Dark Spies (27 page)

“Shot fired! Shot fired!” Duggan dropped to a crouch, ripped open the Velcro cover on his packsack, and withdrew his Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. He shouted into his throat mic, “All units. Metro station. Go! Go!”

Every cop, Bureau agent, SWAT operative, and HRT agent had been given the green light to race to the place where gunfire had sounded.

“Get down! Down!” Duggan was dodging screaming pedestrians as he sprinted while holding his gun at eye level. His HRT colleagues were close by, moving in exactly the same way. “Bravo One. What do you see?”

Bravo One. The SWAT sniper.

Bravo One responded. “One man down. Civilian clothes. Pistol in his hand. Two guys with him, also armed.”

“Are they FBI?”

“How the hell would I know?”

Marsha dashed out of her vehicle, her handgun drawn. She looked up the street. Thirty yards away, with their backs to her, were the three men the SWAT sniper had referenced. One was lying injured, the other two were by his side with weapons drawn.

Her heart pumped rapidly and she said into her mic, “I can’t see their faces! If anyone’s hearing this and is injured, for God’s sake say so now because otherwise you’re likely to have your head taken off by Bravo One!”

What had just happened? She looked in the other direction. Uniformed cops were now on the avenue, rushing toward civilians to get them to cover, barking orders; everywhere was movement, noise; people were abandoning their cars and running; police sirens were sounding from every direction.

One of the uniform cops was running away from the scene, shouting at people to get to cover, his priority to get people to safety, knowing that the area around the metro was a kill zone.

Maybe he was the beat cop who’d passed her transit vehicle moments ago.

A man who was now running.

Away from the scene.

Shit!

“Bravo One. Uniform cop! Running south. I think that’s Cochrane!”

She sprinted after him.

“This is Bravo One. Which cop? Every cop I can see is running in different directions.”

Marsha cursed. The cop was at least two hundred yards away, appearing and disappearing in the writhing mass of hysterical bodies that were between him and her. She ran faster, desperate not to lose sight of him.

Scott was calm as he placed a hand on Shackleton’s shoulder and said, “Head shots to all the fuckers.”

“Damn right.” Lying on his uninjured leg, Shackleton pointed his handgun at the approaching HRT operatives while ignoring the screaming civilians all around the trio of assassins.

Scott winked at Oates. “Time to go loud. Be a good chap and take out the sniper for me.”

Both secreted their handguns and pulled out from under their overcoats SCAR-H 7.62 mm battle rifles. Not only could the devastatingly powerful weapons be fired on automatic, just one round could penetrate body armor and kill a man.

Scott stepped forward, his gun held high, and squeezed the trigger. The sustained volley tore through four HRT operatives, three FBI agents, and six civilians.

Oates got to his knee, took aim, and sent shorter, controlled bursts at the sniper nest on top of the Microsoft building. He smiled because the sniper and spotter were now dead. He stood up and opened fire at everything in front of him.

Marsha was near breathless as she shouted, “SWAT helos: I need you over Wisconsin now! In pursuit of a cop. Possible target. He’s heading south, two hundred yards ahead of me. Now, now, now!”

She crashed into a civilian, fell, rolled, got to her feet, and continued running. “Bravo One. Update!”

Silence in her earpiece.

“Update!”

It was Duggan who answered. “Bravo One’s down! We’re in a firefight with three unknown hostiles!”

Duggan dived behind a car as more bullets came his way and punched through the vehicle and the wall behind him. He knew the gunfire sound—SCAR weapons, upgraded to larger rounds; ones that don’t injure a soldier and require two of his mates to carry him off, meaning three combatants have been taken out of the battlefield equation. The bullets were killers, the same ones used by the British SAS. Lessons learned from fighting fanatics in Afghanistan who don’t give a shit about casualty evacuations of their injured comrades.

He grimaced as shards of metal raced close to his face, crouched, and spun out of cover.

A handgun bullet walloped him in the chest with the impact of a sledgehammer being swung full strength.

But the bullet was no match for the Kevlar under his jacket.

Duggan held firmly in position as he aimed his gun and sent two bursts of bullets into Shackleton’s head.

