“Negative,” McGrath replied. “Even though the agents may be under suggestive influence, they should still follow their training and secure all exits if they want her dead.” He paused just long enough for Palmer and Mallory to reach the rear exit. Palmer had just wrapped her hand around the old-style doorknob when McGrath said, “Stick to the primary plan. Use the basement to exfil.”
Nancy Palmer hesitated for a split second. The escape car was just twenty yards away from the door. Through the grill covering the outside of the half-moon window in the heavy wood door, she could see the path to the car was clear. But her training was too ingrained, and she implicitly trusted McGrath. They’d had many successful operations since the first days of the TER agency. In fact, the operation against the American Terrorist had been their first and only mission failure. She glanced at the president standing beside her and nodded.
“Copy that. Proceeding with the primary evac plan.” She nodded behind them and to the right. “Into the basement we go, Madam President. And Aaron, I want to—”
McGrath’s voice said, “Stand by, I’m getting some intel from our new CIA asset.”
Nancy Palmer and Shirley Mallory kept moving down the steps to the basement. Halfway down, she heard McGraths’s panicked voice return to her ear.
“Get Shirley into the basement. Now, goddamnit. Now!”
The only time her boss had ever lost his composure was when he’d thought Carl had murdered his daughter, Anita Chapman, so the terror in his voice spurred her faster. She grabbed Mallory by the arm and yanked her down the last few steps, then pulled her through the basement doorway. She didn’t know what manner of assault had panicked McGrath, but it was big. Had to be.
Palmer leaned her shoulder into the thick, heavy door and almost got it closed when a tremendous explosion knocked her into shelving halfway across the basement. Then everything fell into complete darkness.
Chapter 21
Carl awoke with a start, completely unaware he’d fallen asleep, and was pleased to see dusk had settled into the deeper blackness of night. It was time.
He drove the minivan along the route that Wizard had sent to his tablet until he was two blocks from Bonhardt’s house on Chicago’s westside. The neighborhood was a collection of narrow row houses on narrow lots and all looked the same with red brick. The homes were all three levels with the first hosting a single-car garage beside the front door. The homes had tiny front yards and arm’s-length clearance on both sides. According to Wizard’s overhead map, the backyard was equally tiny. Carl figured they’d all probably be the same floor plan on the inside too. All in all, it was the cheapest home one could afford to own that wasn’t a slum house.
He backed into someone’s driveway, then got out and opened the driver-side passenger slider. His first action was to get out of his Rasta disguise yet again. It took a few minutes and a dozen wet wipes to wipe the thick layer of skin color off, then he got into his battle suit and geared up.
He noticed there were no streetlights in the neighborhood. Correction: there were streetlights, but they just weren’t on. “Three, it looks like a team with heavy support is already in the area. All the streetlights are off.”
“Stand by,” Wizard’s voice said over the comm. “Okay, I just hacked into the public utilities. It seems there was an emergency maintenance work order filed an hour ago, and I see a maintenance team was dispatched. I’m guessing they’ve been eliminated and replaced.”
Three said, “Watch your ass, Boss. The bad guys are likely already on-site or close to it.”
“Copy that.” He donned his Kevlar helmet and lowered the face shield into place, then attached auxiliary vision gear. He lowered the low-light reticule in front of his right eye and the infrared reticule in front of his left, then set out toward the officer’s home.
“I wish I had drone or satellite coverage. It would be nice to know if anyone is waiting in cars, trying to effect an ambush.”
“Hold on, Boss,” Wizard said. “Let me see if I can hack some cell towers and do some trilateration… Got it. Damn! I see fifteen cell signals not inside houses, all within a block of the cop’s house. By the way, there are four signals inside his home. I’m guessing one each for him, his wife, and two kids. They’re probably home.”
