The gun wavered, then finally dropped. “Shit! I’m not gonna shoot you.” Howson slipped Ryan’s weapon into his holster, lowering his own to his side. Then, a second later: “What do I do?”
Ryan opened the door from the inside, flinching when he realized that he hadn’t checked for a trip wire. “You talked to the guy?”
The officer nodded and pointed to his right. “Yeah, I think he went in there.”
Ryan glanced toward the dark gray facade of the JW Marriott hotel. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and handed it over while simultaneously turning his attention back to the van. “Speed dial 3, then ask for Rivers.” He was glad he had stored her number.
“Tell her where to come . . . Don’t go into that building.”
Ryan was in the cab a few seconds later, head down and busy as the police officer raced toward the hotel. In his right hand Howson carried the standard-issue 9mm Glock. In his left hand he held nothing, as he had already slipped the cell phone into his pocket and promptly forgotten about it.
Vanderveen stopped dead in the hall, staring in disbelief at the message on the cell phone’s display: Network Unavailable. What the fuck did that mean? He cursed low, under his breath, and didn’t notice when a passing woman shot him a disapproving glare.
He hoped it wasn’t the hotel. For all of his planning, he had not anticipated this possibility. If it was something to do with the building materials, he’d have to get outside before he could get a signal.
That was thirty seconds in the elevator, forty seconds through the makeshift hall leading to The Shops at National Place, and another twenty seconds through the stores themselves to F Street. He knew because he had already timed it. Ninety seconds total—more than enough time for any number of unpleasant things to occur. Plenty of time for Ryan to get into the hotel, and more than enough time for the HRT to set up a hasty perimeter.
Maybe it wouldn’t come to that. He pushed and held the button a second time, willing his creation to do its work.
Ryan was in the van for less than five seconds when he found what didn’t fit. His hand was sweeping between the seats when it banged into a boxy metal object. Shifting his weight over the seat to stare down at it, he couldn’t see what practical purpose it might have served. It looked like a cover of some kind, but when he tried to lift it, it didn’t budge. Then he pulled on the other end and it came right up. He flinched, waiting for the inevitable blast. When nothing happened, he looked down and saw a single switch.
He flipped it without hesitation. Leaning back in the seat, breathing hard from fear and the long sprint, his mind raced to figure out what had just transpired.
Two seconds later, sounding distant through the thin steel partition, Ryan heard the unmistakable high-pitched tone as a cell phone began to ring somewhere in the cargo area.
After another few seconds had passed, he looked in the rearview mirror to see a procession of black limousines turn from 12th onto Pennsylvania at breakneck speed, only to make another sharp turn onto 13th a split second later.
Jared Howson burst into the lobby with his gun up, oblivious to the wide-eyed stares and screams that accompanied his entrance.
A security guard was standing just inside the door, but didn’t move to interfere with the policeman or the gun in his hand.
Howson turned right toward the concierge, scrambling to recall the name he had seen on the passport.
“Bidault! Claude Bidault! What’s his room number?” No one responded. They just stared at him with their hands held high. “WHAT’S
THE ROOM NUMBER?”
One of the men finally grabbed a keyboard, his hands shaking.
“Bidault?” Howson nodded impatiently. “Room 545,” the concierge said. “Elevators are that way.”
But Howson was already gone, the Glock 9mm down low in a two-handed grip. He moved fast toward the elevators, then caught a flash of a dark green oilskin jacket and stopped instinctively, trying hard to remember. He had seen that jacket somewhere before . . .
He sprinted past the atrium toward the escalators.
Kealey moved into the hotel with less fanfare, but everyone knew why he was there. A few fingers pointed him past guest registration on the main lobby level.
Indecision for a moment. He didn’t have a weapon, but Vanderveen was running and would soon be gone. Hold or follow? A glimpse of a Metro PD uniform at the top of the escalator made the decision for him.
He moved in that direction, only to find his path was blocked by a large security guard. The man had a radio up and was speaking into it urgently. He turned his attention to Kealey: “Stop right there, sir! I said stop!”
Ryan slowed to a fast walk, his hands up in front of his chest, palms out in a conciliatory gesture. “I have a reservation here. I’m sorry for the trouble, I’m just late meeting someone . . .”
He hit the security guard hard in the solar plexus, then lifted his knee into the man’s face. The guard fell back, tumbling into a coffee cart and sending several steaming urns crashing to the floor.
Ryan was aware of swarming blue uniforms in his peripheral vision as he sprinted up the escalator. He was passing covered glass doors when he heard a popping noise up ahead, and then what sounded like two more shots carrying over the cries of terrified onlookers.
He picked up the pace as the screams intensified in volume.
Howson knew he was moving too fast, but he was young and his adrenaline was through the roof. More importantly, there was an open area up ahead, and he’d definitely caught another flash of the oilskin jacket.
The whole way, from the van to the lobby, the lobby to the escalator, the escalator to here—all forty-five seconds of it—all he could think about was the story it would make. He couldn’t wait to tell it on the old man’s porch . . . There was no little voice, nothing inside telling him to slow it down, otherwise there wouldn’t be any story, and he was running hard. He saw light spilling from left to right at the end of the hall, heard the sound of a bustling crowd, and kept pushing forward. Past a steel-shuttered elevator pit, past a plastic Dumpster filled with trash, and then into the basement level before realizing his mistake, because the lure of the light had prevented him from turning right.
It came without warning. There was no explosion of sound, no tunnel of light, and no pain. All he felt was a grazing sensation at the back of his head, and then darkness.
Ryan was about twenty steps and seven seconds behind. He saw the prone figure of the police officer as soon as he entered the construction area, and tried not to look at the gaping exit wound in the young man’s face, or the spray of blood and tissue on the tile in front of him as he reached down and snatched up Howson’s Glock.
Ryan sensed that Vanderveen was not waiting to get the drop on him, and he needed to move fast now if he wanted to catch up. He turned into the open area recklessly, the 9mm down low in the same two-handed grip that Howson had adopted less than two minutes earlier. Twenty feet in front of him, Ryan saw people running in his direction out of Filene’s Basement, the only store on the lowest level. He bounded up the stairs, passing black bins of cashmere and racks of discounted Prada, forcing his way through the frantic crowd, knowing full well that this might be his last chance at getting close enough to put the man down for good.
Vanderveen was about fifteen seconds ahead of Kealey when he passed through the glass doors leading out onto F Street, moving quickly but casually. His posture was relaxed, and calm enough so that none of the passersby immediately noticed what was dangling from his right hand.