End Game (23 page)

Jonathan and Boxers both wore black on black on black. “I’m still waiting on a name,” Jonathan said. “There’s no need for us to be adversaries.”

“There’s no need for us to be adversaries,” the leader repeated in a pretty spot-on impersonation of Jonathan’s voice. “Shit, man, you’re like a robot. So which is it, army or cops?”

“We have no desire to get into your business so long as you stay out of ours.”

Georgie said, “Far as I’m concerned, you got no business here for us to stay out of. This is our turf, not yours.”

Jonathan was tiring of the banter. They had work to do, and these guys were a problem. They jeopardized the overall security of the mission—whatever the hell that turned out to be—and they posed an overt threat through their firearms and their attitudes. Under different circumstances—say, they were on foreign ground—the smart move would be to eliminate the lot of them just to keep them from posing a threat to Jonathan’s six o’clock once they started moving.

But this wasn’t foreign ground, and different rules applied. From the kids’ point of view, Jonathan was the invader, and they were defending—

“LeBron,” the leader said. “My name’s LeBron.” He pointed to the factory beyond the fence. “What are those dudes doin’ in there? Are they, like, terrorists or something?”

Jonathan’s heart skipped. LeBron knew something, and the something he knew could be of great value. “They could be, yes,” he said.

“Don’t bullshit with us,” another kid in the crowd said. “Either they are or they ain’t.”

“It’s not that simple,” Jonathan said. “If they’re the people we think they are, then yes.”

“I knew it,” Georgie said. “Rag-head douche bags. I told you—”

“Not that kind of terrorist,” Jonathan said. He looked back to Boxers, who just seemed bored. Or ready to shoot someone. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference in the dark. “Can you tell us what you know?” Jonathan asked.

“What kind of gat is that?” LeBron asked, nodding to the rifle in Boxers’ hands.

Boxers raised his rifle a little higher to get it in a better position in case it was needed, yet without pointing it directly at anyone. Jonathan took a half step to the right to make sure he had a clear firing lane in case LeBron was planning to do something stupid. “That’s a Heckler and Koch Model 417 assault rifle,” he said.

“Like an M16?” LeBron asked. “Kinda looks like an M16.”

“Think M16 on steroids,” Jonathan said. He didn’t bother to clarify the difference in calibers and the dozens of other factors that made the 417 and its little brother the 416 (christened the M27 by the US Marine Corps) head and shoulders better weapons than the old M16.

“Machine gun?” LeBron asked. “Fully automatic?”

“It can be,” Jonathan said. “I gotta tell you I’m not comfortable with the direction this chat is taking.”

“I’m just tryin’ to figure out why a non-army non-cop has fancy guns and a big truck, and they’re watchin’ a place I been worried about for a long time.”

“Sounds like we might be on the same side,” Jonathan said. “If they’re who I think they are, we can help you get rid of them.”

“What’d they do?”

Jonathan shook his head. “Nope. You first. Tell me what you know.”

LeBron shifted his posture as he considered his options. Even in the dark, Jonathan could see his eyes sharpen. Everything about the kid’s demeanor screamed intelligence. Everything, that is, except the wardrobe.

“Not out here,” LeBron said. “I got a crib around the corner. We’ll talk there. Just you, though. Gigantor will scare my babies.”

“We’re a team,” Jonathan said. “We stay together.”

LeBron considered some more. “Why don’t we just shoot you all down and be done with it? It’s what, six against one.”

“Not nearly good enough odds,” Boxers said. His words rumbled the sidewalk. His delivery dared someone to question the veracity. “Where he goes, I go.”

More thought. “All right, then,” LeBron said. “Follow me.”

“Just give me an address,” Jonathan said. “I’ll drive to it and meet you there.”

“I’m serious, man,” LeBron said. “It’s just around the corner, not two hundred feet from here.”

“Let’s get going, then,” Jonathan said. “We’ve spent too much time parked at the curb as it is.”