Wizard gave Carl the precise locations of the street cell signals on the path Carl was to follow to the officer’s house. The first car was parked at the intersection of the dark street, apparently ready to follow Bonhardt’s car if they left. Carl transferred his PDW to his left hand and pulled his silenced Glock from his right thigh holster. He walked up to the driver’s window, knelt down, and fired a single shot through the window, into the head of the person. The second bounty hunter was parked on the wrong side of the street facing the target house, so he also had no indication someone was going to walk up to his car in the pitch darkness and shoot him.
Carl holstered his Glock and continued his trek toward Bonhardt’s house with his PDW ready for action. Stock pressed firmly against his shoulder, he panned the barrel back and forth as he’d been trained. His brain combined the green and red worlds that his separate eyes saw.
“Boss,” Three said. “Hold one. Something has changed.”
Carl kept walking a few steps until he was even with a curbside tree, then stepped right against the trunk and merged his body into the darkness. “Talk to me,” he said.
Wizard said, “The contract has just changed. One million for the family, dead only, and five million for the officer, alive only. That’s going out to all hitters as we speak.”
“Hmmm,” Carl said. “There’s gotta be something about his physiology they need to study, and for that they need him alive. The five million is a guarantee no one will slip up and kill him.”
As Carl continued to scan the street, his sight was drawn to a bright flare of light coming from each of two cars, both parked nose-in on the driveways of two adjacent homes. As he got closer, he would have eventually seen their thermal signature, but they helped him by checking their cell phones for the contract update.
He thought about crossing the street and firing into both cars with his silenced handgun, but a moving shadow even on the dark street might be detected by an alert observer’s peripheral vision. Besides, sooner or later, Carl’s presence would be known, so it might as well be now, when he was close to his target.
He scanned his immediate surroundings again, particularly looking for heat targets in cars in driveways, then knelt and sighted his PDW. The weapon had two tactical advantages. It was very quiet and had virtually zero muzzle flash. He fired twice. The six-by-thirty-millimeter armor-piercing rounds punched through the back windows like plastic, and his enhanced vision showed his aim was true.
Two headshots, distance twenty meters.
Continuing up the sidewalk, he found himself directly across from the cop’s home. He looked left and right, but saw no obvious threat, either in low light or infrared vision. He had just informed his team of his intent to charge across the dark street and kick in the front door when Wizard’s voice froze him.
“Hold! Hold! Hold!”
“Copy.” Carl knelt and held his position, weapon ready and focused on Bonhardt’s front door.
“I see three new cell phone signals emanating from the front of the house. A hit team is in there with the family.”
“They’re probably threatening his family to get him to leave voluntarily, but they’re going to kill them anyway.”
Three added, “And one of the cells is active. I’m guessing he’s calling for the retrieval vehicle.”
Wizard said, “Whatever you’re going to do, Boss, do it now! You have maybe fifteen seconds max.”
Carl didn’t have time to think about options, so he decided on a direct frontal assault. Upon approach, though, he discovered the metal front door was well insulated against heat loss. It was Chicago after all, the Windy City. His infrared reticule couldn’t detect any thermal targets through the door, and he
couldn’t take the chance that the metal door had a deep deadbolt that might not yield to a single kick, so he moved to the window.
He saw two thermal figures. One stood a few feet away from a kneeling figure with his hands held behind his head. Carl sighted on the standing figure and pulled the trigger. Then he rushed to the front door and decided to try the knob. It was unlocked, no doubt picked open by the hit team. He shoved the door open gently and motioned the now-standing Officer Bonhart to silence with his index finger stuck in front of his face shield. Then he pulled his silenced Glock from his holster, tossed it to the policeman, and pointed to the front door. Even as he gave his nonverbal commands, he heard a vehicle screech around the corner and accelerate toward the house.
He scanned the next room with his thermal vision and easily identified three figures seated on a couch and two standing figures in front of them. One of them called out, appearing to turn toward the doorway to the front room. Maybe he’d heard Carl drop the hitman, or maybe he just heard him fall or heard the man’s weapon hit the floor. Whatever.
