Shockwave, page 23
When we reassembled, the enemy had disappeared. Some dead, some just gone. No need to count our dead: if you didn’t make it back to the preset coordinates by pull-out time, you were counted as dead. This wasn’t La Légion—we weren’t expected to return carrying dead comrades. Or waste time burying them.
Nobody would ever know my bullet had taken Konrad’s life.
It had come to me as naturally as breathing. Not something you think about. So why was I thinking about it now?
“This is perfect,” the video ninja whispered.
I could see why he was so excited: the skeleton of the demolished building still had some girders standing, with a few crossbeams lying haphazardly across. I could smell the exposed iron, already rusting.
His comfort level rose when he saw it was extra-dark back there—even shadows had blacker centers.
“I can use the tripods,” he said, like that was an enhancement he hadn’t expected.
“You know where we left the car. When we”—pointing at Mack, to make sure he got it—“leave, you won’t see anything until I come back. I’ll be joined by four men. Things will happen. You won’t see Jenkins”—I whispered, then clamped down on the last word like I’d said too much, quickly covering with it with “Mr. Boston”—“until it’s over, but you keep recording until he tells you to stop. Okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
I checked my no-frills Luminox. Not just another prop to enhance the “special agent” routine for the video man—it worked so good that I’d had to rubber-cap it to make sure nobody but me picked up its electro-glow hands. Still shy of midnight. I had no way of knowing if the targets were already inside. I hadn’t seen the red Corvette in the parking lot out front on our first pass-by, but that didn’t mean anything.
“One more time, Conrad. Run it down for me. By the numbers.”
“You’re not ever to be in the frame.…”
I nodded, making vague sounds of approval so he’d relax a little more.
“I get a wide shot of all four of them. Then I come in close, face by face, and snap stills. Once I’ve got each one face-captured, I dial back a little so I can cover everything that happens.”
“Perfect. Now, listen. One of them is going to end up standing next to me, so be very precise. Shoot it like you’re my eyes, Conrad. We need the coverage only of what I see, not of me myself. Understand?”
“I’m your eyes,” he echoed. Not just repeating words, saying it as if he wanted to be me, seeing with my eyes.
“And my ears,” I reminded him.
But he was ahead of me, already fitting equipment in place—becoming more a part of this with every move. Going from voyeur to government agent had done wonders for his … I don’t know what, exactly. Not confidence, more like maybe he wasn’t just some sick little man, not anymore. Our certification of him as a team member, an expert with special qualifications, that was the key to a door he hadn’t even known was there. Unlocking that door had given him a true raison d’être, probably for the first time in his life.
I could feel that in him, even stronger now than the first time it had come.
I threw a complicated series of hand gestures in the direction where Conrad thought Mack was standing. But Mack was actually on the opposite side, holding the full-blued Benelli 12-gauge in one hand. “Remember,” I’d reminded him, “start from one side and sweep. It holds five, but don’t try to count—the blasting will block your ears. Keep pulling until it’s empty. Then just drop it on the ground—you’ve never touched it without gloves—and run for the car.
“If I can, I’ll be at the car before you. If I’m not, you get out of here. Don’t worry about Conrad. Just drive! Don’t stop. Don’t make calls. Get the car back to where we took it from, put it inside the gates, leave the keys in the ignition … and walk away.
“Get a couple of miles under you before you call Dolly.… Just tell her where to pick you up; she’ll know what to do.”
I could see he didn’t like it. But he’d been out of choices the moment we grabbed Conrad. If he knew I was going to make sure Conrad didn’t talk—not to anybody, not ever again—he also knew there was nothing he could do about it.
I left Mack, and walked all the way back to where our video man had set up. “I know you’re good at waiting, Conrad. Less than an hour to game time. Roger?”
“Roger!” he answered. A little steel in his voice, fear fading as he again became one with the only element that had ever opened its arms to embrace him.
The red Corvette rolled up at midnight plus twenty and slid into the space farthest to the right.
He strutted in like he owned the place. Maybe he did—the name would be his idea of a joke, and he’d said we could do anything we wanted inside, too.
I waited. Other cars pulled in, other men got out. No way to tell if his tools had already been inside, waiting for him.
It didn’t matter. When the time came, I slipped on the transparent latex gloves, pulled them tight, rolled my shoulders to make sure my thigh-length field jacket was correctly adjusted, and stepped into the bar.
He was where he’d said he’d be, sitting all the way to the right on one side of a booth, a glossy white nylon jacket unzipped to show a bright-red pullover underneath.
I couldn’t see who was across from him, or next to him. Or even if anyone else was there at all. I made a “Damn!” gesture with my right hand, like I’d walked into the wrong place. Then I turned around and walked back the way I’d come in.
I will say this for La Légion: if you survived all their tests, they stopped the lying and treated you like the soldier you had become.
So, before you went into the field for the first time, they made it all clear. No matter how expertly you had been trained, no matter how correctly you might be armed, no matter how perfectly strategic the position you held, there would always be the waiting. And, within that waiting, what you did with your mind could change what was to come.
