The truck pulled up in the dirt at a red flag and stopped. “Number One at Rovner Street. Stand by for the five-minute.”
Randall Manning watched through binoculars and listened through his earpiece.
“Green light at Rovner, that’s the five-minute,” the voice crackled through the earpiece.
The truck started moving again. Manning followed along with his binoculars. Good so far. Wait for the green light.
“Number Two at Rovner Street.”
Good. Just about right. Manning’s pulse was steady. This wasn’t the first time they’d run through it. It was, in fact, the twentieth.
“Number One at Dodd Street, stand by for the two-minute.”
Manning moved his binoculars to the second red flag, four hundred yards to the south, coming toward him. It was an approximation in terms of timing. It wasn’t intended to be precise. It didn’t need to be precise. They weren’t in the city’s downtown, and they were nowhere near Rovner Street or Dodd Street. They were out in the country-the “boonies,” to most people. They were in unincorporated Fordham County, surrounded on all sides by farmland purchased by Summerset Farms following its acquisition by Global Harvest International.
“Green light at Dodd. That’s the two-minute.”
Manning had driven the real route dozens of times. Dodd Street was actually far less than two minutes from the target, but Manning had built in an extra time cushion to account for unpredictable traffic.
The truck continued south, coming toward Manning. He was inside a dome he’d constructed more than a year ago for this purpose. A few hours ago, this dome had housed all sorts of farm equipment-tractors and plows and backhoes-all of which had been emptied out for this exercise.
He watched out the window from his position on the second-level balcony as the truck drove through the open double doors into the vast dome. He turned to face inside the dome and watched as the truck picked up speed and drove toward the makeshift building, consisting of only a front facade and door.
“Red light at Dayton, doesn’t fucking mat-ter!”
The truck stayed at a speed of twenty miles an hour and pulled up just short of the front door of the building.
The rear door of the truck burst open, and Patrick Cahill jumped out. The driver, Ernie Dwyer, also jumped out. Each of them was wearing state-of-the-art body armor and a helmet with a face shield. They raised their black AKM assault rifles and backed away from the faux building.
“Pop the targets,” said Manning.
Standard tactical training, about which Manning knew absolutely nothing eighteen months ago. But he’d learned a thing or two since then.
Targets popped up like characters in a children’s picture book, the shapes of humans, in various spots around the faux building. From the distance he’d created, Cahill and Dwyer unloaded their assault rifles on the targets, knocking them flat. To the extent they missed the targets-though Manning doubted that the two of them had missed even once-their bullets hit a bulletproof tarp that had been placed floor-to-ceiling behind the building facade.
Randall Manning looked at his stopwatch.
“Good,” he announced. “Well done. Now clean up. Then we eat, and then target practice.”
The ammo would be the first phase of the cleanup. Every shell casing would be collected. The bulletproof tarp would be lowered and scrapped. The roof would be opened to air out the place of the smell of gunfire. Then the tractors and other farming equipment would be brought back in.
Within an hour, tops, this dome would look like nothing more than a warehouse for farming equipment again.
Manning looked over at Bruce McCabe, who was standing next to him, looking a bit flushed.
“What’s bothering you, Bruce?” he asked.
44
I stopped by my office to pick up the dossier that Joel had built up on the legendary Gin Rummy, because I knew he was pissed that I’d taken him off that assignment-actually, he was pissed that he hadn’t succeeded in finding the guy-and I knew that he’d be in my office bright and early on Friday, and if he still saw the file in the same place on my desk, he’d think I wasn’t paying attention to it. I wasn’t, not at the moment, but Joel didn’t need to know that. He had pretty thick skin, but he had a sensitive streak when it came to his professional abilities.
Then I picked up Tori at her condo. A cool wind whipped inside my car, and she closed the door quickly to keep it out. The temperatures were falling. It wasn’t going to be a white Thanksgiving, but it was going to be a cold one.
She had her trademark long white coat and nice boots, always nice threads, but that was the only thing about her that looked normal. Her eyes were hooded and her face drawn. She looked like she hadn’t slept well at all.
“I didn’t,” she said, when I commented. “And thanks for noticing.”
“Big math test coming up?” I asked, even though I was aware that she had finished her last final exam a couple days ago. She was off until mid-January now.
She looked at me. “Is that you making fun of me? You got something against math?”
“No, hey-I love math. Math is the greatest thing since… science.”
“Because that sounded like condescension. And that’s about the only thing I can’t take from someone.”
I had obviously struck a nerve with her that I hadn’t seen coming. “Tori, I’m sorry. That’s not how I meant it.”
It was the first time I’d seen her get her back up about something. She was basically a cool customer, aloof, in control. Something had put her on edge.
Our relationship was odd. I really didn’t know that much about her, and she didn’t know much about me. We kept the topics safe. We kept each other at arm’s length. All I knew was that the more time I spent with her, the more time I wanted to spend with her. Maybe it was her aloofness itself. I’d considered that possibility. I’d never been in a relationship where I was the pursuer. When I was in school, I was a jock, and girls followed athletic success like day followed night. Not necessarily the kind of girls you’d settle down with, but who the hell wanted to settle down?
Then there was Shauna, but she’d started as a pal, so that just sort of happened for a brief spell before we decided that our friendship worked better than romance. And then there was Talia. Even Talia took the first step with me.
I’d never felt like I was more interested than the lady. Until now.
Tori said, “I was working on your case, if you want to know what I was doing. And I found something.”
“Okay, great. What?”
“Kathy Rubinkowski has a Facebook page.”
“Oh-okay. Facebook. Okay. Did you find anything interesting?”
“No, because we’re not ‘friends.’”
“Well, obviously you and Kathy weren’t friends.” I looked over at her as I drove.
“Do you know anything about Facebook?” she asked.
“Sure. I know some shithead stole the idea from two other shitheads, or something like that. And there was a movie about it where everybody spoke in incredibly intelligent, fluid sentences.”
“You are hopeless. She has to invite me to her page, and she obviously can’t now. So I can’t get on her page, is my point. But if someone could find a way in, I’ll bet you could find her e-mail address on her ‘information’ page.”
“Ah, e-mail. I know e-mail. Okay, I get it. If we can get her e-mail address, we can hack her e-mail and see if anything was on her mind.”
“That’s what I was thinking. You think Joel is able to do something like that?”
Interesting. He probably could. “There might be some ethical challenges there, yes?”
“Technically,” she conceded.
“Technically? Tori, I’m seeing another side of you.”
“You’re seeing a side that doesn’t want some poor, sick kid to take the fall for something he didn’t do. That’s what you’re seeing. This is hardball, not softball-isn’t that what you always say?”
It was. I hated it when people used my words against me.