But he did not disconnect. I waited through several heavy seconds. This time I knew the sound I heard was a sob. Toys said, “If you succeed, Ledger … do me one more favor.”
“If I can.”
“If you save all the lives that are on the line … see if you can spare a little pity. Go to church and light a candle.”
“For Gault?”
“No,” he said. “For my soul.”
Chapter Sixty
Over Pennsylvania Airspace
December 19, 7:46 P.M. EST
I stared at my cell phone for a full minute.
“God Almighty,” I said aloud. Ghost heard the tone of my voice and came over to me and licked my face, looking into my eyes to see if the pack was in some kind of trouble. It surely, surely was.
And yet …
Toys.
It happens that way more often than people think. Cops spend 90 percent of a case gathering evidence, analyzing it, doing interviews, running computer searches, and building a profile of the possible culprit, and then they get a phone call from out of left field that tells them who, what, when, and where. Ten times more criminal cases have been solved by anonymous tipsters, people hoping for rewards or confidential informants.
Who in hell would ever expect Toys to be mine? Or to be the one who hammered a crack into the hardest case the DMS ever tackled.
I was sweating badly and I dragged a forearm across my eyes.
They are everywhere … . Even some of the people you work with and some of the people you’re going to try and rescue.
I looked around the cabin of the Chinook and inside my head the Warrior was drawing his knife and squinting through the gloom.
Who did I trust? I’d been away for months, and Santoro had more than shown that he could turn ordinary and trustworthy people into killers.
I thumbed open my sports coat. The handle of the Beretta was comfortably close.
Rudy?
He lay in a narcotic doze while Circe sat beside him, tapping away on her laptop. If Rudy was under Santoro’s thumb, I think I’d lose it. Rudy was my best friend. Closer to me than my own brother. He was the only person on earth I trusted completely. No … no, it couldn’t be Rudy.
Circe?
Who was she really? She worked for Hugo Vox at Terror Town. She was in position to know the security secrets of a lot of crucial operations, and that included probably access to security information on facilities like the London Hospital, Fair Isle, maybe even Area 51. After all, Church and Vox both trusted her. An unscrupulous person could exploit that trust. Sure, she looked beautiful and innocent and forthright, but she could also be a good actress. I’d met spies and moles before. They aren’t picked for that kind of work if you could just look at them and say, Yep, that there’s a spy.
And she was pretty handy with a gun. On the other hand, she didn’t pop a cap in my favorite head, so props for showing good judgment. Unless that was part of a plan to win my confidence and insinuate herself into the DMS.
Across the cabin, Circe brushed dark curls from her face; then she looked at Rudy and placed a hand very tenderly on his chest and kept it there for almost a minute while he slept. I didn’t want it to be her.
A few feet away, Top and Bunny were seated side by side. Bunny was dozing; Top was strip-cleaning his M4. He caught me looking and gave me a slow nod. I nodded back.
Bunny and Top had been with me since I joined Echo Team. We’d saved each other’s lives a dozen times over. They were brothers to me.
On the other hand, Bunny had four sisters and lots of nieces and nephews. He had parents. That gave the Kings a lot of dials they could turn. Same with Top. His daughter, Monique, lost both her legs in Baghdad two Christmases ago. A Taliban mine blew up under her Bradley. Top was divorced; his ex-wife was a nurse. I knew Top still cared for her, maybe even still loved her, and he certainly loved his daughter. If Santoro threatened them, especially Top’s wheelchair-bound daughter, was there anything he wouldn’t do to protect them?
That was a hard call. I’d like to think that both men would come to me, or to Church, with it. Of course … I’d been away, out of touch and out of reach.
What would I do if one of them had been turned by the Kings?
I’d try to save them if I could. Them and theirs. And if I couldn’t? If they came at me? Shit. I knew what I would do, and I could hear the Warrior grunt his dark approval.
