“Aha,” Tom said. “Not a bad idea, Sarah. You want to poison the well.”
That was a standard covert-ops trick. If you found out someone had a double agent in your operation, you could use the fink to feed the enemy disinformation, making him an unwitting triple agent. In this case, Tom had been the leak; and now he could give Adrienne Rolfe information she’d probably take at face value.
Making me a very witting triple agent, Tom thought. He still felt a hot flush of anger every time he remembered how she’d played him for a fool.
“There’s only one problem,” Tully said. “Well, a lot of problems, but they all start at the same place. If we try to catch her red-handed—not to mention the mysterious dissident from RM and M—we’ll have to do it by ourselves. Just the three of us. No backup. Luckily, Ms. Rolfe and her opponents both seem to prefer to work quiet, but this time we’ll be on the same scale. If we screw the pooch, we’re rogues and we all get cashiered and probably do time. Anyone want to bet RM and M hasn’t got enough political pull to see that done?”
“Unless we can blow this open and bring them down.” Tom shrugged. “We’ll just have to be very careful.”
“Sorry,” Tom Christiansen said into the phone. “But I can’t make it tonight.”
“Is something wrong, Tom?” Adrienne’s voice said. “You sound odd.”
Because I’m trying not to scream and jump around, he thought tightly. Undercover work is not my thing. And I really liked you, God damn it.
“Work,” he said. “Another bust, believe it or not.”
“Ah,” she replied—and was it his imagination that heard a sharper interest? “You’re really making progress! Where would that be?”
When he’d finished sweat beaded his brow, and he could feel it cold and clammy in his armpits. She had to suspect something fishy. God, that was lame!
To his surprise, Tully gave him a grin and a thumbs-up. He looked at Perkins and raised his brows.
“Not bad,” she said—which was her equivalent of Tully’s gestures. “That should have worked. After all, the last time you told her we were going on a bust it worked like clockwork for her.”
“Yeah,” Tully said, spitting his gum into a wastebasket and crackling his knuckles with glee. “Only this time, we’re going to be there first.”
“I wish we had more backup,” Tully said.
“Then we’d have to convince ’em we weren’t crazy,” Perkins pointed out.
Maybe we are crazy, Tom thought.
The three of them pulled the dark knit hoods down from their foreheads to cover their faces; the night-sight glasses were a lot less conspicuous that way, too. Perkins had gotten them Bureau-issue, better than the SOU could afford, and better than the military ones he’d used in the Rangers—of course, that was years ago now, too. These were the latest model, not much bulkier than sunglasses, and there was less of the green glow he remembered unfondly from the ’Stans and Iraqi Kurdistan. He took a last look at the copy of the building diagram before stuffing it back into his pocket; in, upper left-hand gallery, fourth entrance from the far end.
The glasses revealed the deserted nighttime street in all its seediness, down to the piece of newspaper blowing along the sidewalk with a tiny scritch… scritch… scritch of crumpled newsprint on concrete. They said Oakland had boomed since the nineties, but you couldn’t tell that from this neighborhood; the only other car in sight was resting on flat rims and probably hadn’t moved in years. A couple of failed attempts at renovation punctuated the decay of the buildings. Even the air seemed to have a stale smell, far from the living stinks of the bay.
“All right,” Tom said quietly, racking a round of double-aught into his shotgun; he’d have preferred a machine pistol or an automatic carbine, but they couldn’t go to the armory and draw as needed in this operation. “Everyone receiving clearly?”
The other’s murmurs came through the button microphone in his left ear. “We go in, collar the perps and then wait until Ms. Rolfe and/or minions arrive, at the time I gave her.” A grin. “I do hope your information was good, Sarah.”
She shrugged. “The Russians are bringing their Viet contacts to meet their source, so they can all kiss and make up,” she said. “Or at least that’s what our source said. Knowing what we know, that means at least two people from… ah… you-know-where.” Perkins had been avoiding the phrase “alternate universe.” “We grab everyone, call in the good guys, and break the news on an unsuspecting world…. Let’s go.”
