The Short Drop (27 page)

Jenn glided forward, down the steps, toward the agent—drawing her weapon and moving in one liquid movement. She had it raised by the third step. The agent fumbled his draw and froze, his gun still pointing at the ground uselessly as his eyes locked on the business end of hers. They stared at each other over the hood of Gibson’s car.

His partner stepped to her left, trying to get a good angle to put his gun on her. She took a step right, matching him. As it was, he would have to fire over the roof of the car, and it didn’t give him a great shot. She prayed that Hendricks was backing her play and had a clear line of fire if it came to that. The agents at the SUVs brought rifles up and trained them on the house.

“Tell your boys to stay cool,” she said to the lead agent. “Because you’re gonna miss all the action if they don’t.”

He nodded and called back to them to stay where they were.

“Not the first time you’ve had a gun on you, is it?”

He shook his head.

“I can tell. Most guys, you point a gun at their chest, and they freak the fuck out. But not you. You’re just mister ice water. I admire that. I do. So why don’t you tell me who you all actually are, so this isn’t the last.”

“We’re the FBI, ma’am. Now put that down.”

“No, I like this gun. I’ve been shooting it, or one like it, since I was eight years old. So run that by me again.”

“FBI,” he said stubbornly.

“Is that a Glock 23 in your hand,
Agent
?”

The agent looked down at it. When he looked back he was nervous for the first time.

“No,” she answered for him. “That looks a lot like a chrome-plated Colt 1911.”

The agent nodded glumly.

“You know who carries chrome-plated 1911s? Guys with small dicks and big complexes. You know who doesn’t? Bureau guys. Never have, never will. So tell me again who you are, and if you say FBI to me again, I’m going to punch a hole in that ID like it’s a train ticket.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

When George Abe was fourteen, his father began taking him to business meetings. He would sit quietly in the corner and listen. Afterward, his father would quiz him on the particulars. George was allowed to ask questions, and his father would explain his tactics. In this way, George learned the principles of negotiation and the art of reading situations. One of his father’s principles was never to ask a question unless absolutely necessary.

“Wait,” his father had cautioned. “Never ask a question in surprise. You will give yourself away. Wait. Think. Often the answers will be given to you.”

George watched Calista, working to piece together what her presence meant. Contemplating how deep her betrayal ran. When it began. Masking both his anger and his deepening fear for his people, who he knew now were in terrible danger. He would not allow his concern to make it easier to threaten him.

“Oh, George, spare me your meditative samurai pose. We haven’t the time.”

“What do we have time for?”

“A few questions, perhaps.”

“Ask them, then.”

Calista smiled. “That’s what I admire about you. You’ve taken Asian inscrutability and worn it like a badge of honor.”

“Clearly, I still have much to learn from you.”

“Yes, I suppose you do.”

“At least now I know what happened to my offices.”

“Yes, well, that. After consulting with my attorneys, we felt it prudent to liquidate Abe Consulting Group and write it off as a loss. For tax purposes, you see.”

“I do. And I’m impressed. That must have taken some planning.”

“Years of it,” she said.

Years?
How could that be? What exactly was Calista planning?

“So, how is Benjamin?” he asked.

Her face brightened like an actress who had forgotten her line and had just been fed her cue. “In the past few hours, Benjamin and I have come to an understanding.”

“About Suzanne?”

“About a great many things,” she said.

“And you think that wise?”

“Things will be different this time. He and I understand each other now.”

George studied her. “What is it you want?”

“For Benjamin to be president.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“Everything my family has earned.”

“And me? Do I wind up like Michael? Is that what I’ve earned?”

“Who on earth is Michael?”

“The man lying here!” George spat, his anger finally eclipsing his will. “The man your new partners just murdered.”

Calista looked down at the body as if noticing the dead man for the first time. “That was unavoidable.”

“And Jenn Charles? Dan Hendricks? Gibson Vaughn? Are their murders ‘unavoidable’?”

“It’s an imperfect world, George. Evelyn understood that.”

Evelyn Furst? Was she that profoundly evil? “What have you done?”

Calista looked away. “Sacrifices had to be made.”