That left Khalid, DeeDee, and John Smith. I knew them, but I didn’t really know them. We had less history. Smith was a closed book that nobody could read. Maybe Church, maybe Rudy. No one else.
DeeDee? She had no family, no close friends. If she was a rotten apple, it would be more likely in the role of a spy rather than a coerced victim.
Khalid? The doctor and scholar who was also a first-class shooter. I liked him and I knew that I trusted him. But it occurred to me that I didn’t know much about his family. He had a brother here in the States, but the rest of his family lived in the Middle East. Iran, Egypt, and some in Saudi Arabia.
I realized that I was not adding Church to my list. If he was a bad guy, then we were all totally fucked. I’m pretty dangerous, but he scares me. He scares everyone. You simply cannot imagine him losing a fight, and I doubt he ever has. He’s brilliant, cold, vicious, detail oriented, and largely a mystery. If it came down to a fight between us, I didn’t like my odds.
I flipped open my phone and called him. He picked up on the third ring. I told him everything Toys had said.
Church listened without comment and the silence continued after I was done.
Finally, he said, “What’s your ETA?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“Talk to no one about this,” he said. “No one.”
I began to ask him a question, but Church hung up on me.
I settled back against the wall, my jacket open and the butt of my Beretta within easy reach, and stared into the middle distance all the way to Brooklyn.
Chapter Sixty-one
The Hangar
Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn
December 19, 7:57 P.M. EST
Mr. Church’s phone rang as he entered his office. He looked at the screen display. He frowned and let it ring twice more before he flipped it open.
“Deacon? You there?” said the gruff voice. “You got a minute?”
“Half a minute, Hugo. What do you need?”
“I’ve been hearing some scary stuff. Is Circe okay?”
“You heard about Starbucks? Yes, she wasn’t hurt.”
“Did I hear right that she popped someone?”
“Yes.”
“Her first time. Poor kid. I was kind of hoping she’d skip that milestone.”
“Life’s hard for a lot of people, Hugo.”
“I know … . I heard about Marty, too.”
Church said nothing.
“He deserved better than getting gunned down like a dog,” Vox continued. “Ledger’s a lucky bastard.”
“He might disagree. People keep trying to kill him.”
“He keeps not getting killed, though, Deac’. From what I heard about Starbucks, he’s the luckiest son of a bitch on two legs.”
Church said nothing.
“Did Ledger get any useful intel from the surviving shooter?”
“No,” said Church. “The man is critically wounded and we don’t expect him to recover. It’s unlikely we’ll get anything out of him.”
There was a pause at the other end. “Really? I heard that he was talking and—”
“You’ve been misinformed, Hugo. We’re getting nowhere with this. Now, I hate to break this off, but I have a meeting. I’ll be in touch when I have something fresh.”
Mr. Church disconnected and placed his phone on the desk. He walked around and sat in the leather chair. There was an open pack of vanilla wafers in the top drawer. He removed them, selected a cookie, and ate it slowly while staring at the silent phone.
Chapter Sixty-two
The Hangar
Floyd Bennett Field, Brooklyn
December 19, 8:19 P.M. EST
We came in low past the Gil Hodges Bridge and landed in a fenced-off compound near the Rockaway Inlet, just outside of Hangar Row in Floyd Bennett Field. There were six black unmarked DMS choppers lined up. Two AH-64D Apache Longbows, a monster of a Chinook like the one we were in, and three UH-60 Black Hawks. There were rows of Humvees and TacVs. Everywhere we looked there were armed guards. Everyone looked tense.
DeeDee and John Smith hadn’t arrived with Black Bess, but knowing the way DeeDee drove, they wouldn’t be far behind.
Sgt. Gus Dietrich met us on the helipad. He held out a hand. “Glad to see you boys in one piece. Well, mostly. Sorry to hear about Rudy taking a hit.”
“Could have been worse,” said Bunny.
“It could always be worse,” agreed Dietrich.
