by Mack Maloney
But this was not just some cop. It was the same cop who had almost given them a ticket down near Connecticut Avenue about a half hour before. The guy with the ruby stud in his ear.
“I knew you guys were kind of queer,” the cop said. “Who’s delivering flowers this time of night? Dying flowers at that ….”
Ozzi was speechless.
But not Hunn.
“Shut your fucking mouth, will you!” Hunn hissed at the cop. Ozzi was stunned.
The cop was, too. So much so, his flashlight started jiggling.
“What did you say?” he demanded of Hunn.
“I said shut the fuck up — and keep your voice down,” Hunn replied harshly. “We’re part of General Rushton’s security team. We weren’t about to tell you that back there. But we’re up here covering his flank.”
The cop lowered his pistol, just a little. He looked like he believed Hunn.
But then he yelled, “Hey … everyone … are these guys with you?”
At that moment, Ozzi saw about a dozen heads pop up from the roofs of the other buildings surrounding the alley. All of these people were dressed like him and Hunn, in black camo gear. All of them were also holding huge rifles. He couldn’t believe it. There were other sniper teams up here. Three alone were stationed on top of the Oak House. In fact, there were sniper teams on every roof around them but theirs.
Ozzi smacked himself upside the head. How dumb could they be? There was no way Rushton would have let his security lapse for such a long period of time. He’d just redistributed it to another place.
“They’re not with us!” someone across the alley yelled.
“Who the hell are they?” came another voice in the night.
“We’re absolutely screwed,” Ozzi said under his breath.
But Hunn had other ideas.
Ozzi was amazed at how quick the Delta soldier moved. One moment his huge sniper rifle was pointing down at the alley below; the next it was pointing right at the cop’s head.
“We can’t get caught,” Hunn whispered to Ozzi. “Not now. Not here.”
“I’m with you there,” Ozzi replied.
“Drop the weapons and put your hands on your heads … now!” the cop screamed.
Hunn and Ozzi were frozen in place, but they made no move to lower their weapons.
The cop repeated his warning, shouting even louder now.
Ozzi noticed the cop was armed with a smallish service revolver. A popgun compared to what Hunn was carrying. One shot and the cop would no longer be a problem. Besides, Ozzi and Hunn had been in so many gunfights, so many close calls, in the past few months, they were ready for anything.
Except this ….
They could not fire on a fellow American. Especially an innocent guy like this.
“I will shoot if you don’t lower your weapons now!” the cop yelled again.
“We’re on a special operation!” Hunn tried again. But it wasn’t working this time.
There were no more warnings. The cop fired his weapon, hitting Hunn right in the chest. The Delta soldier went down instantly, his sniper rifle splitting into pieces as it hit the roof.
Ozzi freaked. He began firing his own weapon, not at the cop but just inches above his head. The cop stumbled backward, falling on his substantial behind.
At the same moment, Ozzi felt the heat of other bullets zinging by him. The snipers on the other roofs were shooting at him!
Damn …. He had to think at light speed. There would be no copter coming in to pull them out this time. They were on their own. Going back over the roof to the parking garage was no longer an option. But they had to get out of here — and quick.
Tracers …. He had an ammo magazine on him that was full of them. They were his only ace in the hole.
He went down to his knees and jammed the “hot” clip into his rifle. Then he just started firing.
It was as if a fireworks display had suddenly erupted on top of the roof. Streaks of phosphorus light were flying everywhere, hot burning greenish red, going off in all directions. It was enough of a shock to the other snipers that most of them went heads-down for a few seconds.
When they looked up again, Ozzi and Hunn were gone.
* * *
One of the sniper teams atop the Oak House roof was just able to see what happened.
After dropping down to avoid the fusillade, they saw the little guy pull the big guy to the edge of the roof — and then jump off.
But Ozzi and Hunn didn’t miraculously fly down to the alleyway. Instead, Ozzi somehow managed to drag Hunn, all 260 pounds of him, out of the fire coming from the sniper teams and over the edge of the roof. Twenty feet down was a very rickety fire escape. It was their only chance. Ozzi lowered Hunn down first, or at least tried to, as they both really toppled over together, the rusty iron of the fire escape ladder breaking their fall. Hunn nearly crushed the life out of Ozzi on landing; it was all he could do to get himself out from under the big soldier.
But no sooner had Ozzi done this when he felt himself falling again. It seemed for an instant that he was stationary and the rest of the world was moving. But then he realized what was happening. The fire escape ladder itself was going down, as it was designed to do, five stories to the alleyway below.
He landed hard, again, and then Hunn came down on top of him — again. Once more, he had to crawl out from under the monstrous soldier.
But at least they were on terra firma. They’d hit the alleyway not far from the limousine. Ozzi could still hear its air-conditioning cranking at high speed, the silhouette of the driver visible just beyond the windshield.
Ozzi saw the eyes and faces of the sniper teams and the D.C. cop looking down at him. He let loose another barrage of blinding tracers, almost giddy that he’d made such a dramatic escape.
But then he looked down at Hunn and for the first time realized his chest was covered with blood.
