to hide while he changed his appearance from that of a cop to an ordinary citizen.

  In her earpiece she heard Duggan saying that the three gunmen were dead, that all law enforcement officers needed to scour the area in case there were more of them, and that every paramedic in D.C. was needed on Wisconsin Avenue.

  She could still hear the sirens and the commotion on the avenue, but the noises grew quieter with every step she took. And despite the fact that thirty yards behind her was the start of what was temporarily the most heavily policed zone in the U.S., right now she felt completely alone.

  She wondered if she should call for backup; even just one or two cops would make a difference.

  But every able-bodied man and woman was needed on the avenue.

  People were injured.

  Dying.

  Dead.

  And there was the possibility that there were more gunmen loose.

  But they weren’t the only reasons she didn’t call for assistance.

  If Cochrane was in the alley, she couldn’t signify her presence here to him by allowing him to hear her voice.

  She kept walking, estimating that she had another twenty yards to go before she reached the ten-foot-high wall that blocked the end of the alley—a wall that Cochrane would easily be able to scale in order to disappear into the hectic throngs of the city.

  Part of her now hoped that was what had happened, because the prospect of confronting a cornered Will Cochrane terrified her.