Vanessa reached out and found the towel. Kowalski realized that the free show was over, and he hadn’t any time to fully appreciate it.
Who was he kidding. He wouldn’t have allowed himself to, anyway.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I won’t be bringing the girls out to play anytime soon.” She rewrapped the towel around her torso.
“We have to get to San Diego. Now.”
“Figured that.”
They were silent as they quickly gathered their things.
Haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” The interrogator was loving this. Possibly as much as the idea of using his little knife. What was that anyway? Something he took from the kitchen at home? Something his wife ordered at a Pampered Chef party?
“Yeah,” Kowalski said. “I figured it out. The first team pushed us to a specific car rental place. You had someone there waiting. You tagged the Taurus with a homing device.”
The interrogator shook his head, made a tsk-tsk sound. “And she said you were the smartest operative she ever worked with.”
He didn’t have to say who. “She” was enough to wedge the blade under his armor.
“Then again,” the interrogator continued, “she’s no longer with us.”
Kowalski said nothing.
“In answer to your theory: No, we did not bug the Taurus. We had something else.”
Kowalski said nothing.
And then it came to him. Oh, of fucking course. How stupid can one man be? Maybe he had been knocked in the brains one too many times.
He’d known it had happened. He just didn’t know it had happened so early.
“The Surgeon certainly thought the device came in handy.”
The Surgeon watched the targets take the stairs down from the apartment. They faded in and out of view. That was okay. He also had them on his handheld tracker. Two pulsing red dots, making their way slowly across a grid. No way of losing them.
So he was more or less relaxing, smoking a Pall Mall, something he had a hard time doing practically anywhere in L.A. In this empty apartment, though, it was okay. Maybe a rental agent would detect a faint hint of smoke, but by then, he’d be long gone.
He only expected to be here a few more minutes, actually.
Maybe just sixty seconds.
A quick phone call (fuck the Internet; The Surgeon was old school) had revealed that Lee Michaels owned the third garage on the left. The garages were positively Stone Age: just a box of concrete wedged into a muddy hill with corrugated steel doors. It was enough to accommodate most midsized vehicles. Like a Ford Taurus.
Even the most primitive of garages, however, have a door handle.
The trap was so easy to set. Just put The Stuff in your right-hand pocket, grab a stack of supermarket circulars, walk up to the apartment gate, give ‘em a circular, then on the way back quickly put on some gloves and coat The Stuff on the handle.
The Stuff was great. Mr. Brown loved working with it every chance he got.
The Stuff killed on contact with skin. Not right away, but within fifteen to twenty minutes. Knocked you unconscious. For good.
The Stuff was completely untraceable. Not even the CIA knew about The Stuff. Not this Stuff.
So Mr. Brown staked out an apartment across the way and smoked while he waited. Lie also tore open a packet of mint pastilles, and he scooped a handful into his mouth between cigarettes. It fought the nicotine breath. Women were so picky about that.
Maybe after this he’d go down to Sunset and try to get himself a date.
The great thing about the garages was that they were so narrow. Only one person could squeeze in at a time. The thing to do was worm your way into the driver’s seat, back the car out, then have your passenger lower the garage door for you before hopping in.
That meant two people touching the garage door handle. The driver. And the passenger.
Oh, and here they were, heading to the garage, thinking they were about to make a clean getaway.
Yep.
The Surgeon was mildly surprised that Ms. Montgomery had failed to take them out herself. She was usually good. He hoped she wasn’t dead.
But then again, it was nice to strut his Stuff, too.
Kwalski reached for the garage door.
“Wait,” Vanessa said.
“Nobody’s hiding in the garage,” he said. “I rigged it. If this had been opened in the last few hours, I would have known.”
“Rigged it with what? A piece of tape up in the corner?”
Kowalski didn’t say anything, because that was precisely how he’d rigged it. A piece of tape, up in the corner. It was still there.
“I’ll open it quick,” he said. “We jump if there’s an explosion.”
Vanessa looked at him. “Bollocks.” She reached down, grabbed the handle, and yanked the door upward. It rattled as it moved along the rusty tracks and settled into place above her head.
No explosions.
No gunfire.
No nothing.
Kowalski gave her a See? look.
“Well, go on then,” she said.
One down,” mumbled the Surgeon. He helped himself to more mint pastilles.
But there was a problem now. The girl was good as dead, but the male target—this Kowalski—was squeezing himself in alongside the car, making his way to the driver’s seat. Which meant he wouldn’t touch the garage door handle at all.
It was a good thing he’d prepared a secondary device.
This was even more ingenious. It was a strip of clear tape, running across the length of the garage, about six inches away from the outside of the door.
The tape was pressure-sensitive. Step on it—hell, stomp on it, hard as you can—and nothing. Just an ordinary piece of electrician’s tape. But roll the approximate weight of an automobile over the tape, and watch out.
Ka-Boomsville.
You can do all the forensic analysis you want, and all you’d find is a blown back tire that somehow, incredibly, sparked the gas tank, resulting in catastrophic combustion. That would be your best guess, anyhow. The tape would have long burned up into nothingness. You’d have nothing to analyze.
The Surgeon watched the male target start the car. Popped a mint.
Then he hit the remote control that activated the tape.
Kowalski started the car. He didn’t like this feeling. Jittery. Nerves on edge. Things moving too fast. Being forced out of his safe house—the safest place he knew—in less than an hour. Compromised. This wasn’t like CI-6. They weren’t usually this sharp. He thought he’d have more time to prepare. A week would have been nice.
Worst of all, he still had beers left up in Lee’s place. God, that pissed him off.
Kowalski reached for the gear shift. His hand missed. On the second try, he found it.
There was a fluttering in his stomach. He was almost never sick to his stomach.
Kowalski sighed, then turned off the ignition. Stepped out of the car, feeling the blood rush out of his head. Squeezed himself alongside the Taurus.
“I need you to drive,” he said.
He threw the keys to the redhead.
She caught them, no problem. “I don’t know how to drive in America.”
“We’ll be on the 5 the whole time. Just stick to a lane. You’ll be fine.”
“To be perfectly frank, I don’t know how to drive. Like, at all.”
“Piece of cake. Just stay between the white lines.”
This was a lie, and Vanessa looked like she knew it. But there wasn’t much choice. The nausea was full on now, and the dizzy feeling refused to go away, no matter how much Kowalski controlled his breathing. It was going to take some effort to stay conscious in the passenger seat, let alone the driver’s seat.