Chapter 19
Li was eating a doughnut when the sudden barrage of sirens began.
It wasn’t like she was in love with the double-filled jelly. Truth was, it was just about the only thing left in the house to eat.
She was up in the master bedroom, as usual. The place was a total mess by now. The old bed had partially collapsed due to the weight of the team’s remaining gear. And if anything, there were more wires — electrical, cable, modem — cluttering the floor, a real hazard in the nighttime. Still, the bedroom remained the center of Li’s universe. She had even taken to sleeping up here — on the floor curled up in a blanket — not that she was sleeping very much anymore.
She was still praying over the napkin image, trying to find anything else on it besides the mysterious 74 with a circle around it. She’d had no further breakthroughs since the night before, though, when the negative flipflop revealed the number. No amount of polarizing could erase the remainder of the coffee stain; it had also defied any other kind of image-altering, photo-painting software she’d thrown at it.
But at least she was doing something. It was the only way she could cope in this very screwy time. The doughnuts had helped, too — their origin wasn’t so much of a mystery anymore, not after Hunn and Ozzi told her they probably came from friends of Master Chief Finch of Cape Lonely Air Station. Li tended to get the munchies when she was anxious or nervous. And she was a lot of both these days.
She’d had the TV turned on all day, this while fraught again with worry while Ozzi and Hunn were still out there, somewhere, trying to assassinate the highest-profile general in the United States. She’d seen the news reports on the Denver near miss; she’d seen the footage of the horribly twisted and burned Sky Horse helicopter. Her sense of helplessness was nearly overwhelming. She’d tried calling ghost team west many times. She had three numbers for three secure phones to use for them. But it was no use. Each time, a recording came back saying the phone was not in working order.
It would be a disaster if they lost touch with ghost team west now. The last conversation they’
d had was when they passed on the news about the threat in Denver and the location where the first bus would be two days later. This was the bombshell information they’d found in Ramosa’s laptop: a detailed map of the first bus’s route, the same as contained on the Mann file, except this one had exact dates and times and mileage between the spots where the bus was dropping off its missile teams.
Ghost team west had received this crucial information and had obviously acted on it in Denver. But what about the pursuit of the first bus itself, down in Texas? How were they going to act on that now?
With no copter?
No Eyeball Machine?
No communications?
If they were even still alive ….
* * *
It went on all day, the same news reports over and over. Now it was dark, the old house was creaking again, and the fog was rolling in. Li had her gun beside her, of course, and just about every light in the house was turned on. But even these things couldn’t do her much good tonight.
Now it was the sirens that got her attention. A discordant symphony off in the distance. From the sounds of it, every police car in D.C. was wailing through the streets. The racket grew so loud, Li set her confection aside, went downstairs and out to her porch for a better look at the city below.
Indeed, it was pulsating with flashing police lights and even more sirens than just seconds before. This city, so quiet just a few days ago, was now alight and obviously in turmoil. Worst of all, Li knew — she just knew—that all the ruckus had something to do with Hunn and Ozzi. She could taste the trouble in the air.
She pulled out her cell phone and tried dialing one of the phones Hunn and Ozzi had with them. This was a huge security breach of course. But she wanted to hear one of their voices, just to know they were all right. But there was no joy here, either. A recorded voice just replied that the owner could not be located.
She put the phone away and had started back into the house when she heard the sound of tires coming up the reservoir extension road. She froze on the spot. Was this good or bad? She wanted so much for it to be Hunn and Ozzi, coming home, in one piece. But at the same time she knew they would never so conspicuously drive the van up to the house.
It had to be someone else.
She edged her way to the other end of the porch and looked down the road. She saw the outline of a black sports car making its way into her driveway.
She recognized the car right away.
“I don’t believe this,” she whispered.
It was Nash.
He pulled up in a minor cloud of dust and stepped out of the Viper. He was in full combat uniform and as handsome as a recruiting poster.
“What are you doing here?” were the first words out of her mouth. Not much of a greeting.
He looked self-conscious. And tired. And worried. And just a bit bewildered. He’d never been up to her house before. It took him a moment to absorb the strange, Addams Family atmosphere.
Finally, he walked up onto the porch and tried to casually lean against the railing. Li didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t invite him into the house. God knows what he’d see inside.
“Sorry I didn’t call first,” he said finally. “I just came to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye? Where are you going?”
Nash shrugged. “It’s top-secret, of course,” he began, eyes downcast. “But you know these people out west, these rogue characters? Rushton has put together a team to go get them, if any of them are still alive, that is. For some reason, they put me on this team.”
“To bring them back as heroes, I hope,” Li said, the words tumbling out of her mouth before she could stop them.
Nash laughed, in an ironic way. “Hardly,” he said. “Just the opposite.”
Li was stunned. “You mean … kill them?”
Nash shrugged again. “Those are the orders.”
Li just stared back at him, not wanting to believe what he’d just said. This was devastating news to her, but she couldn’t let Nash know that. She couldn’t let him see it affect her. She had to stay cool — and learn more.
“Very rash procedures,” she said. “And where are you going to do this exactly? Does Rushton know where these guys are?”
