by Leigh Barker
“Ex-wife.” He shook his head. “It’s not me.” He took a long moment to let his mind confirm it. “It’s Gunny.”
Andie nodded without thinking, as if she’d known that all along. “Gunny’s the best marine I’ve ever seen.” She caught his eye. “Except you.”
“Maybe he is.” He shrugged. “It won’t matter. With his wife and kids weighing him down, he’ll be no match for a professional hit team.”
“Then we should warn him.”
“He’ll know.”
“Yes, I think he will,” Andie said. “But we should do something. You said he’s no match for them.”
Ethan took his cell from the dash. “Winter is closer.” He looked up at the office block. “And if we make our move now, we’ll cut off the head before any more damage is done.” He put the phone to his ear said, “It’s me,” and shut up. He put the cell back on the dash.
Andie waited. Nothing.
“What happened?”
“Winter’s at the airport waiting for a flight to Seattle.”
Andie shook her head slowly. “How did he—”
“He’s the second best tactician I know.”
Andie relaxed. “And the best k—” She stopped herself.
“Yeah, the best killer. I’d have to agree with that. With him watching Chuck’s back, I can get back to business.”
“Will he be in time?”
He thought about it. “They’ll probably make their move at midnight more or less. That gives him…” He glanced at the dash clock. “Six o’clock in Seattle. So a six-hour window. Three-hour trip. Four maybe with a wait. Two hours to get set.” He nodded. “Plenty of time.”
“I hope so,” Andie said.
Ethan picked up his phone again. “Won’t hurt to give Gunny a heads-up. Tell him to put the beer back in the fridge.”
Ethan ended the call and looked at the phone. Gunny hadn’t sounded the least bit surprised by the news that his family were the chosen ones. He’d just said he was ready. No hint that he was nervous. Just another day in the office. Except this one wasn’t and they all knew it.
A black Chevy Suburban with blacked-out windows cruised slowly past, took a left onto Connecticut and pulled over right at the intersection. From where the unseen occupants had eyes on the Cherokee and Ethan. Whoever they were, even if there was really a they, or it was just Ethan’s paranoia. Thing about paranoia—
“You been monitoring the news?” Ethan said.
“Of course,” Andie said, looking up from the little screen and its lines of numbers. “Why?”
“SecNav said the directors of a bunch of agencies had been replaced. Secret Service one of them?”
“All of them,” Andie said. “Ones that matter anyway.”
Ethan continued to watch the SUV sitting in the bright sunshine. He was tired. Too many wars. Too many people trying to kill him. He was seeing enemies everywhere. Yeah, that was it. He was overreacting. All he needed now was for the spiders walking up and down his spine to quit and his hair on his neck to give it a rest.
Another, identical Suburban was coming up H Street in the third lane.
He looked casually to his left and saw the two guys studying the menu at the tea shop. Identical suits. Identical sunglasses.
The second SUV had pulled into the middle lane. Another minute and they’d have the Cherokee boxed in. Because the they were Secret Service, or delegates to a Secret Service convention.
“Get out,” Ethan said, and leaned over Andie to open the passenger door.
She stared at him, then looked around quickly. “Trouble?”
“Not for you. Get out.” He snapped her laptop shut and gave her a gentle push to get her moving. “Get off the street. I’ll lose these suits and pick you up at…” He looked around. “There.” He pointed at the White House.
She got out and leaned back in. “You want me to go to the White House?”
“No. Hell no. Lafayette. Stay in the park. Stay with people.”
He pulled the door closed and the Cherokee moved out into the traffic. Slow, like he was just taking a drive, sightseeing.
The second Suburban moved into his lane and tailed him. The first vehicle hung a U in the one-way street and jumped out into the traffic to cut him off.
Ethan turned left into the street it’d just exited.
He had his Colt in a shoulder holster under his light jacket. He could slow down, let them close in, then put them to sleep before they even knew what had hit them. Maybe. These guys weren’t punks looking for a drive-by, they were the best, charged with the safety of the President of the United States. And that’s not a position a man gets because of who he knows.
But one thing, way ahead of that; he couldn’t and wouldn’t kill Americans doing their job, not even if that job was putting the bag on him. Or worse. There was only one way. He was going to have to lose them. And this was their city.
If he could get out of the city, lead them someplace they weren’t so familiar with—that was never going to happen. Northwest to more open country. Maybe an hour’s drive. Or a lifetime. No, it was going to have to be right here in the middle of the nation’s capital with tourists and the locals enjoying the afternoon sunshine.
He glanced in his rear-view at the SUVs following five, six cars behind. And smiled. They were all staying under the speed limit, watching the lights and the intersections. A slow-motion pursuit. An OJ Simpson chase.
At the next intersection, a hundred yards ahead, an SUV turned right into the street and came towards him. Ethan glanced in his rearview. One of the vehicles had cut off left around the block. They’d had to do that fast. Not a slow-motion maneuver. Speeding, but there’s never a cop when you need one.
In a few seconds that SUV was going to block the road and this game would be over. There was a left turn ahead, not even a real road, just an alley between two apartment blocks, but that was it, the only way off the street without wearing handcuffs or a body bag.