G
raham had never been so cold. It was winter-cold inside this little room with its metal table and its forest of hooks hanging from the ceiling. He was wearing so little that the cold seemed to wrap around him like some kind of cooling blanket. He couldn’t stop trembling, but he suspected that a lot of the trembling was due to fear instead of cold.

He’d rather it be from the cold.
Show no weakness,
Deputy Price had said.

Jolaine’s words resonated even louder. All he needed was time and opportunity. With those things, he stood a chance of getting out of here. With just those things.

But he’d need strength, too, and with all the shivering, he could feel energy draining out of him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten, and that thought triggered a rush of hunger that consumed his gut, cramping his stomach and making him feel nauseous.

Jolaine.

Another wall of emotion broke over him. Jolaine was all he had left. She was the last one who gave a shit about him at all. Now it was just Graham and these terrible people.

3155AX475598CVRLLPAHQ449833D0Z.

The thought came from nowhere, still intact, still ready to go. The code that was more important than so many lives. How was that even possible? What could it mean?

Well, that was easy, wasn’t it? It meant the difference between life and death for Graham, and maybe for Jolaine as well. As long as he kept it to himself, they would have to keep him alive.

Another terrifying thought bloomed: Maybe that was the plan. This shit with the freezer and the cold air was a form of torture, right? Sure it was. He’d seen it on TV. It was the kind of thing that happened to the Iraqi prisoners in that prison he’d read about in the history books. The books called it torture.

Well, what was the point of torture?

In this case, it was to get him to talk. They’d made that very clear. They’d make him suffer until he gave them what they wanted. And then what?

Well, Jolaine said that if he gave up the information, they’d kill him. So, his choice was to suffer or to die.

That wasn’t a choice at all. That was—

The lock on the other side of the door moved. It made a loud sliding sound followed by a solid
thunk
when it reached the end of its travel. He waited for what was coming next. Under the table as he was, occupying the same spot for all this time—a spot that had therefore become at least a little warmer—he hoped that he wouldn’t be seen.

Should he be ready to lunge at whoever opened the door? Was this the opportunity that Jolaine had told him to be ready for? How could he know?

The door opened quickly. That was a surprise, because in his mind, the opening would have been a long, drawn-out event, complete with creaking noises and a demonic laugh. He couldn’t see the door because it was blocked by the vertical rectangle that served as one of the legs for the stainless-steel table, and for long seconds, nothing happened. No one entered as far as he could tell, and he didn’t move. The heavy thrumming of his heart was the loudest sound he could hear.

“Come on out, Graham,” said a heavily accented voice. It wasn’t Teddy, but it might have been his brother. The same accent, but a lot thicker. “I know you are here because there is nowhere else for you to be.”

Graham didn’t move, as if by remaining still he could become invisible.

“So you want to play seek and hide,” the man said from the door. “Sure. Fine. We can do that.”

The hiding strategy suddenly seemed like a bad idea. What was the sense of pissing them off? It would be different if he’d set a trap, or if he had some kind of ambush plan. As it was, all hiding could do was make all of this more difficult, more uncomfortable for him.

“I’m here,” Graham said. It came out a little too loud, but that probably didn’t matter. He scooched his butt along the floor the point where he was clear of the table, and then he stood. He didn’t realize he’d raised his hands until he saw that he’d done it, and the realization embarrassed him. When he was standing at his full height, he lowered his hands to his sides.

The man had only advanced a few feet into the doorway, but he stood funny, as if one side of his body were heavier than the other.

“What’s wrong?” Graham asked, reading the expression on the man’s face as one of anger. “I’m right here.”

“I knew where you were,” the man said. He showed an odd smile, an unnerving smile. Then he shifted his weight to point something at Graham.

At first, it registered to Graham as a gun. He started to dive for cover, but before he could hit the floor, a spray of high-pressure water was on the way. The sheer volume of the flow told Graham that it was from a fire hose. When the solid pillar of water hit him in his chest, it threw him backward and down onto the floor.

