Munroe pulled on a pair of latex gloves. He’d check the room first; decide what he wanted going into the official paperwork. And what he didn’t.
Two beds, shitty desk and chair, cheap dresser, Laptop on the desk, laptop bag on the floor by the chair. He’d be taking that, send it east, let the tech weenies out at NSA see what they could wring out of it. Al Din had a phone in his pocket, which was in Munroe’s pocket now. Put that in the same pouch. Nothing in the drawers. Underwear, socks, some shirts all neatly folded in the suitcase that lay open on the second bed. Three more phones in there, all the same make and model. Throwaways, probably, picked up at a 7-Eleven somewhere. Munroe powered them up one at a time, checked. No call history, no messages, no texts. Leave those for the Feebs; give them something to play with.
Bathroom. The usual shit, although the bottle of Acqua di Gio next to the sink went for something like seventy bucks. Looked like al Din’s tastes had gotten a little too refined for Sandland. Munroe was more of an Aqua Velva guy himself.
Closet. Pants and shirts, all ironed and hung up, couple of sport coats. Munroe checked the labels – Armani, Cardin, all high-end stuff. On the floor, next to a couple of pairs of expensive loafers, an aluminum case.
Munroe put the case on the bed, tried the latches. Locked. Bastard. Munroe pulled a leather case from his pocket, took out a couple narrow metal picks, had to fuck with the case for a minute. Out of practice. Didn’t do that much breaking and entering these days, not personally. Better than usual locks on the case, too. But the latches popped. First one, then the other. Munroe lifted the lid.
The case was lined with stiff black foam, six identical slots cut into it. Five of the slots were empty. In the sixth, Munroe saw a flat black metal tube with a couple of buttons on it. Pretty sure he knew what that was.
The little fucker had deployed the other five, probably some kind of failsafe play. If Munroe made a move on him, al Din could set them off. Or maybe just a safety net, make sure, when he came in, that he had a hole card, something to play if he didn’t think Munroe was honoring the deal. Or maybe he was gonna jack them up for more cash.
The why didn’t matter. Munroe had five devices in the wild that he needed to find ASAP.
He pulled out his phone dialed a number, gave the guy on the other end the address and room number. “I need a runner here soonest. Then get on the phone to Fort Dix, find out the closest Level 3 biohazard lab we’ve got around here, one we can use on the QT. I got a device I needed eyeballed yesterday.”
“Got it,” said the voice. “Anything else?”
Munroe had an uncomfortable thought. Al Din had a phone on him. Gotta figure, if the devices were his failsafe, then he could set them off remotely. That scene in the garage? Did al Din have time to push a button?
“Yeah. Monitor the emergency channels.” Munroe thought through parameters. They’d been tracking al Din as best they could ever since Munroe got the call in Saigon. Fucker’d been everywhere. “Following counties: Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane, Will, Kendall. Tap their public health systems, too. You start hearing anything unusual, anybody calling CDC for advice, anything like that, I need to know.”
Munroe ended the call, packed al Din’s computer into the laptop bag and closed the metal case. Did a quick scan. Fuck, power cord had come loose from the computer, plugged in under the desk, lying on the floor. Feebs find that, they’re going to start asking about the missing computer. Munroe bent down, yanked the cord, stuffed it in the bag. There was a single knock on the door. Munroe slipped out his Walther, cracked the door. Small guy in motorcycle leathers, Kawasaki Ninja in the spot behind him, next to Munroe’s car, black helmet on the seat.
“I’m your runner,” he said.
Munroe gave him the packages, called Hickman, told him the Feebs could toss the room now, looked at his watch. Not quite 11am. Long day already, and it just got a hell of a lot longer.
CHAPTER 95
The Eagle was in the stairwell at Northwestern Memorial, coming down from eight to seven. Nudged the door open just a fraction of an inch to make sure it was unlocked. It was. Supposed to be unlocked in hospitals, but needed to make sure there was no exception due to the security around the target.
Been on the floor earlier, sticking to the far end, past the nurse’s station. The cop was leaning on the desk, chatting up a blonde who was doing some charts. See where he was tomorrow, then make the call whether to come from the right or the left. Liked the layout, the way the nurse’s station was tucked in to an alcove, the seats facing away from the target’s room.
Already been down the other stairwell, the exit stairwell. Nice little gap under the stairs at the bottom of each flight, space enough to dump the sweater and wig. Be a while before anyone found those. A little variety on the scrubs, but the dark blue was dominant, so go with that.
Nothing more to see here. Time to do a little shopping.
CHAPTER 96
Starshak followed the ambulance to the ER, Bernstein riding with him. Took a while for the docs to finish up with Lynch, stitches on the outside of his thigh from a few inches below his hip damn near to his knee, his whole thigh wrapped in bandages. Starshak on the phone a lot while the docs worked. The brass, DA, review board, seemed like pretty much anybody from any federal agency anywhere that felt like calling him.
Bernstein got X-rays: did in fact have a cracked rib. Not much to do for that. Nurse wrapped him back up.
When they were done, Starshak drove them to Bernstein’s place first, Bernstein grabbing a sweater he could work his arm into. Then they headed to Lynch’s condo, Lynch pulled on an old BC sweatsuit, the only thing he could fit over his thigh.
Then the three of them sat at Lynch’s kitchen table.
“You guys OK?” Starshak asked. Bernstein nodded, said nothing.
“Just a scratch,” Lynch said.
“Big fucking scratch,” said Starshak.
“Yeah,” said Lynch.
“That wasn’t what I was asking.”
“I know.”
The three of them quiet for a while.
“Never been shot at before,” Bernstein said. “Never shot at anybody.” He sounded a little hollow.
“You did good,” Lynch said.
“Right,” said Bernstein. “Took a round in my iPhone, emptied my clip, I think I got one guy in the calf.”
Lynch shrugged. “Four guys, three with machine guns, you stood your ground, did your job. You weren’t there, I’d be dead.”
Bernstein nodded. They were quiet again for a while.
“We got lucky,” Bernstein said.
Lynch nodded.
“Hardin and Wilson hadn’t stepped in…” The thought trailed off.
“They say why they did that?” Starshak asked. “They could have walked clean.”
Lynch shook his head.
“You got any ideas?”
Lynch pursed his lips, looked out his window for a moment. “They’re just on the right side, I guess.”
“Running up quite a body count for being on the right side,” said Bernstein.
“I’m OK with the bodies,” said Lynch. “Corsco’s goons? Hernandez’s goons? And from what I can see, nobody that didn’t come after them first. Hardin stole some diamonds maybe, but not in my jurisdiction, and look who he stole them from? And Wilson? Stand up cop, up until this week. You look at their history, what we know about the two of them now, this shit with her brother, Hardin does two tours, then gets chased out of his own country by some punk hood, spends a decade in Africa taking out other people’s garbage. I don’t know. You’ve got the law, and that’s great. Most of the time, for most people. But the law never did shit for either of them. So I think maybe they just go by right and wrong, now, as best they can. I hope they come out of this OK.”