“How am I going to get them to push the button, Sean? It can’t be a tip-off from you.”
“I know. Here’s how we’ll play it. A call will come in from one of the informants me and Nick had with the Joint Terrorism Task Force. A Lebanese guy, Ramsey Salman. He’s in the database, works at a deli in Brooklyn. He was keeping tabs on a couple of preachers for us. He’s been dark for a while, but he’ll say there are a couple of guys in that apartment about to launch a hit on the city. It’ll justify a red alert about a credible incoming threat.”
“Hang on, hang on.” She thought about it fast. “OK, but I can’t just say I got the call. I need an actual call to come into the Bureau switchboard, a call for you or Nick. And it can’t come from you, obviously.”
Obviously-since it would be taped, and Deutsch needed it to stand up to scrutiny after the fact. I’d thought about this. If I made the call, there was the very real possibility that my voice print would be recognized, which would put her in a serious jam. My eyes wandered aimlessly across the joint as I looked at my solution. He was wiping down a table in the far corner.
I waved Theo over to my table. “I know. I’ve got it covered.”
“You’ve got someone who can make the call?”
I watched as Theo walked over, hoping he’d be up for it-and that he’d be as good as he’d been in that audition. “Yes.”
“OK, let’s get going. But better he ask for Nick. They’re routing all his calls to my BlackBerry.”
Gigi’s head felt like it had after her one and only time at Coachella. She’d fulfilled a bucket list ambition by seeing Portishead live-their first two albums had been the soundtrack to her teens-but it had taken her a full week to recover from the experience. By the time Roger Waters had finished his trip back to The Dark Side Of The Moon, she’d felt like someone had drilled a hole in her cranium, filled it with silly putty and razor wire and left her on the cold lump of rock. The putty felt comfortably numb, but the second she moved-even a micron-the blades would score the inside of her skull and she’d want to die.
As she blinked her eyes open and tried to pull focus, the situation that had put her on the floor of her own apartment came cascading back.
Fuck.
That pretty much summed it up.
“Gigi,” she heard Kurt whisper. “You OK?”
She pushed herself up on her elbows, ignoring the screaming anguish that was quickly filling the left side of her head. Kurt was turning toward her from a slump against the bedroom wall, eyes locked on hers. They were full of a chaotic storm of relief, terror, confusion and-she’d seen it only once before but knew she’d recognize it again-genuine care.
“What’s happening?” she asked with a groan.
“It’s going to be OK,” Kurt told her.
“OK how?”
“Reilly’s on his way.”
This didn’t sit well. “What do you mean? How?”
“I called him.” Kurt paused, seemingly embarrassed, then said, “He made me call him. Tell him we had a hit.”
Gigi thought it through quickly and groaned. “You fucking pinhead!” she hissed. “Jesus Christ, Jaegers. Don’t you realize the bastard is going to kill us anyway?”
She heard the intruder say, “Shut up. Both of you.”
She turned and spotted him sitting in the living room, defiling her sleek Italian sofa, the one that had taken four months from order to delivery, and watching over them. Her expression soured with disdain. “Whatever, dickhead.” She twisted her face back at Kurt, shaking her head slowly, trying to block out the despair.
She looked at Kurt. He just looked like he wanted to weep. Right then, she thought of how she loved the pinhead and how it would be nice to hear and say the words-she never had, not once-but first they needed to survive the night.
The bastard checked his watch. “You two should kiss and make up. You don’t want to go out like this, do you?”
“Up yours,” she spat back as she slithered backward toward the wall, closer to Kurt. She reached out and squeezed his forearm in what she hoped was a gesture of support, finishing up slumped right next to him.
She inclined her head toward him and whispered, “Reilly’ll get him.”
The movement was so painful she felt like she was going to puke. And she wasn’t sure she even believed what she’d just said.
53
From my vantage point in a sheltered doorway on Twenty-third street up the block from Gigi’s building I watched as the some NYPD uniforms quietly cordoned off the street and set up their perimeter.
I could barely make out a couple of cops going in to the eatery, where they would herd everyone to the back of the place and tell them to stay clear of the windows until further notice. Another team would be doing the same on the opposite sidewalk.
I’d spoken to Theo before I slipped out, needing to make sure he understood how important it was for him to keep our little secret. He was a bit nervous, rightfully worried about the call I’d asked him to make, which he’d pulled off with a very convincing foreign accent-not necessarily Lebanese, but it did the trick. I’d already assured him as strongly as I could that it was all under control and that he had nothing to worry about. I genuinely didn’t think he did. We’d made the call from my burner phone, which was untraceable. They didn’t have his voice on record, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell them who’d made that call if it ever came down to it.
Through the light snowfall that was drifting down from the darkness, I watched and waited, knowing I needed to move quickly once my window of opportunity opened up. I wouldn’t have much time if I was going to capitalize on the confusion and make my move undetected while the situation was still fluid.
I was also wondering if my target would spot the forces moving in on him, and-mostly-I was hoping I hadn’t miscalculated and sealed Kurt and Gigi’s fate.
Sandman walked over to one of the large windows and carefully peered outside. The snow was still falling-light, but steady. There was nothing going on out there. Except… the street was quiet. Too quiet. No cars driving down. No pedestrians on the sidewalks. Nothing.
He noticed the slightest of movements on the roof opposite. He pulled back and retrieved his night-vision scope, then he moved tight against one of the thick vertical columns of exposed brick that provided the loft’s skeleton and looked out through the scope. A sniper and a spotter were taking up position. He recognized the gear and the edges of the big letters on their ballistic vests.
He swung the scope down toward the street, though the angle obscured the sidewalk immediately outside. He adjusted his position and looked down along the front of the building in time to catch two cops disappear from view inside the restaurant across from him.
They’d tricked him. The sloth and his slut girlfriend had found a way to alert Reilly and he’d called in the troops.
Sandman pulled out his gun, took quick strides over to his hostages and pushed the suppressor hard into the side of Kurt’s head.
“What did you tell him?” he barked.
“What? Why? Nothing. You heard me. I didn’t-”
“What did you tell him?” he repeated, seething with controlled anger.
Sandman leant his foot against Kurt and shoved him to one side before swinging the suppressor around to Gigi’s forehead. He kept his eyes locked on Kurt.
“I want you to watch her die,” he hissed at Kurt. “I want you to watch it, knowing it’s your fault. In fact, I want you so close to her you’ll actually feel her die.”
Sandman could see both defiance and fear in the girl’s eyes and knew that both were genuine. She wasn’t trying to hide her feelings, or mask one emotion with another. There were no prayers, pleading or promises. Like Sandman himself, she was completely in the moment and, at some level, he admired her for that. He’d need to kill them both eventually, once they’d outlived their usefulness. Based on what he had seen and heard, he’d already decided that a staged sex game with tragic unintended consequences would be an appropriate way to dispatch them both. It would simply be two more “deaths-by-misadventure” to add to all the others, but he had to deal with the nuisance of Reilly’s little counterpunch first.