Albatross (29 page)

Andersen visibly relaxed for a moment. The young cadet seemed ready “to serve and protect,” or so Andersen thought. These cadets were always ready to jump into the shit.

“At ease, cadet. Is that an extra flashlight?”

“Sir! Yes, sir!”

Andersen was amused and relieved. As Andersen took the flashlight, the cadet took out her handcuffs to put on the witness. Andersen stopped her but directed a question at David. “Are you planning on running, David?”

“Where would I go? I am safer here than anywhere … or at least I thought I was. Out there, if Burns is behind all this, I am on the short list to remain alive.”

The cadet objected, “Sir, protocol requires that prisoners need to be secured at—”

Andersen cut her off. “He’s not a prisoner but a material witness. Just sit with him.” Andersen turned to retrieve his notes, which were spread on the table in piles. He had a system of cross-referencing statements. He would need time to collect them.

The cadet seemed to pick up on Andersen’s dilemma.

“Sir! I can secure your notes if you like sure, sir.”

My God, the training about respecting rank is surely working.
“Thank you, cadet. Just sit with the witness and don’t touch them. They are in a particular order. Just make sure they stay where they are,” Andersen instructed.

Andersen turned to David and tried to reassure him. “Don’t worry. We’ll get him.”

David said nothing. Andersen left his only witness in the dark with a by-the-book cadet holding a flashlight because his police department was now under attack.

“What a shitty day this turned out to be,” Andersen said to himself. He bolted up the stairs to help with locking down the station.

Silent, both David and the cadet remained standing in the dark interrogation room for a few moments until Andersen’s footsteps were no longer audible. When David was sure it was just him and Samantha, he had to ask Samantha a question. “Have you done that cadet thing as part of a role play or something? You were too convincing to just pull that off without practice or something. You were just too good at it to be a first time.”

David was relieved to finally be with someone he knew. It had been difficult to be interrogated by Andersen.
The man has skills,
David thought.

Eight months ago, Burns gave Becky and him computer sites, public papers, and local public sources to research past and present law enforcement and military personnel that were in a twelve-mile radius of their target location. With Burns’s specific search parameters, two names consistently came up as “very active” in law enforcement with a past history in the military during the war on terror: Steve Andersen and Diane Welch. Much to David’s surprise, it was past newspapers articles that produced the most data. Still, Burns made it clear that there could easily be other people who were not in the public eye that could be a problem. David did appreciate Burns’s caution. After some digging, Burns and Samantha found out that Welch was out on leave for “personal reasons.” That left Steve Andersen as the only known variable that could cluster their plans.

While David could not “see” Samantha, it was easy for him to imagine that Samantha was smiling as she took his arm and guided him to the door.

“You have no idea how many things I have been to so many for so long,” Samantha replied.

David pondered. Her response sounded very familiar.
Ah, yes … the Battle of Britain
, David recalled.

“Ah, yes. ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few.’”

David heard Samantha’s sigh.

“Why Becky finds your lose associations cute, I will never know. But then she was always the smart one,” she concluded. But then Samantha added, “That was from Churchill’s ‘Finest Hour’ speech, right?”

David knew she wouldn’t let it go. “You see … you mock me, and yet you are quite the historian. You are right though. I should know enough not to ask you leading questions.”

“You’re right. You are pretty smart, and yet you do ask the most obvious questions. Have I played a bad cop?” Samantha said.

David felt bad even casually referencing Samantha’s former profession. He was uncomfortable with it.
I must be anxious,
he thought.

As Samantha and David moved away from the room, David stopped and pointed to the desk.

“Before we leave, we need to take his notes. The less he has, the better,” David said firmly.

David felt bad lying to the lieutenant. He did tell him much of the truth, but still, it was all for misdirection and deception.
I’m just not cut out to be a spy
, David thought.

David heard Samantha pull the papers altogether in to one big pile and stuff them unceremoniously into one folder under her free arm. They both moved out of the room and stood in the darkened hall. David was the first to speak because he was used to the dark and he had memorized the blueprints of this building with text-to-voice software.

“So where are we?” David asked.

“Interrogation room eight,” was the hushed response.

“Turn left. Twenty-five feet, there is a door that leads to a flight of stairs. Go down the flight of stairs, and it leads to a locked emergency door. Without electricity, we should be able to open the door in silence and walk out the back of the building. Cameras and detectors should also be off-line.”

“A walk in the park … how nice,” Samantha whispered.

The directions were perfect. Once they were at the emergency door, they knew they had come to the moment of truth: Would the other side be empty or filled armed police waiting? Before they opened the door, David took his suit jacket and tie off and unbuttoned his collared shirt. Not much of a change, but different enough at a distance not to be spotted as the “blind guy in the suit.” David heard Samantha make a more substantial change as she shed her cadet jacket and hat along with a whole bunch of stuff he couldn’t identify. He guessed one of the items was a wig because the strands hit his face.

