The Professionals

by Owen Laukkanen

  “We’re going to make a trade,” said Pender. “You’re going to put down your gun and bring Marie to the cabin door, and we’ll swap.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “All right, then, I’ll kill her,” said Pender.

  Stevens swore. “We swap,” he said, gritting his teeth.

  “Good. Put your gun down.”

  Stevens made an exaggerated show of reaching into his holster and removing the FBI-issue Glock. He left it on the seat of the Crown Vic and held both hands high.

  “Now bring Marie to the plane.”

  Stevens put down the radio. He took McAllister by the arm and began to lead her across the tarmac. He could hear Wellwood yelling something in the background, but he tuned the tactical officer out and kept walking.

  The Gulfstream’s twin jet engines were spooling up as he approached.

  Stevens felt naked and vulnerable as he crossed the tarmac, the walk seeming to take hours. The girl was shaking in his arms, whether from fear or excitement, he couldn’t tell. Finally they reached the stairway and Hall’s bloody body, and Stevens stared down at the kid; his eyes were open wide. It wasn’t as easy as it looked, was it, he thought. You can’t just want to be the hero.

  Then he saw the kid’s gun, a .38 revolver lying forgotten a foot away from his right hand. Either Pender had missed it or he just hadn’t cared. Either way, there it was.

  Stevens pushed Marie up onto the stairway and then bent down as though to nudge Hall’s body out of the way. With his right hand he swept up the gun and tucked it into his pocket. Then he followed Marie up the stairway, keeping himself behind her so the bulge didn’t show.

  Marie willed her heart to stop racing as she climbed up the stairs and ducked her head beneath the doorway to enter the Gulfstream. She paused at the entryway and took a breath and then turned and walked into the passenger cabin. It was a luxurious little aircraft: cream-colored leather seats and deep-pile carpeting and three or four flat-screen TVs—and in the rear of the plane stood Pender, holding Windermere in front of him with a machine gun in his hand, the pilot sitting in the seat beside them, staring at Pender’s gun.

  “Arthur,” she said. She wanted to throw up and pass out and die. Pender smiled at her and even his smile looked alien.

  “Everything’s going to be fine, Marie,” he said. He was calmer than she’d ever seen him. “We’re free. You don’t have to be scared any longer.”

  She heard Stevens climb into the airplane behind her, and Pender’s eyes shifted to him. “Agent Stevens,” he said. “Ready to make that trade?”

  “I’m ready,” Stevens said. “Let’s do this and be done with it.”

  “Don’t do it,” said Windermere. “We worked too damn hard on this case to give it all up like this.”

  “Shut up,” said Pender. “You’ll have other cases. I’ll just be the one who got away.” He turned back to Stevens. “I’m going to bring Windermere closer, and we’ll pass them off, get it? Then you both get the hell off this plane.”

  “Fine,” Stevens said. Marie felt his hand tense on her back as Pender started toward her. “Let’s go.”

  Stevens watched Pender push Windermere forward and held tight to the back of McAllister’s shirt, looking for an opening. With his right hand, he reached into his pocket, keeping the girl square in front of him.

  Pender and Windermere came closer until Windermere and McAllister were almost touching. Pender kept his eyes on him as they walked, his hand tight on the machine gun. Stevens stared back, watching Pender advance, waiting for the kid to stumble.

  Pender took another step and then stopped. He glanced down at McAllister, just barely, and Stevens made his move. He pulled the revolver and stepped back, holding McAllister tight and pointing the gun across the plane at Pender. “Get back,” he told the kidnapper. “Get back or I blow you away.”

  ninety-two

  Stevens stared across the plane at Pender, pointing the revolver square at the kidnapper’s face. “I can’t let you do it,” he told Pender. “I can’t let you go.”

  Pender stared at him, any trace of a smile now gone. His eyes stayed dead calm, though, and Stevens wondered what the kid was thinking. He sure didn’t look scared.

  “You kill me, I kill Windermere,” Pender said. “Think about it.”

  Stevens looked at Windermere. She stood ramrod-straight in Pender’s grip, the machine gun pressed into the side of her neck. She was staring at Stevens like, ice this kid. Stevens shook his head.

  “You kill her, you get rid of your last bargaining chip,” he said. “Then you know how this ends.”

  “You’re forgetting the pilot.”

  “You need the pilot. You kill the pilot and you die on this tarmac.”

  Pender stared at him. “You’ve got five seconds to put that gun down. Then I shoot your girlfriend.”

  “I’m married,” Stevens said. “Go ahead.”

  Pender held his gaze a moment longer. “One,” he said.

  Stevens shifted his eyes to Windermere’s. “Shoot him, Kirk,” she said.

  “Two,” said Pender.

  “Last chance to put the gun down, Arthur.”

  “Three.”

  “Arthur.” Marie’s voice was plaintive. “Put the gun down, baby, please. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “I’m getting you out of here,” Pender said. “Four, Agent Stevens.”

  “Listen to Marie, Arthur. This doesn’t have to end this way.”

  “I guess it does,” said Pender. “That’s five.”

