Edge (46 page)

I looked too. A youngish man with a close crew cut. He wore dark jeans and a sweatshirt. He kept his hand at his side and when he turned and made some brief rounds, I could see that he wore a semiautomatic pistol on his hip.

Still thirty yards away, Pogue slipped an earpiece in and spoke into his collar. I couldn't hear the words clearly but I deduced he was reporting in to Williams, Joanne's former boss.

If McCall was right about the times, the primary
had not yet arrived. This conclusion was reasonable since there were only two vehicles here—Loving's and the SUV the minders had used to kidnap the girl. Amanda would be held for the time being, until the primary who wanted the information from her arrived.

The reason they hired Loving was that nobody else was willing to torture a teenager, if it came to that. . . .

What on earth could she possibly know? Something she'd learned about one of her father's earlier cases? Or something else? Like all teens in the D.C. area she'd have friends whose mothers or fathers worked for the government and for government contractors. Had she and a girlfriend read through files in a parent's computer, something classified?

But that question would have to wait.

Our job now was simple: Save the girl.

Pogue listened for a moment and whispered a few more words. Then he signed off. He eased closer to me and whispered, “Williams says you're in charge. How do we handle it?”

“I don't want to wait for the primary. I want to extract her now. Use nonlethal if possible . . . at least on one of them.”

I wanted somebody alive to learn who was behind this.

“All right.” He glanced at my gun. “You tapped?”

Meaning: Was my Glock threaded for a silencer? I rarely had reason even to draw my weapon, let alone make sure it fired in a whisper. “No.”

He handed me his. “One in the bedroom. Safety's on.”

He'd tell me this because Glocks don't have a
safety lever; they have a double trigger that prevents accidental discharges. I was familiar with the Beretta, though, and slid the lever smoothly to the fire position. The Italians made as efficient weapons as the Austrians.

I was curious why he'd given me his gun. Then he said, “Cover me.”

He opened his backpack and extracted some metal and plastic pieces. He assembled them into a small crossbow, steel.

The evolution of weapons . . .

It took two strokes to cock it. The bolt he loaded didn't have a sharp tip but instead an elongated tube.

“I should be a little closer,” he whispered.

We moved forward. I was in the lead, using my training as an orienteer and amateur sign cutter yet again to keep our transit silent. I thought back briefly to that very long, very hot day outside San Antonio, leading the illegals to safety as quietly and as unobtrusively as I could.

Pogue and I eased into a compacted stand of weeds about forty feet from the guard. With a nod at the bow, Pogue said, “Stun gun. It'll immobilize him for about twenty seconds, so we'll have to get to him fast. I'll go first, you come behind and cover me with the Beretta. You're okay with that, right?”

Meaning killing somebody. I said, “Yes.”

I aimed toward the doorway, where any reinforcements would come from.

“Go,” I whispered.

POGUE LIFTED THE
weapon, looking completely at ease, like a man about to cast a fly into a clear stream.

He was compensating for gravity and the slight breeze. When the guard turned away from us, Pogue pulled the trigger. With a faint snap, the bolt zipped into the air in a perfect arc, hitting the man somewhere in the middle of the back. I didn't know how many volts the flying Taser had but it was enough. The guard went down, shivering.

Then we were on our feet, running in tandem. Pogue had dropped the bow and had a backup pistol in his hand. With the silenced automatic, I scanned the doorway, the building's windows and the area around us for signs of hostiles. There were none. Pogue hog-tied the guard with plastic restraints and slapped an adhesive gag over his mouth. He bent down and pocketed the man's phone and radio, after shutting them off, as well as his pistol, while I patted him down for other weapons. Even though tactical ops aren't my specialty, I knew you never left weapons for the other side to pick up later.

Take or trash, the saying went.

I dug the man's wallet out of his pocket. I was disappointed but not surprised to see he was a
pro and there was no evidence of his employer or affiliation. He had four driver's licenses—different names, same picture—money and credit cards in those various names.

In a moment the man revived. He looked up at us, fearfully, and began to retch. Pogue and I dragged him around the corner of the building and I ripped the gag off and let him vomit. When he was done Pogue slapped another gag on him. I crouched down and pulled out the small locking-blade Buck knife I carry.

I opened it with a soft click. The man stirred. I pointed to the gag and held up two fingers. Terrifying the man even more, Pogue applied a second.

I bent close and said, “Is Loving here?”

A hesitation. Pogue gripped one of the man's hands and I scraped the blade across the top of a nail. Painless but persuasive; even with the gag, you could hear the terrified scream.

A yes nod.

“How many people inside, total?” I began to count. At four, he bobbed his head up and down vigorously.

“And the man who hired Loving? We know he's on his way. When will he get here? Blink—each blink is five minutes.”

I tallied them up. It came to a half hour.

“Who is he?”

A series of desperate nos. I believed he didn't know the primary's identity.

“Inside, those four . . . are they all with the girl?”

A shrug but a terrified one and I suspected he didn't know.

“Where?” I began running through various
directions, at which he either nodded or shook his head. Once or twice he shrugged.

Apparently they were in the back of the facility, straight down the main corridor, though he didn't know or couldn't remember if it was upstairs or down. While just one story here at the entrance, farther inside the hill there were multiple floors, duBois had learned.

I nodded to Pogue and closed my eyes and tilted my head briefly. The man extracted a heavy-duty hypodermic syringe. The guard stirred violently, probably thinking we were going to kill him, but Pogue got the needle into a vein skillfully and a moment later he was asleep. “How long?” I whispered.

“Two hours, give or take.”

I ripped the gag off, fearful that the guard might vomit again and choke to death. Pogue looked at me questioningly, as if he didn't care what happened to the man, but said nothing.

