The Loot

by Schaefer, Craig

  “Thought about the situation,” Beckett told her as he crouched down, grabbing hold of a garage door. “Then I talked to Jake, and he gave up the keys to his company ride.”

  The door, bare aluminum tinged with spots of rust, rattled upward as Beckett gave it a heave. A small garage bay waited just beyond, and a single vehicle: a jet-black Ford Explorer with tinted windows, polished and ready to roll.

  “We use our vehicle, one that’s locked up all night long, out of enemy hands, instead of letting Ellis use his. We’ll call it chauffeur service. Bottom line, that’s one less place his fan club can plant another bomb.”

  Charlie circled the truck. Motes of dust danced on the light streaming in from the open bay door. She watched where they fell on the oil-stained pavement, shifting across the Explorer’s glossy front bumper.

  “All the same,” she said, “are we in a hurry?”

  “Technically, but Dom’s not here yet, and we can’t leave without her. Why?”

  She rapped her knuckles lightly on the hood. “I don’t trust any vehicle I haven’t examined myself, locked up or not. Back in Afghanistan, we caught insurgents trying to sneak into our base garage with IEDs way too many times for that. They never got lucky, not while I was there, but . . . I just don’t trust that easy.”

  He lit up the shadowy bay with a smile. “Damn, I’m glad you said that.”

  “What, was that some kind of test?”

  “Nope.” He fished out a ring of car keys and tossed them over the hood to her. “I just like knowing everyone around me is as paranoid as I am. Makes me feel right at home. So I heard you and Dom had a chat yesterday.”

  Charlie unlocked the side door, leaned in, and popped the hood.

  “Yeah?” She glanced around the door. “She tell you . . . anything about my situation?”

  “Your situation is your business until you feel like making it my business, just like her situation is her business.”

  At that moment, Dom’s business was with her lawyer. She’d tossed her phone onto the passenger seat of her Lincoln, and his voice echoed over the tinny speaker like he was riding to work alongside her.

  “But we do need at least one-third payment of your outstanding bill by the fifteenth, in order to continue with your case.”

  “Explain something to me,” Dom said. “Three calls this week. Two and a half of those calls have been about my outstanding bill. Five minutes of those calls have been about what you’re doing to earn the money.”

  “These things move slowly,” he said. “Your husband is making a very strong push for sole custody, and he has a lot of resources to throw into the fight.”

  Dom gunned the gas, speeding through an amber light just before it flickered red, and punched the steering wheel. “He’s trying to wear me down. Fuck him.”

  “Ms. Da Costa, this really isn’t productive—”

  “I will get you your money. Do your job. I’m not losing my kid. Period.”

  She hung up. They were billing her in fifteen-minute chunks, and they’d probably charged her another fifteen just to talk about her bill.

  When Dom finally swept into the garage, Charlie was crouched on the concrete, leaning low and strobing a light from her phone across the Ford’s undercarriage.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Dom said. “Damn lawyer kept me on the phone for twenty minutes; then I had to let the people at day care bitch at me for picking Natalie up late last night. Pretty sure I’m paying them enough to show a little understanding now and then, but they don’t see it my way.”

  Beckett nodded down at Charlie. “It’s fine. We’re checking for bombs.”

  “Probably a good idea. Find any?”

  Charlie stood up and dusted her hands off on her slacks. “Clean as a whistle and good to go.”

  “All right,” Beckett said. “Let’s roll. Charlie, you just graduated to Asset Protection 102: Escorting the Primary. Pay close attention, because the final will be graded.”

  Dom walked past and gave her a pat on the shoulder.

  “I’ll give you a hint,” Dom said. “The class is strictly pass-fail. If the client ends up dead? You failed.”

  Sean Ellis rested his head in a penthouse at the Grandview, a tower overlooking the rolling greens of Boston Common. Sitting in the front passenger seat while Charlie drove, Beckett cast a narrow eye at the big, glassy front entrance.

  “Circle around,” he told her. “See if we can find a back route, service entrance, maybe.”

  “Primary’s going to squawk if we march him out through a delivery door,” Dom said from the back seat.

