“Well, holy shit.” Karl turned to Tom. “I was just checking to see if someone had been snooping on any of these guys behind my back, but this is right around Nast’s time of death.”
Tom nodded, like he was impressed.
The dot proceeded to move from the street across the lawn. It paused outside the house for a moment.
Karl stared it in disbelief. “He’s going into the house…” He clicked on the dot. An image loaded.
When it appeared on the screen, he didn’t seem to understand what he was seeing. But there was Tom. His photo and profile, right beside the map that showed Nast’s home.
Karl turned and started to lunge for something in his desk. He didn’t see Tom’s face at first. Just the gun.
Neither spoke. Karl made no attempt to get out of his chair. He just kept staring at Tom, like his mind was stuck on a continuous loop of not believing what he was seeing, then accepting it, then not believing again.
Tom had never pointed a gun at another person before. The grip felt too warm on his palm, and he could feel it slipping a little—wanting to slip—and every time Karl glanced at it, Tom wanted to look down and make sure the Sig did not in fact have a safety he’d forgotten to switch off.
Once, he’d seen an interview with a New York police officer who said you can tell a lot about a person by how high he holds his hands when a gun is on him. The kind of person who doesn’t want trouble reaches for the sky. Karl’s hands hadn’t gone up an inch.
“I never liked that you picked me up at the airport,” Karl said.
Tom managed not to take his eyes off him as he reached down and ripped an Ethernet cable from the wall.
“Who else are you going to kill?” Karl said.
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
I just led the person who killed Nast there before I could get my hands on him myself.
Karl just smiled.
Tom went across the room and ripped another Ethernet cable out of the wall.
“Is someone making you do this?” Karl said. “Look, you know me. I might understand.”
“I’m sorry I got you involved.” Tom dropped a phone jack on the floor—crushed it. “I need your phone.”
“I’m giving you a chance here.”
“I need your phone.”
“I think you know what happens after that.”
Tom took a big breath, so there wouldn’t be any waver in his voice. “Karl, your phone. Please.”
“But I could be in here for hours.”
“You’re stalling.”
“Am not.”
Tom sighed and raised the gun, but he had to lower it again because his hand was shaking. He looked back at Karl, who was staring at his hand. He’d noticed.
“I’m trying to talk to you,” Karl said as he made a little show of the inconvenience of digging his phone out of his pocket. He held it out for Tom to come get it.
“Slide it over.”
Karl put it down and kicked it. “Why are you doing this?”
“I can’t tell you that. You’d only use it to find me.”
Karl frowned. “They’re going to do a lot more than find you.”
Tom pocketed the phone, punched in the exit code on the door, and backed through.
Karl leaned forward. His expression was sad almost. “Wait. Just come back in here and talk to me. Please.”
The change in Karl’s tone was so startling Tom didn’t move.
“You know what I do here, right?”
Tom didn’t say anything.
“If you close that door, you’ll be completing an act of espionage against the United States of America, and then it’s just a matter of time and a little hard work before I watch the lights go out in your eyes.”
Tom could only stand there with his feet planted on the carpet. It was fascinating how calmly—almost reassuringly—Karl said this.
“Goodbye, Karl.” Tom started to turn around.
“Do you know how the first people hunted animals that were bigger than they were? They chased them for miles and miles and then they ran them down. Imagine for a moment how that’d feel. You’re a mastodon the size of a school bus, and no matter how fast you run, there’s always someone on the horizon who just won’t stop coming. I bet by the time those people stabbed that mastodon to death, in a sense it was already dead. It just didn’t want to run anymore.”
Tom said nothing.
“Don’t make me do that. Don’t make me want to do that. You’re not the kind of person I want to hunt, for Christ’s sake. So talk to me. Make me understand. And don’t be a mastodon, Tom. Choose life.”
The only thing Tom was sure of at that moment was that he could not stay in this room for another second. He closed the door behind him and gripped the doorknob. It took all his strength, and the knob bit into his palm, but then the metal began to pop and lengthen. He bent the doorknob down and sealed Karl inside.
Karl was at the door immediately.
First he tried the knob. Then he tried locking and unlocking the bolt. The door wouldn’t open.
He went to his desk and felt around until his hand touched the Sig he’d taped to the top of the drawer. He turned and fired into the lock over and over, then hurled himself against the door. He spilled out on the floor of the hallway along with bits of door. Then he bear-crawled through the pieces to get to his feet and ran to the nearest office. There was a guy blowing on his coffee. Once he noticed the gun, he raised his hands.
“Your radio!” Karl said.
The man cocked his head and gave this some thought.
“Now, motherfucker!”
The man reached into his desk and threw it to him. Karl ran out of the office to look for a floor plan as he tuned to the emergency band.
“Station Chief, this is Karl Lyons.”
There was a pause.
“Authenticate,” the chief said.
“6149-Yankee.”
The radio crackled softly as they ran his response to the coded challenge.
“Proceed, sir.”
“We got a blow drill.” Karl walked to a window and checked to make sure Tom wasn’t on the fire escape. “I’m calling it.”
