End Game (13 page)

“Graham,” she said. She never took her eyes off the real estate in front of her.

“Right here.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine. I have the extra bullets.”

“Okay, good. Now, get out, stay behind cover and look on the ground near the front of the car. Do you see the keys? I dropped them and they should be down there.”

She heard him moving.

“Got them.”

“Have you ever driven a car?” she asked.

“I don’t have my license.”

“Different question. Have you ever—” She stopped the question because the answer was irrelevant. “You’re about to drive the car,” she said. “Get behind the wheel and start it up.”

“But there’s broken glass—”

“Graham!”

“Okay, okay.”

Jolaine saw movement behind the SUV that was farthest from her. A crouched bad guy was duckwalking to get position behind the engine block for better cover. She didn’t see the man as much as she saw the gun barrel. He held it a little too high.

Jolaine switched the selector from semi- to full-auto and fired a three-round burst into the engine block. Even the armor-piercing rounds wouldn’t penetrate the thickness of the engine, but they would burrow deeply enough to disable the motor and to give the guy a religious experience. Just for good measure, she fired another three-round burst through the other SUV. There would likely be survivors among the attackers, and she didn’t want them to have a way out.

She had just begun to wonder what Graham was doing when the Mercedes engine turned over and then revved as Graham gave it way too much gas. “Get in!” he yelled. “We’re ready.”

“Hold on a second,” Jolaine replied. That guy behind the fender, and whatever other friends he had left, were a problem. She dared not turn her back on—

There were two of them side by side and they popped up together, their weapons at the ready. They opened fire, on full-auto. They emerged from precisely the spot where Jolaine had been watching, one of them standing into the red dot of her gun sight. She dropped him with a bullet to his chin.

His friend reacted with impressive speed, diving back for cover while the head mist still hung in the air. Jolaine swung her aim and got off a shot, but it wasn’t a clean hit. She thought she saw an impact on his shoulder as he fell, but she couldn’t be certain. She needed to be certain.

With her M4 at the ready, pressed in tightly and her finger outside the trigger guard, she advanced on the spot where he fell. Behind her, she heard Graham plead for her to get back into the car, his voice squeaky with panic. But their only route out of the parking lot was through these guys, and that would mean driving through the kill zone of an ambush. Unacceptable.

Jolaine had lost track of time since the shoot-out began, but she was confident that it was still under two minutes. The other cars in the parking lot meant that other guests were either watching through windows—a foolish choice—or cowering in corners. Either way, lots of phone calls were being made to 911, and that meant she and Graham were in a hurry.

Impossibly red blood traced rivulets in the uneven pavement of the lot, almost all of it from the ruined head of the first shooter to pop up from behind the second SUV.

“Jolaine, please don’t!” Graham cried.

She ignored him. There’d be time to explain later. Now she needed to concentrate on the potential threats. She heard the Mercedes transmission slip into gear and she knew without looking that Graham was backing out of the parking spot to be prepared to drive off. She was fine with that so long as he did not try to pass her.

Or panic and leave me behind.
That thought made her regret that she’d crippled the other vehicles.

As she carefully turned the corner around the front bumper of the target SUV, her mind filtered out the hideous sight of the dead man with the exposed brain and instead scanned for signs of the living. She led with her carbine as she whipped around the corner to encounter whatever threat lay beyond.

The second man she’d hit sat against the rear wheel of the vehicle, his legs outstretched, his face gray and twisted in agony. His right arm and the right side of his shirt glistened with blood. She’d hit him harder than she’d thought. His rifle—she saw now that it was an MP5—lay on the ground next to him, and he made no effort to reach for it.

Keeping low, Jolaine kicked the weapon away and turned her attention to the rest of the parking lot, searching for additional targets. Movement close to her rear caused her to whirl, but she broke her aim when she saw that it was Graham with the Mercedes.

She held up her hand to tell him to stop, and said, “Don’t move any closer, Graham, and don’t get out of the car.” Her eyes never stopped scanning all compass points. “Keep an eye out for other people and tell me anything you see.”

“We need to go, Jolaine,” Graham said. “Please, let’s just go.”

“Ten seconds,” she said. She turned her attention to the wounded man. “Who are you? Why are you attacking us?”

The man moved slowly, as if lifting his head consumed all of his energy. “Not you,” he said with a heavy accent that sounded nearly identical to that of Bernard Mitchell. “The boy. The boy will get you killed. We do not care about you.”

