by Brad Thor
“Roger that,” he replied.
After letting two cars pass, McGee pulled into the street and began tailing the black Town Car.
It was the only move they could make at this point; the only move that Phil Durkin wouldn’t see coming.
The comparison of the espionage world to chess was quite apt, except that to be the best, your mind had to be trained to see the board in all three dimensions. Of all the former teammates Ryan could have reached out to, Florentino was the most obvious. They had not only anticipated that she would do it, they had been ready for her. Hindsight was always twenty-twenty and she and McGee both now realized what a mistake it had been.
For his part, though, McGee didn’t seem to have fully learned the lesson. He wanted to go after another team member, this time being “more careful.” As far as Ryan was concerned, being “more careful” was not a clever enough plan. They needed to be more cunning. There was no use trying to grab another gazelle from the back of the herd if there was a predator hiding in the bushes waiting to spring once you made your move.
Ryan’s plan was to wait until the predator had left the safety of the bushes and then spring her own trap. Was the man driving the Town Car their predator? She couldn’t be one hundred percent sure yet, but her gut told her that they were right on the money, and her gut was seldom, if ever, wrong.
As they followed him, the driver conducted multiple SDRs to ascertain if he had anyone on his tail.
“This guy appears to have had a little bit of training,” said McGee.
“Which means we were right to follow him,” Ryan replied. “Whatever you do, don’t lose him.”
They came close to doing just that, three times. The driver of the Town Car was good, but McGee and Ryan were better.
He led them to a neighborhood alive with nightlife in the northwest part of the city, known as Adams Morgan. After circling the block, he parked illegally on Eighteenth Street near a twenty-four-hour restaurant called “the DINER” and left his vehicle with its flashers on.
“What’s he up to now?” McGee asked as he eased the Mustang into a no-parking zone at the end of the block. “He can’t be here for the coffee.”
Ryan turned in her seat and watched out the rear window. “Why not?”
“Because I’ve eaten here before. The coffee’s good, but it’s not worth driving halfway across town and risking a parking ticket over.”
By her count, they had passed at least three places where the driver could have gotten coffee and been able to legally park. “Maybe he’s getting something to eat.”
“Maybe. Or maybe there’s another reason he left his surveillance post and had to hightail it over here.”
A few minutes later, the man reemerged with a Styrofoam cup and climbed back in his Town Car.
“I call bullshit,” said McGee.
“You can call it whatever you want,” Ryan stated, as she continued to watch him, “but get ready because he’s going to pull a U-turn.”
“Where’s he going now?” he asked as he checked the approaching traffic and tried to figure out how he was going to execute the same maneuver without the driver of the Town Car seeing him.
“I don’t know, but something tells me he didn’t know either until he went into that diner.”
* * *
Samuel placed his hot tea in a cup holder before gauging the traffic and executing his U-turn. No sooner had he done so than his cell phone rang.
“Samuel speaking,” he said after activating the call.
“You retrieved the envelope?” the voice on the other side asked.
“I did.”
“You read the contents?”
“I did.”
“I understand there are personal reasons why this assignment could be problematic,” the voice said. “But you are not going to allow any personal reasons to make this assignment problematic. Is that correct?”
“That is correct,” replied Samuel. He had removed the envelope from its hiding place in the bathroom, read, and then memorized its contents. All of it was printed on a water-soluble paper, which he destroyed by dropping it in a toilet and flushing.
The target was indeed known to him. They had a history together. But that history would not stop him from carrying out his assignment. His job was to act, not to ask questions. This would be like any other assignment. A job was just that, a job.
Once the call was finished, he placed his cell phone down on the seat and picked back up his tea. Peeling back the plastic lid, he blew into the cup and gauged the temperature by how much steam rose from the surface. It was much too hot to drink now, but by the time he got to Bill Wise’s house, it should be just about perfect.
CHAPTER 45
Samuel did an inconspicuous drive-by of Bill Wise’s property. It was an older building that appeared to have been a warehouse at some point. This was both good and bad.
It was good in that Wise didn’t have neighbors right on top of him that would see or hear things, but it was bad in that commercial buildings presented their own special challenges for surreptitious entry.
Whenever possible, Samuel liked to surveil his own targets. Tonight, though, this wasn’t possible. The job needed to be taken care of right away.
The building had a front entrance, a side roll-up garage door, and an alley entrance. The alley looked like it was going to be his best bet. Getting in wouldn’t be a problem, as long as Wise cooperated.
Samuel noted that Wise had a security system. That was going to need to be turned off. He felt confident he could get the man to do that for him. With a plan beginning to form in his mind, he set off in search of the items he would need to accomplish his mission. Forty-five minutes later, everything was ready to launch.
* * *
When the weather was nice, Bill Wise liked to sleep with his skylights vented. Staggered sensors were one of the easiest and smartest inventions alarm companies had ever come up with. The breeze was free to come in, but if anyone tried to raise the skylight beyond where it was right now, the alarm immediately sounded.
