looked around for a dog, but the grass was empty. Then he heard the barking. The noise grew louder as Wells ran up the hill toward the big white house.
He reached the front porch and looked at his watch: 1:35:20. He would give himself fifteen seconds to pick the lock on the front door. If he couldn’t, they would have to break a window. But when he grabbed the doorknob it turned smoothly. The door was unlocked. Weird, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. The dog was yammering loudly now, one bark rushing into the next. He sounded like he was at the door. And he sounded like he was big. They would have to take care of him quickly.
Behind him Qais reached the porch just as Sami finally got over the fence, a delay that was fine by Wells. Sami ran up the hill, angling away from the house and toward the cottage, as they had planned.
“The dog,” Wells said. Qais nodded and raised the.45. Wells turned the knob and kicked open the door.
The dog came flying out, a big beefy Rottweiler, leaping for Qais with his jaws wide open. Qais’s first shot caught the dog in the chest and knocked him down. He whimpered and yet kept coming, protecting his turf. Qais shot him again between the eyes, the big round smashing the Rottweiler’s skull, splattering fur and brains and blood across the porch. He collapsed and was still. Qais’s eyes glittered behind his black mask.
THEY STEPPED OVER the dog’s carcass and into the house. Wells closed the door and they both took a moment to let their eyes adjust. Qais turned toward Wells—
— and Wells was swinging the Glock toward him, holding the heavy pistol by its barrel. Qais tried to get a hand up to deflect the blow, but the Glock came too fast. The butt of the gun crashed into his temple just behind the eye, the softest spot on the skull.
So Wells hit him again. The same spot. This time Wells could feel the pistol dislodging bone. Qais grunted, a sound not unlike the one the Rottweiler had made, and tottered over, unconscious before he hit the ground.
WELLS’S PLAN WAS simple. Split the jihadis up. Take out Qais, leaving him alive for interrogation if possible. Take out Sami before he got to West’s bodyguard. Disarm the guard before he started shooting, and then find West and explain what was happening. Call Exley and tell her everything. Have the agency put out a cover story to convince Khadri that Qais and Sami had died in the raid. Maybe even fake West’s death too. Do it all before the Atlanta cops showed up and blew his head off.
Well, “simple” might be the wrong word for the plan. But it was the best he could do under the circumstances, and so far it was working. “FBI!” he shouted up the stairs, hoping West wouldn’t freak out and come down the stairs shooting. Or worse, drop dead of a heart attack.
“FBI! General, please stay calm—”
But there was no answer.
“General—”
The house was silent. Maybe West was hiding in his bedroom, calling 911…though that wasn’t how Wells expected a three-star to act, even one old enough to collect Social Security. Doesn’t matter now, Wells told himself. I have to move. He turned and ran toward the guest house.
AS HE CROSSED the lawn he heard the rattle of Sami’s H&K from the cottage, a half dozen shots, a break, and a half dozen more, echoing through the humid Georgia night.
He arrived at the cottage a few seconds later to find Sami grinning at him, the H&K held loosely in his hands. Wells could see lights flicker on in the neighboring houses. So much for the plan.
“Sami—”
“You’re never gonna believe it, man,” Sami said in Arabic. “Where’s Qais?”
“In the house, looking for West.”
Sami turned toward the house. “Take a look,” he said to Wells.
Wells walked into the cottage.
Sami was right. Wells couldn’t believe it. Even in his wildest imagination he wouldn’t have expected this. But there they were. No wonder the front door had been unlocked. No wonder the house had been silent. And no wonder West’s wife had divorced him when he retired.
A dozen rounds from H&K had done a lot of damage to West and the bodyguard, but not enough to obscure what had been happening in the cottage before Sami arrived. The bodyguard lay naked across the bed. A lubed-up condom hung on the end of his flaccid penis. West wore a studded black leather dog collar and what looked like a leather corset. One of his arms was handcuffed to the bed; the other hung limp at his side. Evidently the bodyguard had been trying to unlock him when Sami arrived. He had failed. And so had Wells.
WELLS GLANCED AT his watch once more: 1:36:43. Not that it mattered. West, dead. The bodyguard, dead. He would never be able to explain to the police what had happened here tonight. He would never be able to explain to Sami what had happened to Qais. He had only one way out of this mess, and no time to spare. He stepped out of the cottage. Sami turned toward him.
“Can you—”
Wells raised the Glock and shot him. Once in the chest, and then in the head, just to be sure. He left the H&K but grabbed Sami’s.45. A good silencer might come in handy.
Wells ran to the house. In the distance he heard a siren. He had to finish Qais off. Qais would know now that he wasn’t loyal to Qaeda, and so Qais would try to blame this attack on Wells to get the agency after him. The agency might be able to figure out that Qais was double-crossing him, but not if Qais gave up Wells just a little at a time, like he really wanted to protect him. No, Wells couldn’t take that chance. Qais had to die.
Wells stepped over the dead Rottweiler and into the entry hall. Qais lay unconscious on the floor where Wells had left him. As Wells looked down Qais sighed faintly, as if he had already accepted his fate.
He shot Qais once with the.45 in the back of the head. A quiet pop. Another man dead. Then Wells did something he hated. He turned Qais over and aimed the.45 at his face. He stepped back so the blood wouldn’t spatter his legs and pulled the trigger until he had blown Qais’s nose and mouth and eyes into a bloody pulp. An unrecognizable pulp. Wells assumed that the surveillance footage at Hartsfield would show him with Qais, and that the police would check those tapes as soon as they could. But Qais wasn’t carrying any identification, and with what Wells had just done the tapes wouldn’t be much use.
WELLS JOGGED THROUGH the house to the kitchen, in the back. The sirens came louder now. He opened the kitchen door and sprinted through the garden behind the house. He pulled himself over the fence, landing on gravel in the unfinished backyard of the half-built mansion.
He whipped off his ski mask and ran around the unfinished house and down the driveway to the street where he had parked his pickup. The houses on this side were still dark. A lucky break.
He slid inside the Ranger, pulled his Red Sox cap over his head, and drove off. As he turned onto Mount Vernon he could see a police cruiser speeding toward him, flashers blazing, sirens screaming. The officer inside looked hard at him as they passed but didn’t slow down. And Wells drove free into the night.
BACK AT HIS apartment he sat at the kitchen table, trying to control the faint shaking of his left hand. The adrenaline was gone now and he just felt tired. Beyond tired. Exhausted deep into his bones.
In April he had told Walter the interrogator that he didn’t remember how many men he had killed. He had lied. He remembered every one. Now he had two more to add to his list. He thought of that first buck he had shot so many years before. No, he didn’t hate killing. But he was sick of it, sick of being good at it. Sick of knowing that he would have to do it again. He had been around too much death for too long.
Wells forced the thought of death out of his head and balled his hand into a fist. When he opened it again, the shaking was gone. He couldn’t blame himself for tonight. Khadri had put him in an impossible spot. He had played his cards as best he could. He couldn’t have known that West would be with the guard. “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” he murmured to the empty kitchen, and felt a faint ugly smile cross his face.
He considered calling Exley, turning himself in, trying to explain what had happened. But that was impossible. Things had gone too far tonight. He’d been involved in the killing of a three-star. No way to sweep this