The stream pummeled him with bruising force, knocking the air from his lungs. When the man redirected the stream to his face, Graham brought his hands up to protect his eyes. Even with his face covered, the water got into his nose and mouth and choked him. The act of coughing brought in more water, and he thought he was drowning.

The pillar of water shifted in an instant, and then it started tearing up his belly and his legs. Again, he tried to cover up, but then the stream returned to his face. As soon as he covered it, the stream went back to his balls. This asshole in the doorway was having a great time.

Graham rolled on the floor to turn his back to his attacker. The force of the stream pushed him across the floor until he was pressed up against the far wall.

Still the hydraulic beating continued, raking the length of his body, from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. This went on for at least two minutes. There’d be brief respites of five, ten, maybe fifteen seconds when the water stream wasn’t being driven directly into his body, but the flow continued.

And then it stopped, a smash cut from full on to full off.

The attacker didn’t say a word before he left. Graham heard the door close and the lock slide back into place. Then all he heard were the sounds of water dripping and draining and puddling. It was a sound that was worse than silence.

When he was sure he was alone again, he rolled away from the wall and onto his back, and from there to a sitting position. Water ran from everywhere. Where it wasn’t running off a surface, it dripped in a rapid, staccato rhythm that might as well have been a stream. He sat in a puddle that was at least an inch deep, maybe deeper. He could not have been more soaked, not if he had jumped into the deep end of a swimming pool. Every surface of the room was soaked, in fact. Not a dry square inch to be found anywhere.

As he rose to his feet, he noted that the water was deep enough to cover his toes. When he walked, his feet created tiny bow waves that rippled across the width of the room.

When the coolers kicked on again, he understood what they were doing.

They were going to freeze him to death.

Anton Datsik sat at his desk in the study of his modest home in Arlington, Virginia, playing solitaire on his computer as he waited for the phone call that had to come soon if it were to be of any use. When it arrived, he answered on the first ring. “Tell me you have news I want to hear,” he said.

“I do,” the woman said. “We know where the boy is. He’s in the custody of the Chechens as we speak. There’s an old meatpacking plant in Detroit.” She gave him the address.

“How do you know this?” Datsik asked.

“I just know,” she said.

“Who else knows?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Does your boss know?”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “Or if she does, I don’t know how. My sources and hers are entirely different. And mine are much more reliable.”

Datsik typed the address into his computer to check out the location. It was both urban and accessible. He checked the clock. “How long has he been there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe one hour. Not much more, I don’t believe.”

“Are you there on the scene?”

“I am not.”

“They cannot be allowed to leave,” Datsik said.

“I believe that is what the Agency hired you for.” There was defiance in her voice this time that hadn’t been there before. He didn’t like it. “I have done my part,” she said. “I have delivered him to you. Now be sure to tell—”

Datsik clicked off. He knew what she was going to ask and didn’t need for that to be out in space for the NSA to listen to. Besides, he had more pressing matters to attend to.

Using a different phone—an encrypted satellite phone that was dedicated to a single purpose—he dialed a number and waited.

Philip Baxter answered on the second ring. “Yes,” he said.

“The clock is ticking,” Datsik said. “I need a plane, eight parachutes, and a pilot who has no memory.”

Baker paused. In the background, Datsik could hear the sound of a television. Sounded like a romance. “Do you know what time it is? How am I—”

“I can end this tonight,” Datsik said. “But I have to work quickly. Telling you the truth, it might already be too late. In two or three more hours, this will either be over, or the world will have nuclear-capable terrorists. All of that, my friend, is on your shoulders.”

He deliberately used the most provocative words he could conjure.

“Your team is ready?”

“It is.”

Another pause. “I’ll get back to you in ten minutes,” Baxter said.

LeBron hadn’t exaggerated. His crib was indeed just a few hundred feet away, the first house on the corner. It took LeBron and his crew less time to walk the distance than it took Boxers to drive. Big Guy parked the Expedition in the alley behind the house and locked the doors.

“Somebody steals this car, they’re gonna get quite a stash,” Boxers said.

