by Peter Nealen
As Larry and I approached slowly, two of the riflemen leveled their weapons at our rental car, while the middle guy held up a hand for us to stop.
“Damn, these guys are not fucking around, are they?” Larry asked, lifting his eyebrows.
“They just had their principal come damned close to getting turned into pink mist two days ago,” I pointed out. “We’d be a little trigger-happy after something like that, too.”
I braked slowly and smoothly. The windshield wasn’t armored, and any kind of quick movement was not going to be a good idea, not with Sparrow’s detail as twitchy as they obviously were.
We’d actually passed the scene of the previous ambush on the way there. There was an IED crater and a lot of spent brass around the intersection between Highway 40 and South Woody Mountain Road, along with the bullet-riddled, burned out remains of a vehicle. Nobody knew for sure who had done it; there were certainly enough narcos running around the Southwest with an interest in smoking a Congresscritter, but a “Sulla” cutout was also suspected.
Lucia Sparrow, as it turned out, was one of the vanishingly rare politicians who had built a reputation for integrity and rock-hard principle in her five years in office. She couldn’t be bribed, and she couldn’t be bought, at least so went the word on the street. She’d called out corruption and lies amongst her colleagues without regard for who they were. It hadn’t won her any friends, but she’d publicly proclaimed more than once, “I’m not here to make friends with other members of Congress, or the government, or even the President. I’m here to represent the people of Arizona.”
Needless to say, her attitude didn’t appear to have endeared her to either of the factions, either. That was why we were there.
Our problem was, we couldn’t secure Sparrow if her detail was going to fight us, and they were presently paranoid as hell. And with good reason.
Whoever had pulled off the bombings in twenty-four cities, everybody and their mother was now blaming their pet bogeyman for them. There had already been enough blood spilled that most people were just looking for justification to spill more of it. The POCRF was blaming militias, the cops, and white supremacists, and calling for more “white blood” to be shed in retaliation. The Three Percenters were screaming about Federal false flags and gearing up for a war with the POCRF and their allies and the Feds at the same time. The think tanks were blaming the Russians, the Iranians, or the Caliphate. The Caliphate had claimed responsibility, though almost twelve hours late, which tended to reinforce the idea that they’d had nothing to do with it, but wanted the credit.
If the point of the bombings had been to throw gasoline on the flames, they had succeeded.
Knowing that didn’t make our job any easier, staring at multiple M4 muzzles from behind an unarmored windshield. I kept both my hands on the wheel as the middle guy, who hadn’t pointed his weapon, came forward.
“Sorry, gentlemen, but this street’s closed,” he said, his voice clipped and professional, as he came to the open window beside me. He wasn’t pointing a weapon, but his hand was on his M4’s firing controls, and he was a good pace back from the car, so that he wouldn’t have to step back to make room to bring his carbine up if he needed to. I also noticed, out of the corner of my eye, that the two still covering us had moved to make sure he wasn’t cutting off either of their fields of fire. I suspected that he’d placed himself equally carefully to give the belt-feds in the woods a clear shot, too. These guys were pros.
“Yeah, we know,” I told him, keeping my hands on the wheel. “We need to have a word with your boss.”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he said. “The Congresswoman is not seeing anyone at the moment.”
“Look, bud,” I told him. “We’re not here to get your principal.” Well, in a way we were, but “get to safety” is different from “get dead.” “We’ll strip down to our skivvies if you need us to for your comfort level, but we’ve got to talk to your boss.” Before he could answer, I pointed out, “Though I don’t think seeing this big bastard here in his skivvies will make anyone particularly comfortable.” I was hoping to ease the tension a little bit and get old boy to relax a little, but it didn’t particularly work. He was probably used to douchebags trying to get by security with humor, and was probably somewhat professionally offended.
“I need you to turn around and drive away, sir,” he said, in the same flat tone.
“Look,” I said, “I’m going to reach for a phone. I’m not reaching for a gun, so don’t shoot me.”
“Do you have weapons in the vehicle?” he asked, lifting his muzzle ever so slightly.
Ah, fuck. This guy’s more keyed up than I thought. This is going to suck.
“We’ve got your back, Hillbilly,” Eddie’s voice said in my earpiece. It was a little, flesh-colored Bluetooth job, in my right ear, away from the window. Eddie and I really didn’t have separate teams anymore; we’d taken serious enough losses since this all kicked off back in the fall that we were essentially working as one slightly reinforced team. Fortunately, neither Eddie nor I were the kind to squabble over who was in charge.
Still, I didn’t want one of us smoking this dude, who was just doing his job, if we could help it. If he got too trigger-happy, we might still have to, but that would make our job that much harder.
That didn’t mean I was necessarily going to get obsequious when it came to dumb questions. This was fucking Arizona. I looked at the guy like he was stupid. “Of course we’ve got weapons in the vehicle,” I told him, in a voice that said, without so many words, you fucking numbnuts. “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s gotten a little dicey around here, with cars blowing up and people getting shot.” He didn’t look impressed, but then, I probably wouldn’t in his place, either. But he didn’t point the M4 at my face, so that was progress, of a sort.