Another crackle. “Engagement is level 5. Is that a go?”
“That’s a go.”
In about ten seconds, the downstairs would turn into a kennel. Marines—the ones who pined away for this sort of thing—would be going in all directions, arming up, shouting instructions. Level 5 was the most “assaultive” end of the Continuum of Force in the close combat manual, and they would be pretty excited about that.
“Do we have a location for the hostile, sir?” the chief said.
“No.”
“What was his one?”
“The war room on the second floor.”
“How long ago?”
“Three minutes ago.”
“What’s his two?”
Karl was about to say anywhere outside the walls of the embassy, outside of US jurisdiction. Then he remembered the files. Tom had worked hard to lie his way onto the investigation—so there was something here he needed.
“Martin Litvak’s office,” Karl said. “And his three will be anywhere outside the building.”
“Name, description?”
Karl turned the corner and ripped an emergency exit floor plan off the wall. “Tom Blake.”
They ran the name.
Now the station chief hesitated. “Sir, you are aware—”
“Yes, I know who he is. And full engagement protocol is authorized.”
“Sir, the Rules of Engagement provide—”
“You have your orders, Station Chief. If you can’t catch him, kill him.”
Tom did his best to walk normally down the hallway. He passed an acquaintance and nodded hello.
Once he got to Martin Litvak’s waiting area, he went up to Marty’s assistant.
“I’m Tom Blake. You have files for Agent Lyons and me.”
The assistant didn’t move.
“The need-to-know only includes Agent Lyons,” he said.
Tom looked around the room. “Are they even here yet?”
“Obviously I can’t—”
“Look, just let me know when they get here.”
“This—”
“This is a waste of time,” Tom said, noticing the man flinch each time he cut him off. “I’m assisting Agent Lyons. Are you sure my name isn’t on there?”
“I can assure you that once Agent Lyons—”
“Okay, fine. Just call him when they actually arrive.”
The man blinked something back. “Look, that isn’t the issue, as I explained.”
“What have you explained?”
Tom was watching his eyes. The temptation had to be powerful. Then the assistant’s eyes ticked over to the corner of the room, where there was a thin metal briefcase.
“If you just listened,” the assistant said, “you would realize I cannot release them to—”
Tom was already moving around the desk. The assistant didn’t even have time to raise his hands in defense. Tom grabbed him, wrapped one arm around his neck in a sleeper hold, and squeezed. If the man’s carotid arteries were a garden hose, Tom had just stomped on them.
The assistant went limp, but he’d be back up in thirty seconds. Tom propped him against the wall, so the blood wouldn’t pool in his head. He stashed his gun in the briefcase, because in a minute or two the Marines would be involved and he might be tempted to use it. He snapped the lid shut and hit the hallway.
You don’t betray your country without good reason, and he was holding his. He hefted the case: weird that something so significant could weigh so little. He turned down the hallway to the emergency exit on the northwest corner of the building. The exit was unguarded, seldom referenced—a security afterthought.
He could see the double doors seventy yards ahead. The hallway was so white and bare it offered no sense of his progress. He didn’t seem to be getting any closer to the doors until suddenly he was right up against them.
He pushed on one of the double doors. The handle went in, but the door didn’t budge. He tried the other door. It was locked too. He put down the briefcase and pushed with both hands, putting all his weight into it. Still no give. Suddenly he understood. It was too late—he was screwed—but he understood. They were locking down the building.
He turned around and pressed his back against the doors. He could hear his heartbeat thudding in his ears. He surveyed the hallways, each of which would lead to a different fate. He hadn’t planned to actually be in a US government building when the US government discovered what he’d been up to. He had to think.
Boyd cycle.
John Boyd was the military strategist who figured out why during the Korean War the US’s F-86 achieved an unheard-of 10:1 kill ratio against the faster, more nimble MiG-15 used by the North Koreans. (Answer: unlike the MiG, the F-86 had greater visibility due to its large canopy as well as the ability to multitask.) His broader conclusion, though, was that whichever combatant could repeat the cycle of observing and reacting the fastest would gain a step, then another, and eventually overcome.
So if he wanted to live, he had to react more quickly to each phase of the embassy’s response than the embassy could to each phase of his escape.
Well, John, that’s beautiful and all, but it’s kind of a tall order.
Tom forced himself to imagine the first response. No alarm would sound. The CIA did little with that much ceremony, and despite what the Marines thought, the CIA ran the building. The passport office would shut first. They’d expect him to mix in with the crowd because the security cameras would find him anywhere else. He glanced up at the camera watching him now and saw his reflection in its dead eye.
Plan B: an exit on the north side of the building. It had a relatively light security presence.
He neared the hall to the exit. A man in a wrinkled suit passed him going the other way. They nodded to each other professionally. Tom stepped around the corner—
And wished he could take it back.
For a second, his calm nearly dissolved into the animal urge to bolt. The long hallway led to a gated exit, which was guarded, as he’d known it would be. But the security presence had been doubled. An icy feeling crept up the back of his skull and threatened to become articulate. Through a window on the other side of the gate, he saw a woman with a baby stroller duck her head in the rain and run for cover.