“Why him? What did he do?”

“He has something that belongs to us,” the man said. Bloody froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth, and Jolaine realized that she’d hit his lung. “He has codes.”

“What codes?”

The man coughed, launching a pink spray that somehow missed Jolaine. “Don’t be a fool. He needs to follow protocol, then this all ends.”

“What is going on?” Jolaine said. She heard an edge of desperation in her own voice.

“Follow protocol. Otherwise, everyone else wants to kill him. To kill you, too.”

“Everyone,” Jolaine repeated. “Who is everyone?”

“Without protocol, everyone is everyone. Russians, Americans, Israelis, Chinese. Everyone.”

“But why?”

Sirens grew louder in the distance.

“Please tell me why.”

The man managed a laugh that triggered a gout of blood from his mouth. He spat but made no effort to wipe it away. “First you kill me and then you ask for favor,” he said. “You have balls. Protocol is your only way to live,” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Boy knows. Ask him. Go. Go now and run. Live quickly because I think you will die soon.”

“Jolaine!” Graham yelled. “They’re coming! Don’t you hear the sirens?”

She watched the wounded man’s smile, his contentment obvious. He’d said all he intended to say, and would be dead in minutes.

Jolaine stood and walked around to the driver’s door of the Mercedes. “Out,” she said. “I’m driving.”

“Thank God,” Graham said. He ran to the other side.

His ass had barely touched the seat before she hit the gas and they were on their way.

Protocol is your only way to live.

A
t one level, Jonathan thought that Venice had the hardest job of all of them. While she didn’t get shot at—well, except for that one time—she had the burden of waiting and listening until someone chimed in with a sitrep. Jonathan didn’t think he’d be able to do it.

It was nearly four in the afternoon now, and the sun hung high and hot over the gently rolling terrain.

“According to Venice’s satellite downloads, this isn’t going to be an easy house to find,” Jonathan said. He knew they were close, but the unrelenting woods were loath to give up driveways. “What’s that up there?” A medical caduceus had been nailed to an otherwise unremarkable tree.

“I see a cross and tangled snakes,” Boxers said. “Doctor shit.”

They turned into the drive, through the heavy woods to another turn at another caduceus, and up to the front of the house. A nice place, bigger than he was expecting, but nothing remarkable in its two-story design.

“Ready for things to get interesting?” Big Guy asked.

“Soon enough,” Jonathan said. “Go to Vox.” From this point on, everything they said would be live on the radio, without having to push a transmit button. “Mother Hen, Scorpion,” he said.

Ten seconds passed. “Go ahead, Scorpion,” Venice said. “I’m here. Nice to hear from you. It’s been a while.”

“Big Guy and I are home now,” Jonathan said, knowing that she’d understand them to be at the target house. “How are your eyes?”

“Still blind,” she answered.

Jonathan had been hoping for satellite support from SkysEye, a satellite imagery service established by his now fabulously wealthy former Unit compatriot named Lee Burns. Built with private funds under the auspices of assisting in petroleum exploration, the SkysEye network had proven to be extraordinarily helpful to Jonathan over the course of his freelance years—well worth the staggering price tag—providing nearly military-quality imagery of fine details from a couple hundred miles in the sky.

Given their past relationship, and the nature of the missions upon which Jonathan embarked, Lee Burns typically moved heaven and earth to accommodate his needs. Sometimes, though, the timing just didn’t work out. Lee had a business to run, after all, and Jonathan imagined that sometimes it would be hard to tell the representatives of Mega-rich Oil Company that their multimillion-dollar contract would have to wait while the system was repurposed to support an illegal operation.

“Big Guy and I are both on VOX,” Jonathan said. “The security plan is hot now.” The security plan mandated situation reports—sitreps—every seven minutes, or more frequently if the situation warranted. Translated, that meant that the risks of getting hurt had just multiplied.

“Speak up, Big Guy,” Venice said.

“Right here,” Boxers replied, thus completing the radio check.

“I’ll take the front,” Jonathan said, “and you take the back. When we’re both in position, I’ll knock. If someone answers, we’ll play it by ear. If they don’t, we’ll crash the door.”

As an afterthought, Jonathan added, “Mother Hen, before we make a mess here, you are one hundred percent sure that this is the house where the car is registered, right?”

“One thousand percent,” Venice replied.

Jonathan looked to Boxers, and Big Guy nodded. “All right, then. Report when you’re in place.”

