She clicked the image to enlarge it and saw that it was in fact a man with their victim.
“Holy fricking shit!” Kit said as she stared.
Because it was a man Kit recognized.
In fact, it was a man everybody in the world recognized.
70
“Hi, Harry,” Dawn Warner said as the Denver SAC got on the line.
His name was Harry Wheaton and his file said he was a former Mississippi college football player and former marine helicopter pilot. She looked at the man’s picture from his file now on her screen. He was forty-two and square-jawed and was actually quite attractive.
I wouldn’t toss that out of bed for eating crackers, Warner thought.
“Thanks for taking my call right away, Harry,” Warner said. “I hope I’m not keeping you from something.”
“No, not at all,” Wheaton said. “Glad to talk to you. What can I do for the Department of Justice this morning?”
Wow, he didn’t even have the Walmart hick accent she was expecting, Warner thought. He sounded normal.
“I’m glad you asked, Harry,” Dawn Warner said pleasantly as she stood and started a loop around the conference table. At the other side of it, she knelt at the wastepaper basket and picked out the whiteboard marker.
“Harry,” she said as she began to twirl the marker between her fingers and continued her walk. “I’m trying to, well, I guess I’m trying to get your take on something. On an agent I believe is in your offices today. Special Agent Kit Hagen.”
“Kit Hagen?” Wheaton said. “Yes, she’s here. She was just in here with me a minute ago.”
Warner’s antennae, already up, went suddenly way, way up.
Why would Hagen be talking to the SAC? she thought.
“She’s an impressive agent, especially after that tragedy in Wyoming,” Wheaton continued. “I mean, to bounce back like that so soon. Truly, I tip my hat to her.”
“Well, Harry,” Warner said. “This is confidential, extremely confidential, but Special Agent Hagen is acting somewhat erratically. She’s supposed to be home on leave here in Washington, DC, but obviously she’s not. She’s, well... She’s sick, Harry. Mentally unbalanced. We think she’s suffering from PTSD from the shooting.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Wheaton said. “She seemed absolutely fine. I spoke to her not five minutes ago. What the hell is going on?”
“It’s bad, Harry. Trust me. A family member contacted us yesterday. He said Hagen drove over to his house out of the blue and that she was acting very strangely. She told him she wanted him to have her apartment and car if anything were to happen to her. He asked her what the hell was she talking about and she took off. We spoke to a Bureau psychologist, Harry. They think Hagen’s risk of suicide couldn’t be at a more critical level.”
“This is a shock,” Wheaton said. “Agent Hagen was just in here. She said she had to receive some classified information. She’s in our SCIF right now.”
The marker dropped from Warner’s hand.
In the SCIF! Warner thought.
That was it! The NSA files. Hagen was going through Echelon. Going through the files for something. And in the damn SCIF!
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“Some classified information?” Dawn Warner finally spat out.
“Yes. I mean, I guess. That’s what she said. But that isn’t true? She’s mentally unstable?”
Warner closed her eyes. They needed to grab her. They were right outside. They needed to grab her right now.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s worse than we thought. Harry, listen. Do you know if she’s armed?”
“I don’t, but I would assume so.”
“And she’s still in there? I mean, she didn’t leave the SCIF, did she?”
“No, she didn’t leave. It’s right around the corner near my office and I would have noticed. Let me ask my secretary. Hold on.”
Please, Warner prayed as they waited.
“No,” Harry said. “My secretary says she’s still in there.”
Thank you, Warner said to herself, pumping her fist.
“What do you want me to do? Do you want me to get some agents and get her out of there?” Harry said.
“No, Harry. She’s armed. Don’t go near her. When she comes out, just act like everything is fine. Just stall her and keep her in the building. I’m actually getting on the horn right now with the Bureau doctor. We already called the nearest military hospital. They have a team on the way.
“They have people for this, Harry. Specialists. Kit needs to be hospitalized but we need to do this delicately. Let the professionals handle it.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Wheaton said. “This is just...”
“Tragic. Exactly, Harry. But it’s going to be fine. Just keep your personnel away from her and give the specialists I send in as much latitude as they need. They’ll be arriving in the lobby forthwith.”
71
The thumb drive with all the photographs on it was tucked in beneath the plastic of Kit’s temporary ID pass as she came out of the SCIF room into the corridor of the federal building’s fourteenth floor.
She held her breath. The hall was empty. Silent. She let her breath out slowly, then looked up at the black plastic bubble camera above her.
She stood for a moment, rooted there. Wondering who was watching her, wondering if they knew, wondering how much time she had.
Move! she thought.
She went left down the hall through the dead fluorescent lighting. She suddenly noticed all the grids everywhere. The grid of industrial carpet tiles. The grid of acoustic ceiling tiles.
It made her feel like she was actually inside a computer. Like she’d become a rebel data point that was now trying to escape the boxes of a malevolent spreadsheet.
She stopped again for a moment when she turned the corner. She could see the elevator way down at the other end of the hallway. Between her and it were several office doors on each side. One of them on the right was the SAC’s office, she knew.