He moved his gun’s sight toward the remaining two assassins, but they were largely obscured by men, women, and kids running around like headless chickens, or crouching or standing like statues, or draped over stationary cars while waiting to die. An FBI agent and uniform cop ran from his right flank toward the gunmen. The cop flipped backward as bullets smashed into his throat and face; the agent yelped and hit the ground dead as SCAR rounds turned his internal organs into mush.

It was no good. Duggan decided he had to get much closer to the assassins.

The noise around Marsha was deafening as she ran, holding her gun while shouting, “FBI! FBI!” in case any of the numerous cops or hundreds of civilians thought she was one of the hostiles. She could still see the policeman she was pursuing as she dodged through the crowd, flapping one arm to tell people to get down. But he was faster than her, and she was losing ground. “The policeman who’s running away from me! Stop him!” No one heard her. No one cared, because all that mattered to them was that farther up the street it sounded like a regiment of Russian airborne troops was advancing on Capitol Hill.

Somewhere behind her she heard a helo.

“Delta Two. We got visual on you, Agent Gage.” This came from the SWAT sniper in the helicopter.

Thank God! “The uniform cop. About two fifty yards ahead of me heading south. Take him down!” Marsha tried to run faster, but her legs felt as if they might buckle from her exertions. “Take him down!”

“One hundred percent confirmation cop is Cochrane?”

“Negative.”

“Then I’ve no clearance to proceed.”

“Wound him then!”

“Negative.”

“What?!”

“Bullet in the leg can still kill. Man might be a legitimate cop.”

Jesus! The SWAT sniper was right, but she was now losing all hope. “Okay. Take out the gunmen in the north.”

“Roger that.” The helo turned away.

Marsha leapt on top of a stationary car and began running along the row of vehicles that had been abandoned by terrified drivers and passengers. The extra height gave her better visibility and the ability to move without constantly bumping into people. Either side of the vehicles was still chaos, with people racing into shops, falling over each other, wailing; and the drone of police sirens was all pervasive.

She jumped to another car and saw the cop dash off of Wisconsin Avenue into a side alley.

Scott and Oates were expertly holding their ground, covering angles, one of them opening fire while the other changed magazines, crouching while shooting, moving, sending short and long bursts of death at anything that might be a threat to them.

The former SAS operatives knew there was no way out of this.

It was their last stand.

Their day of the bullet.

And they were making it a memorable one for every person here.

Duggan sprinted into open ground, shouting, “Out of the way!” at civilians he had to swerve around to get closer to the gunmen. Some of them did as he commanded, others dropped to the tarmac because assassins’ bullets had just entered their brains.

“Delta Two. I got one of them in my sights.”

Duggan yelled into his throat mic. “Do it! Now!”

As the sniper’s high-velocity round bored a hole through Oates’s head, Duggan ran faster than he’d ever done in his life, and hurled himself through air to grab Scott.

But the assassin sidestepped.

Duggan crashed to the sidewalk and rolled onto his back.

Scott was standing over him, his SCAR pointing at Duggan. “Got to be quicker than that, sunshine.” He smiled. “But I guess that was the point.”

It was the point. Duggan’s clever strategy had laid Scott momentarily open to anyone and everyone. Even if it meant he was putting his life at the feet of a highly trained killer.

But Scott knew he’d been outwitted.

He took his eyes off Duggan and looked toward the sky.

Allowing Duggan time to lift his submachine gun.

Scott closed his eyes.

Duggan’s rounds hit Scott’s chest at exactly the same time as Delta Two’s sniper bullet entered the assassin’s head.

Marsha had to slow down as she reached the entrance to the alley; her breathing was too fast, her legs felt like lead, but more than anything she felt abject fear as she held her gun in two hands and entered the dark and narrow passageway. She moved cautiously down the alley. Trash containers were sporadically positioned on both sides; fire escape ladders hung down the tall walls above them; water poured from roof gutters that were overflowing from the day’s earlier heavy rainfall. No one was visible in the alley, but there were plenty of places for a man to hide while he changed his appearance from that of a cop to an ordinary citizen.

