Kang threw the empty bottle of pepper spray as his friend fell. Scuttling backward, he tripped over Gao’s body, his left hand brushing the man’s pistol and grabbing it. Scrambling to his feet amid more gunfire, he stumbled into a loping stride, running for his life — the second time in a week.
John Clark forced an eye open with his left thumb and forefinger while he played the front sight of his pistol across the area where the threat had been. Spray-and-pray was for the movies. Pistol ammo was too precious to lay down suppressive fire. Clark shot when he had a sight picture. He wore a hoodie and had turned sideways in time to avoid the full can of capsicum, but he got a large enough dose to make accurate shooting problematic.
He’d set up cameras at either end of the Michigan bridge and then a half-block down Wacker in either direction, allowing him to watch the team’s approach, with the added bonus of capturing their faces on video. Ever wary for more threats, he kept scanning after the other man ran, stepping out of his alcove just far enough to kick the pistols away from the two that were down. They looked dead, but he didn’t have the luxury of checking quite yet — and he’d seen human beings absorb a hell of a lot of lead before getting up to kill again.
Reasonably satisfied that no one else was going to shoot at him, Clark slipped Li’s cell phone into a small Faraday bag and shoved it in the pocket of his jacket.
Sophie had told her husband about the strange device she called Cassandra shortly after they’d switched vehicles. James was the one who remembered he’d paired his phone with the device. It was a logical step to assume the hit team had used the phone to disarm the security system, and they would use it to track the Lis’ whereabouts. The phone went into a makeshift Faraday cage — alternating layers of plastic wrap and aluminum foil — and was left in place while Peter took his family to a secondary location to wait for Clark’s arrival. From there, it was a straightforward endeavor for Clark to remove the phone from the bag long enough to let Peter and Sophie be overheard talking about the Joint Terrorism Task Force — a plausible reason for them to hide in plain sight in Chicago.
Clark coughed, taking the time now to check the two bodies. Dead. He snapped close-up photos of their faces and their fingerprints before securing their weapons — there were only two. He worked quickly, wanting to be gone before anyone decided on a midnight walk along the river. His lungs felt like he’d breathed in a sack of stickpins. He fought the urge to rub his eyes. That would only make things worse. Two dead, but one was in the wind.
He stared at the black water in the direction the man had run.
Who are you?
He hoped he’d caught good enough images on the video feed to ID the bastard.
Something pale at the base of the concrete planter caught his eye. He blinked to clear his vision and then stooped, a grin spreading across his face in spite of the situation. A little finger lay on the concrete, neatly clipped off behind the second knuckle. Clark glanced over his shoulder at the two bodies. They had all their digits.
Knowing he’d drawn blood on the runner made his eyes suddenly feel better. He dropped the severed finger into his pocket along with the Faraday bag and walked quickly to the west, away from the bodies. He’d circle back and retrieve the cameras that were topside after he took a look around from a safe vantage point.
Clark pondered the vagaries of the universe that had put his friend in such danger — and those same capricious fates that had allowed him to get here in time to help.
The call from his old friend Admiral Peter Li had come as a surprise. They’d worked together some — or, rather, Li had picked Clark up in hostile waters and given him a ride on his ship. Clark was out of the Navy by then, doing jobs for the Agency, so the differences in rank had not impeded the men’s friendship. In this business, good friends were few and far between. Like most men, Clark and Li went for long stretches of time without speaking at all, then taking up where they’d left off the last time as though their families lived across the street from each other. Clark had attended Li’s late wife’s funeral, and Sandy had sent him something when he married Sophie. Li was younger by more than a decade, but command had made him an old soul. Clark enjoyed their infrequent talks, over-the-phone equivalents of old men sitting around a café, wearing John Deere hats and reminiscing about the good old days.
With the Calliope computer program safely in Ding and Adara’s possession, Clark had found a quiet spot to return his friend’s call. He hadn’t met the new wife, but she was pregnant, so she and Peter were apparently getting along swimmingly. Clark tried to imagine what it would be like to have a new kid at fiftysomething. Having grandkids was close enough to going through Navy BUD/S all over again, thank you very much…
The timbre of Peter Li’s voice had sent a chill up Clark’s spine. Something had to be very wrong for a man as unflappable as him to be shaken.
Clark had listened, controlling his breathing to remain calm, noting details, making plans. Peter was as smart a man as Clark had ever met, with the wisdom that came from spending a lot of time under stress — and then coming out the other side of it. Clark knew from personal experience that the man could remain dead-dead calm in the face of unparalleled danger, but now his family was threatened, so it was only natural that he sounded harried.
Clark wasted no time telling Li to calm down. He was clearheaded and thinking strategically, but it would be some time before he’d be anything close to calm.
“Don’t tell me over the phone,” Clark said after Li had given a description of the attack and the events he believed precipitated it. “But are you somewhere safe?”
“We are,” Li said.
“Are your wife and kids there? Listening?”
“They’re in the other room.”
“Good,” Clark said. “Do you plan to call the authorities?”
“Aren’t you the authorities?”
“Not really,” Clark said. “Not anymore, anyway.”
“What would you do?” Li asked. “If it were your family?”
“I’d call someone like me,” Clark said. “Listen, my phone is encrypted. Are you calling from an open line?”
“Yes,” Li said.
“Do you have Signal on your phone?” Clark asked, meaning the encrypted texting app. It wasn’t as sexy as most of the other SMS services — no puppy-nose photo edits, no poop emojis. It was plain vanilla encrypted text from end to end. Perfect for Clark’s needs and personality.
“I do,” Li said.
“Okay, then,” Clark said. “Send me your location, and anything else you remember via Signal.”
“Very well,” Li said. “Should I call the police?”
“Let me make a couple of calls. If you’re still doing the same job, then there’s a good chance that what you’re working on and what I’m working on are related — actors from the same part of the world, at any rate. I’ll explain it more in a text. I’ll get back with you in the next ten minutes and we’ll make a plan. In the meantime, I’m heading your way on the next flight, but I’m a good twenty-four hours out. I hate to leave you twisting in the wind until I get there, but I can’t get there any quicker. Are you good to go?”
“Good to go,” Li said. “But, John, there’s one other thing. It’s sensitive.”
“Put it in the text,” Clark said. “Location first, then details. Talk to you in ten…”
And they had talked at great length, coming up with a plan to lure Kang into the open. It had worked, partly, at least.
Clark retrieved the cameras from above the Riverwalk. Now it was time to go hunting.