They did, walking across the street with their weapons down by their sides, unnoticeable to a casual passerby in case one came through this rundown part of West Oakland. A few of the buildings were sealed, windows shuttered and marked with FOR RENT signs; not far away traffic hummed along the Nelson Mandela Parkway, and nearer the water to their south a diesel locomotive blatted mournfully as it drew a load of containers up from the docks. Tom checked the street number twice, because the building looked as shuttered and deserted as anything here. He was surprised at how nervous he felt, until he realized it was mostly a peculiar form of institutional loneliness.
I’ve been a team player too long, he thought. First in the army, then with Fish and Game.
It wasn’t just a matter of having backup in the physical sense; operating on his own was nothing new. But he was used to being on the side of the angels, or at least on the side of the duly authorized, licensed and officially approved. If things went messily wrong here he’d be filed under rogue cop, and so would his friends. The sensation made him a little queasy, and it was unfamiliar. Somehow the thought of being killed wasn’t nearly as nerve-racking as the thought of being classified with the villains afterward.
I may be nervous, he thought, suppressing the sensation with an effort of will. But I’ll be goddamned if I’ll be scared.
He drew his foot back for a boot-heel entry—the door was sheet metal around the lock, and didn’t look especially strong.
“Let me,” Perkins said, touching him on the sleeve.
She pulled out what looked like a blank Yale with a miniature doorknob on the handle. It hummed a little as she inserted the key end, then went through a series of barely audible clicks before turning inert.
“Sensors on the key,” she said softly, twisting the knob. “Adjusts it automatically… there! Standard-issue these days.”
“Fart, Barf and Itch get all the cool toys,” Tully said, his jaws working on a wad of gum.
The front doors led into a long two-story hall, part of an old converted warehouse that someone had hoped would become a nest of boutiques, upscale shops and eateries. Spiral staircases on either side led up to two galleries, giving access to shops and offices mostly vacant, like the ones on the ground floor. Most of those that were occupied had signs in various Asian scripts.
Tom brought the shotgun up, eyes flickering back and forth. “Go,” he whispered, hearing his voice in an eerie echo from the ear mike, ready to suppress anyone who shot at them. Hopefully the villains wouldn’t know they were coming, but nobody ever got killed by being too ready for trouble.
Unfortunately, very few operations have ever failed for using too many troops, either.
Tully and Perkins went up the left-hand staircase in a rush, their soft boot soles making quiet rutching noises on the perforated-steel treads. Roy dropped prone, covering the long gallery while Perkins ran halfway down it. Tom kept his stance until she was ready, down on one knee and weapon in firing position; then he went up the stairs himself, no louder than the others despite his greater size, moving like a great dark cat. It was a pleasure to work with people who knew what they were doing, and that was a fact.
He felt the same thing, in a distant abstract way, when an amplified voice bellowed: “Freeze! You’re covered!”
Both his companions did what he did: froze, with their eyes active. Jumping up and shooting at nothing would be highly unprofessional, also fatal.
Then the voice went on in a more conversational tone
: “Look at the pretty red dots, motherfuckers.”
He did roll his eyes down. The glasses showed the laser aim point clearly, right on the upper part of his breastbone, right in the “sniper’s triangle.” And whoever was doing the talking had an accent like Adrienne’s, only stronger.
Urk, he thought.
“Throw down!”
“Do it,” Tom said, bending and slowly setting down his shotgun and pulling his Glock out to join it with two fingers.
If they wanted us dead, we’d be dead, he thought.
That was slightly reassuring; criminals rarely killed police officers except in the heat of the moment. Cop killers were unlucky—they tended to be shot while resisting arrest or while attempting to escape, or to commit suicide by throwing themselves downstairs in stir. The mystery men from the other dimension might not think like that, but most of the people here were good, honest terrestrial scumbags.
