by Barry Eisler
A midthirties white guy got out. Fit looking, short hair, clean shaven. She saw no telltale bulges, but he was wearing a dark windbreaker that would offer a variety of concealment possibilities. He might have been a cop. Hard to know without more. His hands were empty, that was good. But he’d gotten out awfully quickly. Not much time to have called in the stop—to describe the vehicle, suspect, and location—and certainly not enough time for dispatch to have run the plates.
He started walking toward the driver-side window. That was also odd. The more tactical approach would have been the passenger side. There were cops who favored a driver-side approach—mistakenly, in Livia’s view—but they almost always parked their own vehicle farther to the left to create a zone buffered from traffic in which they could safely reach the stopped car.
And there was something else off. He was too confident. Cops were relentlessly drilled that there’s no such thing as a routine traffic stop. They were shown dashcam videos of “routine” stops with the approaching cop shot at without any warning. Cars thrown into reverse and officers rammed. Officers grabbed while reaching through the window for something and dragged down the road. Any halfway-tactical officer approaching a stopped car knew to do so cautiously, even if his tactics were weak. But this guy—this guy in plain clothes and an unmarked car, who had stopped her for going maybe five miles an hour over, who had switched on his flashers just the right distance from the secluded spot where someone a little less careful would have pulled over—this guy was sauntering up to an unknown car as though he knew exactly what to expect.
She breathed slowly and deeply, keeping cool, watching through the sideview now. His hands were still empty. She wanted to draw the Glock. But damn it, if she were wrong . . .
“Hello there,” he said, looking in at her through the driver-side window. No badge that she could see—not hanging from his neck, not affixed to his belt. His palms were on his hips, a quick trip to a concealed weapon. She didn’t like that, but it was what a prudent cop would do, and the main thing was that for the time being, his hands remained empty. She’d play it cooperative. If he went for a weapon in the face of that, she’d have to draw hers. She was tempted to preempt him, but that would be too likely to provoke a gunfight, with her trapped inside the car and him outside and mobile. And even if she dropped him, ballistics could match the rounds to her duty weapon.
There was another option, though. The Somico Vaari in her cargo pants. Tough as an axe, sharp as a razor. She had a hole cut in the right hip pocket to make room for the sheath, which was clipped in place inside. Catch the edge of her pinky on the overhang built into the pommel, and she could deploy the knife even faster than she could the gun.
With no ballistic evidence left behind after.
“Hi,” she said, with a friendly smile.
He nodded. “Do you know why I pulled you over, ma’am?”
“I don’t, Trooper . . . ?”
Trooper was a title of address for state cops. Whatever this guy was, he wasn’t with the California Highway Patrol.
“Johnson,” the guy said. “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to step out of the vehicle and follow me back to my patrol car.”
No correction regarding the mistaken title. On top of which, an unmarked wasn’t a patrol car. And no request for license and registration? Either this guy was the most clueless cop ever—
Or he was no cop at all.
But if he, or someone else, had somehow seen her at the Cuero house, and followed her as she left town, they must have known, or at least suspected, that she herself was a cop. If she pretended otherwise, he’d recognize the subterfuge. The better bet was to pretend she believed his act.
“Happy to, Trooper Johnson,” Livia said. “Just so you know, I’m on the job. From out of town, and I don’t have my duty weapon with me. Okay to exit the vehicle?”
The guy stepped back toward his own car and nodded. “Good to go.”
“Good to go” sounded more military to her than cop, but it was hardly a sure thing. What was more telling was that the guy was prepared to accept at face value her assurance that she wasn’t carrying. For a normal cop, a driver’s spontaneous “I’m not carrying” declaration would be the opposite of reassuring. Yet this guy was good-to-going her without even having asked for ID.
Well, whoever he was, it didn’t seem this was just about killing her. If it were, he would have already tried his luck. No, he wanted information, probably of the Who are you, what were you doing at the Cuero house, what do you know, what do you suspect variety, and he’d have to extract that information before killing her. Which was why he wanted her in his car, and was most likely thinking to cuff her and then planning to drive to a secondary location where he could take his time and be completely in control.