  “Let him squawk. Took me ten minutes on the internet to get this joker’s home address, just to see if I could do it. That means everybody with a grudge against the man has it too. This is way too open for my liking.”

  Charlie agreed in silence. The park on the other side of Tremont Street was a spot of paradise in the heart of the city, in full bloom and packed with summer visitors—and that was exactly the problem. Too big, too open, too many strange faces, and too many angles. She found an access alley and brought the Ford around back.

  “Entry and exit points,” Beckett told Charlie, “are pretty much just like how we ran ’em at the hotel banquet. Check your angles and watch for avenues of attack.”

  “Ask yourself how you’d kill him,” Dom said.

  Beckett turned, glancing around his seat at her.

  “It’s how I do it,” she said with a nonchalant shrug. “Think like a bad guy. If you can do that, you’ve got ninety percent of this job handled.”

  They pulled into a cul-de-sac behind the building just big enough for a delivery truck, with a pair of steel double doors shielded by a curving six-foot brick wall. A grimy sign screwed into the concrete, left of the doors, listed delivery hours and contact numbers for the building’s management company.

  Charlie was thinking like a bad guy.

  If the opposition had access to Sean Ellis’s home address, they could scope out the back as easily as the front. The cul-de-sac offered reduced lines of sight and fewer ways to approach, but it was also quieter. Fewer witnesses. If she were going to kill someone and hope to get away clean, she’d do it right here. Her practiced eyes scouted for debris, stray trash bags, anything that could conceal an explosive device. The pavement was clean, save for a scattering of cigarette butts, and the only hiding place she could spot was a dumpster parked about fifty feet up the alley.

  She pulled to a stop, close to the doors. They weren’t alone. A scruffy kid in a concert T-shirt was leaning against the wall and having a smoke. A fixed-gear bike stood propped up next to him, and he wore a heavy canvas messenger bag slung across his chest. A courier, or somebody who wanted to look like one. The perfect disguise if you needed to lurk in plain sight, waiting for your shot. Beckett followed her gaze.

  “You like that?” he asked her.

  She killed the engine. “I do not.”

  “Then handle it, Little Duck.”

  Charlie hopped out of the SUV. Her credentials, laminated and dangling from her neck on a lanyard, swung as she approached the courier. She remembered Beckett’s little trick from the hotel banquet, and now it was her turn to try it out. The kid looked her way, casually curious, and she brandished her ID card.

  “Sorry, sir. Building security. I’m going to need you to clear the alley.”

  She didn’t make up a reason. A reason would invite an argument. All the same, he gave her a bleary-eyed look, nursing a hangover, she guessed, and said, “Can I just finish this?”

  “Sorry, sir. Need you to clear out. Now.”

  He tossed his half-smoked cigarette at her feet, hopped on his bike, and wheeled out. She watched him until he disappeared around the corner.

  “Not bad,” Beckett said, standing behind her. “Okay, doing a transfer, we always keep at least one person with the vehicle. Eyes on, so nobody can rush in and tamper with it. This morning, that’s you. Keep the alley secure and clear while me and Dom go up and
fetch the primary.”

  They buzzed themselves in through the delivery doors. Charlie stood alone.

  The alley took on an eerie, removed quality. She listened to the sounds of the street, heavy traffic on Tremont filtered through a skyscraper valley, echoing distantly but still a stone’s throw away. She glanced up, checking windows as she walked, slowly circling the SUV.

  Seven stories up, a curtain ruffled in a window.

  Charlie’s feet jolted to a dead stop. In a heartbeat, she ran a dozen mental calculations: distance, trajectory, cover. Contingencies and reactions.

  Nothing moved behind the glass. False alarm. She went back on patrol.

  Back on her tour, she’d experience two dozen moments a day just like that one. Snapshot beats with deadly potential. It was funny how fast that kind of life became normal, like she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been on high alert at all times. She had thought, once, that she wanted nothing more than to get back to the States and live like a normal person again.

  Alone in the alley with her thoughts and her mission, she had to admit the truth. Part of her, deep down inside, wanted no part of a “normal” life. She missed the danger. It was addictive.

