“By the way... have you given any thought to all the things that could go wrong with this?”
He shrugged. “Vacant house, ambush, maybe Lawrence is sending us next door, to alert those in the real place? Or this is the right house and, being slightly outnumbered, we get very dead? Those kind of things?”
“We have another option.”
“Which is?”
She held his eyes. “Call Fisk. Bring the Bureau in.”
“But Lawrence says the Alliance is everywhere, and that could include the Bureau, like you said. Not necessarily Fisk herself, but just a team member on the response unit, and we’re screwed. No, Patti, this is us. Strictly us.”
She let out air. “Sweet-talker.”
That got the world’s tiniest grin out of Reeder, before he crept away through the underbrush, skirting trees. There was something military about it, and Rogers suddenly flashed on the nature of their self-appointed mission.
If this was indeed the right house, the guards inside were not necessarily Alliance, but might simply be agents, like herself, like her team, agents who likely thought they were doing their job, nothing more, nothing less.
But her job right now was getting Nichols out of harm’s way.
She unholstered her pistol, checked it, re-holstered it, then settled in on her haunches to wait, staying alert. The sun kept climbing, and her legs were tight, near cramping, and all the ways that this could go south kept careening feverishly through her mind.
Occasionally, she duckwalked through brush and got behind a tree to rise and stretch, eyes never leaving the house. Then she would reposition herself and crouch again, careful not to attract attention. She checked the time now and again, and — endless minutes turning into mind-numbing hours — she wondered if they really were staking out a vacant house. She hadn’t seen so much as a hint of movement beyond a window and it was nearing noon.
She was about to text Reeder that maybe Morris had played them and they should abort when something moved past the half-open blinds on the second floor. She perked, her discomfort and boredom gone. Moments later, a hand separated blinds and a big slice of male face appeared, eyes slowly scanning the woods.
Then the blinds snapped shut.
Was that where Nichols was being held? An upstairs bedroom?
She texted Reeder: *2nd-floor window*
Reeder’s response was one letter: *K*
Texting shorthand learned from his daughter, Amy, no doubt. Rogers twitched a smile, then focused on the house so intently she might have been trying to hypnotize it.
Then the phone in her hand vibrated and when she looked at the screen, she saw:
*GO*
She rose like something that had grown very fast, the phone dropped in a pocket, her pistol coming out and up. Two houses down, Reeder came out of the woods just as she did. Simultaneously they crossed the joined backyards and took posts at opposite corners at the rear of the target house.
When Reeder disappeared up the far side of the house, she went up her side, stopping at the front corner, making sure she was low enough to keep well under the living room windows. She peeked around the corner — on the other side of the house...
... a nondescript tones-of-gray Ford, an obvious government car, was just pulling into the driveway. Reeder remained out of sight. That wouldn’t change until whoever was in the car parked it and got out.
Then she heard the garage door going up. Damn! She was at the wrong side of the house and if she couldn’t make it across the front yard, and time it right, the door would close and the new shift of captors was in.
Or worse — Reeder might wind up in that garage alone with however many armed agents were in the Ford.
As soon as the passenger side door passed her position — only two of them, driver, rider — Rogers took off quick and low, bisecting the front yard; as she passed the front door, it stayed shut. At the same time, Reeder came around the garage side of the house, low but not as fast. He didn’t have the nine mil in hand — instead, it was that extendable baton of his, looking like he was running a relay and about to pass it off. He pointed inside with the unextended weapon, hesitating as the Ford rolled inside.
The garage door motor indicated the vehicle and its inhabitants were about to be shut inside, and she hurtled under before the drawbridge came completely down. The front doors of the Ford opened, snick, snick, and an agent in a dark suit got out on either side.
Was the house soundproofed enough that those within wouldn’t be alerted to the arrival of their relief team?
“Turn around slow, gentlemen,” Reeder said, positioned behind the driver toward the left rear of the Ford. Rogers was behind the passenger, at the vehicle’s right rear, and both she and Reeder were training guns on the men, although Joe had his nine mil in his left hand and the baton in his right.
The two agents turned, nice and slow, hands shoulder high. No stupid moves. Not from this pair. Smart moves, though...?
Her man, who she didn’t recognize, was maybe thirty, dark hair, wedge-faced, blank-eyed.
The driver was older, forty anyway, with graying dark hair, pockmarked with a reptilian smile.
“Peep,” the driver said to Reeder, pleasantly but a little too loud.
“I can hear you,” Reeder said. “Make sure no one in the house can.”
“Kinda in over your head on this one, aren’t you, Peep?”
“Patti, this is Robert Clayton — Homeland.”
She nodded just a little. “Mr. Clayton.”
“You’re on the wrong side of this, Peep,” Clayton said. “But you can easily get on the right side. You could have Agents Nichols back, no problem, and we can negotiate our way out of this unfortunate situation that we find ourselves in.”
“Define ‘we.’”
His chin came up slightly. Pride? “You, and I, and some of the most patriotic Americans who’ve ever lived.”
“Well, some are going to die.” Slowly Reeder approached the man. “But you don’t have to be one of them, Bob, if you arrange to have Agent Nichols turned over to us without any further fuss.”
Clayton’s scowl was somehow reptilian as well. “Who do you think you’re talking to? You make a move on us, the two inside will execute the prisoner, and—”
Reeder hit Clayton with the baton, right along the side of his head. The Homeland agent chased himself to the cement, sprawled there out cold in a crisply pressed suit.
That’d got Rogers’ attention enough for her charge to risk a leap at her, right into a swing of the barrel of her pistol, which caught the agent much the way Reeder’s baton had his partner. He did a limp-puppet fall, clearly out before he landed.
Rogers said, “So, there’s two more inside.”
Reeder said softly, “Unless Clayton is cleverer than I give him credit for.” He nodded toward the nearest unconscious fed. “Use their own cuffs on ’em, bind their feet with their neckties, collect their pistols and cells.”
She nodded and did that while Reeder stood covering her by facing the door into the house, the nine mil in his right hand now, the baton tucked away.
Throughout, the only sounds were the rustle of clothing and light clink of the cuffs as she bound the unconscious men — nothing came from within the residence. Leaving the two men on the floor of the garage, one on either side of the Ford, they moved quietly inside — the connecting door unlocked — and found themselves in a mudroom, washer and dryer to their left, a bench and empty coat-hanger pegs to the right.
Gun in hand, Reeder walked them into a nice if characterless kitchen — stainless steel appliances, big island in the center, long counter — and she followed him. Dead soda cans were arranged on the counter like a little tin army — big-time agents tended to be tidy — and the smell of bacon lingered. No take-out bags visible in the wastebasket. Cooking for themselves.