Garin rose to check the premises. The other two occupants were oblivious to what had just occurred. There was no doubt, however, that a review of the security recording would reveal a muscular man in a cap and dark glasses assaulting a somewhat smaller Middle Eastern man.
He grabbed the sentinel by the back of his collar and dragged him silently across the floor, around the corner at the end of the aisle, and into the employees’ restroom, where he deposited him on the floor of the stall. Garin checked for a pulse in the sentinel’s neck and, satisfied that he was dead, rummaged through the dead man’s clothes for any identification. Finding a wallet in the sentinel’s right rear pocket, Garin stuffed it into his front pocket, though he would be surprised if it contained any useful information. He took his SIG from the small of his back and inserted it into his waistband in front, making sure it was covered with his shirt before emerging from the restroom.
The other patron had left while Garin was stashing the body. Garin casually collected his basket and coffee and went to the checkout register, where the cashier rang up the sale and placed everything but the coffee in a paper shopping bag.
Garin knew his next move would be more difficult. It had to be executed before the remaining sentinels began wondering about the whereabouts of their cohort. It also depended on the angle of the rear- and side-view mirrors of the jug-eared sentinel’s driver.
Garin exited the store, turned left, and walked unhurriedly to his car, pretending not to look at either of the two Tauruses. Cradling the shopping bag and coffee in his left arm, he dug into his pocket for the car keys and pressed the button to open the trunk. He put the coffee on the roof of the car, then placed the bag in the trunk, where he quickly unzipped his gym bag and removed a suppressor. With his back to the vehicle containing the two sentinels and angling slightly away from the vehicle to his left, he swiftly affixed the suppressor to the SIG. As usual, a round was already chambered.
Garin closed the trunk. Holding the weapon against his right leg, he turned and began walking briskly toward the sentinels in the vehicle directly behind him. Through the front windshield Garin could see a momentary look of puzzlement cross their faces, changing into wide-eyed expressions of terror as they spotted the SIG in Garin’s hand and realized what was about to happen.
Garin raised the SIG in one fluid motion and quickly fired three shots at each man. He immediately pivoted to his right and sprinted toward the other Taurus, his eyes fixed on its rear- and side-view mirrors for any indication that the remaining sentinel had seen what had happened. If he had, he reacted too slowly. Garin put three more shots through the rear window of the vehicle, striking the driver twice in the head and once at the base of the neck. Through the shattered window Garin saw the man pitch forward against the steering wheel, a curtain of blood and brain tissue splattered across the front windshield.
Garin returned the pistol to his side as he walked back to his car and scanned the area. There was no sign that anyone had witnessed the events of the last ten seconds. Although there were no security cameras on the exterior of the store, Garin was under no illusion that the police, and later the FBI, wouldn’t instantly conclude that the muscular man in a ball cap and sunglasses who had crushed the trachea of the jug-eared shopper was the same one who had assassinated the three men in the parking lot. Just like that. Four corpses in Broome County.
Garin retrieved his coffee from the roof of his car, got in, and placed the weapon under his seat. Looking in the rearview mirror, he could see the splintered windshield of the Taurus, the two dead men reclining against their respective headrests. They appeared strangely at peace.
He took a sip of impressively awful coffee before driving out of the parking lot, casting a quick glance through the store window, where the cashier remained engrossed in her paperwork. Garin would’ve preferred to have spared one of the sentinels for interrogation but couldn’t risk having another patron drive into the parking lot and report the gruesome sight of three dead men slumped in their cars. It would take only a few minutes for the local cops or sheriff to arrive and put out an alert for a man matching his description. He estimated that he had twenty minutes to get rid of the car, ball cap, and glasses, alter his appearance, and secure another means of transportation.
As he drove, Garin realized that he was becoming accustomed to being in a sustained state of bewilderment. It seemed no matter where he went, someone was able to track him and employ various hunters. The sentinels had already been in place outside of Katy’s house when he arrived, even though the FBI had no idea they were looking for a Michael Garin. The only person besides himself who had known about the bunker was dead, yet it seemed someone may have been snooping around the cabin shortly after he left. Then an elite assault team conveyed by military helicopters showed up at the Burns farm, defying odds that would dwarf winning a multistate lottery. And finally, the sentinels from Katy’s house had tracked him to a convenience store in central New York.
Garin could only assume the sentinels followed him to the store using some form of tracking device. But since there was nothing in his bags, the device would have to be inside or attached to the car. How someone had managed to place a device in or on a vehicle that had been locked in storage for more than a year was a puzzle he would have to ponder later. Right now, Garin needed to get rid of the vehicle so it wouldn’t be an easy target for either the authorities or the sentinels’ associates.
And he had to do it quickly. He had the uneasy sense that a clock was ticking, although toward what he had no idea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Dan Dwyer arrived thirty minutes before the hearing was scheduled to begin. He sat on a leather couch in Room 211 of the Hart Senate Office Building, waiting to be summoned through the imposing vault-like double doors of the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility of Hearing Room SH-219, the space wherein the most consequential secrets of the world were discussed. A young man sat at a desk opposite him, typing earnestly on a keyboard.
With Dwyer was his attorney, Jack Elliott, instantly recognizable to cable news junkies as the man invariably seated next to whoever was testifying that particular day before an investigative body of the federal government on a matter of national interest. Elliott’s expensive but rumpled suits, unruly white hair, and exploding waistline camouflaged a quick and precise mind that regularly outmaneuvered the congressmen before whom his clients appeared.
And Dwyer regularly appeared before congressmen. As DGT had grown exponentially over the last eight years, so had the interest of some congressmen in nearly every aspect of his business. A few of them had serious questions about the enterprise and the extent to which it was replicating, if not usurping, the role of the military in fighting the war on terror. But the majority of politicians simply saw DGT as a useful foil, a shady, rapacious outfit that not only soaked up large amounts of federal revenue but soiled America’s reputation overseas. For the latter cohort, DGT was the Great White Whale. Whoever harpooned it would be a hero to the country’s antiwar movement and could use it as a springboard to higher office.