A.k.a. the last thing on Earth she would allow, ever.
For an instant, she marveled at how readily she had accepted that this man intended to kill her. Apparently, the two attempted hits she had survived in connection with a government-run child-pornography ring had eradicated whatever vestigial urge she might have had to question her intuition. Or dismiss it as paranoia.
She heard a vehicle approaching and waited. A second later, a white Ram 2500 went by from behind them, the bottom panels covered with dust and dirt, probably from off-roading. As soon as it had passed, she opened the door with her left hand, keeping her right free and ready to go for the Glock if the guy even twitched. But he didn’t. He just watched her with a matter-of-fact expression, which she supposed was his approximation of what a cop looked like after pulling over a driver. She reminded herself that just because he didn’t know anything about traffic-stop tactics didn’t mean he didn’t know anything else.
She stepped out, her heart beating hard, turned toward him, and swung the door closed with her left hand. He was about five feet away—closer than a cop would have stood, farther than she would have liked for purposes of the Vaari. She saw no weapon shape anywhere around his waist. Could be an old-school shoulder rig. More likely, something at the small of his back.
The sound of the passing truck faded, and the area was suddenly silent.
He gave her a quick look up and down, his gaze pausing on the slight bulge under her fleece. He brushed his windbreaker back with his right hand, resting his knuckles on his hip. Yeah, she’d been right. A small-of-back holster, now just a few inches from his hand.
“I thought you weren’t carrying,” he said.
She felt her heart rate kick up another notch. “I’m not.”
He flexed his right hand. “What’s that under your fleece?”
“A camera.”
He flexed his hand again. “Show me.”
She looked in his eyes. “Are you even going to tell me what this is about?”
If he’d been a real cop, a good cop, he would have stepped offline by now and had his own weapon out. Hell, a good cop wouldn’t have allowed her out of the vehicle without a thorough check in the first place.
She saw a flash of concern in his eyes. Yeah, he wasn’t supposed to just kill her. He was supposed to interrogate her first. But in that moment, he was wondering if he could safely manage it.
Spoiler alert, motherfucker. You can’t.
“Show me,” he said again.
“Sure,” she said. “Just as soon as you tell me what department you’re—”
He went for his gun. Smart to do it while she was in midsentence. But she’d been ready for the trick, and saw him tense for an instant, so she was moving in even before his hand started sweeping around to his back. She closed the distance in less than a second and slammed his gun arm back with her left hand, the Vaari already out and tight in her right. She plunged the eight-inch curved steel blade up through his abdomen all the way to the hilt.
He shrieked and folded in half as his body reflexively tried to jerk away from the cold metal suddenly inside it, and his arms snapped together in front of him, barn doors closing after the horses have stampeded out. She
gripped the right sleeve of his windbreaker with her left hand, pivoted counterclockwise, and blasted his legs out from under him with hiza guruma, a simple judo knee sweep, using the Vaari to push him into the throw rather than the more customary lapel grip to pull him. He landed hard on his back.
She yanked out the Vaari, twisting it on the way, and kept control of his right arm to make sure he couldn’t reach for his gun again. But maintaining the grip probably wasn’t necessary. His knees were fetaled in, his face contorted in agony, and his mouth flapped open and closed as though he were a fish on the deck. She was pretty sure the knife had sliced through his spleen, ruptured his diaphragm, and penetrated his left lung. Meaning the diaphragm was in full spasm, the lung collapsing, and the spleen, the most vascularized organ in the body, dumping blood inside him.
She watched him, still holding the arm. His body began to shudder. She listened. She heard a vehicle coming toward them from up the road and around the bend. Shit.
She sheathed the Vaari, took hold of the back of his windbreaker, and dragged him between the cars. She was lucky—he wasn’t big, and the gravel acted as a kind of dry lubricant. He shook as she dragged him but didn’t struggle, a thick trail of blood from his wound marking their passage.