Her stomach felt like liquid as she stared at it. The bump of her heart was like a hammer tapping slowly against the inside of her chest.
Doesn’t matter, she thought. Move!
She swallowed dryly and started moving for the elevator. She’d taken three steps when she saw the door for a stairwell on her left.
She stopped and glanced at the elevator again.
Then she stepped back and went left into the stairwell, taking out her phone as she entered through the door.
The buzz of her calling Gannon mixed with the clop of her heels on the descending concrete. The metal stair railing brushing her elbow felt cool as she came down as fast as she could.
“Come on, come on, Mike. Pick up!” she said.
“What’s up?” Gannon said.
It was loud where he was. It sounded like he was on foot maybe.
“I have it. I got it, Mike. I’m coming out.”
“Kit, what’s wrong? You sound panicked,” Gannon said.
“I am panicked,” she said truthfully. “I’ll tell you why when I get out of here. It’s bailout time. I need to get out of here now.”
“Is someone after you? You need to be careful. There’s—”
Then Kit stopped in her tracks as the stairwell door on the landing below her blasted open.
72
Men were there.
Ten steps below, two men, two strong-looking men, stood there in EMT uniforms looking up at her. Kit stood frozen, staring back at them with her mouth agape.
A radio suddenly went off, the tinny squawk loud off the concrete walls.
“We got her,” the shorter of the two men said with a wild-eyed grin as he lunged onto the stairs and headed up.
Kit’s phone slipped from her hand and clatte
red off down the stairs as she backpedaled. She actually came out of one of her shoes as she turned and started back up.
This can’t be happening, she thought as she struggled up the stairs. Not again. Please, not again.
She’d made the top of the landing, dizzy and shaking, when the man grabbed her ankle and yanked her feet out from underneath her. Black stars of pain flashed in her vision as her bad shoulder smacked into the hard landing.
As the evil medic hovered over her, she screamed as she swung with her good hand for the man’s balls with everything she had.
But at the last second, he shifted his hip gracefully and it felt like her pinkie broke as her fist smashed his thick thigh instead.
“Scrappy, huh? I like scrappy. Tomboys are my favorite,” he said in his New York accent.
Then he open-palm slapped her across the face hard enough to make her nose bleed.
She fell over on her side, her face on fire, dazed. She scraped her fingertips on the rough concrete floor. One of her nails snapped as she scrabbled with her free hand to get away.
“Help, Mike!” she screamed when she looked down the stairs and saw her phone at the bottom.
“Help! They got me! They got me! Two men. EMT uniforms!” she screamed.
The short man laughed as he threw a hard forearm up under her jaw. Terror pulsed through her like live voltage as there was a pinch on her backside. He was sticking her with something, she saw as she glanced down.
No!
“Help me, Mike! They’re drugging me! Help!” she yelled again.
“On second thought, Mikey, don’t worry. We got her,” the short brute called out loudly as he pressed the plunger.
Kit felt the liquid going into her, hot in her veins.
“False alarm, Mikey. We’ll take it from here,” Kit heard the man say with a cackling laugh as the lights began to dim.
73
Maniscalco tore away the blister pack tin foil with his teeth, then popped another Nicorette into his mouth as the federal building’s steel garage door in front of him began to clank upward.
“Boy, oh, boy, do we got her, Boss,” he said into his phone. “Yeah, uh-huh, she had a thumb drive on her. Yep. Davies got it, and she’s wrapped up in the back on the stretcher with a bow. No. No one said shit to us. The lobby security guy even held the door for us, the helpful dope. We’re coming out now.”
The shutter had just stopped its clatter, and he was tucking the phone into the pocket of his fake EMT jacket, when he heard it.
From the street came a sound. A loud sound, a kind of industrial bellowing horn. Maniscalco squinted, listening. It almost sounded like a fire truck but not exactly.
The horn sound stopped as he pulled up the ramp, but as he paused at the ramp’s apron before the street, he heard it start up again.
It was nearer and louder now. Definitely some kind of horn rapidly gaining in volume somewhere to his left.
The truck appeared at the corner just as Maniscalco flicked the transmission to Drive. It was a large Mack-style construction vehicle, and horns from other vehicles blared along with it as it blew the light and swung with a dangerous wobble the wrong way down the narrow one-way Champa Street.
“What in the hell?” Maniscalco said, swallowing his gum.
The truck growled again and a billowing cloud of exhaust from its cab stack rose into the air behind it as it just missed hitting a Prius head-on.
Maniscalco had just put it together that there was one big-ass problem and was scrambling to put the ambulance into Reverse when the speeding truck struck the high curb ten feet to the left of the ambulance.
“Shit!” Maniscalco screamed.
Then the massive gray grill of the sixty-five-thousand-pound fully loaded cement truck embedded the driver’s door into his sternum.
Sailing sideways and puking blood in the roar and diesel stink, Maniscalco was still alive to watch the guard in the booth beside the ramp wisely dive out its front door a split second before the crushed metal missile of the shrieking T-boned ambulance slammed the booth off its foundation.
