"Like the one that was around your neck," Russell told Cavanaugh. "Are you guys making some kind of fashion statement?"
"And what's this ? Another fashion statement?" Using forceps, the attendant probed the man's left ear and removed a flesh-colored object.
"An earbud radio receiver," Cavanaugh said. "If he's got one of those, he's also got a miniature microphone." Cavanaugh studied the man's blood-spotted turtleneck. "Probably pinned to the front of his collar. A mike the size of a dime."
"Damned if there isn't," the attendant said.
Lt. Russell yelled down the stairs, "Does the wounded guy down there have a microphone on his collar? And something in his ear?"
"Just a second, Lieutenant, while I . . .Yeah!"
"Same with this guy!" someone shouted from the upper stairs, where the third gunman lay dead.
Russell inspected the microphone and pried off its back. Just before he pulled out a tiny battery, he asked Cavanaugh, "Who the hell did you take on? The CIA?"
Chapter 13.
" The CIA? "
Sprawled on a dark rooftop across the street, Carl listened to the radio transmission crackle and die. Like the men in the apartment building, he had an earbud and a miniature microphone. Un like them, he had a small black box the size of a pack of cigarettes. This box, a radio receiver and transmitter, had a switch that allowed him to communicate with each man separately. For the past fifteen minutes, until the microphone had failed, he'd been able to eavesdrop on the conversation.
He hadn't heard Aaron's voice in several years. It filled him with a welter of emotions: anger, regret, bitterness, a fond need to be able to return to that long-ago summer when they pretended to be soldiers caught behind enemy lines and hid among bushes, watching men and women holding hands as they strolled through the woods.
Concealing himself behind a chimney, Carl raised an AR-15, sighted through its holographic scope, and waited.
Chapter 14.
The cell-phone numbers Cavanaugh pressed were for the landline at William's safe site. As the phone buzzed on the other end, he heard more sirens outside. Red and blue lights flashed beyond the window.
"Hello."
"This is Cavanaugh. Put William on."
"Maybe he'll talk nicer to you than he does to us."
The phone made a bumping sound. Then William's voice said, "I hope this means everything's back to normal and I can get out of here."
"Afraid not," Cavanaugh said. "There's been some shooting and--"
" Some shooting?" the lieutenant said in the background. "I was with the Marines in the first Iraq war. I think we used less ammunition."
"Why don't I let Lt. Russell explain it to you so I don't say anything I shouldn't."
"Name, rank, and serial number," William's voice cautioned. "Nothing else. Put him on the phone."
Cavanaugh handed the phone to the lieutenant, then looked at Jamie and Kim against the wall. Jamie impressed him with her composure, as if she'd been an operator all her life.
But Kim was another matter. The pupils of her eyes resembled pencil points. Her brow was beaded with sweat, her withdrawal symptoms accelerating.
Cavanaugh gave her a firm nod of assurance.
"At the precinct in half an hour," Russell said to the phone, then gave it back to Cavanaugh.
"Yes, William?" Cavanaugh asked into it.
"Name, rank, and serial number. No exceptions."
"I want you to call somebody." Cavanaugh gave William a name and a phone number. "Tell him I need help."
When William heard the name, his response was, " He'll get their attention."
"Okay, we're ready to move this guy," the ambulance attendant said.
The attendant and his partner lifted the semiconscious man onto a Gurney and wheeled him from the apartment. Below, a clatter of equipment indicated that the gunman Jamie had wounded was being lifted onto a similar Gurney.
"Hands behind your back," Russell told Cavanaugh
The lieutenant clicked handcuffs onto him.
The policewoman did the same to Jamie and Kim.
"Is the van here?" Russell asked a policeman.
Cavanaugh managed to stand.
Preceded and followed by police officers, he, Jamie, and Kim left the apartment. On the stairs, a camera flashed, a medical examiner and his team inspecting the other gunman Jamie had shot.
Cavanaugh descended. The smell of burnt gunpowder widened his nostrils. He stepped over empty ammunition casings and left the building, confronted by the chaos of flashing lights, police cars, ambulances, and several hundred onlookers.
Chapter 15.
As Aaron emerged from the building into the kaleidoscope of lights, Carl almost pulled the trigger. Aaron had his hands cuffed behind him. He had policemen ahead of him, policemen behind him, and two women next to him. One of the women, Chinese, was the GPS computer expert whose apartment Carl had ordered watched. The other woman was the one he'd seen in Jackson Hole. Aaron's wife.
Carl studied her. Tall, wearing slacks, with legs that drew his gaze from her ankles to her inviting hips. Athletically trim, with upward-tilted breasts that made him imagine standing behind her, cupping his hands over them. Glossy brunette hair that he wanted to stroke. Eyes so intense Carl felt their power even on the roof across the street. Aaron, you and I always had the same great taste.
Do it , Carl told himself. Shoot . But no matter how much he wanted to, he mustered the discipline that he had not possessed while he and Aaron had been in Delta Force and later when they'd worked for Global Protective Services. No "I" in "team"? I understand that now , he thought.