“My God. Your own sister. And what about Pennsylvania? Suzanne?”

“Suzanne isn’t in Pennsylvania.”

For a moment, he took what she said as defeatism. That she’d given up on finding Suzanne. But that wasn’t what she meant at all.

“Where is she?”

Titus came back from the truck and whispered something in Calista’s ear. Calista listened but kept her eyes on George.

“I’m afraid we’re out of time,” she said.

“Where is she?” he yelled. “Answer me!”

“Enough!” she snapped, then took control of herself again. “That’s enough. I think we’re done here.”

George looked up at her from his knees.

“I see. And am I your last loose end?”

“Nearly,” Calista said and held out her hand. Titus handed her a radio. She turned up the volume and rested it on her knee. It was the communications channel for a Cold Harbor tactical team.

“Jenn Charles! Daniel Hendricks! Step out of the house. We have warrants for your arrest,” a voice barked over the radio.

“We have a white female on the porch,” a team member said.

“Is it Charles?” asked a second.

“Stand by.”

George held his breath. The voices chattered back and forth.

“Positive contact. Visual confirmation. It’s Charles.”

Calista looked back to George.

“Very nearly.”

Fred Tinsley knelt on one knee deep in the woods and watched with mounting irritation the standoff develop between Charles and the seven men from the black SUVs. He’d been waiting here all day for darkness to fall before taking the house. It would have been simple. He knew its layout from the last time.

Then, as if on cue, these men had roared up, gung ho, bristling and loud. Charles didn’t believe they were FBI. Tinsley didn’t care one way or another. Whoever they were, they couldn’t be allowed to take anyone from the house. Tinsley needed one of the three alive. Temporarily. There were questions that needed answering. Gibson Vaughn, if possible. He appeared to have leapfrogged ahead of the other two, and Tinsley wanted to know how.

Tinsley studied the battlefield. In a direct exchange of small-arms fire, he would die. That was undisputable. His Sig Sauer was a fine weapon, but it was no match for seven trained men. Five with assault rifles.

He knew, however, how to neutralize their advantage.

Rising out of the shadows, Tinsley hugged the tree line, slipping out of cover a few feet from the rear SUV. One man stood on each side of the vehicle behind an open door. The engine was running, masking Tinsley’s footfalls on the white stone driveway. It helped that their focus and their rifles were trained on the confrontation with Charles.

Tinsley took the first man in a single practiced sweep of his knife. Blood splashed the window. He lowered the man to the ground into a sitting position to die.

Tinsley looked through the open doors of the SUV to the other man, who glanced back at the same instant. For a moment, they stared each other in the eye. Then the man was twisting, trying to bring his rifle to bear, but it was unwieldy in the cramped space between the door and vehicle.

Tinsley lowered the knife and asked the time.

“What?” the man asked as if he hadn’t heard Tinsley correctly.

It was a strange question under the circumstances, and that strangeness slowed the man a fraction. It was enough. Tinsley shot him in the neck, the suppressor sounding a hollow rattle in the SUV’s interior, and the man went down clutching the ruins of his throat.

Tinsley checked to see if the exchange had drawn unwanted attention, but all eyes remained on the standoff unfolding on the porch. It was tense, like unlit kindling. It needed a spark to make it catch. Tinsley took up the dead man’s rifle and fired several bursts over Jenn Charles’s head.

The effect was instantaneous.

Charles reacted first. She slid to her left, dropping as she fired twice at the man claiming to be FBI. The man tumbled backward and stayed down. His partner returned fire, but Charles disappeared behind the car. There were gunshots from the open doorway of the house, and the second man threw himself to the ground and crawled toward his fallen partner.

Automatic-weapons fire erupted from all sides. The rifles were all suppressed and, judging by the sound, loaded with subsonic ammunition. Charles was correct. These men were not the FBI.

The car Charles was hiding behind exploded in a firework of broken glass and metallic shards. Bullets crashed into the side of the house, battering the front door of the house and flinging it wide. Tinsley heard a man yell in pain.

