I raise my radio and key the mike. “Spider Two, this is Black Widow. Are you there?”
Jimenez responds, “Spider Two, copy.”
“Can you see us?”
“Like fish in a bowl a minute ago. You’re fine now.”
I shake my head. “Not if you had night vision. Black Widow out.” I turn to Stein. “Hope you don’t mind my borrowing your call sign. Can you get more light onto the pool?”
“Some.”
Stein flicks more switches, adjusts a rheostat. Powerful floodlamps bathe the pool and deck in a brilliant glare.
“That’s good,” I say. “The contrast between the lighted pool area and the darkness inside the kitchen will defeat night vision. If they have thermal, we're out of luck. Don’t take chances. Stay away from the windows.”
Robyn folds her arms over her chest. “Do you think they’ll try anything?”
“We don’t know who they are,” I tell her. “We may be worrying about nothing, but it’s best to be safe. It’s only a few more hours before we take you to the White House.”
Stein puts her arm around Robyn’s shoulders. “Breed, I’m going to take Robyn upstairs. She can have a shower, and I’ll show her the dress blues she’ll wear tomorrow. She’s got a room to herself and some nightclothes.”
“Alright,” I say. “But she doesn’t have a room to herself. She isn’t to leave your sight. Keep that MP5 handy.”
“Yes, Sir.” Stein gives me a sidelong look, takes Robyn by the hand.
A thought hits me.
“Stein.”
“Yes!”
“Which side of the house is Robyn’s room on?”
Silence. I know the answer—the pool side. On a level with the top of the hill.
I call to Stein. “Move her to the side away from the hill. Keep the curtains closed and the lights off.”
“Breed.” Stein’s voice echoes from the top of the stairs. “I sense this control thing is an issue for you.”
Robyn’s whisper carries down the stairs. “How long have you two known each other?”
35
Puzzles
Falls Church
Saturday, 2300
I climb the stairs and call out. “Man on the floor.”
“We’re in here, Breed.”
The second floor is dark. Stein took my warning seriously. I look left and see a bedroom overlooking the pool. As I expected, the hilltop looks straight into the bedroom’s windows. To the right is another bedroom. The door is open. The floor is lit by a dim nightlight.
Inside, I find Stein and Robyn sitting on the floor, their backs to the wall. Stein has taken off her suit jacket, exposing a SIG P226 Legion in a hip holster. The MP5 rests on the floor by her right hand.
Robyn is barefoot, wearing her digital camouflage pants, and a white t-shirt.
“Here you go.” I hand them each a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” Stein says. “What about you?”
“Had some. Adcox ran through the comms with me again.”
Robyn looks exhausted. She has not recovered from her overdose. “You never stop moving, do you, Breed.”
“In this business, people who sit still get killed.”
I sit on the floor across from the women. Lean against the bed.
“What did they have on Lopez?” Stein fumes. “Are we to believe that the Taliban and Al Qaeda had him on their payroll the whole time? If that’s true, he was working for them long before Grissom’s operation went live.”
“Yes. If that’s the case, what was he doing for them all that time?”
“After our last conversation, I checked everyone on the team.” Stein ticks them off on her fingers. “I know you don’t like each other, but Koenig is clean. A solid performer. Not the best at anything, but a solid, middle-of-the-road kind of guy. Competent at direct action.”
“The general wouldn’t tolerate incompetence.”
“Lopez had nothing in his record other than the usual bar fights and drunk and disorderly charges. He was another solid performer, albeit something of a blunt instrument.”
“That,” I say, “makes him the perfect person to task to kill people.”
“And our government did. Many times. Before Captain Koenig punched his ticket, Lopez scored an impressive number of notches on his gun. All enemy combatants. He has a long list of decorations.”
“Earned for doing the kind of stupid things society considers brave.”
“You have your share,” Stein says. “Which we won’t get into. Ballard is odd. He’s as you described him. A nerd who built his own radios and rocket ships in school. Joined the army, where his skills were enhanced. So he could do things bigger and better, all the while killing our enemies. None of which bothered him in the least. His fitness reports are good, but he’s something of a sociopath. He looks at everything as a game, dissociates from real-world consequences.”
“I get that feeling around him.” The room is cozy. I can see Robyn’s eyelids drooping. She’s ready to fall asleep.
“Takigawa is the most interesting of the lot. He is a loose cannon. Spent time in the stockade for assaulting civilians. Seems he was in a bar in Fayetteville and some good old boys made racist remarks. He says one of them tried to brain him with a whisky bottle, then attacked him with a knife. Takigawa broke the man’s arm, then assaulted the man’s four friends, put three of them in the hospital. Claimed he was defending himself.”
“I’m sure he was.”
“So am I. His stripes need Velcro, they’ve been on and off his sleeves many times. He has problems with authority and was quietly asked to leave Delta. But—he continued to operate in Special Forces. Well regarded by everyone he’s served with. Except for a handful of officers.”
“The perfect Tier 1 operator.”
“The point is,” Stein says, “the men General Anthony sent on that mission were elite operators, every man a patriot. That leaves us with conspiracy theories. Neoconservative warmongers. The military-industrial complex.”
I shake my head. “Doesn’t sell, does it?”
Stein closes her eyes. Rests the back of her head against the wall. “No. I couldn’t sell it to myself drunk.”
Robyn is fully awake again. I turn to her. “Robyn, something Zarek said has bothered me.”
“What’s that?”
“At the campfire. He claimed the US was attacking his caravans three times more often than Shahzad’s. What’s the story?”
“Zarek’s
