The Hit

Chapter





29





IT WAS GROWING DARK AS he set out, and the drive took over an hour with traffic. Robie picked up speed but then had to slow down as he wound his way through some small towns on the way to DiCarlo’s house. He wondered how the woman enjoyed the commute every day from here. He assumed she didn’t. Most Washington-area commuters spent years of their lives sitting in traffic plotting intricate ways to kill their fellow rule-breaking motorists.

Robie slowed as he approached the turnoff. It was a long, winding gravel road that split two tall pine groves. The house was brick, old, and there were three cars parked in the front motor court.

Considering what had happened to Jim Gelder, Robie had expected to be stopped before now, but maybe they had seen who he was on long-range surveillance. He turned off the car and got out, making no sudden movements because he didn’t want to be shot.

Two men appeared from the shadows. They were Robie’s height, hard and muscled like tree knots. They checked his ID, let him keep his weapon, and escorted him into the house. They led him down a narrow, dark hall to a door and then departed.

Robie knocked and a voice inside told him to enter.

He opened the door and walked in. DiCarlo sat behind her desk. She looked worried and disheveled.

That was the first thing Robie noticed.

The second thing he noticed was the pistol resting on top of the desk.

He paused at the doorway. “Everything okay?” he asked, although he knew it clearly wasn’t.

“Please sit down, Mr. Robie.”

He closed the door behind him, walked across a small square oriental rug, and sat in the chair opposite her.

“Your security perimeter is a little soft,” he noted.

Her expression told him that she was aware of this. “The two men out there I would trust with my life,” she said.

Robie quickly read between those lines. “And they’re the only ones you trust?”

“Intelligence is not a simple field in which to work, it’s always changing.”

“Today your friend, tomorrow your enemy,” translated Robie. “I get that. I’ve actually lived that.” He put his hands over his stomach. He did so to allow his right hand to inch closer to the gun in his holster. His gaze went to her weapon and then to DiCarlo’s face.

“You want to talk about it?” he said. “If the number two is worried about her security and can’t trust folks outside her immediate protection circle, that’s probably something I should know about.”

DiCarlo’s hand went to her pistol, but Robie got there first.

“I was going to put it away,” she said.

“Leave it where it is,” said Robie. “And don’t reach for it again unless someone is shooting at you.”

She sat back, clearly upset at what she probably deemed insubordination on his part. But then her features cleared.

“I guess if I’m paranoid, why shouldn’t you be?” she said.

“We can agree to agree on that. But why the paranoia?”

“Gelder and Jacobs are dead,” she replied.

“Reel did it. She’s on the outside.”

“Is she?”

“What do you know that makes you think she isn’t? When we spoke last you were more her advocate than anything else.”

“Was I?”

DiCarlo rose and went over to the window. The drapes were closed and she made no move to part them.

Robie began to wonder if there was long-range surveillance out there.

“You tell me,” he said.

She turned back to him. “You’re probably too young to remember much about the Cold War. And you’re certainly too young to have worked for the agency during it.”

“Okay. Is that what we’re back to here, the Cold War? Where people are constantly switching sides?”

“I can’t answer that definitively, Mr. Robie. I wish I could. What I can tell you is that there have been troubling developments over the last few years.”

“Like what?”

She blurted out, “Missions that never should have been. Missing personnel. Money moved from here to there and then it disappeared. Equipment sent to places it should not have been sent to and it also disappeared. And that’s not all. These things happened in discreet quantities over long periods of time. Taken singly they didn’t seem to be all that remarkable. But when one looks at them together...” She stopped talking, seemingly exhausted by her outburst.

“And are you the only one who’s done that?” asked Robie. “Looked at them collectively?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Missing personnel. Like Reel?”

“I’m not sure.”

“What are you sure of?”

She sat back down. “That something insidious is going on, Mr. Robie. I don’t know if it has anything to do with Jessica Reel. What I do know is that it’s reached a crisis point.”

“Does Evan Tucker share your concerns?”

DiCarlo passed a hand over her forehead. She was about to answer when Robie heard the sounds. He pulled his gun with one hand and hit the table light with the other, knocking it off the desk and plunging them into darkness.

He reached across the desk and grabbed hold of DiCarlo’s arm. “Get under the kneehole of your desk and stay there.”

He groped on the desk, found her gun, and handed it to her. “Kept up with your certifications?”

“Yes,” she gasped.

“Good,” he said tersely. “Good.”

The next moment Robie was on the move.

He knew exactly what the sounds had represented. He had heard them many times over his career.

Two muzzle blasts equaled two long-distance rifle shots.

This was followed by the sonic signatures of the rounds in the air.

Two thunks represented the impact of those rounds hitting flesh. The last two thunks were the dead bodies of DiCarlo’s trusted security team hitting the dirt.

Her secure perimeter was gone.

Now it was just Robie between DiCarlo and whoever else was out there.

He thumbed a number on his phone but the call didn’t go through. He looked at the bars. He had four. But the call wouldn’t go through.

Because they were jamming the signal. Which meant there was more out there to confront than a single sniper.

He opened the door to the room, shot through the opening, and moved down the hall.