They made it between the cars just as she heard the vehicle enter the straightaway. Keeping low, she kept tugging him back until she had pulled him next to his passenger-side front tire. There was a gravel embankment at the edge of the shoulder, dropping to a weed-covered ditch below. She scooted over the side, pulling him after her. He rolled down limply and came to a stop faceup, one leg draped over the other in a weird pantomime of ease.
The vehicle slowed. Shit, had the driver seen her? She didn’t think so, but . . .
She pulled herself up the embankment and did a quick sneak and peek. The vehicle was the white Ram 2500 that had passed just a couple minutes earlier. She couldn’t be certain, but the same model, the same color, the same dust and dirt as though from off-roading, was good enough for her. The driver hadn’t been interested when he’d passed the first time; what would have brought him back? And why would he be slowing . . .
The truck passed their position, did a U-turn, and eased past again. Then it pulled onto the shoulder in front of her car and stopped, the engine idling.
What the hell is this?
A cellphone started buzzing. She glanced down. It was coming from the guy, his pants or his jacket. The ground around him was soaked in blood—she must have hit the spleen, as she’d thought—and he was obviously past hearing his phone, let alone answering. Still, was it loud enough to be audible from inside the truck? She didn’t think so, but if someone got out . . .
She dropped back, grabbed the guy by the arm, and hauled him over onto his stomach. She tugged the windbreaker up, and there—a small-of-back holster, as she’d thought, the butt of a Glock protruding. She yanked free the gun—the 19, good—checked the load—9-mil, good—proned out, and started a low crawl along the embankment. She didn’t want to be directly below the cars, and she especially didn’t want to be directly below that pool of blood on the shoulder. It would be the first place someone would look, and she damn well wasn’t going to get into a gunfight while lying in a ditch, against someone holding an elevated position.
A few yards away, a clump of rocks rose above the shoulder. She came out of the low crawl into a crouch and moved faster.
The cellphone stopped buzzing. She heard the truck door open. Boots on the gravel. She clambered clockwise up the rocks, her heart hammering, controlling her breathing. She forced herself to go slowly, to watch her foot placement, to trade speed for stealth.
She heard a man’s voice: “Frank?”
Eight steps crunching the gravel. A pause. The voice again, softer this time: “The fuck?”
The footfalls hadn’t been coming toward the embankment. They had gone past her car and then stopped. Meaning he hadn’t seen the body. But he had seen the blood. And his brain was trying to sort it all out: Did Frank kill her? Where did he take her? Why isn’t he answering?
Wait, is that her blood, or is it—
Livia burst from around the rocks. “Do not move!” she bellowed, closing the distance, the Glock she’d taken extended in a two-handed grip.
It was another fit-looking, jeans-and-windbreaker white guy, facing away from her, staring at the pool of blood between the cars as she’d expected. He was holding a pistol at low ready in a right-handed grip—he must have decided when he saw the blood and didn’t see Frank that a holstered weapon was the wrong way to go.
He ignored her command, bringing the gun up and around, spinning clockwise toward her—
She pressed the trigger—and a second time, a third, a fourth, rapid-fire. Her sights on his torso, shifting left as she moved, using the first guy’s car for cover and forcing the new guy to turn farther to try to acquire her. The guy twitched as the rounds hit home, and he stumbled toward the embankment, still turning, still trying to get in the fight. He managed a wild shot. A second. She reached the side of the car, dropped her level, focused her sights on his face, and put two rounds into the side of his head. His knees buckled and he flopped to his back, his torso going over the edge of the embankment. He hung like that for an instant, and then his legs disappeared as he slid down the other side.
Livia stayed behind the cover of the car’s engine block, checking her flanks. She blew out two long breaths, forcing herself to stay calm, stay tactical. Then she dashed along the embankment until she was ten yards beyond the guy’s position. She wasn’t going to take anything for granted—it was unbelievable what a person could sometimes survive, even head wounds.
