by Greg Rucka
Michael Ledor knew they were coming. Somehow, some way, he saw something or heard something or someone just wasn’t as careful as he needed to be, but Michael Ledor knew they were coming.
He knows all this, understands all this, as he looks past Nessuno into the bathroom and sees the man lurching up and out of the tub, the long gun in his hands. It’s an instant impression, flash-burned, the assault rifle and the man. Blue jeans and a checked blue-and-white overshirt, unbuttoned to reveal a white T, untucked and splotched with water from the tub. Black hair, slight curl, almost to his shoulders, stubble over his mouth and on his chin, as though he’s trying to grow in a beard. The glimpse of neon orange, earplugs to protect from the blast.
Then the third thing, the thing he couldn’t teach Nessuno, because there wasn’t the time. He could teach her to cover her sector, he could teach her to buttonhook the entry, he could get her to trust him, he could make himself trust her. But to teach her not to react to the unexpected explosion, to the grenade and the scream, that takes more than he could give. That takes years, working day in and day out, live fire in the shoot house and on the field and in battle, and her reaction is human, instinctive.
She turns away and gives the man that Bell believes must be Michael Ledor her back.
Bell has no shot.
He lunges, hand out, grabs hold of Nessuno by the front of her harness, yanks her down with him. The gunshots wrack the small apartment, rip the air overhead, and Ledor is firing like a pro, controlled bursts, over and over again, and Bell is on the ground, tumbling on top of Nessuno to cover her, and he sees SWAT falling. They’re wearing all their protection, but Ledor is firing 7.62, Bell knows, and there’s only so many of those that threat level III body armor can take before the protection gives up and allows the rounds to do their business. Everything goes clumsy, he’s atop her, tries to roll free, but Nessuno’s arms are around him, holding him against her, trapping him there, as if in some mockery of that night they shared, and he senses the movement above and behind him more than sees it, more than hears it, and he goes limp. Something hits the floor, a follow-through vibration of footsteps beating retreat, and she slackens her grip. Bell rolls off her, tries to get his weapon up, but Ledor is out of the room, an empty magazine on the ground not a foot from where they lie, and he understands. Ledor should’ve stopped, he should’ve delivered rounds to them, but he must’ve believed they were down, too, or else he’d certainly have paused to finish the job.
Then Bell is up, keying his mike, officers down, he’s rabbiting, he’s rabbiting, he’s armed. Nessuno shouts something after him, but he doesn’t understand it, and he doesn’t stop, rushing out of the apartment and into the railing in time to see the man and his rifle break out of the doors to the street in a flood of too-bright daylight.
Bell vaults the railing, lands badly, tumbles down the stairs, back to his feet. His ankle tells him that was a stupid fucking thing to do, but he’s ignoring everything now, running with gun in hand and crashing through the doors and into the sunshine. He’s thinking of Tom O’Day turning to deadweight on his feet and Stephanie and Callie and Amy and Athena and they’re bleeding, and Ruiz wants this one alive, and, goddamn it, so does Jad Bell. He can hear Nessuno in his ear, calling it out, they’ve got a runner, rabbit, rabbit, one in pursuit. Officers are down, repeat, officers are down.
The apartment complex is off South Meadow Drive, two identical structures built facing one another, separated by their carports. One police car is here, pulling to a stop, and Bell strips the phones from his ears, lets them fall, immediately hears the chatter of that assault rifle once more, another terse, controlled barrage. Someone, somewhere, screams, but it sounds like terror and not pain. Bell sprints in that direction, cutting between parked cars, between pockets of shadow and washes of sunlight, comes around the south side of the building to see the man who is—and please God let him be—Ledor perhaps sixty feet ahead, crossing a new stretch of parking lot.
Bell skids into the side of a parked car, braces himself on the hood, dimly aware that there’s someone behind the wheel. He tries to control his breath, sights, and fires twice. It’s a hell of a distance for a pistol shot, would be the first break they’ve caught if he manages to land a round, and he’s both a little surprised and, more, grimly satisfied when the man stumbles, tumbles, skids along the pavement. He loses the rifle. The driver hits her horn, screaming at him behind the windshield, but Bell doesn’t care, he’s already running again.