  Pender counted, the gun pressed tight against the FBI agent, and he knew he would have to do something by the time he reached five. He drew the count slow, trying to bluff Stevens into folding his hand, feeling a sick sort of emptiness start to well up inside him as he realized that bluffing wasn’t going to work this time, that he was going to have to shoot Windermere.

  He reached four, and then as if he was standing outside his body, he heard himself tell Stevens five and he felt his finger tense on the trigger and Windermere stiffen beneath him. But he paused, just barely, and glanced over at Marie, saw her face stained with tears, heard her screaming, and he came back inside himself. He stood there in slow motion, unable to move.

  And then Windermere wrenched away, her strength surprising him, and the decision was no longer his. He struggled with her and he heard her screaming, but her partner wasn’t shooting, and for a second or so he knew he had her, knew he had the agent and Marie and he was getting away clean. And then the first shot sounded, and he felt the slug in his shoulder.

  Windermere ran and Pender lifted the machine gun, intending to put a burst through both agents, and then the second and third slugs hit and Pender dropped the machine gun, more from the shock than the actual pain, and then he felt himself dropping to the cabin floor beside it.

  He heard Marie screaming, and he saw her face as she bent over him, saw her tears. He suddenly felt the pain and it was worse than anything he’d ever felt in his life, and he could feel his strength waning and he knew he was going to die. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine that he was drifting away from the airplane and the FBI and the bullets, that he was lying on that dream beach somewhere in the Maldives. He could picture it, watching the surf roll in from a hammock strung between two palm trees.

  He let himself lie there, imagining how the sun would feel, forgetting everything he knew about a cold Detroit winter. And Marie was there and she was crying and he didn’t know why, but he smiled up at her anyway and he tried to touch her face. “I’m sorry,” he said, but she didn’t stop crying.

  Marie pressed her cheek against Pender’s and begged him not to go, but he wasn’t listening to her and she could tell he was somewhere else already.

  He smiled up at her and whispered he was sorry, and she wanted to tell him he didn’t need to be sorry, that everything was okay. But he had stopped moving, and his face seemed frozen and distant, and she could tell he was gone.

&nb
sp; She knelt over him for as long as she could, feeling the blood seeping out of his body and all over her clothes. Then the FBI agents took her by the arm, first Windermere and then Stevens, and she struggled and shouted and kicked at them until they both reached under her arms and picked her up and took her away, screaming and sobbing.

  They took her out of the plane and down across the tarmac, stepping over the body of the young FBI agent. They walked her back to where the cars were parked under the sodium lights of the hangar, and they handcuffed her again and put her back in the unmarked sedan.

  Stevens climbed behind the wheel and started the engine and Windermere got in on the passenger side and they drove past the hangar and out of the airport, Marie twisting in her seat and staring back, watching the airplane disappear in the distance until there was nothing more to see.

  They took her back through the wintry Detroit streets, and neither of them said a word to her as they drove.

  ninety-three

  It took several long days after Arthur Pender’s death to tie everything off and clean up the last messes, and even then, Stevens knew, there would be more paperwork waiting back in Minnesota.

  They wrote reports in triplicate in the confines of their little office, and then, four days after Pender’s body was wheeled from the cabin of Jason Cardinal’s Gulfstream, they stood pressed close in a Detroit cemetery and watched Agent Hall’s coffin as it was lowered into the cold December earth.

  It was a miserable affair: a wet, rainy snow falling on the mourners, Hall’s family sobbing and Windermere crying, too, burying her face in Stevens’s coat and pulling him tight, her eyes clouded with tears.

  When the service was over they took a cab from the cemetery to the Metro airport and got on a late-afternoon Delta Airlines flight to the Twin Cities. As the plane took off, Stevens held Windermere’s hand in his own, though this time he wasn’t sure whether it was supposed to be for his comfort or hers. He stared out the window and watched the city shrink smaller below, a damp gray maze of freeways and factories. In the distance, he thought he could see Coleman Young Airport and the hangar where Pender had died, and before the city disappeared beneath the clouds, he traced the Interstate’s serpentine line to where the Motor City Motel still stood. Then all went white, and he looked away.

  “We’ll be back,” Windermere said from the seat beside him. “The Sawyer kid’s preliminary hearing is in a month or so. And God knows what they’re going to do with the girls.”

  The girls, Stevens thought, would probably get off pretty light. Tiffany Prentice, true to her word, had had her father hire the savviest criminal law firm in the country, and Stevens had no doubt that the girl’s Stockholm syndrome defense would meet with a sympathetic jury—if the case even got that far. Cases like hers tended to get quietly pled down to fines and community service and then were conveniently forgotten.

  McAllister, on the other hand, was relying on Gloria Wallace, the public defender. And though the woman was paid with taxpayers’ money, she wasn’t exactly a slouch in the courtroom. Matt Sawyer’s initial statements put McAllister nowhere near Donald Beneteau at the time of his murder, and indeed, the big guy was taking everything on his shoulders so as to keep McAllister as far away from the crimes as possible. Sawyer’s cooperation meant Wallace had more than enough to keep her client away from any serious jail time, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Obradovich was at this moment finalizing a pretty plum plea deal for the girl, Stevens’s and Windermere’s objections not counting for a whole hell of a lot.