Men came out of the door that had been their destination, with pistols in their hands. They didn’t make any attempt to cover their faces; that wasn’t reassuring, even slightly, because it meant all three of them could make the perpetrators. Which meant they didn’t care…
A gun tapped him on the back of the head, then withdrew—reminding him it was there, then withdrawing out of range of a sweep if he tried to turn.
“Forward march, asshole,” the voice with the not-quite-Southern accent said. “Hands on your head.”
Their captors were arguing, out in the waiting room beyond this office; all except for one Vietnamese gunsel who was standing with a machine pistol trained on them.
“Just kill them,” someone said; someone with a thick Slavic tinge to his vowels. “Not to get fancy, not to fall on ass.”
“We need to ask them questions,” the voice with the accent like Adrienne’s said. “Then we can kill them.”
“Our money!” said a third party to the dispute. “You give us our money!”
Oh, that is all soooo not good, Tom thought.
The hood and night-sight glasses were gone; he was sitting in a metal-frame chair, with his hands tied behind his back and behind the backrest; his feet were lashed to the legs. Tully and Perkins were to his left and right, along one wall of an industrial-décor office, bare brick and metal strut ceiling, and a discouraged-looking potted plant in one corner. They all exchanged glances.
Well, we knew it was a risk, he thought, swallowing the fear that made sweat trickle like cold grease down his flanks. Sometimes the cat’s alive when you open the box; sometimes it’s dead.
There was a big desk at the other end of the room near the door, and through it came a group of men; they were arguing, with a lot of hand action. Six of them: two East Asians, two white men who looked enough alike to be brothers, squat and broad-faced, and three who looked like something from a Sopranos rerun—right down to the expensive bad taste of their aggressively cut business suits and the bulges under their left armpits.
A youngish man seemed to be the leader of the suits; he was talking, and with that same impossible-to-place, not-quite-Southern accent that Adrienne had, but much stronger: “I told you that we had our own channels into the police,” Young Suit said. “And it worked out, didn’t it?”
He gestured toward the desk. It carried their weapons and ID, the folders open to show their pictures. Young Suit walked over to the prisoners and grinned at them; then he went on: “Your boss, the slope,” he said. “You found out about his father’s house, hey? Didn’t know that the Yasujirus got a big payment from RM and M right after the war… and a nice note saying how sorry the company was to be buying the property they’d been cheated out of, and would they please accept the very generous purchase price… and the help later, the scholarship and suchlike. Always pays to have friends. Friends who can plant a bug on someone’s car, so you know when they’re coming, for example. Easy as salmon in spring.”
Even then, Tom felt a slight surprise at the odd turn of phrase. Then a prickle ran up his back, remembering the videodisk and the enormous, unbelievable weight of fish thrashing their way through Carquinez Strait.
He’s one of them. One of the people from the other side. Also… he couldn’t have gotten a warning about this operation from Yasujiru, or a bug on the car—not unless he was monitoring that continuously. It must have leaked from Adrienne… but how? She’s been chasing this guy.
“Mr. Bosco, the question is what to do with them now,” one of the squat men said. He had an accent as well.
Russian, Tom thought; he recognized it from his years in Central Asia. Then: Aha! Bosco, as in Bosco Holdings. Another piece of the puzzle.
Young Suit—young Mr. Bosco—smiled. “Toni, please, Alexi. I said, we’ll take care of it. Rest assured, no bodies will ever be found.”
The Russian scowled. “Better to make sure of them now—after we find out what they know.”
Toni Bosco spread his hands soothingly. “That’s what we had in mind. But carefully, carefully. The FBI would get very upset if they found one of their special agents in, ah, bad condition. It’ll be a while before we can deal with them.”
Alexi jerked his head westward. “The ocean hides many sins.”
Bosco’s grin was broad, but it reminded Tom of a circus magician’s professional grimace; if he’d been in the Russian’s position, he wouldn’t have trusted it an inch.
“We know a better trick than that, Alexi,” Bosco said.
