As it turned out, the final Russian’s nerve was solid, but his aim was lousy. He got off a shot, but it came nowhere near Wardell. Wardell brought the shotgun level, having to angle his body sideways to do it within the limits of the cuffs, and blew the top four-fifths of the Russian’s head off. The truncated corpse toppled forward like a felled tree. The last gunshot gave the illusion of echoing for longer than the first, and then the silence descended again and the hunter’s moon beamed down, impassive.
Wardell started to jerk another shell into the chamber and winced as the cuffs rubbed the fresh scrape on his left wrist. He turned his head to look at the wrecked transport van, wondering if the keys would be on one of the dead marshals or if he’d have to get creative.
“Th-thank you,” a weak, shell-shocked voice croaked from behind him.
Wardell’s head snapped around. He’d forgotten all about Clarence. It was easy to do. The skinny man was still on his knees, shuffling forward, his eyes glassy with a mixture of trepidation and hope. Those eyes reminded Wardell of a pet rabbit he’d methodically starved to death as a boy.
“Those guys, they would have—”
“Evidently,” Wardell said, cutting him off. He wasn’t particularly interested in who, what, or why.
Something in his voice made the other man shrink back, his eyes widening. “You’re not gonna shoot me, are you?” Clarence said, a nervous we’re-in-this-together-brother smile breaking out on his face.
Wardell looked down at the shotgun and at his bloody wrist, then back at Clarence. He smiled and shook his head slowly. Then he swiveled the shotgun in his hands and rammed the butt into Clarence’s face.
Clarence dropped without so much as a squeal, and Wardell adjusted his grip on the gun again, turning it into a club. He brought it down across the middle of Clarence’s face, feeling bone and cartilage give way. He hit the same spot another three times and felt the facial bone structure crumble completely on the third strike. He lost count after that, stopped thinking. Kept pounding until what had been Clarence’s head was just mush and matter and fragments.
He stopped when his arms started to get tired, letting the adrenaline seep out of him like an ebbing tide. As his pulse returned to normal, Wardell looked down at himself with disgust. He was a mess: covered in dirt, sweat, and blood. A lot of blood. Some was his own, most was Clarence’s. It made him want to retch. He hated being unclean. He hated a mess.
Five minutes later, he’d located the keys to his handcuffs on one of the dead guards and shed his orange prison jumpsuit. He used it to wipe down his arms and face as best he could and discarded it, evaluating his sartorial options. Mess had practical drawbacks as well as aesthetic ones: the clothes belonging to the last two Russians and Clarence were absolutely unusable. That left the big guy.
Shrugging, he stripped the Russian and pulled on his pants and T-shirt. It felt like wearing a circus tent. He paced back to the wreckage and surveyed his choice of weapons. The dead guards had both been carrying Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistols. The driver’s was still in its holster.
He crouched down and looked inside the crushed cabin, at a spot between the front seats. What he saw there made him wonder if a long incarceration could knock your perception of time utterly out of whack, because this was surely December 25th.
There was a Heckler & Koch PSG1 rifle with a telescopic sight strapped there, within easy reach of both driver and passenger. Good for picking off escapees like himself, he guessed. Good for lots of things.
It was a thing of beauty, as powerful and precise as anything he’d used in the desert. More precise, in fact, because it was specifically designed for law enforcement and did not require the compromises for weight and durability necessary for military use.
Wardell made a pretense of weighing up practicalities and logistics before giving in to his desire and taking the rifle. It would slow him a little more than taking one of the Smiths, but not much. Hell, it was what he was trained for. It was meant to be.
That was when Wardell remembered the barn roof. He looked back up there, saw only a straight black line against the dark blue night sky. There was no one on the roof, probably never had been in the first place.
There was a line of trees a quarter of a mile south. Wardell slung the rifle under his arm, cast a final glance at the barn roof, and then he was gone.
Gone to look for America.
2
Nine minutes after the phone call began and seven minutes after it ended, I had showered and shaved and was opening the closet door.
I selected a single-breasted charcoal suit, off-white shirt, and Italian shoes. Nothing flashy, even though the full ensemble had cost roughly the equivalent of a small family car. There were another three identical suits in the closet. I closed the door on them; I could pick them up later.
I dressed quickly and strapped on my shoulder rig. I opened the drawer in the bedside table and took out a Beretta 92FS and its detached magazine. I checked the load of seventeen nine-millimeter Parabellum rounds, slid the magazine home, racked the slide, clicked the safety on, and put the weapon into the holster. I slipped my jacket on top and walked across the hotel room to a small writing desk, on which sat the other three items I would need. The first was a wallet containing an even thousand in cash, a driver’s license in the name Carter Blake, and a platinum Amex card. The second item was a Dell Latitude laptop in a leather carry case. Finally, there was a set of keys for the car in the basement garage.
I reached for my cell phone and my hand froze. The phone had a screen saver that selected random images from memory, refreshed every fifteen minutes. It had chosen a picture I hadn’t seen in a long time: a twentysomething woman with strawberry-blond hair and long eyelashes smiling at the camera and shielding her eyes from the sun. In the background, you could make out the curve of a Ferris wheel. Astroland, Coney Island. It’s not there anymore. It was the only picture of Carol I kept.
I tapped the screen to kill the image and pocketed the phone.
Less than fifteen minutes after my cell had buzzed, I was behind the wheel of the car and on my way to Chicago.
3
The FBI building was located at 2111 West Roosevelt Road. It was a long slab of glass and concrete, ten stories high and wider than it was tall. It loomed behind a neat waist-high steel fence, on a perfectly level lawn that stretched out to meet the sidewalk. The sky had begun to lighten, but for the moment, the streetlamps and the lights illuminating the exterior of the building continued to burn.
I pulled through the main gate in the fence and stopped at a barrier. A uniformed security guard approached me as I rolled down the window. I told him my name was Blake and that I had a meeting with the special agent in charge, and he nodded as though he’d been expecting me. He touched the brim of his hat and waved me through as the barrier rose.
I checked my gun in at reception in exchange for a laminated visitor’s badge, passed through a metal detector, and was escorted up to the tenth floor by an unsmiling agent who responded to my pleasantries with the occasional grunt. I was shown into an expansive office with a great view of the city at dawn. There was a big desk in front of the window. Behind the desk sat a man.