Hearing the change in the comm chief’s voice, Carter gave himself a push, sending his office chair gliding over the smooth tile of the op-center to Lasker’s side.
It wasn’t so much what the camera was showing, but what it wasn’t. There was no guard in the corridor outside A-13. Deserted.
Switching to the camera inside the interrogation room revealed nothing, just the weave of a jacket that had been hung over the lens.
Carter reached for the phone without hesitation. “I need Security to Interrogation A-13 ASAP. Lock down the building.”
It was standard protocol. He knew that. Still, it seemed as though the guard took an unnaturally long time looking over their identification.
The pistol seemed to tremble under Harry’s jacket. He didn’t want to fire on a fellow agent, but his wishes were secondary. The mission came first.
“Everything seems to be in order, sir,” the guard announced finally, reaching for a lever beside him to open the barrier.
Harry shot Carol a tight-lipped smile as he accelerated gently forward
“How long do you give them?” she asked, looking out the window.
“Not long. The alert’s probably going out as we speak. Once we get off-campus, we’re out of their jurisdiction, so they’ll have to mobilize local law enforcement. Another delay. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes.”
Carol turned to look at him, and he saw her father’s determination written there in her eyes. “Are you sure that will stop them?”
“It wouldn’t have stopped your father,” he replied quietly. “But Shapiro’s in charge now. And Shapiro does things by the book. He’ll send out an APB and shift the responsibility.”
Carol went silent for a long moment. “Do you have a plan?”
“The germ of one. Open the glove compartment and take out what you find.”
She hesitated, and he could feel her eyes on him. He tapped the brakes, flicking on the turn signal as they neared the highway. Their greatest safety lay in blending in with the westbound traffic. You never win a car chase except in the movies. And this wasn’t Hollywood.
He heard the glove compartment open and glanced over to see Carol withdraw a holstered semiautomatic.
“It’s a Kahr PM-45,” he announced without preamble. “Subcompact semiautomatic, striker-fired. Chambered in .45 ACP, you’ve got five shots. You know how to use one?”
“Yes,” she replied, a trace of irritation creeping into her voice. “I spent five months at Thunder Ranch when I was twenty.”
That was the good news, he thought, processing the information as he checked the rear-view mirror.
Thunder Ranch had always been among the top firearms training schools in the country, and Clint Smith’s instructors weren’t paper punchers. They were focused on the real-world. Still…
Their tail was still clean, so far as he could see. He spotted an opening and changed lanes, speeding up until they were nestled in the shadow of a tractor-trailer. “Ever killed a man?” he asked bluntly, glancing over to catch her reaction.
There wasn’t one. Carol looked down at the pistol in her hands and shook her head.
“Then pray to God you never have to…”
One hundred meters from the marina in Annapolis, the sea breeze suddenly seemed twenty degrees cooler, a chill rippling through Sergei Korsakov’s body. It couldn’t be.
“No,” he responded bluntly, speaking into the encrypted satellite phone pressed against his ear. “That’s impossible.”
“I tell you, that is the report on my desk. You missed him.”
“They’re lying,” Korsakov spat, adding several Russian curses for emphasis. He closed his eyes once again, envisioning the scene the way it had looked through the windshield of the Durango. The fiery explosion, metal flying like shrapnel through the cold winter air. This operation had been planned for weeks, everything laid out to the last detail. And he had watched…
“They wouldn’t, Sergei,” the voice replied, smooth and certain. “Not to me. You know that.”
He was right. The former Spetsnaz commando swore under his breath, looking left and right down the street. “Why are you calling me?”
“I think you know.”
And he did. Korsakov cleared his throat. “I’m not sure you’re grasping the scope of the problem. If what you are telling me is true — our friend has gone black. And I’m not going to be able to get another chance at him. Not with the Bureau looking for me. My men and I need to leave the country immediately.”
“They’re not looking for you, Sergei,” the voice replied once more, “and if you’d like it to remain that way, you need to listen very carefully…”
Anger flashed in the Russian’s dark eyes. For a long moment he waited, feeling the breeze play with the hem of his coat. Then he licked dry lips and spoke. “Go ahead.”
“Would someone mind telling me what exactly is going on?” Kranemeyer bellowed, arriving on the op-center floor like a gust of wind. For a man with one leg, he could still make quite an entrance.
“We got the alert out to Metro PD five minutes ago,” Carter responded, looking up from his terminal. “Perimeter security reports that Nichols passed through the outer checkpoint thirteen minutes ago.”
“Carol was with him?” Kranemeyer asked, his face darkening.
“Yes.”
The DCS swore under his breath. “What are we supposed to believe — he took her hostage?”
“We’ve got three security guards in Medical right now. They were tazed and handcuffed. Camera footage in the parking garage shows her getting into the car with him, but God knows. He probably had a gun on her.”
“What about her cellphone?” Kranemeyer asked. “There has got to be a way to trace them.”
“Her phone went off-line just after they left the campus,” Daniel Lasker responded, still focused on his screens. “I have a fix on their last known location. Five hundred meters outside the perimeter. Our only lead is the car. Nichols was driving his Cutlass when he left.”
The DCS responded with an oath and a shake of the head. “No good, he’ll ditch the car the first chance he gets. That’s SOP.”
At that moment, the phone in Kranemeyer’s pocket began to ring. Lasker’s brain registered the ringtone as Jon Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive” in the moment before a strange flush spread over the face of the DCS.
“It’s him,” Kranemeyer hissed in what passed for a stage whisper, pointing a long, thick finger in Carter’s direction. “Get on it.”
Four rings, and then he answered. “Kranemeyer here.”
“Free fall,” a familiar voice responded, followed immediately by a sharp click, leaving the DCS staring at a dead phone.
“Anything?” he asked, shooting a sharp glance over at Carter.
“No,” the analyst responded. “Didn’t have enough time. What does ‘free fall’ mean?”
“It’s an Agency distress code,” Kranemeyer responded, his face strangely pale.
Danny Lasker typed something into his workstation, then looked up at his boss. “Why haven’t I ever heard of it?” he asked, the bewilderment clear in his voice.
“Before your time,” Kranemeyer responded, managing what passed for a grim smile. “It dates back to the old Directorate of Operations. I was in Delta back then, tasked out to the Agency for a black op in the West Bank. David Lay was running the op as Station Chief Tel Aviv and Nichols was the Agency’s version of boots on the ground. He was little more than a kid then, his second year in the field.”
“Then what does he mean by using it now?” This from a baffled Ron Carter.