Carl fired two quick shots and kicked through the door, ready to shoot again. The family screamed at his entrance, but they were in no further danger from those men.
Two more headshots through the drywall, distance two meters.
The wife and two children stayed huddled in fear on the couch.
Carl turned and went back into the front room, which looked in the darkness like a formal living room. “The bounty is now five million alive for you only and one million for them dead only. Get them ready to move by the time I get back.”
Carl stepped through the front door with his PDW blazing as the pickup vehicle, a cargo van that looked greenish with a blazing red splotch where the engine was, screeched to a halt. He stitched the vehicle with three triple-taps, then walked over and calmly dropped a live grenade in the driver’s open window. As he walked back toward the cop’s front door, the grenade blast blew out the van’s windshield and doors and shoved him a couple steps forward, but the shrapnel pinged harmlessly off his battle suit. The distraction, however, was just enough so Carl didn’t see the killer step around the side of the house until fire exploded from the tip of his shotgun.
The blast hit Carl full in the chest and felt like a mule kick that knocked him flat on his ass. By the time he recovered from the dizzying flop, the killer stood over him. He racked the loader forward, then stumbled forward, tripping over Carl’s prone body. In the doorway, Bonhardt rose from a two-handed firing position and lowered the Glock. He ushered his wife and kids out the door as Carl rolled to his knees, coughing and trying to catch his breath.
The cop rapid-fired the questions at him. “You have a car? Which way? They’ll be watching for mine.”
Carl simply said, “Fuck! That hurt.” He got to his feet and said, “Wizard, what’s the status of all the cell phones in the area?”
“You have four signals you passed up the street. They are unmoving, so I assume those are the hit teams you terminated?”
“Correct.”
“Okay, you have the three stationary signals in the house, plus the four I assume belong to the family.”
Carl looked at the officer and nodded. The man had prepped his family well and left the cellphones behind because they could be traced.
“There is also a signal in the street, in front of the house.”
Carl said, “The cell phone survived the grenade blast, but the occupants did not.”
“Okay, your exit route seems clear, but other signals are converging on you. I recommend haste.”
He pointed at Officer Bonhardt and said, “Make a right at the corner, go up two blocks, make another right. I have a maroon minivan parked halfway up the street, right side, nose-out. You take the lead, and I’ll bring up the rear because that’s where the attack will likely come from.” He did a quick mental count of the shots he’d heard fired from each weapon. “Here.” He pulled a mag for the Glock from his utility belt and tossed it. “You’re down five.” The PDW was down thirteen with plenty remaining in the thirty-count mag.
The cop pocketed the magazine and turned to his wife and children. Carl guessed the kids’ ages at maybe seven and nine. They seemed remarkably calm in the face of certain death.
Bohnardt said, “This is going to be just like we practiced many times because of my work, okay?” The kids nodded. To the younger one, the boy, he said, “Now you keep hold of your sister’s hand.” The boy nodded and Bonhardt took his daughter’s chin gently in his hand. “And you keep hold of mommy’s hand.” She nodded and the officer stood and gave his wife a reassuring smile. “Alright, team, let’s move, on the double!”
Carl admired the man. He made it seem like a family camping trip, and they’d clearly practiced before. Just like the military… practice so you don’t panic.
They took off at a slow trot, fast enough to make haste, but slow enough to react to possible danger. Through his low-light lens, Carl saw the officer glance at the cars with destroyed windows. They made it to the minivan without event and the officer took the driver’s seat and started the engine with the keys Carl had left in the ignition. Carl put the family in the rear-most seats and took the center bench for himself. He powered down both side windows and folded the PDW stock so he could maneuver the rifle in the smaller space of the vehicle if he had to.
Bonhardt said, “I need a destination.”
“River Hotel downtown.” He glanced at Mrs. Bonhardt. “Your kids sure are brave. But everybody down in back, okay? This could get crazy.” The kids hit the floor behind Carl’s seat and their mom covered them with her body.