Very slowly, I reached for the center console with one hand, leaning back so that he could watch every move I made. I did not want this guy getting nervous.
The phone, by design, was in easy reach. I pulled it out and showed it to him, but he tensed anyway, and the muzzle rose fractionally again.
Fuck. He’s probably thinking of all the cell phones that have been used as IED initiators over the last twenty years. But we were committed, so I unlocked it and started the call before switching it to speaker. When he heard the phone ringing and nothing exploded, he relaxed a little. I held the phone out to him through the open window.
Cautiously, he stepped forward and took the phone. “Who is this?” he asked.
Renton’s voice sounded tinny over the little speaker. “You can call me Baxter,” he said. Even dealing with people who were supposed to be friends, the Cicero Group was being cagey. They had to be; there had been some chatter recently that suggested both factions had picked up on the fact that somebody was going through their assets like a chainsaw through butter. “I represent a group that has similar aims and principles to your boss. Have you heard of a man named Nelson Cuellar?”
“No,” the guy said flatly. “Should I have?”
Though his voice stayed even, I could imagine the look of frustration on Renton’s face. “He’s the guy who killed Senator Leland,” he explained, “and we believe he was the lead on the kidnapping of Judge Alitano’s family. Ringing any bells now?”
A faint frown flickered across the detail lead’s face. He had to have heard about those incidents; even with everything else going on, both had been fairly high-profile, especially as they’d happened before the bombings. “Okay, the name sounds vaguely familiar, now that you mention it,” he said. “What about him?”
“We have credible information that he’s been sighted in Flagstaff,” Renton continued, “and reason to believe that Representative Sparrow is his next target. You’ve already been hit once.” That got a raised eyebrow, as if our new friend was wondering how Renton already knew about it. “You are no longer secure. My associates are there to assist you in getting Ms. Sparrow to a
safer location.”
He eyed us skeptically. “Is that why they’re armed?” he asked.
Renton chuckled. “Those boys are always armed, son. And they’re just the two you can see. Look, do what you need to, search ‘em as thoroughly as you’d like before letting them through to the Congresswoman. But you’re running out of time. Cuellar’s got a crew of hard-dicks that make those pussies you shot up off the 40 look like lapdogs.” That wasn’t strictly accurate; from what I knew, Cuellar was a bloodthirsty but generally sloppy shitbag, and his crew weren’t much better. But Renton wanted to motivate Sparrow’s detail to cooperate, and putting a little fear in ‘em probably wouldn’t hurt. “If you don’t believe me, have your boss call Martin Schofield. He’ll confirm everything I’ve said.” He probably should have started with Schofield. The guy was an old FBI hand, and a personal friend of the Sparrow family. He was also one of the original Cicero Group.
The dude looked skeptical, but finally handed the phone back to me without a word. I took it, and put it back into the center console. “Out of the vehicle, please,” he said, taking another long step back. “Slowly. And keep your hands where I can see them.”
We complied, and he waved more of his boys over. He wasn’t taking chances. I can’t say I blamed him, not that it’s comfortable for a man in my position to surrender himself completely to a thorough search and disarmament. I feel naked without at least a gun and two knives on me.
They didn’t fuck around. They set up on opposite sides of the car, with searchers and cover men placed so that either or both of us could be shot without endangering either of the searchers or the cover men. They were pros, I’ll give ‘em that.
Once they were satisfied that we weren’t packing concealed weapons or suicide belts—or pipe bombs up our asses; they were damned near that thorough—the detail lead just nodded down the road, past the two Suburbans. “Okay, let’s go.”
“Can we take the phone?” I asked.
He shook his head. “You can convince her or you can’t. I’m not letting an un-screened phone into her house. Now either get moving, or get the fuck out of here.”
I just nodded amicably. Fortunately, we had somewhat anticipated this possibility, which was why Martin Schofield was supposed to be keeping his phone handy.
It was almost a klick from the roadblock to Congresswoman Sparrow’s house, but neither of us complained about the walk. Frankly, the only thing I was worried about was that the attack we were trying to prevent might come at any time, and I didn’t want to be halfway down the road, strolling along with no weapons, when it did.
But while we didn’t dare move at a rate that might make the itchy trigger fingers behind us nervous, we got to the front door in relatively good time, and all without anything blowing up.
The two-story house had red siding, including around the chimney, and a deeply shaded porch. The yard had been extensively landscaped, with leafy bushes and lots of trees. Flagstaff is a lot higher and greener than one might imagine when thinking of “Arizona.” Two more black, armored Suburbans sat in the driveway, combat-parked for a fast getaway.
There were two more armed guards on the porch, and I spotted several cameras around the property. They weren’t taking chances. Which was good, but a known, stationary target can always be gotten to, eventually.
The detail lead, who had still not offered his name, mounted the steps ahead of us, turning his back on us for the first time since we’d pulled up to the road block, and knocked on the door.
The man who answered the door was dressed in a suit, unlike the guys in combat gear outside. I was beginning to wonder just how big Sparrow’s detail was. I knew that she’d hired Stony Creek Protection Services, since Congresscritters didn’t get close protection when they were away from DC. Stony Creek had a decent rep, and they’d been pretty professional, from what I’d seen. But I’d counted at least an infantry platoon worth of guards, so far. She had to be shelling out a lot for this level of protection. Which meant she was scared. In a way, that was good. It could also turn out to be a liability.