As Boxers disappeared toward the black side of the building, Jonathan headed toward the white side. Jonathan estimated the age of the place at around thirty years—old enough to need new fascia board but not so old for the need to be urgent. Having traveled the world several times over, mostly focused on the dirty bits that normal people tried to avoid, he’d seen all different terrains, from the vertical to the flat. It occurred to him as he looked back the way they’d come that this place was just boring.

Jonathan hated approaching a building that he only
suspected
concealed a bad guy. If he knew for a fact that an enemy was in place, he could approach with guns blazing. When less than certain, the mere presence of a firearm could turn a benign situation violent, converting otherwise good guys into bad when they reacted with legitimate fear at the sight of the weapons.

Jonathan walked warily down the weed-infested brick sidewalk with his Colt holstered and concealed by his denim jacket. If needed, he could draw the weapon and have shots downrange in two seconds, but that brought him little comfort. Not many gunfights lasted as long as two seconds.

As he closed the last few feet to the front door, he stopped short as his attention was drawn to the doorjamb. The wood near the dead bolt was splintered, hunks of wood avulsed from the rabbet. The effect was to leave a giant scar of raw, unpainted wood.

It was time to draw down. As he reached for the .45, his earbud popped. “Scorpion, Big Guy,” Boxers said. “I’ve got signs of forced entry back here.”

Just like that, everything changed. “Me, too. Are you prepared to crash the door?” Jonathan asked over the air.

“Oh, yeah.” It was like asking a kid if he was ready for Christmas.

“On my count,” Jonathan said. He gripped the Colt with both hands, thumbed the safety off, and poised it close to his chest, the grip an inch from his breastbone.

“Three . . . two . . . one.”

They needed a new car. The Mercedes was still drivable but it had been shot to shit—not suitable for being seen in public.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Jolaine said.

“You killed those people,” Graham said. His eyes were huge. His hands trembled.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Jolaine said. “But we’ve—”

“Don’t apologize.” He seemed appalled that she would even think such a thing. “You were friggin’ amazing. I mean, Christ, they were going to kill us, and you just mowed them down.”

Jolaine appreciated the enthusiasm, despite knowing that after the adrenaline wore off, Graham would suffer from the reality of those images.

Grateful that the streets were relatively empty, but fully aware that she and Graham were far from invisible, she whipped the Mercedes into an alley between two buildings that looked underutilized, if not abandoned. The windows had been soaped, and grass grew through cracks in the pavement. It was exactly the kind of industrial neighborhood that one would expect to be served by the Hummingbird Motel. She created her own parking space next to a bulging Dumpster.

“We need to get out,” she said. “This car is too obvious.” As she spoke, she opened the door. “We need to walk.”

“To where?”

“Anywhere but here.” She placed the empty Glock back into its holster and covered it with her shirt. “This vehicle is a magnet for cops. We need to buy some time.”

Graham pushed his door open as well and stood. “Time to do what?”

“To live a little longer,” she said.

“What about the rifle?”

“Leave it. We can’t go walking around town with a rifle.”

“But your pistol is out of bullets.”

Jolaine made a circulating motion with her arm, encouraging Graham to move faster. “Maybe we can find some more. Meanwhile, we’ve got to get away from here.”

He joined her, looking over this shoulder, back at the car. In the distance, the sirens continued. “Shouldn’t we wipe it down for fingerprints?”

“It won’t matter,” Jolaine said. “Our fingerprints are all over everything—the car, the rifle, the motel room. When they find it, they’ll know that the car belonged to the people who rented the room. What we hope they won’t know is who we really are.”

They walked behind a long line of industrial low-rises. The only business that seemed busy was an auto mechanic shop whose employees seemed to avoid eye contact. Jolaine wondered how many of them would scatter if the police came by. The whir of impact wrenches and the pounding of hammers on metal drowned out the sound of sirens. Jolaine considered that a good thing.

“Where are we going?” Graham asked. He kept throwing nervous looks over his shoulder, and in general acting jumpy as hell.

“I need you to walk as if nothing is wrong. The more nervous you look, the more attention you’ll draw to yourself. To us.”

“That’s kind of hard when you know people are trying to kill you.”

“Graham, everything is going to be kind of hard until this is settled. You need to trust me.”

“I do trust you,” he said. Then, with a wry chuckle: “Not that I have a whole lot of choice.”

The alley behind the low rises dead-ended at a street without a sign. Jolaine estimated that it ran roughly north-south. She turned right to head north, away from the main drag. Ahead, there was a patch of woods that would provide additional cover. She headed that way.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Graham asked.

