“Mom says you live by the zoo.”
Now I’m stuck, Mason said to himself. But then the answer came to him.
“I got an idea,” Mason said. “But you have to promise me something …”
“What’s that?”
“Where I’m about to take you … you can’t tell anybody where it is.”
She thought about it for a moment. “Not even Mom?”
“Not even Mom,” Mason said. “Nobody else will know about it except you and me.”
“Okay, let’s go!” Adriana said, and she laughed again as Mason hit the gas.
• • •
THE APARTMENT BUILDING was south of the Loop, a block off Michigan Avenue. Mason circled the block three times, watching the traffic carefully to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He parked the car and he and his daughter rode up the elevator to the twelfth floor.
It was the first time he’d seen his “safe house.” Hadn’t even mentioned it to Eddie yet. Alexa, the real estate agent, had messengered an envelope to the restaurant with the address of the apartment and a set of keys.
“There’s no furniture!” Adriana said when he opened the door. She ran into the empty room, then down the hallway to the two bedrooms, both just as empty.
Mason went to the window and looked out toward the lake. Through a sliver between two other buildings, he could see a corner of Soldier Field.
“That’s where the Bears play,” Adriana said as she came up and pressed her nose to the window just below his face.
“That’s right.”
“Daddy says they stink this year.”
Mason stopped breathing.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just used to calling him Daddy.”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you have him to take care of you.”
While they were still gazing out the window, Mason reached down and stroked Adriana’s hair. She hugged him. And suddenly all of his doubts about this day disappeared.
She looked up at him. “If you really live by the zoo, can you hear the animals?”
“Sometimes. Mostly at night.”
“I would love that. But why do you need this place, too?”
“Just to have another place to go. Haven’t you ever wanted that? Like a secret room in your own house?”
She let go of him, stepped away from the window, and did a quick cartwheel on the empty expanse of carpeting.
“How long have you had this place?”
“It’s my first time here.”
Her eyes lit up. “Really?”
“Yeah. Remember what I said. This will be our secret, okay?”
“Deal.”
Mason sat down on the floor, watched her do two more cartwheels. Then she sat down on the floor, facing him, looking shy again.
“How do you feel about moving away?” he asked her.
“I don’t want to leave my friends,” she said. “But Mom says we have to go.”
I’m the reason for that, he thought. I took this deal so I could see her again. And now I’m driving her away. But there she is, my girl, sitting right there, talking to me.
“Denver’s in the Rocky Mountains. Mom says it snows there, just like here. But the snow is different.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
“I just thought of an idea,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Instead of having a secret room here,” she said, “you could have it in Denver.”
An apartment in Denver—it seemed impossible. But, then, today was the one day Mason could actually imagine it happening.
That was the exact moment his cell phone rang.
You have got to be fucking kidding me, he said to himself as he looked at the screen. This sudden act of violence, shattering the entire day and bringing him back to his life, was worse than any punch, worse than any gunshot.
PRIVATE NUMBER.
Quintero.
He swiped the screen and put the phone to his ear. “What is it?”
“I’m at your town house,” Quintero said. “Where are you?”
Mason hesitated. “I’m out.”
“Then get back here.”
“We had a deal, Quintero. You gave me your word.”
“And mine ain’t the final word, Mason. You know that. I’m taking you to the airport, so be here in thirty.”
Mason did some quick math in his head and realized two things:
It would take him an hour to drive to Elmhurst and then back to the town house.
And no matter how he played this, there was no way he was going to let Adriana or Quintero see each other.
That left one possibility. Diana’s restaurant was on Rush Street, just a few blocks from the apartment building and on the way to the town house.
“I’ll be there,” he said and hung up.
“Who was that?” Adriana asked.
“Somebody I work with,” Mason said. “I’m sorry, sweetie, but I have to go now.”
“We just got here!”
“I know. I’m really sorry.”
“Where do you work, anyway?”
Mason got up from the floor. “I’ll tell you in the car.”
They went down the elevator and got into the Jaguar. “I work in a restaurant,” he said as he pulled out onto Michigan Avenue. “I thought we could go there right now.”
“You’re a chef?”
“No, I just help out.”
“Doing what?”
Doing nothing. I don’t even show up. I get a paycheck, anyway, so the IRS won’t wonder how I live in a Lincoln Park town house and drive around in restored vintage cars.
“Doing whatever they need me to do,” Mason said. “It’s pretty boring. But see, I have to go do something right now. A restaurant emergency. So I need to leave you there for a little while. Your mom will come and pick you up.”
“But I don’t have to be back until one o’clock. I heard Mom say that.”
“I know,” Mason said. “But we’ll do this again as soon as I can—”
“We can’t do it again,” she said, crossing her arms and looking out the window. “I’m moving to Denver.”
A tense silence hung in the air as Mason kept driving. Adriana had retreated back into her shyness with a new layer of disappointment. It killed Mason to look at her, knowing today would probably undo every inch of progress they’d made since his release. He picked up his cell phone and dialed Gina’s number, trying to find the right words to explain to her what he was about to do.
There were no words to explain it to Adriana.