At the front door I spit on the hinges to keep them from squealing and we eased it silently open. I expected to find battery-powered lamps but the overhead lights were working. Pogue shrugged at what could be deduced from the functioning power: Perhaps the facility had been taken over by Henry Loving. A place of business—to ply his trade as a lifter. It was intimidating; subjects would be terrified to be brought here. Also, the walls were thick enough to withstand a Russian assault—which meant that any locals passing nearby couldn't hear the screams from inside.

The linoleum-floored corridor, stained from water seepage, extended straight to the back of the
facility. I looked for cameras or other security systems and found none.

I returned the silenced Beretta to Pogue and drew my Glock. We started down the hundred-foot-long hallway, keeping to the shadows. Pogue was in front and I watched the rear regularly. He tried doorknobs occasionally but the doors were locked. Apparently there was only this one main way in and out of the facility, though there would have to be some fire exits.

Escape would come later, though. First, I had to find the principal that I'd lost.

Where the corridor ended there were stairs leading both down and up.

Which way?

I played another game. I mentally flipped a coin.

Up won.

PAUSING TO LISTEN,
on the second-floor landing.

Faint noises, the source impossible to guess, came from unknown directions. Taps, clicks, water dripping? The air here was raw with the scent of mold and very chill. I knew that interrogators regularly use underheated interview rooms.

The door to the second floor was locked and we continued to the third floor, the top. At the far end of this corridor we could see illumination, about fifty feet ahead. We moved quickly along the shabby linoleum to the doorway from which the light filtered. We paused outside and glanced in. The door opened onto a wide balcony overlooking the second floor, a very large room, seventy-five by a hundred feet or so. The place was a control room of some sort, filled with gray desks, partitions and metal electronics consoles from which the guts had been removed. The smell of musty paper joined that of the mold. The overhead lights were off but at the far end, on the other side of high partitions, were pools of illumination.

I pointed and, with Pogue now covering me, we went in the direction of the light, crouching, practically on our knees. We came to a stairwell heading
down to the main floor but stayed on the balcony. Soon we could hear voices rising and falling softly from the far end of the room, in the direction in which we were headed. Men's voices, I couldn't make out the words. But there were some tones of impatience, followed by a calm utterance, perhaps reassurance.

If Amanda was there, she wasn't speaking.

We continued farther down the balcony, moving slowly. There was a lot of trash up here, including broken glass and scraps of sheet metal, which we had to avoid. The men were speaking softly; they would easily hear the sound made by a careless footfall.

Finally we got to the end of the balcony. Below us were the pools of light we'd seen. I rose slowly and peeked over the edge. The light, I saw, was cast by two cheap, mismatched lamps sitting on desks. Incongruously, one sported a Disney shade, torn and stained. Nemo, I noted.

Only ten feet from it sat Amanda Kessler.

In dusty jeans and dark blue sweatshirt the girl huddled in a gray metal office chair, face grim and defiant. Her knees were drawn up. Her wrists were duct taped but they'd let her keep her bear purse with its silly grin.

Her captors were underneath us, obscured by the overhanging balcony. Loving and the three others. If we could get the four of them into the open, out from under the balcony, we'd be in an excellent shooting position. I raised two fingers and drew my hand across my throat. Two more raised fingers, then the letter
L
, to indicate Loving, and I pointed to my shoulder.

I wanted two dead and Loving and one other wounded, to keep them alive for interrogation. A shattered clavicle or scapula will completely disable a hostile, unlike a leg shot.

Pogue acknowledged my message while I looked around the floor to find something to fling into the shadows to draw them out—as Pogue himself had done at the safe house just hours before.

One of the kidnappers entered our line of sight below, walking toward the girl. He paused before he got to Amanda, who watched him with narrowed eyes. He picked up a coffee cup. The bulky man was in a suit. He sipped and looked around the room. “They fired missiles from here?”

“I don't know,” came another voice. Not Loving's.

“It was Nikes.”

“What, like the shoe?”

“Like the Greek god.”

The voices had no Southern drawl.

“There are silos around here someplace. In Clifton. In case the Russians attacked.”

“The Russians? Why would they attack us?”

“Jesus.”

I picked up a few bits of broken glass. Pogue saw and silently took a second magazine for the Beretta out of his holster and set it on the floor in front of him. I kept my second in my pocket. I only had one extra, unlike Pogue, who seemed to have about a hundred rounds on him, and if the operation became one of pursuit or escape under fire I didn't want to leave any ammunition behind.

“Where is he?” another voice called.

“Be patient.”

I felt a chill, hearing the calm voice of Henry Loving.

“You think they know?”

“That we have her? Not yet. McCall would've let us know.”

The girl said suddenly, “You're going to get arrested. All of you. Or shot.” Amanda Kessler was not, unlike the others, whispering. Her voice was strident.

The man with the coffee glanced at her but said nothing.

Neither did anybody else.

“My father's a policeman.”

“We know,” came another voice.

But Loving shushed him. “Chat's inefficient. Be quiet.”

I glanced at Pogue. From his pocket he withdrew earplugs. I was familiar with them. They block out the high decibels and pitch of gunfire but allow human voices through. He handed a pair to me. I shoved them in. I took a deep breath and let fly the piece of glass, which landed with a
tink
in the far corner of the room.

The hostile in view set down the coffee and drew his pistol. “Fuck was that?”

Two others appeared from below the balcony, one with a dark automatic in his hand, moving forward slowly.

That was three. We needed the fourth to make our plan work. Where was Loving?

Come on. . . .

From directly underneath us, the lifter calmly ordered, “Call out front.”

As the three men in front of us looked around,
one lifted a radio. “Jamie, what's up? Is he here yet? We heard something inside.”

Receiving no response, he looked back uncertainly.

I let fly another bit of glass and it skidded across the floor.

Both of the armed men below us lifted their weapons.