You were never to think about your preparations. Once in place, you were done with the past. All your past, right up to that very second. “Aucun homme n’a le pouvoir de changer son passé. Mais un homme bien entraîné peut changer son futur.” Your full range of reactions is loaded in your mind, each as carefully as you had loaded your weapons.
There were options, always. But they always lived inside the inescapable dungeon of commitment. To the death. The enemy’s, if you performed correctly. If not, your own.
And, then, the final truth. “Peu importe qui distribue les cartes, la dernière carte à jouer sera toujours celle du Destin.”
I’d done everything I could.
The FBI man knew exactly what he had to do: execute the maneuver so smoothly that he would be standing with me before the others realized what was happening.
I could not be more prepared than I was.
But I knew this, too: I couldn’t be sure of him—there was no way for me to know what Conrad would be seeing with my eyes.
I was in position.
Committed, but with options inside that commitment. Whoever came out the door would be backlit, so the matte black pistol dangling in my right hand would be invisible to them. If the FBI man was planning to cross me, that glossy white jacket would be my first target.
The back door opened and four men walked toward me. The man in the white jacket was wider than any of the others, but the one standing just slightly behind him to his left was taller.
They came toward me, not in a hurry. Moving slowly enough to show they had no fear … but all I saw in their movement was that they didn’t want me to think they were going to rush me.
When they got close enough to see my face, I could see theirs. Not kids, but younger than Mack—I guessed somewhere between late twenties and early thirties.
I was going to say something soothing to freeze them for the split second I’d need, but the FBI man was already in motion. He spun around to my right side so the config became the two of us facing the hit squad, just as we’d rehearsed. The man in the middle of those three responded by stepping slightly forward. Had to be Gomes, I thought.
“He’s with me,” the FBI man said to them. Whether they thought I was another agent or just hired backup, his flat statement was enough to settle them down. “I’ve got something you all need to hear,” he said. “A new target. Hard to believe, but easy to take. Very easy.”
All three of them simultaneously clasped their hands together at the waist, in a listening stance.
“You already know Jordan was a rat,” the FBI man said. “And it shouldn’t have taken me to clue you—he was cut loose way short of his full sentence, and there’s always a reason for that.”
“We didn’t even know he was out until—”
“Then the organization is still too weak for the Final Move,” the FBI man said, cutting off the speaker, a slender man with a hawkish face standing to the left of Gomes. “Nobody is ever locked down where you can’t get some girl to write him like she was going to wait for him no matter how long it took. At the worst, they can’t stop a lawyer from getting inside. Who cares if they’d be listening in? All we’d need to do is verify he was still there.”
“That’s not right,” Gomes said, his voice pulsating with resentment, playing along with what he must have thought was a play. “We were on him quick enough; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was, he knew we were coming. And even with that, he never got far, considering.”
“Considering what? He’d already been out months before you started to close in. You know what a rat does when you let him run around loose? You have any idea how much he spilled before—?”
The guy with the hawkish profile wasn’t going to lose face, not in front of the other two: “He didn’t have anything to spill. Anything more, I mean. You think we didn’t know he was sprung? We had to lay back, like we didn’t know nothing. Thought he’d come right to us.”
“Guess he didn’t, huh? So who finally sent you after him?”
“The Leader. Same as always.”
“Jordan must have known by then. So how’d you get him to trust you?”
“Trust us? That’s a joke, right?”
“He got done with a rock hammer to the back of his head—”
“Yeah. This one,” the tallest man said, as he pulled a heavy, spike-ended tool from behind his back. “So?”
“So if he didn’t trust you”—pointing at Gomes—“how could you”—pointing at the tall man on Gomes’s right—“get behind him?”
Gomes barked a not-quite-scared laugh. “What he trusted was that Val”—nodding his head toward the man on his left—“was going to blow his face off if he didn’t climb that cliff.”
“He didn’t argue,” the man who must be Val said, grinning as he slowly drew a chromed wheel-gun with a ventilated rib from a back-belt holster. “Show a man a .357 mag, he usually doesn’t.”
“We told him we had heard some things, and we wanted to give him a chance to put us straight,” Gomes said. “Gave him the idea that our orders were to question him, not ice him. But we wanted to be sure nobody could come up on us sudden, and the top of that rock was perfect.”
“He bought that?”
“I’m pretty sure he did,” Gomes answered. “Val showed him the gun just in case he balked. We planned it all out. Jordan, he’d think the last place we’d fire a gun would be from up there—the sound would carry for miles.”
“Pretty slick,” the FBI man said, like he was admitting they’d just taught him something. “Only one thing bothers me. Trust, it’s a strange thing, you know? I mean, you’ve got a rep, don’t you? People know why you’re in charge, yeah?”
“That’s right,” Gomes said, a little pride in his voice.
“So why would Jordan trust you? You personally, I mean.”
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“I’m saying what I said inside, only now I’m making it clear enough for even you to understand. Jordan’s done, but now, all of a sudden, there’s a new rat in the cheese factory.”
“Really?” the hawk-faced guy said, no softness in his voice.