She snuck a look down and saw the extra care wasn’t necessary. One of the rounds had gone into his temple and blown out an eye. His face was a mask of blood.
She wanted to search the bodies and the cars. If she could find out who they were . . .
No. She needed to go. Now. All it would take was one passing civilian driver, glancing at the three vehicles on the shoulder, noticing the blood. Or a random hiker on the nearby Pacific Crest Trail, hearing the shots and coming closer to investigate. Or a motorcyclist with a helmet-mounted GoPro, recording her license plate. And she didn’t even want to think about a cop coming by. She had one chance—maybe—to walk away clean from this, and every second she lingered, that chance got smaller.
Time for just one thing: a quick glance into each vehicle. No dashcams—windshield, rearview, dashboard, all clear. Thank God.
She ran to her car and got back on the road. She kept expecting to see another set of flashers behind her. But ten uneventful minutes later, she was heading west on Interstate 8, one car among countless others. She checked herself as she drove. There was a lot of blood from the guy she’d hit with the Vaari, but it wasn’t too obvious on her dark fleece and jeans. The smell was actually more noticeable than the sight. Shouldn’t be too hard to find a rest stop to clean up, then a store for bleach wipes and a change of clothes. The Vaari sheath was contaminated, and she’d need some kind of new one, even if it was just temporary. Then stop at a few places to dispose of the sheath and the other contaminated items. And the gun.
And then back to the airport. Turn on her cellphone. Hope she hadn’t been missed.
And then she could get to the most important thing of all: Little. Because she realized now, with a simmering rage she was having difficulty keeping from boiling over, he hadn’t just used her. Or even just manipulated her.
He’d fucking set her up.
11
Charles “Chop” Opperman, the commander of the navy’s Mountain Warfare Training Camp Michael Monsoor, put through the call from the secure unit on his desk. The news wasn’t good, and he wasn’t looking forward to the conversation.
One ring, then the admiral’s voice: “Yes.”
“Admiral. Chop.”
“Go.”
Chop didn’t hesitate. Everyone knew the admiral liked his news fast. And his bad
news faster.
“My guys observed a visitor to the house. A woman. They followed her and engaged her. The woman got away, and my guys are dead.”
A pause. “Who was she?”
Christ. Not a thought for the two dead men. “I don’t know yet.”
“They were using video to monitor the house?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a recording?”
“I assume so.”
“You assume?”
Chop felt a burst of irritation that was instantly eclipsed by fear.
“Sir. My priority was recovering the vehicles and the bodies.”
A pause. “Of course. Are there going to be questions?”
“None that should cause problems. The bodies . . . It seems the two men had an accident involving white phosphorous.”
White phosphorous was a self-igniting incendiary weapon. The burns it produced were so horrific that numerous laws governed the deployment of the substance against civilian targets.
“I’m sorry, Chop. That’s unfortunate.”
“It is, yes. Their families are being notified. But there won’t be any . . . forensic inconsistencies. The burns were extensive.”
“Then you should be able to focus now on retrieving a recording, yes?”
Chop felt the irritation again, and the fear. “Yes, sir.”
“Good. Upload it to the secure site. I have people who should be able to identify the woman.”
Chop was concerned the admiral was relying on him to upload something that might not even exist. “Admiral, the two men who were in charge of the op . . . they’re gone. I don’t know for certain if there’s a recording. Or, if there is, whether I can access it.”
“You’d better hope there is, Chop. Because if there isn’t, you’ll have to send men to the house, and uncover the identity of this woman by interrogating whoever in the house she met with.”
Chop clenched his jaw. “Yes, sir.”
“I’ll look forward to that video,” the admiral said, and clicked off.
Chop set down the phone. It felt like the admiral had been smiling when he delivered that parting shot, and Chop hated it. But what was he going to do, disobey? Fight back? Even if there had been a time for that, it was too late now. Better to be a realist. The survival rate was better.