AS HE WAITED, Wells unzipped his backpack and pulled out the gun he’d picked up at Langley, a Telinject Vario air pistol. The Telinject was loaded with a syringe filled with ketamine — the drug that club kids and other fun-seekers called Special K — and Versed, a liquid sedative closely related to Valium. Veterinarians and ranchers used these guns to sedate unruly animals. The CIA kept a handful for its own purposes. Wells had borrowed two, after getting an afternoon’s training from a specialist in nonlethal weapons in the agency’s Directorate of Science and Technology, the unit that handled fake passports, wiretaps, special weapons, and the rest of the trickery that accounted for one percent of the agency’s work but ninety-nine percent of its mystique.
“Planning to break into the D.C. Zoo, liberate the chimps?” the specialist — an attractive forty-something redhead with the thoroughly Irish name of Winnie O‘Kelly — asked him. “You know they bite.” Wells merely smiled. She handed over the pistols. “Try not to lose them. They’re not particularly traceable, but you never know.”
Clubgoers took ketamine because at low doses the drug produced what doctors called a “dissociative reaction,” almost an out-of-body experience, giving users the feeling they were in two places at once, watching themselves from a distance. At higher doses, ketamine caused unconsciousness in seconds. Further, ketamine wasn’t an opiate derivative, so it wouldn’t suffocate the guards if Wells accidentally overdosed them. At worst they would wake up stiff and headachy. The Versed in the mix would put the guards to sleep even faster.
Of course, the syringes couldn’t work their magic unless Exley got the guards out of the Escalade.
EXLEY DROVE PAST the mansion’s driveway. The Escalade was on the left, three tons of steel deliberately designed to be ugly. Its hood stared out at the street, a gas-guzzling fake tank driven by rich men who liked acting tough while knowing that other, poorer men would do the real fighting for them. Exley passed by slowly, making sure the men in the Escalade saw she was alone.
A hundred yards farther on, the road dead-ended at the empty parking lot for Two Mile Hollow Beach. Signs warned that any car without a town beach pass would be towed. “So much for free public beach access,” Exley said to herself. But of course anyone paying ten million bucks for a house didn’t want to share the sand.
She turned the Sienna around, double-checked the syringe in her purse. The reality of what she was about to do filled her. Then she turned the radio up, loud, and drove back down Two Mile Road toward the Escalade, now on her right. Just outside the driveway of the mansion, she stopped and parked in the road, making sure the Sienna was angled toward the Escalade. She stumbled out of the van and walked to the open gate.
The Escalade’s windows stayed shut as she approached. She rapped hard on the driver‘s-side window. In the background the van’s radio blared.
Finally the window slid down. “Can I help you?” The man inside sounded distinctly unhelpful. He was big and muscular, and his T-shirt didn’t hide the holster on his hip. Exley noticed a dog in the back seat, a big German shepherd that looked up eagerly at her, its red tongue lapping its teeth.
“I’m so lost. This guy I met, he told me about this party in Amagansett. This is Amagansett, right?”
“Lady. If you’re looking for Amagansett, go back to that road up there and make a right. Good luck. This is private property.”
Exley turned away. “Drunk skank,” one of the men in the Escalade said, deliberately loud enough for her to hear, and the other laughed. “Headed for the drunk tank.” The window slid up.
Exley got back in the Sienna, buckled her seat belt.
The crash with the Escalade whipped her toward the steering wheel. Her belt tightened and the exploding air bag caught her, knocking her back. Even though she’d known the collision was coming, its force surprised her, and she heard herself scream.
She gathered herself. She’d wrenched her neck and had a cut on her arm, but she hadn’t broken any bones. The Sienna had taken the brunt of the impact, its hood crumpled, radiator leaking, windshield starred. The Escalade, taller and heavier, had little visible damage, though Exley saw its air bags had inflated. The bottle of wine cooler had broken and the minivan stank of peach. She reached into her bag and grabbed the syringe.
She unbuckled herself as the doors of the Escalade opened and the men inside stepped out. They didn’t look happy.
FROM HIS SPOT ON THE CORNER, Wells watched Exley park. When she stepped out of the van to talk to the men, he began to pedal the mountain bike beside the hedge on the east side of the road, the same side the Escalade was on. He stayed hidden in the shadow of the hedge. Unless the men looked directly his way, they wouldn’t see him.
Wells took his time, not wanting to get close too soon. The grass under his wheels was wet with dew, and this close to the ocean Wells could smell the clean salt air. Under other circumstances, Two Mile Hollow would make a perfect lovers’ lane.
Now Exley turned around, walked back to the Sienna, her shoulders slumped, her little ass wobbling slightly as she walked. She surely had the undivided attention of the men in the Escalade, Wells thought. Which was exactly what he needed. He was about fifty yards away, close enough that the men would see him if they looked his way.
They didn’t.
The Escalade’s doors opened and the men stepped out. Inside the Cadillac, a dog barked madly, its rapid- fire woofing echoing through the night.
“My door won’t open,” Exley yelled through the night. “Help me.”
“Dumb cootch,” the Escalade’s driver said. “Fred, radio Hank, tell him what happened.” He yelled to the minivan. “You know whose car you just hit?”
Fred the guard turned back to the Escalade. Wells aimed the air pistol, bracing it in both hands. He squeezed the trigger. Propelled by compressed carbon dioxide, the inch-long dart took off with a soft hiss and hit the guard in the center of his back. He yelped, then sighed dully as the syringe pumped anesthetic into him. He raised a hand to the sill of the Escalade to steady himself and slumped into the front passenger seat.
“YOU ARE ONE DUMB DRUNK SLUT,” the driver of the Escalade said as he reached into it for Exley. She slumped across the passenger seat.
“I’m sorry, I’m so stupid, please help me,” she said. He grabbed her harshly and tugged her out, making sure to grope her breasts. As he pulled at her, she jabbed the syringe hidden in her hand through his khakis and into his thigh.
“Goddamn,” he said. “Wha—” But even as he cursed, Exley felt his grip loosen. He crumpled, the deadweight of his arms dragging her down. She freed herself and looked at him, fighting the urge to kick him in the balls. His breathing was slow, but he seemed fine otherwise.
“Sweet dreams,” she said.
“You all right?” Wells said from across the Escalade.
“Never better. Do what you have to do.”
22
IT WAS 3:05 A.M. WEDNESDAY. The radio’s bright green LCD lights told the mole what he already knew. He was awake.
For the last few weeks, he’d found sleep harder and harder to come by. He lay in bed, eyes blinking slowly as a toad‘s, twisting the thin cotton sheets Janice liked. Two bottles of wine at dinner and a hefty snort of whiskey afterward hadn’t been enough to knock him out. Worse, he didn’t seem to sleep even when he was asleep. He had the odd sensation of his mind nudging itself toward consciousness. Sometimes he couldn’t tell if he was awake or
