The DCS shook his head. “No idea.”
“What did you mean?” Carol asked as Harry handed her the TACSAT.
“Take the back off and remove the SIM card,” he instructed, ignoring her question. “We’ll ditch it and the car.”
“How?”
He gestured ahead toward a Wawa’s service station and put on his turn signal. “Be ready.”
Commuter traffic. The service station was doing a bustling business in the early morning commute, and Harry pulled the Cutlass into one of the few empty parking spaces. “Put that pistol under your jacket,” he instructed, shooting a glance in her direction. “And stay close.”
The icy morning air nearly took Harry’s breath away as he swung his legs out of the car. Motioning for Carol to follow, he strode across the lot toward the cars parked directly in front of the Wawa’s.
His gaze swept the eaves of the building as he moved in, checking for security cameras. At a glance it appeared as though the service station had none. Probably just one inside to film any possible robberies.
That made life easier. Three cars from the door he spotted a late-model Chevy Impala, exhaust spewing from the tailpipe as it sat there, idling.
A grim smile crossed Harry’s face. He’d never understand people who left their car running while they went in to get coffee. “We’ll take this one,” he announced, reaching out and pulling the door open.
“You’re going to steal a car?”
He turned to see a look of disbelief on Carol’s face. The look of someone who had never been in the field.
“Yes,” he replied, taking her by the arm and steering her through the open door of the Impala. “Of course.”
“A phone call for you, Mr. Richards.” The Texan looked up from his sudoku to see the CIA’s version of a flight attendant standing in front of him: 40-ish, overweight, and balding.
Tex took the phone without a word. “Richards here.”
“This is Thomas. Listen, we’ve got a problem.” That much was obvious from the voice, Tex thought. It wasn’t vintage Parker at all, the calm steady equilibrium that had made him one of the Service’s best snipers. This Thomas was distracted, nervous. Agitated.
“I’m listening.”
“EAGLE SIX has gone rogue.”
“What can you tell me?” Tex asked, glancing forward at the closed cockpit door. “Bear in mind, this isn’t a secure line.”
“I know, I know. He kidnapped Carol Chambers from Interrogation and made it off-campus before the alarm was sounded.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” the Texan replied, his mind turning over the possibilities. “Where is he now?”
“We don’t know. Metro PD found his car abandoned at a service station about ten miles west of Langley — along with a rather distraught single mother who was trying to report a car theft.”
“Standard operating procedure, Thomas,” Tex observed. The only question was why? “You said ten miles west?”
“Yes,” Thomas replied. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Probably. Don’t do anything until I get back. See if Kranemeyer will let you pick me up at Dulles. That way we can keep things off the official manifest.”
“Right. Goodbye.”
Seemingly exhausted by the flow of words, Tex simply clicked the “kill” button on the phone and laid it beside his seat. Outside the window, clouds drifted past the swift business jet, dulcet and white. Peaceful. What are you doing, Harry?
For a man who had grown up in ‘80s Russia, Wal-Mart was still a vision of almost unimaginable wealth.
And yet no one seemed to appreciate it. That was America for you. Pavel Nevaschkin sighed heavily as he reached down, picking up the motorcycle helmet that hung on the handlebars of the Honda cycle. The December breeze was cold, even through the thick wool lining of his leather jacket. Not as cold as Chechnya, though. Nothing could be that cold.
He’d been in Alfa Group back then, as the new millennium came around, bringing with it nothing but the promise of more violent death. Bad days. Even the Spetsnaz weren’t paid enough to take those risks.
Pavel checked his saddlebags one last time, making sure the Glock 21 would be ready. Round in the chamber, another pair of full magazines in the pouch clipped beside it.
Everything was in readiness. He cast a glance over at his partner, the shooter, a Muscovite he knew only as Grigori. “Remember the plan?”
The man smiled, displaying teeth that bore testament to the finest of East European dental work — cracked and chipped. “Of course — kill the man, snatch the girl. Should be simple, da?”
Pavel shrugged. “Da. Just stick to the plan. Sergei said they’re about sixteen kilometers ahead, so we should be able to catch up with them readily enough.”
The next moment, the engine of his motorcycle sputtered into a full-throated roar, drowning out any further conversation. Pavel threw a leg over the throbbing saddle of the cycle and waved at Grigori to climb on behind him. The job would be done within the hour…
The house was the thirteenth on Nasir Khalidi’s route. Certainly his unlucky number. As the garbage truck slowed to a stop, he jumped off, hurrying across packed snow toward the trash cans.
It was the third can. Always the third can. He blew on cold hands as he watched a mechanical arm dump the can into the compactor in the back of the truck. As bad as the cold was, heat in the summer made the job even worse. Then the garbage reeked.
As the can came back down, Nasir unzipped his jacket, shivering as a cold blast of wind came swirling down the street, the multi-story projects on either side forming what amounted to a wind tunnel.
So different from his native Lebanon. Looking both ways down the street to ensure he was not being watched, Nasir reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out an eight-inch manila envelope. With another furtive glance at the surrounding buildings, he dropped it into the can, wheeling it back toward the sidewalk.
Yes, there were worse jobs than garbage disposal. He should know. He had one of them.
Inside one room of the decrepit tenement, a man looked up from the bank of screens mounted into one side of the wall, watching Nasir Khalidi on the discreetly-placed cameras. He played back the footage in slow-motion, watching as the yellow envelope tumbled into the gray plastic depths of the trash bin. A slow smile crossed his face and he reached for the phone that lay on the console before him, right beside a Beretta. “Status confirmed,” he announced when the call was answered. “He’s made the drop.”
Silence. Harry stole a glance in Carol’s direction as the car sped south. She hadn’t spoken a word since they’d “switched” cars at the service station. Just sat there, staring away from him, out the window. A cold blonde statue.
He sighed, watching the needle on the gas gauge waver with every dip in the road. They had a quarter-tank, enough to get them where they were going.
“You don’t approve of my methods, do you?” he asked finally, breaking the silence between them.
A long pause, and then she looked across at him. The emotion of loss was still there in her eyes, but so was an unexpected resilience. “Theft? No.”