Finally, she was done, and they both waited a moment. Then David heard Samantha open the emergency door. David held his breath as the door creaked open. David could easily hear the noise of sirens and people milling around, but there were no alarms or armed men telling them to halt. With the crowd moving in generally one direction, it was easy for David and Samantha to walk hand in hand at the pace of the crowd.

David was happy to be in the open air. He enjoyed the sun on his face and the sound of human traffic. Being interrogated for hours had not been fun, and he was not planning on ever doing it again.

David suddenly had a curious thought.
Did my clients feel the same way when they talked with me
, he wondered. David couldn’t understand why he was thinking about his past life until he realized that he had been recounting nothing but history for hours.
All this to keep one police lieutenant distracted?
David pondered.

Once they were both a few blocks away from the car that Becky had left for them, they picked up the pace. David took the moments walking to get an update. With little emotion, Samantha casually brought David up to speed and finally told him that they were supposed to rendezvous at rally point delta, meet with Burns, make the transfers, and get out of town.

David’s blood ran cold when Samantha reported in a near-clinical fashion how she had to make a decision about whether to blow the car up or not when the family was right next to it. Someone getting hurt or worse was his greatest fear. While David anxiously waited for Samantha to tell him that she did not kill them, he felt disappointed that he doubted her moral character. David knew that she had done things in her life that crossed the line. He knew that if it was him or Becky, there would be no question they would back down. David was sure that even Burns with his personality change would more likely find an alternative.
But Samantha?
Still though, David had never known her to deliberately hurt someone to meet her own needs.
And yet, love can make you do desperate things,
David thought. But if the family didn’t move and if she had to choose between strangers and losing the people she loved, would she let them live? David knew that Samantha loved Becky and Emma. David was sure she cared for him as say a father.
Does she love Alex Burns?
he wondered.

Once she finished with her report, David took the opportunity to ask her what might appear to Samantha as an unusually timed question. “Do you love him?”

David felt Samantha’s pace lose a step. Her arm pulled him a bit tighter, and he felt her turn to look at him. Based on the body language, David had his answer.

“Jesus, David … you’ve got this thing with bad timing,” Samantha retorted.

“It may be months or years before we see each other again, and I want to know you are happy or will at least be safe with Alex.”

It was a long moment, but Samantha answered his question.

“Yes, I do love him. At least I think I love him. As much as I can love anyone, I guess.”

David knew these emotions had to be confusing for Samantha, but he was sure she did feel things for Alex she had never felt for any man. It seemed obvious that she cared about him. “You and Alex are going to meet up and be together, right?” David asked.

“Yes. We will go our separate ways for about a month and then will coordinate a plan back to each other.”

“Thank God. Your sister was going to kill me if I didn’t find out,” David confessed. Over time, David had formed a mental picture of Becky and Emma. Emma was easy; he remembered holding her as a baby. Becky was more difficult to imagine, but there was one thing David knew about Becky. He knew when she wanted him to find out something, and he was happy to give her good news.

Finally, they were in the car, and Samantha asked if David had the keys.

David felt his face heat up because he feared that he was supposed to have the car keys until he realized that Samantha was laughing as she started the car and drove off.
She’s gotta be stressed too
, he thought. David finally relaxed enough to smile. It had been a long day. The sun really did feel good on his face. He still felt sorry for misleading the lieutenant. He seemed to be a nice enough guy, David thought.

Davis pulled her car into the back of the private bank and backed it in not far from a parked ambulance. She was well within her own window of forty minutes and would be online and in the game in ten. She was very happy she had made the effort to come in early for her shift. When she exited the car, she was vigilant of her surroundings as she pulled out the backpack and locked the car door. She then made sure to keep one hand on the backpack strap and the other on the handle of her weapon.

Then she heard shots. Someone was yelling something, and then there were more shots. Instinctively, Davis extracted her gun from her holster. Suddenly, there was a mob of people exiting the bank. They all stopped in their tracks, and there were a number of statements like “oh no” and “she’s got a gun.”

In clear terms, Davis told them to move. As the door slowly closed, she heard another language demanding something, and then there were two more shots. Then she heard it again: “
Unkraut nicht vergeht!
”

As Davis rounded the corner, weapon drawn and leveled, she started to climb the stars. Davis then noticed someone crouched on the landing. From behind, she could easily see and identify the telltale operations center’s colored shirt of the guard and knew enough not to shoot one of her own.

Davis could easily tell that the guard was clearly startled by her arrival. He looked as if he was covered with sweat. Though the guard was not scared, it was clear he was angry as a result of something going on upstairs and Davis’s sudden arrival.

“Who the fuck are you!” the guard demanded.

Davis lowered her gun, dropped the backpack on the floor, and said, “I need to get in the vault. I am with the operations center.”

But then the guard turned his gun and attention to the upstairs landing obscured by a small wall. “Where’s backup?”

“The operations center is compromised, and I need to get into the auxiliary control room,” Davis said as she stood right behind the guard.