Nurses and orderlies arrived with two-wheeled gurneys. Circe O’Tree took charge of the wounded as if it was her right, and the nurses did not argue the point. I found that odd but didn’t comment on it.
The prisoner was hustled off with a pair of armed agents flanking his gurney. If he thought his day had been crappy so far, he was on his way to see Mr. Church, so it wasn’t like things were going to be sunshine and puppies.
Dietrich led Echo Team and me through the main entrance.
This was the first time I had visited the headquarters of the Department of Military Sciences. It was at least twice the size of the Baltimore Warehouse, which was pretty big in its own right, and even bigger than Department Zero, the massive office in L.A. It housed over six hundred scientists, soldiers, and support staff.
“Mr. Church landed ten minutes ago,” Dietrich said as he punched the code to open a side door. “Top, why don’t you take your team in for some chow? Ask anyone and they’ll show you where it is.”
Top nodded and peeled off with the others to follow the gurneys. Dietrich turned back to me. “The Big Guy’s expecting you.”
Dietrich led me into the Hangar’s operations command center. Ghost trotted along at my heels, eyes wide, nose and ears gathering data. The massive main room was circled with glass-enclosed labs and workrooms, and overhead was a latticework of steel walkways. There were more armed guards inside and a lot of people moving like busy ants in a nest. There were tiers of stainless-steel catwalks and elevated computer stations. Metal gleamed; colored lights flashed. It was Christmas in Bill Gates’s head.
“Wow,” I said. “Nice to see my tax dollars at work.”
I saw Church, his head bowed in conversation with a short black woman with a round face, granny glasses halfway down her nose, and long dreadlocks. The person he was talking too made me do a double take. I tapped Dietrich on the shoulder.
“Okay … why is Whoopi Goldberg here and why is she talking with Mr. Church?”
Dietrich laughed and didn’t reply. I felt like I was going crazy. The woman looked exactly like the actress. She wore a blouse with an orange Sudanese print, a necklace of chunky colored stones, and rings on every finger except her trigger finger. She smiled as we approached, but there was no trace of humor in the polished black ice of her eyes.
Church beckoned us closer.
“Captain Ledger,” he said, “I want you to meet the DMS Chief of Operations—Aunt Sallie.”
I was convinced that this was some kind of bizarre practical joke. “Um … hello?” I said, but as I extended my hand the woman spoke and the illusion was shattered as if she’d struck glass with a hammer.
“Feel free to wipe that shit-eating grin off your face, Captain,” she said in an accent that was pure back-alley Brooklyn. “I’m not her, so let’s just bury that nonsense right now.”
I am seldom at a loss for words, but the best I could manage was a mumbled, “Ma’am,” as I took her hand. She had a grip like a vise and she gave me one hard pump while she looked me up and down. Her gaze had the same invasive and impersonal precision as an X-ray.
Ghost sniffed her and then quickly backed up several paces and lay down.
Aunt Sallie studied me. “So, you’re the hotshot shooter from Baltimore.”
“I’ll have to put that on my business card.”
“The one who let Marty Hanler get killed.”
I did a slow three-count before I trusted my voice to reply.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”
“Are we going to have to make sure you have full-squad backup every time something gets a little rough?”
“Feel free to kiss my ass,” I said pleasantly.
“You got your full and complete share of mouth, don’t you?”
Beside me I heard Dietrich murmur, “Oh boy.”
Aunt Sallie turned to Church. “Give us a minute?”
Without waiting for a reply, she took me by the elbow and led me twenty paces away. The placement of her fingers on the nerve clusters was very precise. It hurt and she knew it hurt, but I didn’t let so much as a flicker show on my face. She knew that, too.
When we were out of earshot she said, “Okay, Ledger, here’s the deal. Marty Hanler was a good friend of Church’s, and more important, he was a good friend of mine. We’d been through fire together. You let someone put him on their trophy wall, and that means you lost all points on my scorecard. Mr. Church may think you piss rainbows and shit little gold coins, but as far as I’m concerned you’re a reckless field agent and a psychological basket of worms.”
