The elevation gave him a good vantage over the high fence next door lined with privacy filler strips and topped with concertina wire.
Terrance DeGraw was right. A fucking fortress. The cinder-block building was virtually windowless. A control pad and a security-controlled metal door defended what seemed to be the sole point of entry; the other doors had been boarded up with metal plates. Anyone who entered was trapped inside.
Of course, that could cut both ways.
The front entrance opened now, a fat man emerging, and as the door swung shut, Evan glimpsed the front room. It had been reinforced as Trevon had described, a DIY sally port with blastproof walls. A cadre of armed men came visible for a moment. Evan doubted they were the only guards posted up inside.
The fat man boasted a handgun on either hip like a Turner Classics cowboy. He joined four others already patrolling the area like junkyard dogs. News of their colleagues’ untimely demises must have reached them by now, as they were clearly on highest alert, covering all sides of the building. Carrying AK-47s, they circled the various shipping containers littering the yard, moving in and out of cover.
If Evan picked off one or two with a sniper rifle, the others would fall back to reinforced positions.
If he made a full-frontal assault through the gate, he could take out several, but there’d be no getting through that reinforced-steel security door to the others waiting inside.
He wanted them all.
He wanted to eradicate Russell Gadds’s operation like Gadds had eradicated Trevon’s family.
Gadds didn’t return until June 25. That afforded Evan some much-needed time to devote his attention to Bennett.
Given Bennett’s Friday appointment on the Hill, Evan had to get home and start assessing the variables and charting the plan of attack. When he thought of the airtight security measures in place, he felt a creeping concern that Candy McClure might be right, that the job was impossible.
And after the promise he’d made to Trevon, he couldn’t get killed in D.C. That wouldn’t just be inconvenient. It would be inconsiderate.
He stared down once more at the heavily armed guards and the daunting barriers of razor wire, cinder block, and steel. Between Russell Gadds and Jonathan Bennett, Evan faced two herculean challenges.
In his next life, he vowed, he’d be a Starbucks barista.
He drew back from the edge of the roof and vanished into the billows of rising exhaust.
43
Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing
The morning gave way to afternoon, not that Evan could tell inside the Vault. His eyes ached, and his hands cramped from pounding the keyboard for hours. He’d risen at 5:00 A.M. for a workout and then gone straight through the looking glass of his shower wall to the Secret Service databases, burying himself in route assessments, security updates, and GPS imaging of the blocks between the White House and the Hill.
Choosing the exact method was even more challenging than he’d anticipated. The plan, such as it was, had to be impeccably executed. He whittled away at the options until he saw maps and calculations floating ghostlike behind his lids when he closed his eyes.
It was barely, barely possible.
But not as a solo operation.
As he neared the eight-hour mark at his desk, he rose and stretched his stiff back.
Vera II eyed him from her glass bowl.
“I’m not bad at asking for help,” he told her. “I just prefer not to.”
She sagely withheld further counsel.
He paced in front of his desk, the projected classified data scrolling over his body, shadow and light, shadow and light.
Now that he’d had more time to scour the Secret Service databases, he’d seen that they did not contain a single detail pertaining to the 1997 mission. Whatever mystery President Bennett was guarding against, he’d kept it even from the agency sworn to protect him. Evan was beginning to think that the secret had been redacted so thoroughly that it now existed only in Bennett’s mind. If so, Evan would never get the answers he sought.
Sitting heavily in his chair, he brought up the Drafts folder of his Gmail account.
“You there?”
A moment later: “i’m in calculus. so yeah. this shit is boring. + easy.”
“Glad you’re getting the most of your education.”
An eye-rolling emoji bleeped onto the screen.
He grimaced, fingers poised above the keyboard. Then he typed: “I can’t find anything about 1997 in the Service databases.”
“97? like the mission Dear Leader wants you dead 4?”
“That’s right. I’ve checked call logs, visitor records, official movements, off-site meetings. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places. Anything you can scare up with your algorithms or whatever, let me know.”
“algorithms. yer cute.”
“Need me to open up a portal to get you on my system?”
The light rippled within the Vault, and he realized that Joey had replied inside his own computer, projecting her answer onto the wall before him.
“dummy,” it read, “i’m already in.”
Vera II smirked at him.
He typed, “Oh.”
“i’ll look into it after class. any luck picking your spot?”
“Yes. Can you do some route analysis? I need specs on wind factor, visibility, height above target, distance, ease of access, stability, etc.”
“not remote. haveta be onsite for that. happy to fly to d.c. it’d get me outta this final.”
“Not safe. I’ll figure it out.”
He deleted the rough draft, erasing their correspondence.
He stood up and paced around some more, doing his best not to think about the bottle of Tigre Blanc waiting for him in the freezer. A few fingers of ice-cold vodka might take the edge off the upcoming phone call he had to make.
He plucked his RoamZone off the desk, glowering at Vera II. “All right, all right.”
He dialed.
As it rang, he continued walking in tight circles.
Candy McClure’s voice came like a purr across the line. “I thought you’d never call. Here I am, all dolled up and nowhere to go.”
“I need you in D.C.”
“I’m already here.”
“Why?”
“I saw the press briefing, too. Bennett just announced precisely when he’s gonna be on the mark. I knew you’d jump at it. You’d better hope Bennett’s not playing you.”
“I thought about that. But I don’t think he’ll pull out of a congressional testimony. He’d lose more political capital than he can afford right now.”
“What do you need?”
“Secret Service protocols designate three primary high-alert routes from the White House to Capitol Hill, ranging from 1.9 to 2.3 miles. They’re all circuitous, so we can’t count on the straight shot up Pennsylvania Ave. Right now that stretch of blocks is under heavier surveillance than anywhere on the planet. I can’t risk being seen in the area again, not until the day of. I’ve identified three potential perches. Can you go to them and get me a comprehensive set of data for each hide?” He told her the measurements he required. “I need it down to the inch.”
“I was thinking to the millimeter,” she said. “But if you want me to work sloppy, I can back off my game.”
“I’m down to ninety hours, and I still have to procure the weapon. I need this ASAP.”
“I’m out the door,” she said. “But, X? One more thing to consider.”
“What’s that?”
“If I can predict you, they can, too.”
*
Orphan A sat on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, hands folded. The four surviving Collins cousins had departed earlier that morning, but Wade remained hunkered down on the Pelican case, hefting various weapons. He refused to leave. He wanted to be right here at command central, manning the fort so he’d know the instant his shot at revenge came through the line.
His face was red from crying, blood vessels blown out around his nose and eyes. He was the only person Holt had ever seen whose sobbing conveyed not grief but rage.
There was no more Sound. Only Fury.
The authorities had identified what remained of his cousin’s and brother’s bodies and leaked a story about a drug heist gone bad. The speed and deftness of the cover-up was particularly impressive—amazing what got done behind the scenes when the commander-in-chief was tugging the marionette strings. People who said the government was inefficient didn’t know the right parts of the government. The media was having a field day with the incident, calling it Watergate-gate.
Wade and his cousins failed to find it amusing.
Holt’s disposable phone vibrated.
Wade’s hands stopped moving at last, the pistol at rest between his massive palms.
Holt looked at the text, the sender ID nothing more than a redacted space. FRIDAY. BE READY.
Holt rose and handed Wade the phone as he passed him. Resting by the front door was a black duffel bag that had arrived earlier this morning. It was zippered shut and secured with zip-ties.
Wade read the message and rose from his perch.
It seemed, for a time, that he kept rising.