“Is Momolu safe?”
“Can’t think al Din’s got any reason to go after him, probably doesn’t even know he’s there. I wouldn’t take Momolu on any field trips until this is over.”
Magnus finished her drink, set the glass down, stared down into it for a minute.
“I knew a girl in Scotland, a friend. My best friend, I guess. She was 16. She took up with this guy, older guy, worked the oil rigs. He had money, most guys didn’t. He’d come in off his shift, they’d be out on the rigs for a couple of weeks, and everything would be great. Trips into Glasgow, all that. But he’d drink, and then he’d beat her. And then he killed her. And I thought it was the times or the drink. And then Africa, and everyone was killing everyone, and I thought it was just Africa.”
She looked up at him. He was expecting tears, but there weren’t any.
“It’s everywhere, isn’t?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
“And there’s never a reason, is there?”
“Never a good one.”
CHAPTER 69
Late that night, the Eagle sat with Franco in the back of a six-passenger Citation on the way to Chicago. The plane added five figures to Corsco’s bill, but that was Corsco’s problem. A private plane meant no security, no screwing around trying to get weapons on the other end. It meant getting in when you wanted, getting out when you wanted. Usually the Eagle drove, unless the job was overseas, but Corsco sent this goombah out, wanted a secured target hit on two days’ notice because he cocked up some dumb-ass DIY job. Hookers and a bag of coke? Jesus. Amateurs.
Plans for Northwestern Hospital scrolled across the laptop. The Eagle had bought everything – floor plans, wiring, HVAC. That was another couple Gs on Corsco’s tab. Worked hospitals before. Hospitals were good, especially big ones like this – mess of buildings, lots of floors. Lots of people coming and going, lots of elevators, lots of stairs, lots of exits. The target was under police guard, though, that would complicate things. But the target had been in for four days, comatose supposedly, no real threat to anyone right now. Security’s guard would be down. Probably one cop watching the room. Still, the hospital would have its own security, and some of them would be off-duty cops.
At least Corsco didn’t want cute. No air bubble in the IV line, no smothering with a pillow. That made things simpler. Quick hit and run. Probably the .32 with the heavy suppressor. Made the pistol bulky, but it would be bagged up in the special rig, catch the brass and everything. No problem there. Get in the room, shut the door, five rounds center mass. You’d have to be right outside the door to hear it, and you’d have had to have heard a light pistol with a heavy suppressor before to know what it was. Target was medically fragile already; one round close to anything vital should be enough. Pride in the work, though. All five rounds would be right on target. Two rounds for the cop if that was necessary, enough to make sure he went down for the duration. Didn’t need him dead. Better if he wasn’t. That left five rounds in the clip just in case.
Northwestern was wired up, all the camera locations on the blueprints. So what? Cameras everywhere these days. Still, you study the placements then you know which side of the hall to walk on to give them a bad angle. Put the high lifts in a pair of loafers, those would add a few inches. The gray wig probably. People weren’t suspicious of old people. Those silicon cheek inserts with bite wings, add weight to the face, mess with the telemetry if anyone was running any facial recognition stuff, wear the fat vest under the shirt, look forty pounds heavier. A hat. Pick up a Cubs hat somewhere, seemed like the right look for plugging a loser like Fenn.
Get a sweater, something easy to slip on over the rest of the get up, something easy to take off, a cardigan, something like that. Something bright, a solid color, say yellow. It was spring, yellow was a spring color. Give anybody that catches the action something easy to remember. The way it worked with witnesses, you give them one, big flashy detail, they seize on that. So if anybody pulls their shit together quick enough to call security, they’d tell them look to look for the yellow sweater. Security’d ask the usual stuff – height, weight and such, and the witness would be all “I dunno, it happened so fast. But a yellow sweater. I remember that.” Dump the cardigan in the stairwell, and boom, you’re invisible.
From the blueprints, three possible exit strategies. Closest stairs were to the right, but that meant walking right past the nurses’ station. Guy’s in a coma in ICU, so they’d have him wired up to monitors. Things would start beeping as soon as the target got plugged, nurses would be moving. Take the other stairs to the left, at the end of the hall. Pass the elevator on the way. If the door happens to open just then, cool. Hop on, ride it up or down, didn’t matter. Long shot on the elevator though, so the real plan was the left stairs. Target was on the seventh floor, no cameras in the stairwells. Dump the cardigan and the wig in the stairwell. Pop out of the stairs on five, got a bathroom two doors down. Grab a stall, shed the shirt, the fat vest, the pants, yank the lifts out of the shoes, spit out the bite wings. Wear scrubs under everything. Less than a minute, then step out of the bathroom and bingo, you’re just another employee heading home on shift change. Pictures on the website showed the housekeeping staff in dark blue scrubs, so get some of those. Google up the uniform store closest to Northwestern, they’d have everything in stock.
Shift change was at 8am, so do it then. Not tomorrow, next day. That was still inside Corsco’s forty-eight hour window. Already working way too much off third-party intel. Needed to at least do a walk through, eyeball the set up, get a clear mental image. So recon tomorrow morning, do the job the next day.
Plane would be at Chicago Executive, up in Wheeling. Traffic was going to suck, that was the downside to the shift-change timing, but the upside was worth it. Pilot was getting paid well to be on call. Buzz him fifteen minutes out, have the engines turning over. Worse case, be wheels up two hours after pulling the trigger.
Ran through the plan one more time, tightening it up. Really liked the fat vest considering there was going to be at least one cop involved. Had a Kevlar lining in the fat vest. Too bad about the cop, though. Shoot a cop, that draws heat, even if you didn’t have to kill him. But heat was why people called the Eagle. Heat was why they paid the money. Wouldn’t be the Eagle’s first cop.
CHAPTER 70
The next morning, Lynch and Bernstein walked into Starshak’s office, closed the door.
“We gotta talk,” said Lynch. “Been thinking. Been so busy chasing our tails on this thing we haven’t done enough of that.”
“What?” asked Starshak.
“It’s al Din,” Lynch said. “The Feds bring him up during their little dog and pony show, tell us he’s Mr .22.Then they give us the one crappy picture, say that’s all they’ve got. All I gotta do is flash it at the shelter where Saturday got killed and I get more than that, find out it’s in Algiers anyway on account of the woman there knows the church. So you gonna tell me that Langley doesn’t know where that is? They can’t even give us that?”
“You saying they don’t want us to find him?”
“I’m saying they’re playing us. They’re playing everybody. Fine. We’ve been around that block before. Whatever above-our-pay-grade national security voodoo they’re up to, we aren’t going to get looped in. But this fuck al Din, he’s in our town killing people. Killed a couple of kids now. That shit we don’t have to eat.”
“So what do we do about it?” Starshak asked.
“I took it down to our tech guy, asked him to start running it against whatever they have from the various crime scenes we can tie al Din to. Guy laughs at me, tells me with that kind of resolution, the bad angle, the lighting, he’d be pulling up false matches by the boatload. Says I got to narrow it down. So I ask him to at least run it against the Stein hit. The stadium has plenty of cameras and we have timing on that down to a tight window. Tech guy pulls up this.”