  It was dark when the plane landed in Minneapolis, and a light blanket of snow coated the runways and the city streets beyond. Stevens and Windermere walked together to the baggage terminal and made a friendly bet whose bag would come out first.

  Windermere won the contest, and she laughed at Stevens as she hefted her suitcase from the conveyor belt. “I guess I’ll see you Monday,” she said, turning back to him. “We gotta start unpacking those early cases. See what else Sawyer and McAllister got up to.”

  “Oh,” said Stevens. “I thought you knew. BCA wants me back onboard. I’ve wasted enough time doing the FBI’s job for them.”

  Windermere laughed. “Come for the party and leave me to clean up, huh? Isn’t that just like a state policeman.” They smiled at each other for a few seconds, and Stevens wondered what he was supposed to say next.

  He’d been thinking about this moment for a couple of days, but when he looked into Windermere’s eyes, he saw she was already pulling away. “So I guess I’ll see you around,” she said. “It’s going to be weird not seeing your mug every morning.”

  “Sure,” said Stevens. “It was kind of fun, wasn’t it?”

  “It was. Even if you did get all moony on me.”

  “Moony?” Stevens laughed. “Bull. I nearly shot you.”

  She let go of her suitcase and wrapped him in a hug. Then she kissed his cheek. “That’s how I knew you were into me, dear.”

  She pulled back too soon. Stevens had to fight himself not to hold on to her longer. “Maybe we’ll see each other,” he said.

  She nodded. “It would be nice to have friends in Minnesota.” She picked up her suitcase. “All right, Stevens. I’ll see you around.”

  “Good luck,” he said. “With Mark.”

  She barely looked back. “Thanks. Enjoy your family.” Then she was gone, disappearing through the crowd of passengers and out the terminal door. Stevens gave her time to catch a cab, and then he turned back to the baggage conveyor, where his bag was among the last few unclaimed. He picked it up and walked to the exit, gasping in the bitter cold and catching himself searching for Windermere on the empty sidewalk. She was gone. She was gone, and that was that.

  He took a cab back into St. Paul, watching the snow falling through the beams of the streetlights and staring through living room windows at the bright half-second tableaus beyond. His own living room was dark when he arrived, the bedroom light on in the second-floor window.

  Stevens paid the driver and stepped out into the street, the snow crunching beneath his feet. Someone had shoveled the walk in his absence, and he idly wondered who as he made his way up to the front porch. He fit his key in the lock and opened the door and stepped into the dark hallway, smelling the familiar smell of home.

  He stood in the silence of the front hall for a few minutes, wondering why he was hesitating, seeing Arthur Pender and Marie McAllister in the shadows. Then he put his bag down and walked through the house, descending into the basement and settling down in his favorite chair. He turned the television on to SportsCenter and put his feet up on the coffee table and leaned back to watch the basketball highlights.

  After a few minutes, he heard a creak on the floorboards above and Nancy Stevens’s fuzzy pink pajama bottoms appeared on the stairs. “Are you a burglar?” she called.

  “Relax,” he told her. “I’m a cop, ma’am.”

  She came down the stairs, and Stevens watched her come into view, tired and mussed-up and beautiful. “Figured you’d have to be a pretty stupid burglar to want to come around down here,” she said. “Nothing in this room dates from later than 1980.”

  She stood on the landing and watched him, and after a moment he stood and walked over to her. He took her in his arms and kissed her, tasting the mint of her toothpaste and smelling her skin cream. “I’m sorry I’ve been gone,” he said.

  “Are you back now?” she asked him.

  He nodded. “I’m here. For good this time.”

  “Good.” She stepped back and stared into his eyes. “Then come on up to bed. We’ve all missed you.”

  acknowledgments

  I’ve been very fortunate to count among my allies my wonderful agent, Stacia Decker at the Donald Maass Literary Agency, and my editor, Neil Nyren, at Putnam—truly a publishing dream team. Without their insight and enthusiasm, this project would never have come to fruition.

  This novel owes much to the efforts of the people who worked behind the scenes on its b
ehalf. Thanks to everyone at Putnam who played a part in the publishing process.

  Thanks to my teachers, who played their own part in the publishing process. In particular, thanks to Michael James, Thomas King, and the Creative Writing faculty at the University of British Columbia, especially Steven Galloway, Bryan Wade, Maureen Medved, Peggy Thompson, Meah Martin, and the indomitable Pat Rose.

  Many friends and family members offered encouragement and support. I could fill a book listing their kindnesses; suffice it to say, I am humbled by their generosity, and grateful to them all.

  Ariane Thompson-Campbell remains my best friend, my voice of reason, and, above all, my inspiration. I’m a better man to have known her, and a better writer, too.

  Thanks, finally and especially, to my family: to my brothers, Terrence and Andrew Laukkanen, and to my parents, Ethan Laukkanen and Ruth Sellers, whose faith in me has never wavered, and whose support has made all the difference.