Two guards perked up as he came into view. Their gaze went from his eyes to the case, then back to his eyes.
Run.
The urge came to him so softly he wasn’t sure he’d felt it. He started to shake a little. He pretended to wipe something off his cuff to channel the shaking into something that didn’t flash: Alert. I am behaving strangely. Stop me to find out why.
He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Then he observed the situation.
—Three guards at the station, twenty feet ahead.
—A fourth guard at the end of the hallway, fifty feet away.
—A fifth guard, a floater, probably on patrol somewhere nearby.
There were only three escape routes: two connecting hallways and a doorway with a stairwell sign above it. The hallway he was in now was not only long but narrow. The Marines could just shoot in his general direction and let the ricochet do the rest.
Tom did his best imitation of a calm man. When he was close, two guards exchanged glances. One sort of smiled. The other sort of frowned. A third glanced at Tom and stopped tapping his pen. Every little thing they did dripped with meaning.
Run.
The word hung on him. It was still just a whisper—he could ignore it.
He didn’t slow down. The exit was still too far away, and none of the guards had taken a contrary move. He focused on the paint strokes on the wall, trying to appreciate the uniqueness of each one while he watched the guards out of the corner of his eye.
Movement at the end of the hallway.
Tom looked up and saw the floater. He was looking in Tom’s general direction. It was too far to tell what he was looking at, but he wasn’t moving.
He knows.
Tom felt sweat in his armpits. His face was reddening—he could feel heat rolling off it. He forced himself to nod hello at the guards as he passed—just as he usually would. One nodded back. The other guard was still eyeballing him. Tom glanced over at their security monitors: Marines were running down a hallway. The guard watching the screen frowned and turned toward him—
A door burst open behind him.
Tom whirled around and saw Karl. The guards turned too. When Tom turned back, the Marine by the door was turning a key in the wall near the exit. The gate began to close.
Karl was shouting and pointing. But the hallway was too long for anyone to understand him. One of the guards stood up, looked at Karl, and pointed at himself: Are-you-talking-to-me?
A voice said, Run. Running is your only chance.
Tom ignored it. Running was death. The gate was within spitting distance, and it still had ten feet before it closed. Tom nodded at the guard by the gate. The guard nodded back. Tom lifted the briefcase and tapped it as if to say: Special delivery. The guard frowned. Tom gripped the case, ready to swing it.
“Freeze.”
A Marine, twenty feet to his right. Tom could practically feel the sights of the rifle on the side of his neck. He didn’t look over. Didn’t need to.
He braced himself and dove toward the stairwell. The M-16 fired a maiming round, not a “kill” round. The nerves on his back were pressed against his skin, waiting for the maiming—eager for it.
But the next thing he knew his hand was closing around the metal doorknob. He swung the door open, then slammed it behind him.
The hallway shook with a cracking sound.
As he crashed down the stairs, he checked himself for blood. After two flights, he still hadn’t found any.
He pictured the building in detail. The alleys
would be watched. He’d never make it to the roof. And the stairwell only went down.
The boiler room.
He’d done his research, even ventured down there several times. The basement was viable. He flew down the stairs and burst through the hall door.
Three Marines spun on him.
There was no escape. He had to fight. The moment all other possibilities caved to this absolute, his body got tight. When he moved, it was no longer the product of his intentions. It was the discharge of something so powerful it was inevitable. He couldn’t control it, only direct it, delay it. He stopped thinking—his thoughts were already movements.
He was so close that the first Marine didn’t even try to fire on him. He just reached out to grab him by his shirt. Tom ducked, grabbed the Marine by the waist, and spun him like a Tilt-a-Whirl headfirst into the tile floor. The man hit, and his limbs spread like a broken toy.
The second Marine shouldered his M-16 and swung it on him. Tom closed in, banking on the unwieldiness of the M-16, which was longer than the other Marine’s M4 and required greater standoff to fire. Tom feinted right. The M-16 swiveled and obliterated the wall he would have been in front of. He lunged left, right under the M-16 barrel, and felt it swing overhead, scraping his scalp. He grabbed the barrel, which burned his hand, and ripped the rifle out of the Marine’s grasp. With his free hand, he cracked the man across the side of his face.
Then he swung the stock of the rifle into the Marine’s jaw so hard the skin did a quick, ugly ripple across the outline of his skull. Tom drove his fist into the Marine’s chest, and the man shot back and slapped against the wall.
The only reason the third Marine hadn’t fired was Tom’s proximity to the other two—that and he seemed confused by Tom on a profound philosophical level. As Tom bum-rushed him, the Marine’s eye dropped to his sights.
He fired.
Tom ducked.
He fell to his knees and slid right into the Marine’s legs. The barrel was already descending as he hammer-fisted the Marine in the stomach. The man doubled over, and Tom popped up to his feet. He let the M-16 he was still holding slip farther down in his hand, lengthening his club, and brought it down on the man’s head. The man’s legs stiffened, and his torso balanced on two inanimate pegs. Tom grabbed him and eased his body to the floor.
The Prometheus Man Page 7