Two blocks later, the cop said, “I think we picked up a tail. No, two.”
Carl raised his enhanced lenses so he wouldn’t be blinded by headlights and looked out the rear. “They probably have air surveillance, so watch left and right. They’ll probably try to ram us from the side while you’re watching the rear.”
“Is that what a terrorist would do?”
“That’s what they do in the movies when—”
Bonhardt slammed on the brakes to avoid a car speeding out of a side street, avoiding the collision by mere inches. The offending car bounced up onto the curb and slid sideways, clearly trying to stay in the chase. Carl pointed his PDW out the open window and fired two triple-taps, one at the driver and one into the front grill of the car. No way that hitman, if he was even still alive, was going to follow them after three armor-piercing bullets ripped up his engine block.
Bonhardt floored the gas and they slipped under the L and followed the Orange Line for several blocks.
“Make a hard right up ahead. Pretend to lose control a bit so the chase cars get closer.”
He did so, and Carl pulled the tab on a high-tech grenade. He tossed it out the window just before Bonhardt straightened the car and entered the side street. The device bounced and exploded right under the lead chase car just as that car started to make the turn, and the car flipped over and tumbled right past the intersection.
The second chase car blasted past the rubble and followed them closely down the street, so Carl tossed two more grenades in sequence. To the Bonhardt family, he said, “You folks okay down there?” He heard an affirmative chorus, then said, “Okay, cover your ears because here comes some noise.” He fired seven shots through the minivan’s rear window.
Bonhardt hollered, “Hard left coming up!”
Carl braced himself as the minivan turned, but the chase car kept going straight, slowing and trailing smoke. “Get back under the L. I have an idea.”
The officer followed the instructions without question, and Carl pulled his laser designator from the duffel he’d left in the minivan and attached it to the PDW housing. It was a special high-intensity laser specifically designed to blind camera and sensors on surveillance planes or drones.
Any doubts that a mini-drone was spotting them vanished when yet another chase car careened out of a side street just after they passed. The s
edan accelerated much faster than the minivan and pulled alongside their passenger side.
Carl ejected his spent mag, pulled another from his utility belt, and slammed it home. “Panic stop on my mark!”
He braced himself on the floor, legs spread wide with his boots rammed against the wall, then he popped the lock, slid the door open, and pointed the business end of his assault rifle right at the driver’s head.
“Now!”
The driver was a woman, and a man next to her was leaning forward, trying to see around her. When Carl shoved the minivan door open, she was looking right at him with the same serious, calculating, killer’s eyes he’d seen on many adversaries. She grasped the steering wheel with her left hand and held a silenced handgun in her right, though it wasn’t aimed at him yet. Her surprise registered in her eyes briefly, and she did exactly what Carl knew she would. She slammed on her brakes.
But the minivan was also slowing at the same rate, so she stayed precisely in Carl’s sights. He fired two carefully aimed shots into the heads of both killers from near point-blank range.
“Pull over fast.” He jumped out even before the minivan came to a complete stop. With his index finger, he turned on the laser designator, aimed behind the car, and waited.
They were still under the L platform and a drone would have to drop down under the platform to reacquire them. He squatted behind the car and waited, but saw nothing. He lowered his low-light and infrared lenses into place, but still saw nothing. He was just about to abandon his ambush when he heard the cop’s harsh whisper through the shattered back window.
“Johnson, front! Eleven o’clock high.”
Carl stood and pivoted, and there it was, hovering fifteen feet off the street about two car lengths away. Black with four nearly silent propellers spaced around the main body, it was small enough for one person to carry. He aimed the active laser at the device, but it pivoted almost at the same instant. It rose quickly and bounced off the bottom of the L platform, then banked hard to the right and hit a support beam. The fragile drone lost some plastic pieces in the impact and spiraled down to the street. Bonhardt hit the gas and crunched his front left tire over the drone.
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