In her earpiece she heard Duggan saying that the three gunmen were dead, that all law enforcement officers needed to scour the area in case there were more of them, and that every paramedic in D.C. was needed on Wisconsin Avenue.

She could still hear the sirens and the commotion on the avenue, but the noises grew quieter with every step she took. And despite the fact that thirty yards behind her was the start of what was temporarily the most heavily policed zone in the U.S., right now she felt completely alone.

She wondered if she should call for backup; even just one or two cops would make a difference.

But every able-bodied man and woman was needed on the avenue.

People were injured.

Dying.

Dead.

And there was the possibility that there were more gunmen loose.

But they weren’t the only reasons she didn’t call for assistance.

If Cochrane was in the alley, she couldn’t signify her presence here to him by allowing him to hear her voice.

She kept walking, estimating that she had another twenty yards to go before she reached the ten-foot-high wall that blocked the end of the alley—a wall that Cochrane would easily be able to scale in order to disappear into the hectic throngs of the city.

Part of her now hoped that was what had happened, because the prospect of confronting a cornered Will Cochrane terrified her.

But she was in no way going to back down from her duty.

After another forty yards, she stopped and listened but heard nothing. And she had a clear view of the remainder of the alley and could see nothing out of the ordinary.

He wasn’t here.

She was sure.

She breathed in deeply; her heartbeat began to slow; her muscles started to relax.

Then she tensed again as she heard a clanging noise behind her, and spun with her gun ready to fire.

But it was merely a pigeon that had landed on one of the rusty fire escapes.

She silently cursed, turned to complete her search of the alley, and involuntarily gasped in shock.

Will Cochrane was standing right in front of her.

His gun’s muzzle inches from her forehead.

A nondescript brown jacket covered his police tunic, the cap was gone, and sunglasses were clipped to his collar; he no longer looked anything like a cop. In a flash, he ripped the gun out of her hand, pulled out the radio set that was clipped to her waist, and smashed it against the wall. “Any secondary weapons on you?”

She shook her head.

“Prove it.”

“You . . . you want me to strip?”

“Not in this weather. You’d catch your death from cold. Frisk yourself—firmly.”

Marsha ran her hands tightly around her arms, legs, and the rest of her body.

As she did so, Will threw her handgun as far as he could down the alley behind her. He nodded toward the weapon as it rolled to a halt. “You can pick that up after I’m gone. I know you cops give each other a lot of grief if someone disarms you.”

“Thank . . .” God, was she really about to thank him? “I’m not a cop.”

“FBI?”

Marsha nodded.

“You work for Marsha Gage?”

Should she lie? Would he put a bullet in her brain if she answered honestly? She recalled what Alistair had said to her.

Once he’s found out the truth about why he’s on the run, he wants you to get very close to him, though I must warn you it will be completely on his terms.

It made sense. He’d tried to come to her home last night but was confronted by men with guns—probably the same men who’d been killed today. And he had no gripe with Marsha, because he’d know that she and the rest of the FBI were as much in the dark about Project Ferryman as he was.

She made a decision.

Not an easy one, but she just made it.

“I’m Marsha Gage. I was warned you might come for me once you had answers.”

Will smiled, though his expression remained menacing. “Between Norway and here, time and time again you considerably inconvenienced me.”

“The feeling’s mutual.”

“I’m sure it is.” He was motionless, his gun still pointing directly at her head. “What have you done with Ellie Hallowes?”

Marsha’s eyes widened, but she stayed silent.

“What have you done to her?!”

Marsha shook her head, fear coursing through her body. “Until this morning, I’d never heard of Hallowes.”

“And yet you wouldn’t be here unless you or someone like you made Ellie set this up!”

The fury on Will’s face was easily recognizable, but as she stared at him she also saw absolute concern in his eyes. She’d been right about him. He was extremely loyal to Hallowes. What was the right thing to say and do? She settled on what her heart was telling her: truth and justice. “I had nothing to do with this. If you ever meet them again, Patrick and Alistair will attest to that because they’ve been assigned to my team for the duration of our manhunt. The men responsible for capturing Hallowes are Charles Sheridan and Colby Jellicoe.”