“Get out, quick,” Reilly ordered as his free hand fiddled with Tomblin’s seat belt and unhooked it.
Tomblin was too stunned to react. That, his rattled brain, and the handgun pressed against his cheek, made him obey. He climbed out of the car, which was when he saw someone else standing by the back door, also holding a gun, though that one wasn’t aimed at his face. It was a woman he didn’t recognize.
“Get in,” she said as she opened the rear door.
He did, hoping a neighbor was watching and was calling it in or that another car would drive by and do the same. Neither seemed to be happening.
The woman clambered in after him. Reilly was already in the driver’s seat.
Eleven seconds after the car had come to a halt, it was off again, trailed by an unmarked Crown Vic with the seductive redhead in the passenger seat and headed for the Blue Ridge Mountains.
63
Nelson County, Virginia
Despite the clear plastic sheeting I’d duct-taped in place of the shattered window, it was still pretty cold in Tomblin’s beefy SUV as I drove it down Route Twenty-nine. The snow was intermittent and the temperature gauge was reading minus two, but that wasn’t counting the effect of the wind. I wasn’t too bothered by the cold. It helped keep me alert, especially given what my body had been through, juicing me up with adrenaline and kick-starting any parts of me that were still a bit sluggish. It also helped prepare my esteemed guest for what was to come. I was more worried about the plastic sheeting, and the fact that I had two passengers in the back and no one next to me, attracting the attention of some bored state trooper. I had Deutsch in the car, though, and her badge would come in handy if that were to happen. The flex-cuffs around the wrists of the guy sitting next to her, and the duct tape over his mouth, would probably be less of a help.
I didn’t want to listen to him, and I didn’t want to talk to him either. We had a two-hour plus drive, and I wanted him shut out and seriously rattled by the time we got to our destination. I imagined the panic that had to be building inside him. CIA big shot, head of the National Clandestine Service-I don’t care who you are-getting grabbed like that by someone with my skill set who you know to be out to settle a score and who looks like he has nothing to lose is going to trigger some major panic in you. I imagined he was also wondering how we got him, how we even knew who he was. After all, he’d tried to subvert our efforts by stepping in quick and having one of his minions log into Erebus and hand me Roos on a silver platter. I was sure he was behind it. According to Tomblin’s plan, I was supposed to be hightailing it straight to where Roos was holed up-where I would no doubt have a few determined heavies and a sniper or two waiting for me-instead of coming after him with the help of a buxom redhead. And yet, we’d found him. His name had risen out of the sewer, courtesy of another anonymous poster on Erebus, one Tomblin’s minions couldn’t-and clearly hadn’t-have seen.
Kudos to Daland and his programming genius.
The genuine mystery informant, whoever he was-assuming it was a “he”-hadn’t elaborated on why he was selling them out, and although he hadn’t said-typed-much, I was pretty sure his native language wasn’t English. Still, he got me the name I was missing. “FF” was actually Edward Tomblin, of the CIA, the “Frank Fullerton” to Roos’s “Reed Corrigan.”
Kurt and Gigi had had a hard time fleshing out his persona beyond the broadest of strokes of his career. The guy clearly valued his privacy and hadn’t exactly embraced social media either. They were helped, though, by the fact that Tomblin wasn’t a particularly common name, and they ended up getting his home address pretty easily. His wife was one of a hundred and forty-five million eBay users whose personal details were on a database that had been hacked from the site a few months back, the only Tomblin within commuting range of Langley.
We’d disabled the trackers on both cars before setting off, and I’d removed the battery from Tomblin’s phone and the SIM card from his car phone. It wouldn’t be long before they realized he was missing. We had a limited time in which to act. So we set off as quickly as we could and, a little over two hours out of the DC metro area, we were skirting Charlottesville before continuing on south.
The landscape got progressively more dramatic around us as the traces of human settlement receded-forests of tall trees, both bare and evergreen, cushioning the parallel two-lane strips of blacktop that hardly had any cars on them, and glimpses of the Blue Ridge mountains beyond, all filtered through a glaze of light snow and set against a white-grey backdrop.
It wasn’t long before we were cutting through some glorious Virginia country. Abundant mature hardwoods on either side blanketed rolling hills that climbed up to the mountains, nature’s full majesty gone wild over centuries and millennia, an outstanding corner of the planet within a stone’s throw from several big cities. This country was truly blessed in that sense. Tess and I had driven through these parts a couple of years back, one of those idyllic road trips through Shenandoah National Park and the Blue Ridge Parkway. We’d timed it perfectly, cruising down in the full glory of fall, visually drunk on a surreal palette of blazing reds, russets and gold of the ridges and the smell of woodsmoke in the air. The landscape was no less heart-stirring this time of year, but I felt it for entirely different reasons. What we were doing here was obviously far from idyllic.
We reached the area we had reconnoitered online and I veered off onto a narrow, single-lane road. I guided the Navigator a couple of miles up into the Miran Forest, then turned into a dirt track that didn’t seem like it had seen much traffic lately. It felt as if the mountain was preparing to swallow us up. We followed the narrow, winding trail for about a mile and a half until we reached the strategically placed small clearing we’d chosen.
I pulled into it and killed the engine.
Gigi, driving the Crown Vic, tucked in behind me and did the same.
Leaving Tomblin in his SUV, the four of us got out and walked up the clearing. We checked our location using Gigi’s tablet, confirmed we were in the right place, and got a visual sighting of the direction our target was in.
Then we got to work.
“Eddy?” Roos asked as he answered the phone.
He hadn’t expected to hear from Tomblin. It was more Tomblin who was waiting to hear from him, once it was done.
He knew something was wrong the second he heard the caller’s voice.
It wasn’t Tomblin.
“Try again, Gordo.”
Roos’s grip tightened around his phone. He’d never spoken to Reilly, but-besides the fact that he’d heard his voice on surveillance tapes-he knew it wouldn’t be anyone else. “You do know how to ruin a party, I’ll give you that.”
“Next time, maybe you should draw up your invitations more carefully. And put an RSVP to avoid disappointments.”
“Oh, I’m not disappointed,” Roos said. “I’m looking forward to meeting you. That’s what this call is about, isn’t it?”
“You know me so well,” Reilly said. “Hang up. I’m going to call you from another phone. This one could be a bit hot right now.”
Clever bastard, Roos thought. He hung up. Seconds later, his phone rang again. “So what’s on your mind?”
“I’ve got your boy here,” Reilly said. “And I’ve got this decision to make.”
“What’s that?”
“The reasonable, rational side of me is thinking: why take any more risks? Why not just make Eddy here tell me all he knows about everything you two have been up to all these years-everything about the janitors, the heart attacks, the accidents, all those deaths… and everything about my dad. Get him to clear my name while he’s at it, for the record, and throw in everything he knows about you too. Get it all on video, hand it over to the DA, and be done with it. Then I can come back for you with a warrant and a SWAT team to back me up. That sounds like the sensible move, don’t you think?”