And the son of a bitch is up again, too, now forcing himself forward. He’s got a hand at his left side, and there are trees at the end of the property line, and that’s where he’s heading. If he’s slowed down at all, Bell isn’t seeing it, and his own lungs are beginning to burn and the sweat is beginning to race down his back as he sprints after him. There’s more chatter through his earpiece, police response, calls for backup, for ambo, for evac, for information. Four officers are down, the suspect is armed and dangerous.
Through the trees now, and green grass that ends in yet another parking lot, another set of paired apartment buildings, and Bell can see that the man is slowing, because Bell himself sure as hell isn’t getting faster. His ankle renews its protest as he comes off the grass, chasing between the buildings, onto the asphalt at the end of a cul-de-sac. He sees the safety orange of the earplugs on the ground, wonders idly if they’ve fallen or if he somehow missed Ledor, if it is Ledor—it must be Ledor, please let it be Ledor—removing them. Forty feet between them now, and Bell is definitely gaining. He can hear someone running behind him, one of the cops, perhaps.
The cul-de-sac dumps onto South Stubbs Avenue, and the man continues across, and Bell has closed to thirty feet but loses at least ten when he has to dodge traffic, a little black Fiat that swerves the wrong way. He spins about, sees it’s Nessuno behind him, sprinting for all she’s worth, arms pumping and knees high. He finishes his turn, and Ledor hasn’t changed direction, straight for the retaining wall against a berm dead ahead, a hard earth slope, and atop it the interstate, where midday traffic is roaring at them from above. Ledor goes over the wall, and seconds later so does Bell, and his ankle makes it a point to tell him what it really thinks of that the moment he comes down. The man is scrabbling his way up toward the road, and Bell shouts at him to stop, to stop or he’ll shoot. More blood has fallen, turned black on the dry earth. He sees Nessuno drop down beside him, her weapon up and ready and in both hands.
“Stop!” Bell shouts. “Michael Ledor, stop!”
He’s at the top of the slope, and Bell and Nessuno are at the bottom, but somehow, Ledor hears him over the traffic. He rises unsteadily, turns to look down at them, and Bell sees he’s got a second weapon, a pistol, in his blood-soaked left hand, held limply at the ground. Bell has a good shot, can take it, but he wants him alive, and he holds his fire, and Nessuno does, too.
“Michael,” Bell shouts at him. “Drop it, come down here, we’ll take care of you. You’re out of run, you understand? You’ve got none left.”
Michael Ledor looks at the guns pointing at him, then the one in his hand. There’s a wide stain of blood along his left side, and Bell thinks the man must be close to decompensating, that the shock from the blood loss will take him down in just a few more seconds. In his ear, Bell hears officers saying they’re en route, they see the suspect, they’re close.
“Just drop it,” Bell says again.
Michael Ledor drops the gun.
Then he turns and throws himself into sixty-five-mile-an-hour traffic.
Chapter Twenty-Two
LARKIN IS WAITING at Four-Four-Two when Brock arrives, but this time he’s not at the bar. Instead he’s in a private room on the second floor, what was maybe a bedroom once but has been since converted into a study slash card room. The floors are hardwood hidden beneath Oriental rugs, and the furniture is all wood and leather, and the books on the shelves are bought by the yard and bound in leather, too, or at least imitation leather. There’s a Waterf
ord crystal clock on one of the shelves, and it’s creeping up on one in the morning.
“What?” Larkin demands. His mood shows his age, brings out the lines around his mouth and eyes. He’s wearing a tuxedo, the bow tie loosed and his collar unfastened. Brock wonders whether the meal was political or business or whether Larkin even differentiates between the two.
Brock moves to the sideboard. He’s never liked being anyone’s whipping boy, didn’t like it when his father did it, didn’t like it when he was at West Point, didn’t like it as he worked his way through the ranks, and one of the perks of being a fucking general, goddamn it, is that he doesn’t have to take it now. He picks up a glass and ignores the ice in the bucket, pours what he thinks is bourbon from an unlabeled decanter, drinks most of it before refilling. It is bourbon, and, unsurprisingly, a good one.