He waited until he was right on top of it and then pulled the Ford round in a tight turn and gunned it. If there was anything in the alley—a delivery truck, a parked car or people—this was over. The alleyway was clear except for a line of trash cans that flew out of the way with help from the Ford’s fender.
The Secret Service vehicles followed him in one after the other. Identical cars with identical drivers and identical passengers. Tax dollars being put to good use.
They were beginning to get on his nerves. What were they doing? Following him to death?
Ahead he could see traffic crossing left and right at the end of the alley. What he should do now was slow right down, watch out for pedestrians, signal his direction and wait patiently for a safe gap in the traffic.
He pushed the pedal to the floor.
Orpheus put down his martini and looked at the phone buzzing on his desk. That it was interrupting his afternoon nap meant it was important, or Bernard would not have put it through. He sighed and got up from the sofa with a quiet groan as his knees complained about the unexpected activity.
“Good afternoon, sir,” a quiet voice said.
“Is it?”
“I do hope so, sir. I am Cedric Leopold.”
“Goody for you,” Hofmann said, and wondered if that was rude.
“I am the special advisor to the President of the United States.”
Hofmann didn’t miss the emphasis he placed on the, but didn’t respond either. It irritated him. “Yes, Cedric, I know who you are and what you are. You are, in fact, there on my say-so.”
That shut him up. For a whole second, he was, after all, a politician, and silence is an anathema to people who think the sound of their own voice is the most important sound on the planet.
“I wasn’t aware of that.”
“No, clearly you weren’t.”
“Then I thank you for this opportunity.”
“You’re welcome.”
“The president—”
“Dicky,” Hofmann said, e
njoying himself at last.
“Err…well, yes, I suppose so.”
“Do go on, Cedric.”
“Yes. The president has tasked me with formulating an appropriate response to the belligerency of the government of the Chinese People’s Republic.”
“So soon?” Hofmann was surprised, but the question was rhetorical.
“Yes, it looks like the Russian government has a leak.”
“All governments leak, but I think it’s fair to say that the Russians leak more than most. It’s the nature of oppressive regimes that they piss people off. Mostly their employees.”
He glanced over at his martini on the coffee table awaiting the end of naptime.
“But let’s get to it, shall we, Cedric?”
“The president has been informed that the Chinese have gotten wind of our US-Russian…err…”
A politician run out of words. He should mark the day in his diary.
“Our plan to nuke them?”
“Well, I wasn’t going to put it quite that way.”
“Then how were you going to put it, Cedric? The plan is to wind the Chinese up to the point where they throw their dolly out of the pram and do something dumb. And we…and the Russians squash them like a bug.” Hofmann smiled. “Would you say that summarizes the situation?”
“Crudely, but yes. I would say that covers it.”
“And they’ve found out. And now they’re a little pissed at us.”
“Yes. The Chinese ambassador is chewing up the furniture in the Oval Office.”
No risk of damage to tasteful décor.
“I guess they’re threatening to nuke us if we make any hostile moves.”
“Yes,” Cedric said. “Apparently their missiles are at DEFCON 1, or whatever their equivalent is.”
“And Dicky is hiding in the toilet.” Hofmann was smiling.
Cedric coughed. “Well, not exactly. He has tasked me with obtaining additional input into his strategy.”
“Like, what the fuck to do now?”
“Once again, a little crude, but basically accurate.” Cedric’s voice was less soft and he was having trouble keeping his annoyance out of it.
“Do you play poker, Cedric?”
“What? Poker? No, of course not. I do not gamble and I do not drink.”
“Whores? You like whores, Cedric?”
“God, no, of course not.”
Hofmann took a moment to stifle a chuckle. “Just wondered what you did for entertainment, that’s all. But if you did play poker, then you’d know that there comes a time to call a player’s bluff.”
Cedric didn’t respond. But then he didn’t play poker. Or drink.
“Tell the esteemed Chinese ambassador the combined number of nukes we and the Russians have in our silos. Tell him to shut the fuck up or we’ll drop the whole fucking lot of them on his shithouse country.”
Cedric was silent.
“Perhaps phrase it a little more…diplomatically. If you must,” Hofmann said.
“You…we would do that?” Cedric said slowly.
“Hell yes.”
“But it could end the world.”
“And that’s bad how?” Hofmann said.
He could hear Cedric breathing as if he’d run up a flight of stairs, and wondered if the man had the balls for it. Maybe he’d misjudged him. It was possible; he’d had to put the list of candidates together in a hurry.
“Fuck them,” Cedric said. “I fucking hate chop suey.”
Okay then.
“Go remind Dicky he’s the commander in chief. Get the air force to put all their surveillance satellites over China. What’s the point of them if all they do is watch the girls on Venice Beach?”
He heard Cedric’s grunt of agreement. The man was excited but trying to keep it in check.
“And you contact your counterpart in the Kremlin. Tell him to get the big guy ready to give the order for the birds to fly the second things look like they’re going south.”
“Jesus,” Cedric said. “We’re really doing this.”
“One of the smartest men I know put it just fine. Fuck them and their chop suey.”
Cedric laughed and the tension was broken.