His words were mild, but the men behind him were stone-faced and alert, their gun hands ready to move. Tom silently willed the others to accept the proposition; whatever Mr. Bosco had in mind, it had to be better than immediate torture and death. Not to mention the prospects of being tied to a chair in the middle of a firefight, if a disagreement broke out among the business associates here. Bosco reached inside his coat—carefully, carefully—and brought out a thick envelope, which he handed to the hitherto-silent Asians.
“Mr. Nguyen,” he said. “I believe this will be full compensation.”
The Vietnamese-American opened the envelope, riffled through the bills, and raised a brow. “More than sufficient,” he said. “However, we are no longer prepared to engage in this animal-products venture. The… difficulties… are more than the profits. Your friends will have to find someone else to market your goods in the East. Goodbye.”
He and his companion turned and walked out the door. Bosco shrugged and turned to the Russians, opening his mouth to speak—
And there was a sound from the gallery outside, muffled through the intervening room but unmistakable to an experienced ear; a sound like a series of large books being slapped closed, very quickly.
Submachine gun, Tom thought. With a sound suppressor. Someone just took out the Viets.
Silencers didn’t silence. A gun going off was going to make a loud noise, whatever you did. The baffles that slowed the muzzle gases down to subsonic speeds did reduce the sound a lot, though; enough that it didn’t carry very far, especially indoors. There were very few neighbors here, and probably none of them would report a firefight.
The Russians went for their pistols. Toni Bosco’s men dove for their attaché cases, which probably held something heavier. Even as they moved, an also-familiar hollow schoonk… schoonk… schoonk rang out.
Grenade launcher. Tom took a deep breath and screwed his eyes shut. That wouldn’t do any good at all if the grenades were loaded with high exposive , but…
Bitter, itching, burning gas exploded up from the shells that went spinning on the hard tile floor of the office. Tom heard screams from his captors, followed closely by retching; that meant military-strength puke gas. He held his breath as long as he could, and then forced himself to breathe shallowly instead of gasping as his lungs craved. The air seemed to be burning lava, an overwhelming itching all down his throat and into his lungs, and tears streamed down his cheeks. After a moment the nausea grew too intense to resist; sour bile filled his mouth, then spilled down the front of his jacket in an uncontrollable racki
ng cough. In the middle of that he could hear similar sounds from Perkins and Tully, and a cold stab of fear shot through his own agony; vomiting was no joke when you were tied up and couldn’t move. You could choke to death on your own puke if you sucked it in.
There was another burst of fire—pistols this time, sharp yapping barks, and more screams, of pain instead of rage. Then someone fired four times, slow-paced shots.
Into the backs of heads, Tom thought queasily. Finishing them off. Well, that rules out an official rescue party.
The gas was mostly out of the air now. He blinked and shook his head, coughing and spitting to clear his mouth. When he could see again, vision blurred but workable, both the Russians and Bosco’s two goons were down, and very dead. His nose twitched at the stink. Bosco himself was standing very still except for retching and smothered coughs, hands on top of his head, and a huge thickset man was patting him down; his face was covered by a pigsnouted breathing mask with a sensor shield over the eyes. Another man was checking the bodies, even taller than the first but lanky, with hair the color of old sun-faded straw spiking up around the straps of the mask. Both wore thin-film gloves on their hands.
Schalk van der Merwe and Piet Botha, Tom thought.
And Adrienne Rolfe, also masked and gloved. She came through the office door, tucking away a pistol—he recognized the make, a Belgian 5.7mm job, expensive, lethal and in theory for police use only. Her face was neutral as she pulled off the mask, took an experimental breath, and coughed.
“Clear,” she said. “More or”—another cough—“less.”
The other two men took off their masks as well, folding them and tucking them into pockets in their dark Banana Republic-style jackets.
She tossed them canvas bags, and they began stuffing things into them—wallets, weapons, the IDs of the three tied to chairs.
The blond man looked over and spoke: “Need someone to finish off the kaffir?”
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