  And people die from addictions, she warned herself.

  The service door rattled open. Beckett led Sean Ellis out, Dom taking the rear. Charlie moved around the SUV, fast and smooth, opening the back door.

  Beckett had told Charlie the statistics on the average assassination attempt. Five seconds, from start to finish. If it was going to happen here, it was going to happen right now.

  They bundled Sean into the back seat, Dom followed, and Charlie hopped behind the wheel while Beckett rode shotgun. She didn’t like the looks of the dumpster up the alley. She made a snap decision, hit the gas hard enough to push everyone back in their seats, and hauled the SUV around back toward Tremont, the way they’d come in.

  From the sour look on the old man’s face, Sean hadn’t forgiven her for wounding his trophy collection. All the same, he didn’t complain about her being there. She pushed her concern aside. She wasn’t there to be his friend; she was there to protect him, and that had to take priority over everything else.

  “Here’s how this is going to work,” Beckett said. “Charlie, you’re going to pull us into the parking garage and proceed directly to the loading bay at the far end of the first floor. We’ve got the freight elevator on lockdown; I radioed ahead, and Garcia and Brooks are covering it. They’ve got eyes on the garage entrance, and one of ’em is riding inside. This will be our morning routine, going forward.”

  “Good place to plant a bomb,” Charlie said. Thinking like a bad guy.

  “Already covered,” Beckett told her. “They ran a check on the maintenance hatch and surveyed the cage and cables, top to bottom, an hour ago.”

  That satisfied her for now, but she didn’t like the long-term prospects. Charlie knew from experience that regular routines were the biggest danger to base security. Not just because the enemy could learn your schedule and adapt their tactics but because doing the same thing day in and day out made people lazy. She was sure they’d done a great job of searching for explosives this morning. Maybe they’d even do a great job next week. After a month, two months, of the same exercise every single day? She wasn’t so confident their eyes would be as sharp.

  Assuming Sean Ellis is still alive a month from now, she thought. Not betting any money on that, if we don’t figure out who’s after him.

  “Dom,” Beckett said, “this time you’re going to stay with the car. Me and Charlie will escort Mr. Ellis to his office, hand off responsibility with the guards stationed on twenty-two, and come back to rendezvous. Any questions?”

  “Yeah.” Dom leaned forward, pointing between the front seats. “What the hell is that?”

  Charlie stared dead ahead, squinting as a spot of sun glare kissed the windshield.

  “Trouble,” she said.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  A short line of cars backed up onto the street, traffic swiveling into the left lane to get around as an angry horn blared. The entrance to the parking garage, nestled at the foot of Deep Country’s corporate tower, was blocked.

  “Don’t wait in line,” Beckett told Charlie. “Ease up and around, nice and slow. Let’s see what the problem is.”

  The problem was a vintage Volkswagen Jetta, broken down right next to the ticket dispenser and effectively sealing off the only way in. Plumes of smoke boiled from under the propped-up hood, and the hazard lights strobed a steady heartbeat rhythm.

  “Pull up to the corner and bring him in through the lobby?” Dom asked.

  “No,” Charlie said. Her grip tightened on the steering wheel as a flash of memory dragged her half a world away and kicked her senses into overdrive.

  Ellis hunched forward, leaning so close over the seat she could feel the hot puff of his breath on her neck. “What is it? What’s going on?”

  A textbook Taliban play. They’d get word of a convoy coming through and block key streets with broken-down trucks, staging a traffic jam and funneling American forces down a corridor of death. The detour was the trap.

  “You think it’s a setup?” Beckett asked her.

  “Don’t know,” Charlie said, “but if it is, bringing him through the lobby is exactly what they want us to do.”

  He nodded, sharp, and took his sunglasses off.

  “Pull over. We stick to the plan. We’ll walk in through the garage. Charlie, think you can run up ahead of us, check that wreck out? We won’t advance unless you give us the sign.”