“Emmet,” Larkin says. He says it, Brock thinks, as though he’s issuing a warning to one of his snot-nosed grandchildren.
“Where are the others?” Brock asks.
“I saw no reason to bring them in.”
“Despite what I said.”
“Precisely because of what you didn’t say. You want all of us in one place, you need one hell of a good reason for it, and it’s not something that can be done quickly, anyway. Anderson is in Vienna right now, and Lenhart is fishing in Alaska.”
“You’re going to have to reach them,” Brock says. “You’re going to have to have them come here.”
Larkin takes a moment to study him, then sits in one of the overstuffed armchairs. The room, Brock realizes, is decorated in an American version of some British manor-house fantasy. There’s even a bellpull by the curtained windows.
“This isn’t like you, Emmet,” Larkin says. “You’re acting alarmingly close to petulant. You know how this works, the way this has worked from the start. We don’t work for you.”
“And I don’t work for you,” Brock says.
“We’re all in this together, always have been.”
“It’s good to hear you say that, Bobby,” Brock says. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Because that means you’re fine with us all going down together, too.”
Larkin doesn’t like Brock using his first name, likes him using the familiar diminutive even less. He likes his final implication least of all.
“Perhaps you better tell me what’s happened.”
“Our partner paid me a visit today.”
Larkin’s reaction isn’t anywhere near as gratifying as Brock had hoped. “He met with you in person? I assume with discretion?”
“Oh, he was discreet,” says Brock. “What he’s done, not so much. All you need to understand is that I’m two days, at the outside, from having army counterintelligence so far up my ass they’ll be able to count my fillings. From me, it’s not a long walk to you, and Anderson, and Lenhart, and Frohm, and our dear, departed Jamieson.”
Brock finishes his drink, pours another. Larkin sits back in his chair, starts to open his mouth to speak.
“I’m not done,” Brock says. “There are two positives in this. The first is that, according to our friend, everything is moving forward. The contingency is in motion, and he’s promising we’ll see it this weekend. So that’ll coincide nicely with my arrest.”
The humor is either too bitter for Larkin’s taste or missed entirely. “And the second?”
“The second is what’s going to save us. Our exposure will expose him, and he sure as hell doesn’t want that to happen.”
“If he didn’t want it, he should’ve been more careful in the first place.”
“It doesn’t matter what he should’ve been, Bobby. What matters is how it is right fucking now, and right fucking now I’m in the crosshairs, which means we’re all in the crosshairs. He used intelligence I gave him to kill four people. Like I said, we’ve got two days at best before that leak gets traced back to me.”
“You’re certain of this?”
“Process of elimination.” Brock gets halfway through his third drink, finally, gratefully, beginning to feel the edges of the alcohol. He exhales, looks at the glass in his hand. “They get me, they’re getting everything.”
That, finally, seems to get a reaction from Larkin. The man straightens, his jaw tightens, and the look he gives Brock is savage.
“I thought you were a patriot, Emmet.”
“You don’t get to question that,” Brock says. “You never get to question that, you arrogant fuck.”
“You’d betray us, that’s what you’re saying.”
“Once they put me under the glass, they’re going to trace it all, don’t you get it? It’s all going to come out. All of it, including him, including you, and I don’t have to open my mouth. There’s a fucking trail here, and once they find me, they’re going to find it. He understands that, at least. You need to understand that, too.”
“Two days?”
“Outside.”
Larkin thinks, his gaze going to the books on their shelves. The Waterford timepiece is silent, and Brock thinks that’s wrong, that what this room needs is a ticking grandfather clock with its pendulum swaying. There’s no other noise, not traffic at this hour, not music piped from some unseen source, not even the sound of movement from the hall.
“In two days, I would think they’ll be too busy to care,” Larkin says. “If he’s done what he’s promised.”
“And that’s why we need to meet, all of us. Because that’s what he’s holding. He gets a meeting with all of us, he’ll give the go-ahead.”
Larkin shakes his head. “No; impossible.”
“Then we need to start looking at real estate in countries that don’t extradite.”
“He’s already made contact with you, he can meet with you.”
Brock feels the glass in his hand, the etched crystal heft of the tumbler, and he wants to throw it in Larkin’s face. He wants to overhand it, pure fastball, see the glass hit and shatter and punish Larkin and his arrogance.