“I’ll call him now.”
“You do that. And, Cedric…” He waited for a beat. “Take a drink. And a whore. It might be the last thing you ever do.”
Ethan’s Cherokee bounced violently as it left the alley and hit the street. In the true tradition of collision avoidance, the drivers of the cars coming at him from both directions hit their horns before they hit their brakes.
It was already too late.
Ethan kept his foot down hard, twitched the wheel a little to the left and went through a gap in the traffic that was barely wider than his car; then he pulled it hard right to lessen the impact from the oncoming vehicles, saw a gap and went through it. This one wasn’t as wide as the last and the Cherokee’s left and right fender buckled as he ploughed through the gap, spinning the two cars away on either side of him. Then he mounted the sidewalk and was into the alleyway before the Secret Service SUVs could push through the chaos in his wake.
As neat as that, he was free of them. Except for the black SUV that appeared at the far end of the alley. Somebody had an eye in the sky. Shit.
The passenger in the SUV put his arm out of the side window and opened up with his handgun. It would’ve been a miracle if he’d hit anything bouncing around like that, but it told Ethan these guys weren’t out to detain him and ask about his health over coffee and donuts.
The apartment block to his left was having a major renovation, but like any good building site, the workers were nowhere to be seen. Just gaps for windows and a wide steep ramp leading up to the gaping hole where the entrance was going to be. Ethan flicked the handbrake on and off and executed a ninety-degree turn, then jammed his foot down and put the car up the ramp and into the building before the smoke from the tires had even risen from the crumbling drive.
All he had to do now was stop before he ploughed into the far wall, and he did that with a good four inches to spare. He bailed out just as the SUV screeched to a halt at the ramp and the trigger-happy passenger started blasting away.
Ethan glanced over the cement mixer he was squeezing past. He could’ve cured the agent’s anger-management issues right there, but killing or wounding the good guys was still off the table. Though that could change if they kept pissing him off.
He stepped left through a doorway and took the bare brick stairs three at a time. Okay, this was more like it. He’d trained a hundred times, a thousand times in houses just like this. Several times at the infamous Killing House, courtesy of the Navy SEALs. Anti-terrorism and just straight building clearance. Home turf.
He heard the other agents arrive, all squealing tires and rapid exchanges of information. They were coming in. They’d split up. Two would go around to the front stairwell, two up the one he was using, while the others used the ladders to try to cut him off.
On the second-floor landing he found what he needed and picked up the two-foot length of rebar and tapped it against his palm. Three vehicles, probably two agents per car. Rebar versus six Sig 229s. What could go wrong?
A little voice whispered in his ear. He could maybe just wound them, shoot them in the leg or the arm or something. Except a round from his Colt 45 hitting flesh, any flesh, was going to send the guy’s nervous system into meltdown. And shut it down. He might as well shoot him in the head.
He could hear movement on the stairs. Two agents coming up slowly. Rubber-soled shoes, but the stairs were littered with chipped brick and cement. Nobody was going to walk over that without a sound.
He put his back against the freshly plastered wall and laid the rebar across his chest to his left shoulder. Silenced his breathing and waited. The Yankees were playing the Mets tonight. His money was on the Mets the way the Yankees had been playing this season. It’d be worth watching. Better than this shit.
A shoe crunched
on the stair and stopped as the cruncher listened for any movement; then more brick debris shifted under slow-moving feet. Any second now he would—
The agent took the last step onto the small landing, his gun leading the way, ready for anything. He wasn’t ready for a two-foot length of rebar zipping down onto his forearm and snapping the bone like a dry twig.
Ethan calmly pushed the agent aside and brought the bar up and around without even looking. The other agent was on the stairs. Where else would he be?
He’d almost recovered from the surprise of seeing his buddy yelp and go down in agony. But almost is like second place in a race; it’s nowhere. He paid for his dull wits with an iron bar across his collarbone. Now he yelped, then grunted and dropped to one knee on the stairs, but he was still viable and had his gun.
Ethan caught the end of the rebar in his other hand and rammed it double-handed into the agent’s face. His head kicked back and he rolled backwards down the brick steps. That was going to hurt, but not for a while.
Now Ethan had a decision to make. Which agent to go for next? Unlike the man who’d taken a dive down the stairs, his mind wasn’t constrained by rigid thinking through mindless training for pretend scenarios. He’d been there and done it for real. He moved at once, cutting through the door gap onto the wide-open second floor. Good space, lots of light and a nice view of trees and stuff. It was going to be somebody’s lovely apartment.
The top of the ladder to his right was bouncing rhythmically as somebody came up as fast as possible. But not fast enough.
Ethan put the rebar on the bare brick sill and grabbed the protruding ladder. He could’ve pushed it off, but then he’d have to lean right out there. He’d been shot before and it hurt like fuck. So he just twisted the ladder right around. The agent would be on the wrong side now, hanging. Ethan bounced the ladder against the sill a few times and heard a girlie scream. That would do.
Three down. Three to go. Easy. If you said it quick.
Problem was, the other agents would’ve had time to get up onto the second floor while he was messing about knocking out their fellow feds. Same thinking process, that being not thinking just doing.