Then the booth and Maniscalco’s skull exploded into splinters as the cement truck plowed everything into the cold stone base of the federal building with a sound like a bomb.
74
The ba-booming sound of the wreck was still reverberating through Gannon’s own skull as he unclipped his seat belt, swung open the smoking cement truck’s cab door and jumped down to the rubble-strewn sidewalk.
Kit’s backup Glock was in his just-in-case pack, and he reached back and put it in his hand as he walked into the street and back alongside the truck through the cloud of dust.
The mixer was still spinning, and as he arrived on the other side of it, he stopped for a moment, coughing into his fist, as he surveyed the wreckage.
The cab of the ambulance was lost entirely from view under the rubble of the building, but the rear of it was still accessible. One of its bright orange rear doors had actually swung open in the crash, and Gannon hurried over and peeked in over the barrel of the Glock.
Over the mess of spilled-out cabinets and broken glass, beyond a pair of overturned oxygen canisters, he saw Kit on the emergency medical stretcher with her eyes closed.
On the pebbled steel floor almost beneath the stretcher lay a thick-necked white guy facedown in a pool of blood. He was strapping some kind of machine gun over his shoulder.
Gannon jumped up and in and grabbed the gun. Then he lunged farther in over the stretcher and checked Kit’s pulse at her neck.
“Kit! Kit! You okay?” he said.
There was no response but her heartbeat and breathing seemed fine. He scanned for head injuries. Though the stretcher was half knocked over, she’d been belted in with three tight straps so she actually seemed to have weathered the crash pretty well, all things considered.
At first, he thought to unstrap Kit from the gurney, but then thought again. Instead, he kicked the fallen debris out of the way, yanked the stretcher loose and slid it out onto the street.
When he was done, Gannon took a quick look at the gun. As he lifted it, he saw it was a Heckler & Koch G36 short-barrel carbine.
He popped out its magazine. It was filled to the brim with 5.56 NATO bottleneck full metal jackets. He slapped it back in and when he looked back into the ambulance, he saw that the fake EMT had a bag with two more mags of 5.56.
Gannon hopped back inside and took those as well before he began rifling through the guy’s pockets.
“Bingo,” he said as he found Kit’s thumb drive in the man’s back left pocket beside his wallet.
He was squaring the guy’s fake EMT ball cap on his own head when he heard the hissing.
He looked down and saw the tactical hands-free headset radio rig the fallen man was wearing, and he stripped it off and traced the cord down to the push-to-talk unit and then down another radio cord to the Motorola radio on his belt.
Gannon quickly re-clipped the rig onto himself as he hopped back down onto the sidewalk.
Then he grabbed the bottom of Kit’s stretcher bed, and they were rolling north out in the street beside the crash through the dust, giving the truck’s still rotating mixing drum a wide berth as they passed.
75
The tires on the Mercedes Sprinter cargo van squealed as Westergaard booted the gas, reversing it up the parking garage’s ramp. He listened patiently to the panicked report from Patchell and Davenport of the startling events taking place down on Champa Street.
“Well, we’ll just have to deal with it, gentlemen,” he said calmly into his own hands-free microphone as the Mercedes roared out onto the open top level of the garage, still in Reverse.
“Wait and watch on the corner of 20th there. Yes, on the corner. Look sharp now. You’re closest. My bet is he’ll be coming out to you.”
This level of the park
ing garage was almost completely empty. Westergaard rocketed backwards toward the northeast corner, shrieked to a stop, put it in Park and ripped open the little low door in the cab behind him to the van’s rear.
In the back was a prone shooting platform that he had designed himself. It had a comfortable gym-mat-like padded surface and hydraulic lifts worked by a joystick controller to raise and tilt the platform into whatever position that was needed.
His Accuracy International AW, the most accurate sniper rifle on earth, was already seated on a bench rest at the back of the platform, aimed out the rear door.
Westergaard climbed in, slammed the cab door shut behind him, lay down onto the platform beside his gun, took the joystick and buzzed it up and up.
He took a few seconds lowering only the front of the platform just right so he could get a nice downward angle to either his left or right. As he did this, he put his eye off and on the Bender scope to get things as comfortable as possible.
He had a clear open firing lane north down Stout Street now. To his left was the side of the huge federal building, and past it, down Stout across the street, there was an open municipal parking lot. Davenport and Patchell had the north and west corners covered. If the targets came south or east, they were dead meat.
When Westergaard was done, he lifted the already loaded magazine beside the rifle and took out the top round of .338.
The Lapua Magnum round was cold against his fingertips and then cold against his lips as he kissed the copper jacket of it.
He clicked the .338 into the chamber, closed the bolt and snapped in the magazine.
Then Westergaard zipped down the van’s wide tinted rear window with a flick of the joystick and looked down the street beside the federal building, breathing calmly to center himself as he waited and watched.
76
Gannon walked out into the street, pushing Kit before him north up Champa.
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