Scott looked at his watch. “One hour until showtime. Best we get on foot and in our positions.”
Shackleton asked, “If cops or agents get in our way?”
Scott smiled as he checked the workings of his sound-suppressed handgun. “Slot ’em. All that matters is that we kill Will Cochrane.”
The Metropolitan Police Department beat cop was relieved that the rain had stopped pouring over Wisconsin Avenue.
He’d spent three hours patrolling the avenue, being a friend rather than an enemy to citizens around him, wanting to help the good people he served. He was like many other beat cops, men and women who’d joined the police because they wanted to make people safe, not because they were closet bullies who hid behind their uniforms and badges so that they could bang heads together.
He wondered if some of the numerous cops and plainclothes agents who’d been drafted into the area this morning were thugs. Sure, they were here to catch the British Intelligence officer, but all beat cops feel resentful when other law enforcement officers are drafted at short notice to serve on their patch. They simply didn’t understand the nuances of the neighborhood or know its people, and were driven by the desire to arrest or shoot anyone they thought was a criminal.
Then there were the SWAT sniper teams that were on his rooftops, and the plainclothes HRT men who were strategically and discretely mingling within shoppers and commuters near the metro. They’d be very tough men — people who should have stayed in the army, rather than briefly putting on a cop uniform for police training before taking it off after graduation and replacing it with Kevlar. They weren’t cops; they were shooters who had no understanding of community policing.
And finally there were the FBI agents who were running the show: college-educated know-it-alls who conducted law enforcement as if it was a white-collar corporate business. They didn’t know what it was really like on the streets and rarely got their hands dirty. Still, the local police had been told there’d be plenty of Bureau agents on Wisconsin Avenue today, so maybe the FBI would experience what real cop work was like.
The officer sighed as he continued his leisurely patrol. The sun started to break through clouds, and he tilted his cap to shield his eyes. The weather was turning for the better, but that was no compensation for the probability that this morning his patch was going to turn to shit.
Pete Duggan was tense and alert as he exited the Friendship Heights metro to take up position farther up the avenue. Every five minutes, he and his seven HRT colleagues rotated locations to avoid arousing suspicion, not that they stood out — the metro and the street were bustling with civilians, many of whom were dressed like them and were carrying bags. Above him, out of sight on the rooftop of the Microsoft Corporation building, was a SWAT sniper and spotter who had a clear sightline to the Metro entrance. Two other sniper teams were farther north and south on the avenue. He could hear them communicating with each other in his earpiece — brief, calm updates about the movement of vehicles and people in the vicinity.
Helos with additional SWAT snipers were hovering low over the city, but not too close to the avenue. They couldn’t be visible or audible to Cochrane when he came here, but they could reach Wisconsin in one minute if needed.
Traffic was crawling along the route, and that was a good and bad thing: good that Cochrane couldn’t attempt to do a speedy drive-by of the metro to see if Hallowes was standing outside; bad that all mobile law enforcement units would be severely hindered by the traffic.
The fact that there were hundreds of plainclothes and uniformed officers in the vicinity gave Duggan little comfort, because he kept hold of the thought that he was hunting a man who could expertly take down four fit and alert cops, whereas he’d only managed to train his gun on two of the injured officers before the remaining two had gotten the drop on him. During his time in SEAL Team 6, he’d been graded as an outstanding operator, and within HRT he was considered the agent who was the best with a pistol and submachine gun. And he was up against someone who was better than him.
Of course, Cochrane stood no chance of survival this morning. But collateral damage worried Duggan. There were so many civilians in and around the avenue; so many opportunities for them to get caught in crossfire.
He checked his watch.
Five minutes past ten.
Marsha Gage was in a van with three of her agents. Like them, she was wearing jeans, a bulletproof vest underneath her Windbreaker jacket, and tactical boots. She said to her colleagues, “Time for you to get on foot. Keep your distance from the metro, and don’t stand in one place for too long.” After they’d left, Marsha returned her gaze to the Friendship Heights metro. She was south of the station, and in between were hundreds of people; a few of them were her colleagues, most were not.
How much easier her task would’ve been had she been able to evacuate the avenue of all but personnel carrying guns. But if she’d done that, Cochrane wouldn’t have come near the place. She had to make him feel at ease, keep things normal, make him think that he was an anonymous pinhead in a sea of dots.
It seemed like she’d been tracking him forever, and she couldn’t help but feel deep professional admiration that he’d evaded capture — and not by fleeing, but by coming toward her. Part of her felt it was unfair that she was now using a sledgehammer approach to finally bring him to justice. Still, she had a job to do, and the bottom line was that Cochrane needed to be taken off the streets.
She spoke into her throat mic. “Five minutes until zero hour. Everyone: stand by.”
Scott, Oates, and Shackleton looked every bit like politicians stepping out of their offices to grab some breakfast or coffee — dark woolen overcoats, sharp suits, white shirts, silk ties, brogues, and hair that was just the right length to make female voters respect their professional appearance but also make them a bit wobbly at the knees. Not that any self-respecting woman would vote for men like this if she knew how they really spoke and thought when not pretending to be wealthy businessmen or politicos.
As they walked along Wisconsin Avenue, their smiles showed off their immaculate white teeth, and they were talking in American accents they’d borrowed from the multitude of Hollywood movies they’d watched while waiting for the right time to kill people.
They felt exhilarated. None of them had any fear, despite being fully cognizant of the dangers around them. In part, this was because their entire adult lives had been suffused with the threat of death; after a while, worrying about it got boring. But more important, they were fatalists who knew they’d die by the bullet; it would happen today, tomorrow, or some other time, but it would happen. It was a liberating feeling because it gave them certainty. That was crucial, because men like this needed to be in control at all times.
They were two hundred yards from the metro and knew full well that they were walking toward eight undercover HRT operatives, Marsha Gage’s vehicle, other FBI agents, and a SWAT sniper post.
None of them cared.
What mattered to them was that Will Cochrane was due here in less than two minutes.
The D.C. beat cop walked from north to south down the avenue while wondering if he should join in if there was any action to be had. Nobody had told him one way or the other what to do, and he was sure that other cops like him were in the same ignorant position.
Treated like mushrooms.
Constantly in the dark and fed shit.