“You’re questioning my patriotism,” Brock says. “You’re all fucking talk. Talk about saving our country, talk about needing to put the fight where it belongs, talk about God and socialism and government repression and correcting our national course and right down to the fucking Resurrection. Nothing but talk, but now your ass is on the line, and you need to step up.”
“Emmet.” It’s a warning. It doesn’t take.
“No, shut up, listen. You and the rest, you were happy to pay the money so this fucking Architect would attack us in our home. So he would kill people in California, so he will kill more people God knows where. You’re happy to have me run between you and him, all to make the war you believe in, but you won’t go further. You won’t go all the way.”
“You believe in it, too,” Larkin says. “Your words, if I recall, were ‘We’re not making war, we’re just trying to win it.’ Don’t divorce yourself from what we’ve done. You’ve as much to gain as any of us.”
“Don’t bullshit this back on me. I know your interest as much as I knew Jamieson’s. At least Jamieson was a true believer, at least he thought he was doing Christ’s work. How’s business, Bobby? You short-selling those stocks tomorrow? You got some other way to make another cool billion off of what might—and I stress might—happen this weekend? Don’t bullshit me.”
“It doesn’t matter why we believe it needs doing, just that we agree it needs to be done.”
“Sure, so long as you never have to get shit on your white shirts.” Brock finishes the last of his drink, sets the glass back upon the tray. “You’re getting to clean the shitter now, Bobby, and it’s backed up and full to the brim. One way or another.”
Larkin goes back to looking at the shelves, but Brock can tell he’s not seeing the books or their titles. The hour and the moment have further conspired to reveal Larkin’s age, the slight sag of the flesh at his cheeks, the lines defining his mouth. He frowns, purses his lips for a moment.
“I’d like a drink, if you would,” Larkin says finally.<
br />
There’s enough in his tone to let Brock know he’s won. He knows Larkin now sees what Brock has been staring at from all angles since he left Jordan’s apartment, left without even seeing her to say good-bye. Left with the Architect saying that Jordan would see him the next morning to give him the details of the meeting.
“What’s your poison?” Brock asks.
“Genuinely?” Larkin shakes his head. “I don’t care.”
Brock leaves Larkin and drives home, and although he’s had enough to drink to know he shouldn’t be behind the wheel, he hasn’t had enough to make him wrap himself around a tree. He wonders if that wouldn’t be a better resolution, to take himself out of the equation entirely. He’s never had a suicidal thought before in his life, not even at his worst, but alone in his car he’s dwelling on death, not least of all his own. He’s lived far more of his life under pressure than not at this point, but this is different. This is inevitability. He’s half expecting to find the FBI or CI or both waiting for him in the den when he gets to his house.
So wrapping the car around a tree at seventy miles an hour, that’s not out of the question.
He remembers wondering what the Architect was like, the imagined man, Eurofag and effete. He hadn’t been prepared for the real thing, the confidence and the arrogance. He’d been plain, average—even the clothes were average, midrange and off the rack, not the tailor-made bespoke suits that Larkin and his ilk favor, that Brock will never be able to afford. It was an alpha-male reaction, Brock measuring himself against this man, the one who had Jordan. They’d fucked, he could tell. He was probably fucking her right now, and that thought keeps him on the road, keeps him driving toward home, keeps his mind focused.
The end may be inevitable, but it will not, Brock resolves, be his end alone.
Larkin calls the next morning, while Brock is having his breakfast. His wife had been asleep when he’d returned, had already left by the time he rose. That was their life, had been for years. Brock made coffee for himself while wondering what she was doing, where she was going, whom she was seeing. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d exchanged more than a dozen words all together. He thinks the only reason they’ve not divorced is because they’re too old and it would be too much bother. He used to wonder if she had a lover or a string of them. He had ways of finding out, but after he’d met Jordan, he couldn’t stomach that hypocrisy. She did her duty by him, stood at his side at the White House, at other events. Beyond that, she’d made her own life, and he wasn’t in it. It was one of the things that had made Jordan so appealing when they’d met. The choice between her and the work required to repair his marriage had been an easy one.