The detail lead, or at least the man in charge outside, talked to the guy in the suit in a low voice, and the guy in the suit gave us a thorough, unfriendly look-over. But he finally stepped aside, and the guy with the M4 led us inside.
They must have called ahead, because Lucia Sparrow and her husband, Gary, were waiting in the living room for us. Gary was standing behind his wife, who was sitting in an armchair, straight-backed, watching us enter. The security personnel fanned out on either side of us, taking up ninety-degree offsets so that they could shoot us without shooting each other.
Lucia Sparrow was a plain, heavy-set woman, her round face looking pinched and showing growing worry lines around her eyes. One look and I could see that she was trying to stay impassive, but this was a deeply, desperately frightened woman. It was one thing to defy corruption on the floor of the House of Representatives; it was something else altogether to have someone try to blow you to smithereens less than two miles from your house.
If Lucia looked scared, Gary was positively green with terror. He was a very fat, very pasty man with a receding chin, and he was practically quaking as he watched us enter the room.
“Madam Congresswoman,” I began, “I’m not going to mince words; we don’t have time. We have reliable information that there are at least two groups in Flagstaff as we speak that are gunning for you. You’ve got good security here, but your home is known to your enemies, and that makes you vulnerable. The attack the other day was close enough; they’re not going to quit. The longer you stay here, the more likely it becomes that an attack is going to succeed. You need to come with us.” I glanced up at the men with guns. “We’re not asking you to leave your detail behind; in fact, we’d welcome their assistance.” Hopefully that helped ease a few fears.
“He says that Mr. Schofield will back him up, ma’am,” the detail lead said. “I have not called Mr. Schofield to confirm that, however. I thought it best if you made that call.”
“Just who are you people?” Sparrow asked. She was still trying to process everything. This could be a problem. From her reputation, I’d expected Sparrow to be made of sterner stuff.
I decided to take a chance. It might help matters along, or it might get us shot dead in Sparrow’s living room. “We’re with Praetorian Solutions,” I said.
That had an impact. The security guys’ eyes widened as one. “Holy shit,” the detail lead said.
Sparrow looked up at him. “Does that mean something?”
“It does, ma’am,” he said, his eyes locked on me. “Though I don’t know for sure if it’s good or bad. There have been whispers about Praetorian for several years now; though I’ve never heard of them actually operating in the United States. Their reputation is…checkered, let’s put it that way.”
That didn’t seem to reassure her. She looked at me and Larry. “’Checkered,’” she said. “Checkered how?”
There was a wary look in his eyes. “Word is, where they go, a lot of people tend to die. They’ve been working in Kurdistan for the last several years, that much is public. There are stories about other jobs, though, usually really rough, action-novel stuff. Depending on who’s telling the story, they’re either hard bastards who get the job done without fail, or they’re a pack of dangerous, off-the-leash, mad-dog killers. There are a few stories floating around to the effect that they may have taken apart a cartel down in Mexico, last year or two.”
That must have rung a bell, because when Sparrow looked back at us, she was a little calmer, and the wheels were turning. “I’m not sure if that means we should trust them, or not,” she said.
He grimaced. “Well, he’s not wrong, ma’am,” he said. “We’re not secure enough here. If he is telling the truth, we should take him up on his offer and get you somewhere more secure.” He paused, squinting at me. “Maybe you should call Mr. Schofield.”
She nodded at that, and reached for the phone sitting
on the lampstand beside her chair. She tapped the screen, and a moment later, it was ringing, apparently on speaker.
It rang, and rang, and rang. I started to get tense. Schofield was supposed to be ready and waiting for this call. If he’d dropped the ball, not only might we fail the mission, we might not even get out of that living room alive. Sparrow’s security was nervous, and their fingers were awfully close to those bang switches.
Just before it went to voicemail and I decided we were fucked, trying to calculate how to close the distance and take that M4 away from old boy before he shot me, then drag Sparrow away through the woods by main force, the ringing stopped, and Schofield said, “Lucia. Good to hear from you.”
“Martin, there are two men in my living room telling me that my life is in danger here, in spite of my security, and that I need to come with them,” she said. “They told me to call you.”
“Am I on speaker?” he asked.
Dammit, just put her damned mind at ease and let us get out of here, I thought.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Stone?” Schofield called. “You there?”
“Yeah,” I replied loudly. “And the clock’s ticking.” I was breathing a little easier, but I was still kind of pissed that he’d taken so long to answer the phone.
“I know,” he answered. “Just had to make sure you were actually the ones she was talking about. Lucia,” he continued, “these men are there on behalf of some of my associates. I can assure you that they are there for your protection, and you need to listen to them. There are some very dangerous people after you. Fortunately for you, these guys are even more dangerous, but you have to move quickly.”
As if to punctuate his words, gunfire suddenly erupted from the woods behind the house. A moment later, the house itself was under fire, and bullets started to punch through the walls.