  She heard him, crystal clear. The odds were it was just a random breakdown. Some poor driver had stopped to take their ticket, only for their engine to die. The same had nearly happened to her, twice, driving her father’s pickup. But if it had been placed here on purpose, there were two possibilities: either it was meant to divert them to the tower’s lobby, getting Ellis out in the open for an easier shot, or they were hoping to lure them closer to the broken-down car.

  Tight funnel, only one approach . . . perfect place to hide a bomb.

  And bombs were her field of expertise. Beckett was counting on her to scope it out, scout for danger, make a life-or-death judgment call. Fast.

  “Someone tell me what’s happening,” Ellis demanded. “Am I in danger?”

  Charlie left comforting the client to her partners. She pulled the SUV to the curb, jumped out, and hit the ground running. She jogged to the edge of the garage entrance. The exit lane was wide open, but bent-spike bumps lined the mouth of the concrete tunnel, promising punctured tires to anyone trying to get inside the wrong way. Then came a raised center curb, the yellow box of a ticket-dispensing machine and wooden swing arm, and the stalled VW.

  She slowed down, assessing, mentally chopping the scene into slices of information. She saw movement on the far side of the Jetta. A tall, thin man in a panama hat bent over the exposed engine, cursing under his breath. He took his hat off, baring a bald, liver-spotted scalp, and whisked it at the plumes of white smoke.

  “Sir?” Charlie said.

  He jumped, startled, and looked her way. She guessed he was in his late seventies, but his eyes were sharp and clear.

  “Oh, sorry, miss, didn’t hear you coming.” His eyes flicked to her lanyard and the ID card around her neck. “I really am dreadfully sorry about this; the old girl picked the worst place to give up the ghost.”

  “Do you need me to call a tow truck for you?”

  He held up his cell, an old flip-phone model with a clamshell, and gave it an awkward wave. “Already done. Triple A is sending someone for me, but thank you so much for asking. Again, I truly am sorry. Didn’t mean to be a bother.”

  She could call and verify his claim, but every second she spent here was another second Sean Ellis was out on the curb, partially exposed in the back seat of the SUV. It was time to choose, the garage or the lobby.

  She jogged back to the mouth of the garage and gave Beck
ett a wave.

  The wreck could still be a distraction, but she ruled out a concealed explosive. The people hounding their client showed signs of being disorganized, not suicidal; if the elderly man in the panama hat was in on this, and she had her doubts, he wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the Jetta when the bomb went off. Still no guarantee of safety, but like Beckett had taught her, their job was about minimizing risk. Compared to risking a move through the lobby, the garage was the smart-money play.

  She kept watch over the driver—he wasn’t even glancing their way, back to huddling over his engine and fussing—while Beckett and Dom hustled Sean into the garage. Charlie waited until they were about twenty feet ahead. Then she broke away and jogged after them, catching up fast.

  “Legit?” Dom asked her.

  Charlie nodded. “I think so. Bad luck, bad timing.”

  The cavernous garage blotted out the summer sun and trapped the heat. It turned the air stale and muggy, smelling of spilled gasoline. They walked the middle of the silent gallery, eyes sweeping in all directions. The rows of parked cars on either side, silently gathering dust, were a 360-degree threat. Every one of them could be holding a lethal surprise, from a bomb on the undercarriage to a shooter hunched down in the back seat.

  Charlie’s pulse kept time with her footsteps, fast and steady. The plain brushed-steel door of the service elevator, extra wide to bring in furniture and big deliveries, waited fifty feet ahead and off to the right.

  They made it to the doors. No sound but their own shoes slapping on concrete. Beckett punched the call button, and it lit up pale amber.

  “One of our people will be on the elevator,” Beckett told Sean. “You’re in good hands.”

  Sean ran a finger along the collar of his neck and loosened his floral silk tie. “I’m not worried.”

  His tone made a liar out of him. Charlie wrestled with the sudden urge to grab him by the necktie, jerk it tighter than a noose, and pull until he coughed up a name. He knew exactly who was trying to kill him, and the longer this went on, the more likely it was they’d get their wish. She swallowed her frustration and waited, shifting her weight from foot to foot as the freight elevator continued its slug-slow descent.