• • •
IT WAS THE MIDDLE of a busy lunch rush when Mason walked into Antonia’s. A hundred diners, most of them men and women in power suits, were sitting at every available table, while a dozen waitstaff swarmed around them. Mason asked the maître d’ for Diana, was told that she was way too busy to spare even a minute.
“Tell her it’s Nick,” he said. “It’s an emergency.”
Adriana stood beside him, watching the mayhem. “Is this really where you work?”
“I’m not here every day. But it’s a nice place, isn’t it? I’ll bring you here sometime.”
Another promise he might never get to keep.
He was waiting for another comeback about how she was moving to Denver. It never came.
“What is it, Nick?” Diana had appeared from the kitchen, was wiping her hands with a towel. She was in her usual workday uniform, a dark suit with a brightly colored blouse. Today it was coral pink.
“I’d like you to meet Adriana,” Mason said. “My daughter.”
Diana’s face was unreadable. Mason saw a lot of things in it—confusion, envy, hurt, anger—and then it all faded away in an instant as she looked down and saw Adriana.
“I’m so pleased to meet you,” she said, bending down just enough to shake her hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Are you my father’s boss?”
She laughed. “Not really. We work tog
ether. And we live in the same town house.”
Now it was Adriana’s expression that was hard to read. “You live with my father?”
“Oh, not really,” Diana said, blushing. “I mean, not together.”
“That’s too bad,” Adriana said. “You’re very pretty.”
“Well, thank you,” Diana said, blushing even more. She seemed at a loss for words, the woman who ran the entire business that even now was humming all around her, suddenly reduced to shyness by one nine-year-old girl.
Diana finally looked up at Mason. “So what’s going on?”
“I need to ask you a favor,” Mason said. “Her mother’s on the way over, but I have to go now.”
“Nick, are you kidding me? It’s the middle of lunch.”
“I’ve got no other choice.”
“What’s so important that you have to—”
She stopped dead when she saw his eyes.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll take care of her.”
“Thank you. I owe you one.”
“You already do, remember?”
Mason got down on one knee and gave Adriana a hug. He held on to her tight, wanted to stop everything else in the world and stay right there on the floor of the restaurant. But he made himself let go.
“Come on,” Diana said to Adriana. “I’ll show you the kitchen, get the chef to make you your favorite meal. What do you like most in the world?”
“Chicken nuggets.”
“We’ll see what he can do,” Diana replied as she took her hand and guided her away. Mason stood there, watching her. She didn’t say good-bye. She just waved and turned away from him.
• • •
A FEW MINUTES LATER, he pulled the car into the garage and came out to the street, where Quintero was waiting for him.
“You’re late, Mason,” Quintero said as he got in the Escalade. “The clock is ticking on the next target. You may have already—”
“I don’t give a fuck,” Mason said. “You know I was with—”
He stopped himself dead, didn’t even want to talk about her. Didn’t want to say her name out loud in front of this man.
“Plane tickets,” Quintero said, giving him an envelope as he pulled away from the curb. “A driver’s license and credit card under another name. You’re landing in Atlanta, going to this motel, registering under this same name.”
“What’s in Atlanta?”
“Everything you need will be in the hotel safe. The combination’s in here.”
Mason stayed silent as Quintero wove through traffic to get to the Kennedy Expressway, then opened it up all the way out to O’Hare.
Mason spoke up as Quintero stopped in front of the Delta terminal. “Does Cole really think he can take out every witness who might testify against him?”
“Not your job to worry about that, Mason.”
“You know I’m not getting within a hundred feet of this guy, right? They’ll have a dozen marshals all around him every fucking minute.”
“If they do,” Quintero said, “you deal with it. Now get out of the car. Your plane’s leaving.”
As Mason opened the door, he felt Quintero’s hand on his forearm, stopping him short.
“Don’t get yourself killed,” he said, looking Mason in the eye. “That wouldn’t be good for either of us.”
“I didn’t know you cared,” Mason said.
“Vete a la mierda.”
Quintero sped away as soon as Mason closed the door behind him. It occurred to him that something had changed, some fundamental aspect of this relationship between Mason and the man who gave him his assignments. The man who was sworn to kill his ex-wife and daughter if he ever failed.
But he didn’t have time to think about it now. He had a plane to catch. And another target to kill.
12
Nick Mason stepped off the plane in Atlanta carrying the name of James L. Wilson, rented a full-size Ford Expedition SUV, and drove to a hotel three miles from the sprawling airport complex to retrieve the supplies he’d need for this assignment.
When he was in the hotel room, he opened the closet door and then the safe that was built into the back wall. The first item he pulled out looked like a thin black backpack. As he put it on the bed and unrolled it, he saw the components of a Remington Defense bolt-action sniper rifle, with a carbon fiber–wrapped barrel with suppressor. He assembled the rifle, flipped open the scope, and looked through it. The weapon felt impossibly light in his hands, but he knew Eddie could put one of the 7.62mm NATO rounds through a quarter from three hundred yards out. Mason, maybe two hundred.
