"You didn't play the game with me," Jamie noted.
Cavanaugh studied her.
"Fine," he said.
They held up their fists and shook them three times.
Jamie's paper covered Cavanaugh's rock.
"I don't want you to do this," Cavanaugh said.
"I don't want to, either. But I'm part of the team, and I'm going to risk my life the same as everybody else."
"Yeah, you're tough," Eddie said.
Cavanaugh had never understood the expression "heart in my throat" until now.
"Do it slowly," he said. "Keep looking for wires."
The speed of his pulse made him sick as he and Eddie crouched behind the farthest car. He opened his mouth and pressed his hands over his ears to minimize the impact of an explosion. But even with his ears muffled, he was sure he heard Jamie open the doors.
A few instants lasted forever.
Then Jamie was standing in front of him, looking terrified but proud.
"Okay," he said, exhaling. "My turn. I'll check inside."
As Jamie and Eddie crouched behind the far vehicle, Cavanaugh aimed his small flashlight and cautiously leaned into the car, peering up under the dashboard. He checked under the seats.
Nothing looked suspicious.
As Jamie and Eddie rejoined him, he reached into his jacket pocket and came out with something else from the bug-out bag: a zip tie.
Without needing to be told what came next, Eddie unlocked the Taurus's trunk but kept his hands on the lid so that it opened only a crack. While Jamie aimed her flashlight, Cavanaugh inserted the zip tie into the crack between the lid and the car's chassis and drew it from one side to the other.
What he felt for was a taut wire. All an enemy needed to do was pick the trunk's lock, put a bomb inside, attach a wire to the bomb's detonator, close the lid until only the enemy's hand fitted inside, hook the wire to the inside of the lid, and then close the lid.
The twist tie was pliant enough that if it encountered a wire, it would bend without putting pressure on the wire. Sweat trickled down Cavanaugh's face. His hand wanted to shake, but he kept it steady. Five minutes later, he nodded to Eddie, who raised the lid slightly higher, while Cavanaugh and Jamie aimed their flashlights inside.
Finally, the trunk was all the way open. They searched among weapons and an armored vest, and to their relief found nothing that looked like a bomb.
Security specialists were paranoid about being held prisoner in the trunks of their cars. One of the first things an operator did when acquiring a vehicle was to inspect the trunk's interior and rig its latch so that it could easily be tripped from the inside. As a further precaution, a weapon and escape tools were hidden behind the trunk's lining, and air holes were drilled, tubes leading from them to the vehicle's interior. Finally, the best agents had a secret stash of something else. Smiling, Eddie now displayed it, peeling off the lining on the right side of the trunk.
Cavanaugh grinned at a plastic bottle of water and a bag filled with energy bars.
"God, I love working with a pro."
They took turns drinking. Water had never tasted so wonderful. Cavanaugh wiped drops from his lips and bit heartily into a caramel-flavored energy bar, all the while staring toward the door that led into the parking garage.
He looked at his watch. Almost five a.m.
"We still need to check the engine and under the car."
Twenty minutes later, every part of the vehicle had been studied.
"Clean," Eddie said.
"But we can't leave the building yet," Jamie said. "The police and the emergency crews would see us and stop us. They'd probably take us somewhere and question us."
Cavanaugh nodded. "We need to assume the assault team's watching the building. They'd follow."
"I'm tough to follow," Eddie said. "Even so, yeah, we'd better stay put and get some rest."
After another round of rock, paper, and scissors, Eddie got the spacious back seat, Jamie the front, and Cavanaugh, who hated enclosed spaces, got the trunk.
It faced a wall. He set the weapons to one side. Then he crawled in, put his handgun beside him, saw a section of rope, threaded it through a rib in the underside of the lid, and lowered the lid until the trunk was open about five inches. He tucked the rope under him so that his weight would keep the lid at the level he wanted. If he needed to, he'd be able to release the rope and raise the lid in a hurry.
Jamie stepped back, pretending she was someone who'd just entered the garage. "It looks natural. With the trunk facing the wall, I can't tell it's partly open."
Eddie was already stretched out in the back seat. With both doors closed, Jamie couldn't see him unless she stood at the side of the car and looked directly in. She turned toward the trunk's lid and peered through the gap. "Sweet dreams, babe." PART FOUR:
THE RULE OF FIVE MISSIONS
1
Dreaming that he was buried alive, Cavanaugh woke with a start. Having imagined the sound of dirt being shoveled onto his coffin, he knew that further sleep was out of the question.
Instead, he imagined Jackson Hole near dawn, the crisp autumn air, elk in the pasture.
Sounds interrupted. Opening his eyes, Cavanaugh clutched his pistol and listened to a door banging. He heard car engines, footsteps, voices. But there wasn't any sense of urgency. The police and the emergency crews must have finished their investigation, decided that the risk was over, and finally allowed the building to be reopened. As more cars arrived, he pulled the rope down, lowering the trunk's lid almost all the way. In the murky enclosure, he stared at his watch, waiting for his eyes to detect the faintly luminous dial. The hands showed that the time was eight minutes after one.
"Time for lunch, babe." Jamie's voice was close outside the trunk.
"Don't you think about anything except food?"
"And a bathroom," Jamie said. "But restaurants have bathrooms, so we're got everything covered. Incidentally, I'm pretending to unlock the trunk."
Cavanaugh released the rope and let Jamie raise the lid.
Her green eyes studied the enclosure. "Reminds me of the first dormitory room I had at Wellesley. Minus the weapons, of course. Nobody's watching. I'm partially shielding you. Come on out."
Cavanaugh's legs felt stiff as he stepped down to the concrete.
Eddie looked rested, putting a stick of gum in his mouth.
More cars entered the parking garage. Sounds and movement filled it. Men and women wearing business clothes walked toward the elevators. Cavanaugh heard bits of troubled conversation about rumors of what had happened during the night.
"Ready to go?" Eddie no longer wore the janitor's coveralls. Despite his beard stubble, his clean leather jacket and turtleneck made him look the most presentable of the three.
Jamie closed her blazer over the blood spots on her white blouse.
Cavanaugh decided that the coveralls he wore would attract less attention than the damaged clothes underneath. "Let's do it."
They got in the Taurus, Eddie behind the steering wheel, Cavanaugh next to him, Jamie in the back. Despite the care they'd taken to make sure the car didn't have a bomb, Cavanaugh tensed when Eddie turned the ignition key. But the only sound was the car's smooth drone.
Eddie drove up the ramp toward the building's exit, where he showed a GPS badge to a security officer. The crossbar went up. They emerged onto the noise and commotion of 53rd Street.
"It'll be hard to follow us in all this traffic." Eddie drove through noisy Madison Avenue and continued along 53rd.
"Unless they planted a location transmitter so small we didn't spot it when we searched the car."
"Unpleasant thought." Eddie checked his rear-view mirror. "Where to?"
"Get us off the island," Cavanaugh said. He turned on the radio. Billy Joel sang about "A New York State of Mind." Cavanaugh pushed a button that switched the sophisticated radio to an extremely wide FM spectrum, a Global Protective Services modification. "Jamie, why don't you tell us the fascinating story of your life?"