“Really,” the FBI man said as a dark pistol magically appeared in his extended right hand. That’s a Steyr GB, flashed in my mind—I haven’t seen one of those since Laos. “You think I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, Gomes?” he spat out.
Gomes didn’t even blink. “You giving yourself up now?”
The FBI man blasted his pet informant—a three-shot burst to the central body mass.
No change in ambient sound—probably not the first time people in that bar had heard gunshots out back.
Or maybe the whole thing was an FBI operation. But I quashed that thought as quickly as it came—this “SAC” had to be a lone wolf, or I would have been in a prison or a grave way before this.
“Who the fuck are you, man?” the tallest of the Nazis demanded, still holding the rock hammer.
“FBI,” Brigham said, putting some brag behind his words. “You’re looking at the only man our people have ever placed inside ZOG’s own spy nest.”
“You’re with—?”
“Remember that load of H that was supposed to finance our Robert Mathews Revenge Brigade? It was Gomes who tipped the FBI. And that major boom that never went off? That was your boy Gomes, too.”
“Look, man, I personally watched Lew earn his spiderweb. Three niggers in one night. No way he was a—”
“Yeah? Then you tell me how Gomes got away with so much crude shit. Stuff like you just described. You think the FBI didn’t know who took out those same three niggers you just bragged about? Gomes, he’s been on the payroll for years.”
“And you, you’re the one who’s been paying him?”
“Yep. With ZOG’s own money. That was the only way I could get him to where I needed him to be. And now you two are the team. The whole team. Your job is to keep me—”
The tall guy whipped the rock hammer into the FBI man’s stomach, striking as instinctively as a scorpion’s sting.
But the agent must have picked up the pre-strike flex. He was already stepping back, and the spike didn’t get all the way in.
“Fuck!” came out of his mouth as he dropped to one knee. Sounded more surprised than angry, but that didn’t stop him from gut-shooting the hammer artist. The man he shot dropped to the dirt, still holding on to his kill toy.
The last one, Val, immediately threw down his shiny gun, stepped away from it, and threw his hands in the air. He didn’t know who he was surrendering to, but he knew it didn’t matter anymore.
I don’t know where he’d been trained, but one thing he’d never learned is that you can’t surrender to an enemy who doesn’t take prisoners. The FBI man fired twice. Val staggered for a half-second, then slumped to the ground.
I couldn’t be sure how many rounds the FBI man’s pistol had left, but I had to make sure the job was done. I waved a white piece of parachute silk back and forth. That was to signal the video man to stop working. And to send Mack circling behind him, to make sure he did.
“You gonna …?”
“Just hold on,” I told the FBI man. “We’ll get you fixed up.” I picked the agent’s heavy pistol out of his hand, asked, “Hardballs?”
“Hollow-points,” he grunted. “Mercury-tipped.”
I walked over to the hammer man and put a slug into the side of his head. Then I planted another one just above the nose of the guy who’d tried to surrender.
I saved Gomes for last. He’d taken the most lead, but no head shots, so I dropped down next to him to check.
He was gone. No pulse, no breath, limp carotid. I stomped his throat with the heel of my boot. It was so quiet I could hear the hyoid bone crack.
I waved again. Mack came on the run. I stepped over to the FBI man, and put his pistol back into its carry-pouch. Then I pulled up his shirt to check him over. Not much blood. I popped open the kit Dolly always puts together for me when she knows I’m going into the field.
Then by the numbers: press on both sides of the wound to push out any pus until I saw a clean blood-flow, pull the backing off the antibiotic-soaked sponge, and smooth it over the opening; body-wrap him using a wide roll of Coban, and cover it all with silicone Rescue Tape to make sure it would hold.
He never said a word, but even his carefully controlled breathing couldn’t put the pain noises on mute.
“Keys,” I said to him.
“Left outside pocket,” he answered. Three separate words, with a nose breath between them.
I found them. Motioned Mack to get close enough to hear what I was going to say.
“Listen good, now,” I told the FBI man. “There’s no way to get a car back here. There’s no light, and the ground’s all rutted—can’t take the chance. We’re going to walk you around to your car and get you in the driver’s seat; you’re on your own from there.”
“I can’t—”
“Yeah, you can,” I said. “If you want the ER, drive yourself there. But have a good story ready. And better get rid of your pistol—it ties you to those bodies.”
“Your money—”
“You’ve got that in the ’Vette, right?”
“Yeah. But … Listen! I got a pickup. With a closed bed. At my house. It’s real close to here. You could drive me back here, load up the bodies, and dump them someplace.”
“Why would I do that?”
“For the money. Almost three hundred large. In my house. You take me there, I’ll show you where it is.”
Can I trust Conrad to stay put?
“Go back and make sure everything stays in place,” I told Mack. “Understand?”
He nodded.
“Do it fast. Soon as you’re sure, get to the parking lot. You follow us.”
Another nod.
I hoisted the FBI man to his feet, and we started moving. He leaned against me like he was dead drunk.
I followed the bent agent’s directions to his house.
He wasn’t lying—took maybe seven minutes. Mack had no trouble keeping the red Corvette in sight. Or Conrad under control, I guessed.
