Distantly, as if in a nightmare, he heard a woman scream. Recognized Carol’s voice. Pushed it aside.
Lopez already had a hand on his weapon, his Beretta half-way out of its holster as he reacted, surprise filling his features.
The electrodes bit into his chest in mid-draw, stopping him cold. His body shook as though in the grip of a seizure and he crumpled to the floor, his head striking the edge of the table as he fell.
He turned to face her, the Taser leveled in his outstretched hand. She was staring at him in disbelief, her mouth open in shock. “Your father and I…saw a lot of hard times over the years, and I have no intention of failing him now. I owe him that much. Now how hard do you want to make this?”
The implication of his words was clear. Time was running out — no more games.
Without a word, she reached for the handbag on the table and slung it over her shoulder, her decision apparently made. A defiant tear trickled down across her cheek as she reached up, brushing back a strand of hair. “Then…we run.”
That would work.
“Follow my lead,” Harry admonished, moving quickly toward the soundproofed door. He could hear her footsteps behind him.
It swung open under his hand and he glimpsed Kauffman in the corridor outside. The older man started to turn, eyes widening as he saw the stun gun in Harry’s hand.
There was no time to react, no time to shout a warning up the corridor, as Harry jammed the Taser into the man’s ribs. Pulled the trigger.
Kauffman went limp and Harry wrapped an arm around his waist, lowering him gently to the floor. They’d gone back a long way.
But all that…was past now. The die had been cast and he was a fugitive. A traitor.
No time to think about that. He threw the empty Taser back into the interrogation room and motioned for Carol to grasp one of Kauffman’s arms as he lifted the man’s body. “Come on, come on. We’ve got to hurry.”
The smell of burning flesh. It was the kind of smell one never quite got used to, the way it lingered in the air even after the bodies had been removed. A smell you could never forget.
It had been years, Vic Caruso thought, kneeling by the twisted scrap metal that had once been part of the Toyota’s doorframe. Years, and yet it all came pouring back, like flood waters through a broken dam.
The FBI special agent closed his eyes, as though that alone would force the memories away.
The deserts of Iraq. Convoys running north to Mosul. Homemade IEDs, just like this one. Explosions.
He’d been a younger man then, a freshly-minted Army lieutenant. Learning a hard lesson. In the end, all the money in the world didn’t matter. A million-dollar Tomahawk missile or a grenade tucked inside an empty can of Campell’s soup, you were just as dead.
His fingers were trembling when he rose and he thrust both hands into the pockets of his overcoat. A Sicilian by ancestry, Caruso had never been given to public displays of nerves.
Flashbacks. “Any thoughts on the driver?” he asked, turning to the tall female agent at his side.
“A Russian,” Marika Altmann responded without a trace of hesitation in her voice.
“You’re sure?” Due to the placement of the explosives, the driver of the sedan had ended up taking more of the blast than even his intended targets. The condition of his corpse had suffered as a result.
“Of course,” she replied casting an irritated glance in his direction. “I grew up in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, remember? I know a Russian when I see one.”
She fell silent again, brushing a strand of hair away from her eyes. Hair once golden, now tinged with silver.
Caruso pushed at a mound of the dirty snow with the tip of his wing-tipped shoes. She would know.
Altmann had been seventeen when her family had fled East Germany at the height of the Cold War. Nine years later, she had made her way to the States.
And the rest, as they liked to say, was history. Known in the Bureau for keen insight and an explosive temper, she was a legend among the field agents. A legend, and a terror. Caruso still wasn’t sure whether being assigned with her was a compliment…or punishment for botching up his investigation of that CIA field team in September.
It was at that moment that the cellphone in Caruso’s pocket began to ring. He answered, listened for a moment, and then turned to his fellow agent. “They want us back at the Hoover Building.”
For a moment, he thought the older woman hadn’t heard him. She inhaled sharply, as if sniffing the air, and glanced toward the crew of agents sifting through what was left of the interior of the sedan.
“It wasn’t just him.”
“Excuse me?” Vic demanded.
“It wasn’t just the driver. That’s not the way they work. There’s a team of the Russians. Here in this country…”
Chapter 3
There were five minutes remaining by Harry’s watch when they reached the underground parking garage.
Five minutes before the Agency realized something had gone wrong. Five minutes before the lockdown began.
Knowing the caliber of people he worked with, he was surprised it hadn’t begun sooner. The caliber of people he had worked with, he reminded himself, pushing open the door to the garage.
He heard Carol behind him, fumbling in her purse for her keys.
“We can take my car,” she announced, following him out into the open. Her voice held a tense edge, but she had pulled herself together surprisingly well.
He cast a glance back over his shoulder. “Your car has built-in GPS?”
“Yeah, it does…” He heard her voice trail off as the hacker within her recognized the implications.
“We’ll take mine,” he responded quietly. Hand tucked inside his jacket, grasping his pistol, Harry led the way across the parking garage, stopping beside a nondescript black 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.
“Your car?” Carol asked, going to the passenger side of the vehicle.
Harry nodded, holding up a hand for her to stop. The parking garage was supposed to be secure, supposed being the operative word. He never entered the car without doing a check for explosives, and now was no different, despite the need for haste.
All the hurry in the world wouldn’t help them if there was a bomb in the undercarriage of the Cutlass…
“Right, Ethan, I’ll get right on it.” Daniel Lasker replaced the phone on his desk and shot a glance of exasperation over at Carter.
“Not sure when I became part of the Security Directorate.”
“What’s going on?”
“Surveillance cameras have gone on the fritz down in Interrogation and they want to know if I can straighten it out from here,” Lasker sighed. “Like they can’t send a man down themselves.”
Ron looked up from his workstation, a weary grin crossing his face. “That’s what comes from getting a reputation as a techhead around this place.”
“No,” Lasker replied, typing a command into his terminal. “That’s what comes from dating his sister. Ethan’s been asking favors ever since he introduced me.”
“She worth it?”
A sly grin played at the corners of Lasker’s mouth. “Gentlemen don’t kiss and tell, Ron.”
“Gentlemen…what does that have to do with you?”
The younger man started to laugh, a retort on his lips. Then the screens came flashing across his terminal and the laughter died. “What on earth?”