“We were ambushed by ten shooters with automatic weapons in a professional cross-fire attack. Let’s see you do better.”
“I have done better, and even at my age I can run your ass all over a live-fire combat range.”
“Do you want to blame me for the four thousand dead at the London just because I was in England? How about Hurricane Katrina? I went to Mardi Gras once. Do I look good for that?”
“Don’t try to be smart, Ledger; you don’t have the tools for it.”
“You’re a charming lady. So happy to make your acquaintance.”
She let that pass. “Before Church hired you, all you did was some penny ante police bullshit and an Army tour during which all you did was jerk off. Before the DMS you had zero field time.”
“And since then, ma’am, I—”
“Call me Aunt Sallie or Auntie,” she snapped. “Call me ma’am again and I’ll kneecap you. Don’t think that’s a joke.”
“Whatever. If I’m supposed to be impressed by all this, I’m not. You don’t like how I handle things? Too fucking bad. Church scouted me, so if you have any problems with my qualifications then you can take ’em and shove ’em where the sun don’t shine. But let’s be real clear on one point, Auntie: I don’t give a rat’s hairy ass what you think of me. Honestly. I really don’t. I don’t know you well enough to dislike you, but I could put some effort into that.”
“Nice speech. Here’s the bottom line: I read your psych profiles and I think you’re a danger to our cause. Sure, you racked up some wins, but a lot of good people seem to die around you, and that marks you with a permanent red flag in my book.”
“You finished?”
“For now.”
“Fuck you,” I said.
She smiled, then turned and walked back to Church and the others. I took a breath and followed.
“You two kiss and make up?” Church asked.
“Sure. I promised him a blow job later if he buys me dinner.”
“Looking forward to it,” I said.
Church said nothing. He carefully unwrapped a stick of gum and put it in his mouth, then folded the silver wrapper into a neat little square. We all watched him do it and I saw Dietrich’s eyes flick from Church, to Aunt Sallie, then to me, and then he stared past me into the middle distance. He was having a very hard time keeping a straight face.
Finally Church said, “Captain Ledger, I would like you, Dr. O’Tree, Dr. Hu, and Aunt Sallie to join me for a brainstorming session. Let’s convene in fifteen minutes. It’s been a lo
ng, bad day for everyone, but we need to be sharp for this.”
Auntie nodded and headed off to set things up, throwing me a short and pointedly dismissive look as she went.
Dietrich turned to follow, but I leaned in to whisper to him.
“Is she always like this?”
“Nah, you caught her on a good day. She’s usually pretty cranky.”
Church said, “Captain, you might use that time to clean up.”
I nodded. My clothes were dark with dried blood and I still hadn’t looked at the damage to my thigh, which hurt like a son of a bitch. I turned to go, but Church touched my arm.
“Hold on,” he said quietly. We walked out of earshot of the rest of the staff. After the reaming from Auntie I thought I was going to get fried by him, too, but instead he offered his hand. “You did good work today, Captain.”
“Doesn’t feel like it,” I said honestly.
“Anyone can be ambushed. It’s the nature of war.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“No,” he agreed. He adjusted his glasses. “However, if the call you received is good intel then it’s probably a game changer.”
“You know, Boss,” I said, “I listened to the tapes of your conversation with Deep Throat, and Toys isn’t the guy who has been calling you.”
“Same anti-trace technology, though.”
“Yeah, which brings up its own set of questions. If Toys and Gault are part of the Kings organization, then can we continue to believe that Deep Throat is not also part of the Kings?”
Church nodded. “I’ve been giving that considerable thought, Captain, and I tend to agree with you. Either he’s a mole who shares his phone with another mole or we’re not seeing a conflict between organizations. I think this is an internal matter.”
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