The next item from the safe was a smaller gun case, containing an H&K USP Full Size Tactical semiautomatic loaded with nine-millimeter rounds. It was the same model he’d used in his last mission at the Aqua. The gun he’d used to kill Ken McLaren.
Mason took out the final two items—a pair of Leica 2,000-yard binoculars and a large envelope with several documents inside. He spread the documents out on the bed next to the sniper rifle.
The first was a mug shot of a large black man with a look on his face that was a combination of disgust and world-weariness. He held his own name in front of him, white letters on a black placard: ISAIAH JEREMIAH WALLACE.
Then a series of printed photographs, of rough quality and with haphazard angles, likely taken with a cell phone. As he looked through the images, he saw that it was a detailed itinerary, with a list of destinations and waypoints, each scheduled down to the minute.
Then a map showing a route almost exclusively on secondary roads, from a small town just outside Houston, Texas, to a location in the Appalachian Mountains about sixty miles north of Atlanta. Mason checked the itinerary again, peered at the map to see the final destination.
Then he threw the map back on the bed and looked out the window.
“Son of a bitch.”
• • •
AS MASON DROVE NORTH, he picked up his cell phone and dialed.
Quintero answered on the first ring. “What is it?”
“Tell me this is a joke,” Mason said. “An Army Ranger camp?”
“On the phone? What’s wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me is I don’t know how to get into an Army Ranger camp.”
“You don’t,” Quintero said. “You have their route, you make the hit before they get there.”
“How did you get the route?” Mason paged through the itinerary with his free hand while he kept the phone to his ear with the other.
“That’s need-to-know and you don’t need to know,” Quintero said. “Just do your job.”
“If they get to that camp, I’m fucked. You know that.”
“I do know that,” Quintero said. “And you know if you don’t want to get fucked, don’t drop the soap.”
The call ended before Mason could say another word. He threw the phone on the seat next to him and kept driving. When he looked at his watch, he added an extra hour for the time change. He had five hours, the seconds ticking away loudly in his head.
• • •
THREE HUNDRED MILES to the southwest, a small convoy of vehicles was making its way through the state of Alabama. Bruce Harper sat in the front passenger’s seat of an unmarked Chevy Express passenger van, specially modified for the U.S. Marshals Service with a turbo-diesel V-8 engine and heavily tinted bulletproof side windows.
Four other deputy marshals rode in the van with him. Isaiah Wallace sat in the middle row, a deputy on either side. They’d been rotating drivers every four hours to stay fresh. It would be fifteen hours on the road today, with a lead vehicle ahead of the van—an SUV with two deputy marshals—and another SUV behind them with two more deputies.
In case Darius Cole’s people were watching, Harper had taken the unprecedented precaution of flying a decoy prisoner—actually, a retired marshal who resembled Isaiah Wallace—to the West Coast. As far as the marshals working the detail knew, the man they were guarding was Isaiah Wallace. Would it work? Harper
wasn’t sure, but anything he could do to lower the risk of the real Wallace becoming the second fatality in the WITSEC Program in less than a week, he was going to do.
It wasn’t the first time in his career Harper had gotten creative. He couldn’t even count the number of times he’d brought high-profile witnesses to and from courthouses using newspaper vans, catering trucks, anything that didn’t look like an official federal vehicle.
But now the stakes felt higher than ever, and when Harper had contacted his staff back in Arlington, he’d asked them to find the best possible location to keep Isaiah Wallace until the retrial was over. One of his administrators called back an hour later with an idea.
The man had been an Army Ranger before joining the Service and he told Harper about this intensive sixty-one-day training program they’d had, running obstacle courses and doing night patrols at Fort Benning, then rappelling down mountains at Camp Merrill, in the Appalachians, then finally parachuting into Camp Rudder, in Florida, to swim through the swamps with the alligators and snakes.
“That mountain phase at Camp Merrill …” the administrator said. “I remember thinking, this is one of the most isolated places I’ve ever seen and there’s nobody there but Rangers in training. Except for two small civilian guesthouses.”
Harper had placed high-risk clients at military bases before, but never somewhere quite like this. As soon as he heard the idea, he knew where he was taking Isaiah Wallace.
Harper looked at his watch.
Five more hours and he could relax.
• • •
MASON TOOK THE COUNTY HIGHWAY out of a small town called Dahlonega, turned onto a winding road leading up into the mountains. He passed a farm stand selling boiled peanuts, then the trees closed in tight, making a natural tunnel overhead. He turned on his headlights and kept driving as the time leaked away. He still had no idea how he’d hit a three-vehicle convoy, which, according to the documents, would be carrying eight deputy marshals to protect Wallace, along with the Assistant Director of WITSEC himself, a man named Bruce Harper.
As he went farther up the road, the elevation continued to rise, until he saw a sign indicating that Camp Merrill was one mile away. As he got closer, he came to an intersection. Straight ahead was the entrance to the camp. A gate with a man standing on either side of a green transport truck, the back of the truck filled with Army Rangers, some of them turning to clock him as he took the hard right and headed up the mountain. A quarter mile later, the road doubled back again and Mason pulled over.
Exit Strategy Page 11