It was a hell of point, but they didn’t have a lot of choice. Jonathan was betting on the fact that within the neighborhood, stealing from LeBron was understood to be a bad decision.

“Maybe I should stay out here and guard it,” Boxers offered.

“I’d rather you be inside,” Jonathan said. “It’s only the two of us this time around, and we’re on a really tight clock. I want your opinions.”

Boxers laughed. “Are you really going to plan an 0300 op off the word of a bunch of gangbangers?”

Jonathan scowled. “It’s local intel. We do it all the time. These guys know more about their neighborhood than we do.”

“We don’t even know if the guys they don’t like inside that factory are the same guys we don’t like.”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.” This wasn’t like Big Guy. “Why’s there a bug up your ass on this?”

Boxers started to speak, then changed his mind.

“Talk to me, Box.”

“You know we’re gonna get screwed in this thing, right?” Boxers said. “We’ve got government agencies fighting each other for a piece of this pie, and we’re the ones in the middle who don’t officially give a shit about the outcome so long as we extract the PC from the bad guys.”

Jonathan shrugged. “That’s what we do,” he said. “We’re mission oriented, not politically oriented.”

“Big words,” Boxers said. “Where are you going to be when we’re in the middle of a crossfire between FBI and CIA?”

Jonathan recognized that his answer would seem obtuse, but he didn’t mean it that way. “We’re going to save the PC,” he said. Really, it was the most obvious thing in the world. “The alternative is to let the PC die. That won’t happen. Not on my watch.”

“And what do we do about the bodies that bear government credentials?”

“We say that they shouldn’t have tried to kill a child.” Even in the most cynical corners of the most corrupt governments on the planet—of which, unfortunately, the United States was numbered, thanks to the Dar-mond administration—it was understood that children were not to be harmed in political operations.

Boxers held Jonathan’s gaze, then defaulted to his dismissive chuckle. “Yeah, okay. Fine. I say we wear body armor.”

Now, there was a point where Jonathan could not argue. Before moving ahead, each of them donned their ballistic vests, which were preloaded with three hundred rounds of ammunition for their preferred long guns—the M27 for Jonathan and the HK417 for Boxers.

“As long as we’ve got the ammo . . .” Boxers said.

“Yeah, we’ll take the weapons, too.” Jonathan didn’t believe in his heart that they were walking into an ambush at LeBron’s house, but there was no way to know for sure. Bottom line: No one in the history of mankind had ever offered up a curse to all things holy for being too well armed or having too much ammunition.

“Let’s kit up all the way,” Jonathan said. A full-on, high-end show of firepower couldn’t possibly work against them. Plus, the more they carried on their persons, the less they risked losing in the event that the Expedition was stolen.

When they were done, Jonathan’s M27 dangled like an exclamation point down the center of his body. His left thigh bore a 4.6 millimeter HKMP7, and the ubiquitous .45 Colt 1911 rode on his right thigh.

He saw that Boxers was similarly outfitted, but with the 417 where Jonathan’s M27 hung, and a Beretta M9 instead of his Colt. “What the hell,” Jonathan said. “Let’s take the rucks, too.”

With the rucksacks on their backs—Jonathan’s weighed in at around seventy pounds, Boxers’ at just north of one hundred—they had nearly everything they needed to invade anyplace that needed invading. Certainly, they had LeBron’s living room covered.

“That covers the theft issue,” Boxers said with a smile. “Sure am glad I brought it up.”

With his tiny wireless transceiver inserted in his right ear, Jonathan connected his portable radio to the transmit button in the center of his chest and he pressed it. “Mother Hen, Scorpion.”

“Loud and clear,” Venice’s voice responded.

“I have a research project for you,” Jonathan said. He read off the address of the factory. “I need you to find out everything you can about the inside of that building. Anything and everything.”

“Okay,” she said. For reasons known only to her, Venice avoided military speak such as “roger” for okay, or even the civilian version, ten-four. “How long do I have?”