“That’s abundantly dismissive,” Jolaine observed. “Especially from the vantage point of one who will not be in the crosshairs if things go bad.”
Maryanne shrugged. “What can I say? That’s the nature of the job. We’ll make sure you’re well armed and well trained. There will be communications protocols in place. In addition to your salary, we’ll also pay for you to finish your degree.”
Jolaine laughed. That last part came out of nowhere. “My degree? When would I have time to pursue that while working twenty-four seven?”
“You’ll be staying at the house,” Maryanne said, the very essence of reason. “You can take online courses during the nighttime hours.”
Jolaine couldn’t see that working out, but she supposed it was a nice benefit to offer. She fell quiet.
“Look,” Maryanne said. “We know what you did for the Azizi family while you were working protection for them.”
Jolaine felt something stir in her belly. Was it possible that she was about to be arrested after all? “I don’t know—”
“It’s okay,” Maryanne assured. “You’re not in trouble for that. You just did your job.”
Toward the end of her most recent tour, Jolaine and her team had been escorting Behnam Azizi and his two children, eleven-year-old Afshoon and her nine-year-old brother, Fahran, from their armored SUV into a local coffee shop when a car erupted in an enormous fireball less than a hundred feet away, launching shrapnel like hundreds of bullets toward every compass point. Knocked down by the pressure wave, Jolaine rolled back to her feet, scooped the Azizi children into her arms, and ran. She’d assumed — correctly — that the bomb was an attempt to assassinate Behnam Azizi, and she wanted the children as far away from any ensuing gunfight as possible.
When it was all over, Behnam Azizi and three Taliban gunmen were dead — along with eight civilians who just happened to be on the street when the bomb detonated. Some of the locals who’d seen Jolaine running away with the panicked children had assumed that she was kidnapping them. Her teammates had assumed that she’d turned cowardly and fled the gunfight. Both assumptions led to her being prematurely rotated out of Afghanistan.
“Your instinct was to save the children,” Maryanne said. “The instinct of the penis possessors on your team was to stand and fight. Your approach is more compatible with the job we need done.”
And so, after some negotiation on pay, Jolaine accepted the offer.
Reflecting back on that conversation, and the training that followed, Jolaine remained stunned by the degree to which everything that could have gone wrong did.
If the Mitchells were so damned important, why didn’t they have a security detail of their own? And what could they possibly know that could justify this kind of carnage?
Once she started down this road of inquiry, the questions wouldn’t stop. If Maryanne — Jolaine’s only lifeline in all of this — was so securely on top of all that was happening, where was her warning to the family when everything was going to hell? Where was her phone call, or her FBI SWAT team? Why did the FBI seem to care so little about things alleged to be so important?
Who was the wounded little man who stumbled through the front door in the opening moments of this nightmare? Clearly, that goddamn code was something that the good guys wanted and the bad guys wanted them not to have. Those numbers were the key to everything. And now that Graham had seen it, it was imprinted forever. Sarah had deliberately pulled her son into the kill circle. Why would she do that?
Jolaine had to get back to Graham. It was entirely possible — maybe even likely — that he was awake by now. Despite the note she’d left him and his boisterous declarations of independence, it wouldn’t take long for him to feel abandoned. Nothing good could follow from that.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ten feet under the parking lot that separated Jonathan’s firehouse home from the basement of St. Katherine’s Catholic Church, Jonathan and Boxers worked together in the twenty-five- by twenty-five-foot armory, selecting the weapons and tools they might reasonably need to meet the requirements of the upcoming 0300 mission. Built of reinforced concrete, and accessed by an enormous steel door that was originally designed for a bank vault, the armory was a place of solitude for Jonathan. Something about the combined smells of Hoppe’s solvent, gun oil, and the hints of isocyanates from the explosives brought him comfort.
The room was lit as brightly as a surgical suite. Heavy fireproof cabinets lined the walls, and two wooden workbenches with additional lighting took up the space in the middle, their tops covered in a carbon-rich conductive plastic that was connected by braided copper cables to the grounded floors. On the occasions when Jonathan or Boxers would manipulate primary explosives, say in the creation of specialized initiators, they would wear conductive shoes and electrically bond themselves to the workstations via conductive bracelets. Explosives knew few enemies more dangerous than static electricity.
“Wish we had better intel,” Boxers said. Anticipating the need for quick action, Big Guy had followed Jonathan home and spent what was left of the night in the guest room on the firehouse’s first floor. “We’re packing for every contingency.”
No argument from Jonathan. He took a sip of his coffee. Not knowing where they were going, or what they were going to find when they got there, they had to plan for both mechanical entry and explosive entry. Not knowing what kind of reconnaissance they would be able to perform, they had to plan for multiple contingencies there, too. And so it went with every element of the upcoming operation.
“These are all clean, right, Boss?” Boxers stood at the gun locker.
“Affirm,” Jonathan said. After every operation where shots were fired, the weapons involved needed to be retooled so that they could not be traced to past or future uses. Because of their spooky pasts, both men were so far off the grid as to have no official, truthful pasts or identities, but the additional attention to details improved their already stacked odds of never getting caught.
Jonathan heard footsteps approaching from the tunnel beyond the door, and recognized Venice’s quick stride. “Don’t shoot,” she said as she closed the distance. It was an unnecessary step, but an understandable one under the circumstances.
“Come on in,” Jonathan said. When Venice appeared in the doorway, he noted the laptop and notebook in her arms, and he pulled the elements of his deconstructed Colt 1911 closer to make room for her. “Help yourself to some coffee. You’re up early.”
Venice set her stuff down. “No, you’re up early. I see seven in the morning every day.”
“And I see it as rarely as possible,” Jonathan confessed. “What brings you all the way down here?”
Venice took him up on the offer for coffee and headed for the pot. “I’ve been scouring the Internet and other sources looking for some mention of the grand shoot-out that allegedly happened last night.”
“Allegedly?” Jonathan asked.
Venice looked into the coffee pot and winced. “When did you make this?” She poured some into a cup — one that bore the logo of the Central Intelligence Agency — and added enough cream and sugar to turn it into a dessert drink. “I say allegedly because I find no mention of the assault anywhere. Not even on ICIS, and if past is precedent, a shoot-out is exactly the kind of event that would have ICIS buzzing like a beehive.”
Jonathan recognized ICIS (pronounced EYE-sis) as a post-9/11 program that documented ongoing police investigations in real time so that other law enforcement agencies could be aware of what was going on, in case they wanted to weigh in and recognize similarities in their own jurisdictions. “What are you thinking?” he asked.