End Game (33 page)

“There’s a giant step between blaming and killing,” Boxers said. “What proof do you have?”

Rollins looked to the ceiling and scowled, as if to divine his next words. “There’s proof, and then there’s
proof
. We don’t have any of the latter. What we do know is, he came home, walked away from his marriage, and disappeared.” His eyes bored into Jonathan. “And I mean
disappeared.
Off the grid.”

“You know, we’re trained to do that, right?” Jonathan said. “In fact, we’re
paid
to do that when we’re in hostile territory.”

“But domestically? Who would do that?”

Jonathan waited for him to get the absurdity of his own question.

Rollins acknowledged with a nod. “Okay, other than you, who would do that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Within a few days of his disappearance, the first of the Agency guys was killed, shot with a five-five-six round from a long ways away. Over a hundred yards, as I recall. He was on his way to his car in the driveway, and it was a perfect head shot.”

Jonathan felt tension in his chest. That wasn’t the kind of a shot an amateur could make.

“Three days later, the second agent was taken out as he exited a coffee shop outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia, not far from your stomping grounds. Five-five-six again, center of mass, hollow-point round. Perfect shot and no one heard it.”

Boxers’ ire had transformed to concern. “Was this a coffee shop he went to regularly?”

Rollins nodded. “Every day. How did you know?”

“Was the first guy—the head shot—a hollow point?”

“No.” Rollins smiled. He saw that Boxers got it.

“He was worried about collateral damage,” Big Guy said. He looked to Jonathan. “He’d studied the guy’s routine and used HPs as a safety.”

“What about the third?” Jonathan asked.

“Another head shot,” Rollins said, “again from long distance. The interesting thing there was that the shooter showed great patience. The agent had been standing for ten minutes with his kid at the end of the driveway, waiting for the school bus.” He looked to Boxers. “Like before, this was a daily routine. He waited till the little girl was on the bus, and the bus was on its way before he shot. No one heard or saw anything. By the time his wife woke up and noticed he was missing—and then found the body—he was already stiff.”

Jonathan took a pull on his scotch as he pushed the pieces into place. “That still doesn’t mean Boomer did it,” he said. Even he heard the weakness of his words.

“Doesn’t matter,” Rollins said. “The Agency thinks he did, and they’ll move heaven and earth to find him and take him out.”

“What about due process?” Boxers asked.

“Where have you been the past few years?” Rollins countered. “The alphabet agencies stopped caring about due process when the regime changed. That was about the same time when beat cops started riding around in tanks. This isn’t your childhood America anymore.”

“So, we’ve got a lot of conjecture and assumptions,” Jonathan summarized. “Cut to the chase, Colonel. Why are you here?”

Rollins cast a nervous glance to Boxers as he said, “We want you to find Boomer and bring him home.”

“Well, that’s not gonna happen,” Boxers said. “I don’t hunt down my friends.”

Jonathan said, “By ‘bring him home,’ do you mean alive or dead?”

“Preferably alive.”

“But dead would be okay, too?” Boxers growled.

Rollins worked his jaw muscles. “No, dead would not be
okay
, Box. I’m not the monster you pretend I am. But don’t forget that every wet-work contractor for the CIA is out looking for this guy. If they get him, he’s toast.”

“Then why not just leave it to them?” Jonathan asked.

Rollins recoiled from the question. “Now who’s being the monster? You said it yourself, Dig. He’s family. Boomer deserves better than a bullet. I don’t care what he did, he deserves better than that. If you can get to him first, maybe you can talk him down. If he hears that you’re the one hunting for him, maybe he’ll surrender. This is serious shit.”

Jonathan leaned back into his seat and crossed his legs. The math here wasn’t working for him. “You said bad things happened to him over there on his last tour. I won’t even ask you for those details—at least not yet—but if the bad stuff is traceable to specific interactions with specific Agency assets, then I presume the remaining assets have become much harder targets.”

Rollins looked to the floor.

“
Are
there any more targets, Stanley?” Boxers asked.

Rollins took a deep breath. “No,” he said. “All the targets have been eliminated.”

Jonathan exchanged a confused look with Boxers. “Then what’s done is done,” he said. “Good reasons, bad reasons, that’s for others to decide. I’m not a cop. I’m not going to traipse all over hell’s half acre to bring a colleague into custody.”

“It’s more than that,” Rollins said. “The killings are real—they really happened—but that’s not the punch line.”

“Good Christ, Stanley,” Boxers said with a derisive laugh. “Can’t you just for once in your life deal from the top of the deck? Why does everything—”

“He’s a traitor, guys,” Rollins said. “He’s selling secrets to the world.”

Something stirred in Jonathan’s gut. “What kind of secrets?”

“The most damaging kind you can think of,” Rollins said.

J
OHN
G
ILSTRAP
is the acclaimed author of
High Treason, Damage Control
,
Threat Warning, Hostage Zero
,
No Mercy
,
Six Minutes to Freedom, Scott Free, Even Steven, At All Costs,
and
Nathan’s Run
. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. An explosives safety expert and former firefighter, he holds a master’s degree from the University of Southern California and a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia. Please visit him at
www.johngilstrap.com
.