Living in the city, he’d learned to sleep through a lot. Helicopters, emergency vehicles, rap music thumping out of passing cars, none of it bothered him. He knew physiologically that all of those sound waves were penetrating his ear canals. For its part, his brain didn’t process any of those things as a threat, and therefore allowed him to continue sleeping. The sound of a breaking bottle right outside, though, was something different.
While you could walk down any street on any given day and see shards of broken glass, it was rare for most people to ever hear bottles being broken. That sound normally meant alcohol had been consumed in excess. It also meant that violence to persons or property might be imminent. Wise’s brain passed along the message: Bottle broken. Outside. Close.
He went from being fully asleep to fully awake in a fraction of a second. As he lay in bed, eyes open, he wasn’t waiting for confirmation. He knew what he had heard. He was attempting to gather additional information. Had the bottle been thrown out of a car? Had it come from the front of the building, or in the alley? Had the person or persons moved on?
Almost instantly, he had his answer as another bottle broke and voices were raised. There was at least one adult male, in front, and he was arguing with someone else. Once the neighborhood was fully gentrified and real estate prices went even higher, Wise was going to make a fortune from selling his property. Until then, he had to put up with crap like this.
Grabbing the remote, he flipped on his TV and clicked over to his security camera feeds. He was greeted by the sight of two local crackheads, one male and one female, engaged in urban couple’s counseling only a few feet in front of his building. He watched as the woman reached into the plastic bag at her feet, pulled out a third bottle, and launched it at the man. As it sailed past its intended target and shattered against the front door, Wise had had enough. It was time for the crackheads to pack it in and move their party someplace else.
; He quickly pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and slipped his large feet into a pair of boots. After tucking the Beretta from the nightstand in his waistband, he grabbed his SureFire flashlight and headed for the front door.
From a closet off the reception area, he retrieved an aluminum baseball bat and deactivated the alarm system. He left the lights off so as not to silhouette himself when he opened the front door. By the time he got it unlocked, two more bottles had smashed against the front of the building and Bill Wise was fit to be tied.
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” he roared, as he threw the door open and stepped outside.
“This ain’t none of your damn business!” the woman yelled as she fished in her bag for another bottle.
“Like hell it isn’t. There’s broken glass all over my fucking property.”
“She’s crazy, man,” the male crackhead replied as he tried to hide behind Wise.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Wise replied, extending the bat like a traffic control arm at a border crossing. “You stay right in front of me where I can keep my eye on you.”
“You don’t want to mind your own business?” the woman challenged. “Then you gonna get some pain, too!”
Wise thought about pulling his Beretta, but instead whipped out his SureFire and aimed the bright beam in the woman’s eyes. “Put that bottle down right now,” he ordered.
“Fuck you!”
“Put it down, or you’re both going to jail. Do it now.”
“You heard the man,” the male crackhead said. “Put the damn bottle down.”
“You zip it,” Wise commanded. “I’m the one giving orders.”
“Whatever you say.”
“Last chance,” Wise said to the woman. “Put the bottle down, right now.”
Slowly, the woman lowered the bottle and set it on the ground. Wise released the tailcap switch on his flashlight and the beam extinguished.
“Man, I can’t see shit now. I oughtta sue your ass for giving me blindness,” she spat.
“Yeah, I gave you blindness,” Wise replied. “And the next thing I’m going to give you is a taste of old school. I’m getting a broom and a dustpan and then you two are going to sweep up all of this glass.”
“I ain’t sweeping up shit.”
“You bet your ass you’re sweeping, honey,” Wise replied. “If you don’t, I’m having you two arrested. I know you live in the neighborhood and I’m guessing several of my cop friends know who you are. The choice is up to you.”
The woman relented. She exhaled a drawn-out and dejected “Shit.”
Wise shook his head. Careful not to turn his back on the pair, he retreated inside for a broom, a dustpan, and a small garbage can. Stepping outside, he half expected them to be gone, but they were still there and had even begun to argue again.
“Pipe down,” he barked. “You two lovebirds can coo all you want once this is all cleaned up and you’ve flown off someplace else.”
As they were going to be cleaning up around his entrance, the last thing Wise wanted was for them to be able to have a clear look inside. Not that his foyer area was all that fancy, but the less these two pillars of the community knew about his domicile, the better, and so he closed the door behind him.
Wise stood on the sidewalk and watched. It was pathetic. You’d have thought neither had ever handled a broom or a dustpan before. They were completely useless. He let it go on for about five minutes before finally throwing in the towel. They were so drug- or alcohol-addled that they could barely stand up straight, much less bend over to sweep and pick up broken glass. At some point, one of them was going to get hurt and that wasn’t something he wanted.
“That’s enough,” he said, taking the broom and dustpan away from them. “Go on. Get out of here. Get lost.”
Wise watched as they looked at each other, then looked at him and began to walk away. The woman stopped to pick up her plastic bag until Wise shook his head and clucked his tongue. It was bad enough they had woken him up. The least he could do was make sure they didn’t roust anyone else in the neighborhood.
The one-man community watch strikes again. He half laughed and half sighed as he picked up the woman’s bag, dropped it in the trash can, and then made quick work of the broken glass.
