I’m about to follow her back the way we came, but Berg says something that makes me stay.
“I don’t know, but the local PD is saying they have one missing, too. This Andrews person was so convincing to the principal because she wasn’t pretending. That stupid kid wasn’t being paranoid—not about the dirty cop, anyway.”
“You think there’s some truth in his story about the hacker being on the other side?” the second one asks.
“It may have been a mistake to ignore him. I can’t mess this thing up, Hudson. Rogers and I are both up for that promotion, and it’s mine if I can show the assistant director how idiotic her nursery-school initiative is. I’ve got a local uniform watching him. I’ll get her to bring him back in here.”
There is a thirty-second pause in their conversation, long enough for Berg to radio the officer in charge of me. Then Berg says, “Are you fucking kidding me? I gave you one job: to watch a seventeen-year-old kid.”
“I think I just got that cop in trouble,” I whisper to Katie.
“In the uniform’s defense,” Hudson is saying, “the kid’s a seventeen-year-old highly trained operative, no matter what you think of Rogers’s program. And apparently not bad at it. He neutralized four of six known hostiles and identified one as a rogue cop. What if he’s also right about the hacker being responsible for—”
“Shut up, Hudson.”
There’s a brief silence before Hudson speaks again.
“So … new objectives?”
“Objective, singular. Let the locals handle their dirty cop. Find that goddamn kid.”
CHAPTER 29
I’m kinda surprised when we return to find Bunker right where we left him. But I’m glad to find he not only hasn’t been captured, but he’s looking a lot less green than he did in the basement.
“Where’s Joel?” he asks.
“Koval got to him first,” Katie explains. “We don’t even know if they’re still in the building. Wherever they are, we need to find them before Koval can leave town. Or the country. I don’t even want to think about what he might do to Joel.”
“Yeah, but we’d better be armed with more than a couple of screwdrivers and a Sharpie, which is all I got.”
Bunker starts smiling, so I know he’s been up to something. “Well, I can help with that. While you guys were gone, I did a little intel-gathering of my own.”
“Oh, jeez, what did you do, Bunk?”
“Called your boss. Or who I figured was your boss, because it was the last number you dialed and it had a 202 area code—I’ve memorized all the area codes,” he adds for Katie’s benefit. For some reason, his father thought it was important to take a phone book into the bomb shelter with him. Maybe he didn’t think they’d be in there for fifteen years. Not only had Bunker memorized all the area codes, but he can tell you the address of everyone in Tucumcari, New Mexico, up to Richard Beckman, at least as of 1999.
“Um, why?” I ask, afraid to hear the reason.
“Figured while I waited for you guys to come back, I could get some information about this Koval person.”
“And how did that go?” I ask, afraid to hear the answer.
“First she yelled at me for having your phone. Then she yelled about you giving me your phone. Then she interrogated me, asking questions only my dad and I should know, to make sure I was who I said I was. And what’s up with those questions? Don’t ever call my dad paranoid again, because clearly Big Brother has been watching.”
“So what did she say, Bunker?” Katie asks, not especially interested in Bunk’s fears about government overreach.
One day I’ll have to explain to him that the minute he became my friend, Rogers probably opened a file on him and his father.
“I expect her to call back any minute,” Bunker says just as his phone vibrates.
Or my phone, and he’s about to answer it.
“Give me that,” I say, grabbing it from him.
“You’re really onto something here,” Rogers says when I answer. “Your friend caught me up on what you know so far—and, by the way, we’ll need to have a long chat about that. Giving him your phone will definitely be a problem for your next performance review.”
“But boss—”
“I said later, Smith. Let’s deal with the bigger problem right now. There has been chatter for weeks now that Vadim Koval has been planning a hostile takeover of Marchuk’s arms trade while also proving to the terrorist world that he can provide even better service than the old man did. I’ve got some people gathering more intel. We should have a report for Berg in the next half hour. You need to bring him in on this, Smith,” Rogers warns. “Don’t try doing this by yourself.”
“Not that Berg would ever listen to me, but I don’t need his help. But no worries. I have backup.”
“Smith, I’m warning—”
“Sorry, boss. Gotta go.”
After I hang up, I relay the intel to Bunker and Katie.
“I’m calling MI6 if your Berg won’t help us find Joel,” she says, taking out her phone. “We need officers at every airport in the metro area, every train station, roadblocks on every road out of this state.”
“Hold on, Katie. Y’all can’t run operations on our soil. At least not overt ones, and all of that sounds pretty overt to me.”
My phone starts vibrating again. It’s the third call since I hung up on Rogers. She is so going to kill me.
“Not so fast,” says a woman’s voice on the stairs above us.
Uh oh. Rogers is going to have to wait in line.
It’s Andrews, and she looks like she wants to kill someone. Or three someones. I need to think of a way out of this on the quick.
“We’ve been busted,” Bunker says. “I guess my spy days are over.”
“Wow. This is one busy stairwell. You’d think Berg would have checked it out, with it being just down the hall from his command center,” I say, a little more loudly than necessary. “And Bunk, I’m guessing all your days are over if it’s up to her. Don’t believe the uniform. She’s no more a good guy than her partner Marchuk is.”
“Hands out of your pockets. Slowly,” she orders, pointing her gun at me. I comply.
She doesn’t have to ask Bunker, whose face has gone back to a shade of about-to-puke green. He already has his arms raised, though I’m worried he might faint any second. Katie doesn’t look sick at all. She looks like she’s thinking about charging Andrews and killing her with her bare hands.
Which is why Andrews turns the gun on Katie. “And you. Did I just hear you say you were MI6? What the hell is the world coming to? They’re hiring officers who haven’t even finished their growth spurts, but I apply for the FBI, DHS, and CIA, and not a single one will take me.”
“Uh, because you’re a dirty cop?” I offer, hoping to distract Andrews for a minute by getting her to talk about herself. It worked on Sveta, except Katie won’t be crashing through the ceiling. “I’m pretty sure that silencer attachment on your pistol isn’t standard issue from the police department’s gun vault. Police—at least not good cops—don’t use silencers.”
“They didn’t know I was dirty. And I didn’t go to the other side until after they rejected me. I got sick of playing by the good ol’ boys’ rules.”
“So you turned traitor to your country because you were rejected by some boys?” Katie asks. “You should be kicked out of the girl club now.”
“Please. That’s all you are—a girl. I’ve been a cop longer than you’ve been alive. The struggle is real for a sister in uniform. Still in uniform, still working a beat. Passed up for promotions by—”
“Better cops than you?” I say.
“If you know I’m MI6, then you know what I’m capable of,” Katie says, taking the smallest step toward Andrews.
“Better back up, little girl. You may be a spy, but bullets can still stop MI6 agents just as well as they can stop a CIA officer. Or a sickly-looking redhead,” Andrews says as she points her weapon first at Katie, then me, then Bunker.