Nash just shook his head. “Well, it’s a bit strange,” he replied. “Rushton admitted he doesn’t know where they are at this moment — but he seems to know where they are going to be in a few days. He claims he knows the time and location. He thinks we can just swoop down on them and let them have it. No rules of engagement. No chance to surrender.”
Li could barely speak; the bad dream had taken another twist. But again, she tried not to let it show. “When?” she asked. “When is all this happening?”
“Sometime in the next seventy-two hours,” Nash replied. “We’ve got to get some equipment together. Some security codes and things. Plus get some kind of transport out there — wherever we are going.”
She was on the verge of tears but fought to keep her head. She had to ask him, “Why are you here, then? Telling me this?”
Nash inched a little closer to her. “Because I wanted to give you some free advice,” he replied. “There are some very strange things going on, Li, and not just with these rogue characters or the terrorist missile teams. There’s something even deeper going on. I don’t know what it is. I just know there’s a very weird buzz going around, and I thought I’d better give you a heads-up.”
This was another surprising bit of news. The ghosts had found some files on Rushton at the bottom of Palm Tree’s PDA that indicated sdmething even more nefarious might be happening in Washington. But what could it be, beyond what everyone already knew?
At that moment, an aircraft flitted overhead. It wasn’t a jet fighter. It was an MD-500 helicopter, a small buglike aircraft used almost exclusively by U.S. military special ops. It was heading for the reservoir and D.C. beyond.
“What is that doing up there?” Li asked Nash sternly. “I know only black ops use those kinds of copters. And these jet fighters going overhead all the time? What’s going on?”
Nash just shook his head. It was obvious he was a troubled soul at the moment. “I guess that’s what I’m talking about,” he replied.
They just stood there now, with really nothing else to say. Sad words, something that might have been. Suddenly Li wished she were back at the Wizards basketball game — before everything got so crazy.
Nash looked into her eyes and she into his. He went to kiss her, but she turned it into a hug. Nash got the hint right away. Mission abort.
He stepped down off the porch. The sirens continued to wail in the background.
“I’ll send you a postcard,” he said, a grim joke. “That is, if they actually deliver the mail way up here ….”
He started back to his car, embarrassed now and anxious to leave. He brushed up against her Toyota.
“Hey, at least this thing is looking better,” he said. “Did you get a wax job or something?”
She tried to laugh. “Or something, yes,” she said.
He opened his car door but then turned back to her one more time.
“You’re probably the smartest woman I know, Li,” he said, surprising her again. “And definitely the most beautiful. And maybe I’m telling you things you already know. But just be careful — OK? It’s important to me.”
With that, he jumped into his car and drove away.
* * *
Li went inside and collapsed to the floor of her hallway. Nash’s words were still echoing in her ears.
Rushton …
The treasonous general didn’t know where ghost team west was at the moment but did know where they were going to be in the next three days. What the hell did that mean? How would he know where they would eventually wind up — assuming they were still alive — if they didn’t know themselves?
She sank farther down to the floor. At this point, being hit by an iceberg would have cheered her up. She thought back to all her training, her cl
asses in counterterrorism, psych-ops, deep-issue analysis. All the deductive reasoning that the professors had tried to pour into her head.
First conclusion: this probably had nothing to do with the first bus and its scheduled rendezvous down in Texas. That was happening in less than 36 hours, not 72. Nash and his team would be on their way already, if that were the case.
So if it wasn’t the first bus, then what was it?
Connect the dots, her instructors used to tell her. There’s always a key piece in every puzzle ….
Then, right out of the blue, it hit her: Rushton knew what the drawing on the napkin meant. It depicted some event that was going to happen. He knew the location and knew what was going to transpire there. But here was the kicker: He must have thought that ghost team west knew, too. And so he was going to send his triggermen to wait for them there, wherever there was.
Her friends were walking into a trap. A setup. And at the moment, there wasn’t a thing she could do about it.
Suddenly she heard the most horrendous sound. A loud thump, followed by a mighty crash. It was so sharp and so unnerving, her pistol was out of its holster in a flash. What now?
The noise hadn’t come from anywhere outside. She was sure of that.
It had come from upstairs.
What Li did next said a lot about her and how she had changed in just the past few days.
It was in this same hallway, on a night not unlike this, just last week, that this whole nutty thing started — this crazy patriotic haunted house story, with seditious overtones. Back then, that night she found her lightbulbs gone, she had walked through the house, gun up, trembling, confused, doing it but scared stiff. And still, she didn’t dare go upstairs, weapon or not.
But she’d had enough of this. All of it. The spooky crap. This traitorous general. Her country turned upside down. She heard the noise again, but this time, instead of backing off, she went up the stairs in a flash.
Her gun was pointing this way and that, hyper, determined. But she caught herself after reaching the second-floor hallway. She stopped. She listened. The noise was coming not from the master bedroom, as she had first suspected, but from the bedroom down the hall, the place where she’d had that strange conversation with Ryder that night. (She had thought of that more than a few times in the last week.) She began creeping down the hallway, weapon out front, ears open, ready for anything.