He had no idea whether being forced to clean up some of the mess would have any impact on the pair. It likely wouldn’t, but Wise felt he had done the right thing. Too many people didn’t stand up for what was right anymore.
Picking up the trash can, he stepped back inside and set it down along with the broom, the bat, and the dustpan.
He sensed the man’s presence just before the figure stepped from the darkness and with his gun pointed right at him said, “Good evening, Dr. Wise.”
Wise knew better than to go for his Beretta. He’d be dead before he could pull it from his waistband. Instead he calmly and politely replied, “It’s good to see you again, Samuel.”
CHAPTER 46
“All the way down to my shorts? Seriously?” Wise asked after he had carefully, albeit reluctantly, already surrendered his firearm, as well as his flashlight.
“Please see it as a token of my respect,” Samuel replied as he stood still partially concealed and a safe distance away.
“If you intend to show me proper respect, Samuel, why don’t you tell me why you are here.”
“We’ll have plenty of time to talk, Dr. Wise. Right now, I’d appreciate your cooperation.”
Wise did as his captor asked. After removing his boots, jeans, and T-shirt, he did a 360-degree turn for Samuel with his hands above his head. The hit man then had him face away from him, sweep his arms behind him like a sandpiper with his palms up. Samuel told him to look up at the ceiling as he bent over at the waist. He instructed him to spread his legs so far apart that Wise was forced up onto the balls of his feet and having trouble keeping his balance. That was when Samuel struck.
The first handcuff was on him so fast and was converted into a steel wristlock so quickly, that even if Wise had wanted to react, he couldn’t have. The pain was exquisite. Samuel delivered so much precise and practiced pressure that Wise’s knees simply buckled and he dropped to the ground. Even the most veteran of street cops would have been blown away with how rapidly Samuel had subdued his prisoner and applied the handcuffs.
Wise was told which knee to bend and then on the count of three, used momentum to bring him back up to standing. An amateur would have simply grabbed him by the chain of the cuffs and lifted, risking tearing the prisoner’s shoulders out. Samuel was no amateur.
He took great care in guiding Wise back to the building’s living area. He knew all too well that a man like Wise would have all sorts of weapons hidden all around. Near the machinist’s bay where Wise worked on his cars and motorcycles, Samuel had placed a chair. He asked Wise to sit there now. Wise complied.
“Now we talk?”
Samuel nodded. “Yes, doctor. Now we talk.”
“I assume that you have a list of specific questions you would like answered?”
“I do.”
Wise pursed his lips. “And what will I get in return?”
“Out of respect and professional courtesy,” he said, unrolling a suede tool bag with multiple stainless steel instruments and a handful of zip ties that had been rubber-banded together, “I will not cause you any pain.”
“That is very thoughtful, Samuel. Pain is something neither of us likes, is it?”
“No, doctor. It is not.”
“Will I be free to go afterward?” Wise asked.
The CIA operative shook his head as he pulled the rubber band from around the zip ties. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
Samuel stepped forward and in a move that belied his thick, lumbering appearance, grabbed a handful of Wise’s hair and snapped his head backward, banging it against the back of the chair.
It was a move meant to stun and disorient, which was exactly what it did. Before Wise knew what had happened, Samu
el had attached his handcuffs to the chair with several of the zip ties. His legs would be next.
Samuel came around front and looked at Wise. The man’s eyelids fluttered like a pair of shades that had just been drawn too tight and his head lolled to one side. Grabbing his left ankle, he slammed it up against the left leg of the chair and had just gotten the first zip tie halfway around both when a shot rang out and piercing and painful darkness overtook him.
For a moment, he had no idea what had happened. Then the excruciating pain came rushing in and he realized that Wise had head-butted him. Then, still cuffed to the chair, he had run.
Samuel reached up and touched the bridge of his nose. It was broken and bleeding. “I understand why you had to do that, Dr. Wise,” he called out as he stood and pulled his pistol. “I even forgive you for it, as I hope you will forgive me for what I have to do.”
The CIA operative looked around as his mind whirled through multiple calculations. It was a large space, but not so large that a man Wise’s size could disappear, especially not when attached to a chair. He would try to find concealment first and then he would avail himself of a weapon. That was, of course, only if he could free his hands.
Samuel settled on Wise’s library and its rows of metal bookcases. They provided the closest and most logical place to hide. He approached the stacks with caution, pausing every couple of steps to listen. All he needed was the squeak of the chair beneath Wise’s weight or the scrape of its legs on the floor to give the man away. Step. Step. Pause. Step. Step. Pause. Suddenly, he heard something else.
At the end of the next aisle, a book had been knocked from its place and lay on the floor. He had him now.
Samuel rushed along the row of books and no sooner had he made it to the halfway point than he heard the groan of metal on metal and a wall of books began to rain down on him. Wise was trying to tip the bookcase over from the other side and crush him!
The bald-headed man ran for all he was worth as the tidal wave of books poured over him. With the case only centimeters from his head, he dove to get out of the way.