“Toward the woods. We’ll be less readily seen there.”

“Is that really a good idea? I mean, I’m not saying I won’t go, but aren’t they going to dispatch dogs or something pretty soon? If we’re just hanging in the woods we’ll get caught right away.”

He had a very good point, Jolaine thought. She stopped and turned, colliding with Graham.

“Whoa,” he said. “What are you doing now?”

“You’re right,” she said. “We need a car. Come this way.” She started back toward the main drag.

Graham trotted to catch up. “And where are we going to get a car?”

She led the way to her answer. The easiest cars to steal—to hotwire and drive away—were of an older vintage, the older the better. It was damn near impossible to hotwire anything made in the past ten years or so—certainly that was beyond Jolaine’s limited ability. As luck would have it (it was about time for some
good
luck for a change), the ideal candidate sat parked along the curb outside a low-rent apartment building. It was an old Honda Civic that appeared to have the original paint job, which was to say very little paint at all. Call it red. Maybe brown.

As she approached, Jolaine drew her Leatherman tool from its pouch on her belt and opened it up. In a second stroke of good luck, the driver’s door opened when she lifted the handle. That was often the case, she’d been told, when people parked their cars in poorer, crime-ridden areas. It was better to leave the car unlocked and let thieves find out for themselves that there was nothing worth stealing, than to make them break a window to discover the same result.

Once inside, she wondered if the owner actually
hoped
that someone would steal these wheels. The gray cloth seats were worn nearly transparent in the spots where they weren’t torn, and the headliner drooped like old cobwebs from the ceiling.

Graham climbed in the opposite door. “Do we really have to be in
this
much of a hurry?”

She ignored him. She folded out the flat-head screwdriver, jammed it into the keyway, and twisted. The engine jumped to life. That done, she stuck the blade into the gap between the steering wheel and the steering column to find the tab that would release the steering wheel lock. That was always the toughest part of this operation. It took a good twenty seconds, but when she found it, she pressed down and the wheel was free.

“There,” she said, more to herself than to Graham.

He gaped. “How do you know this shit?”

“I used to hang around with tough people,” she said. In reality, she used to hang around with a former SEAL named Darrell, whose youth had introduced him to all levels of thievery. She’d held him in her arms until he bled out and died in some rocky village near J-Bad in Afghanistan whose name she’d forgotten.

She pulled the transmission into drive, and they were on their way. She still didn’t know where they were heading, but north seemed right, so she swung a U-turn and headed wherever the road would take them. Canada, maybe, if she could figure out a way to get them some passports.

“Who were those people?” Graham asked. “And why were they shooting at us?”

“You tell me,” Jolaine said. She made sure her tone was leaden, devoid of humor.

In her peripheral vision, she saw Graham’s head whip around. “What?”

“You heard me,” she said. “You tell me why people are trying to kill us.”

“How am I supposed to know?”

She cast him a glance, then returned her eyes to the road as she navigated out into the country. Buildings were already becoming sparser. “How do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What the hell is wrong with you? How did you become my enemy all of a sudden?”

“The last thing I am is your enemy,” Jolaine said. “Tell me about the phone call you made this morning.”

“I already told you about that.”

“I have it on good authority that you left out some good parts,” Jolaine countered. “What did you say?”

“I talked to a creepy guy and I hung up on him.”

“But why?”

“I talked to him because my mom asked me to. I hung up on him because he was creepy. What aren’t you understanding?”

Jolaine settled herself. Getting frustrated or getting angry would only be counterproductive. “Please try not to be obtuse,” she said. “You talked with the creepy guy, you said something, and then all of a sudden the world is trying to shoot us. Last night, they were shooting at your parents. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your mother filled your head with some secret thing and a phone number, and now our lives are in jeopardy.” She paused and glared through his head. “What do you have, Graham? What justifies all of this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. You know I’m risking my life for you, right? I could drop you off on the side of the road and let you fend for yourself. No one wants to hurt
me
because of what I know. They only want to hurt me because of my association with
you
.” It felt good to utter the truth, even though she took no pleasure in hurting him.

“Let me off, then,” he said. She’d triggered his defiant streak, always a mistake.

“That’s not the point, Graham, and it’s not going to happen. You know that. My job is to protect you. And yes, it’s to protect me, too. But you owe me what you know.”

“I promised my mom not to tell anybody but the guy on the phone.”