Tinsley watched the partner of the fallen man circle the car and take his partner by the collar, dragging him back behind a large elm in the center of the circular driveway. Charles returned fire as best she could but was effectively pinned down. There was no other movement from the house. Tinsley wondered if she had sacrificed herself to buy her compatriots time to flee out the back.

That would not be ideal.

Movement drew Tinsley’s eyes. The man flanking Charles had spotted him. Bullets laced past, and Tinsley threw himself into the SUV, scrambling low across the seats as the armored door absorbed a burst of rounds. The sound of the running engine stopped him. He sunk down below the dashboard, shifted it into drive, and stomped down on the accelerator. The SUV leapt forward. Rounds thudded into the engine block. White circles like cigarette burns popped in the windshield above Tinsley’s head. He held the accelerator to the floor.

The SUV caught the shooter square with a meaty impact and dragged him into the woods. The SUV hit two trees simultaneously, lifting the rear axle off the ground as it wrenched to a halt.

His nose bleeding and right knee injured, Tinsley disappeared into the trees before the air bag had finished deflating.

Bullets punched holes through the walls above Gibson’s head. He stumbled backward and fell to the floor behind the cover of the bathtub.

Billy was frozen, hugging the toilet like it was a life preserver. Gibson crawled over and shoved him roughly around so that the toilet was between him and the gunfire. That and the bathtub would give them some short-term protection, but he needed to get Billy out of there.

Billy begged Gibson not to leave him.

“I’ll be right back,” he promised.

He moved low out of the bathroom. The hallway was covered in debris and broken glass. He scuttled down the hall to the front door. Hendricks was sprawled out on the floor. It looked like the front door had cracked Hendricks in the forehead, splitting the skin from the bridge of his nose to his hairline. The wound was bleeding heavily. Gibson checked for a pulse—it felt strong and regular.

He dragged Hendricks farther from the open door and patted him down. A thick key ring was in a hip pocket. He took the keys along with Hendricks’s gun and crab-walked back to the bathroom, where he fumbled through the keys, unlocked the handcuffs, and motioned for Billy to follow him.

Together, they crawled down the hallway back to Hendricks. The automatic-weapons fire had slowed, becoming more deliberate. There was a thunderous crash away from the house. A car horn rang out. It took him another moment to realize that the crash had momentarily halted the gunfire.

He gestured for Billy to drag Hendricks farther back into the house.

Gibson glanced out the door and into the dark. A round snapped past his ear. One of the SUVs had driven off into the woods. The other SUV’s headlights had been shot out. He could see Jenn crouched behind the car, but no one else. Billy said something behind him.

“What?”

“Floodlights,” Billy said again.

Gibson pointed to a panel of light switches above his head. Billy nodded.

Not a bad idea. He knocked on the doorframe to get Jenn’s attention. They made eye contact. He showed her the gun, gestured for her to come to him, then held up three fingers. She nodded, and he counted down with his fingers. On zero, he threw all the switches at once. Powerful halogens lit up the driveway like high noon. In the glare, he saw two men back by the SUV and another behind the elm tree in the circular driveway, kneeling beside a body.

Where were the others?

As the lights came on, Jenn was up and moving swiftly. Gibson emptied Hendricks’s gun in suppressing fire over her head. Jenn slid into the house, and he kicked the door shut behind her.

The men out front started shooting out the floodlights, plunging them back into darkness.

They moved deeper into the relative safety of the house, huddled around Hendricks, and regrouped. Jenn shifted and helped her partner into a sitting position, shaking him gently as he came to. She brought Hendricks up to speed while he tried to clear his head and wipe the blood out of his eyes. Gibson offered him his gun back.

Footsteps pounded up onto the porch, and something solid hit the floor in the living room. Jenn anticipated it.

“Open your mouth, cover your eyes and ears!” she ordered.

Hendricks reacted automatically. Gibson and Jenn were already curling their heads down into their knees. Gibson yelled at Billy, but he only gaped at them in confusion.

The flash-bang went off in the hallway, but Gibson still felt the change in air pressure in his skull. It was like a car alarm pressed to his ears. He could see and he could hear, if only barely. Billy had taken the brunt and curled into a writhing ball by the time the shooting started.