'Goddamnit,' Lucas said.
'Maybe…'
'What?'
The red-haired agent laughed ruefully and said, 'I was gonna say, maybe we could get dogs.' He looked off into the dark and said, 'Fuck me. Dogs.'
SIRENS. AMBULANCES AND cop cars. They started back between the buildings toward the road, walking at first, then breaking into a trot. The two wounded agents were still on the ground, each with an agent sitting next to him. Another agent and two bodyguards sat next to Dallaglio's body, and Jesse Dallaglio sat on the ground a few feet away, making a keening cry that Lucas thought might have been romantic to read about, but in practice sounded like a broken dental drill. The girls were out of sight, and Lucas thought they were probably back in the Lincoln, where they wouldn't be able to see their father.
The first of the ambulances arrived, and the paramedics looked at Dallaglio and then went straight to the two wounded agents, who were loaded into the first ambulance and sent on their way. Another ambulance came up and they also looked at Dallaglio, and then one of the paramedics lifted Jesse Dallaglio to her feet and led her back toward the Lincoln and the girls.
Lucas had nothing to do but stand around. He wouldn't be working with the crime-scene people, except perhaps to identify the spray of. 45 shells as coming from his gun. Sally was walking around, saying a few words to each of the agents, then came back to Lucas and said, 'She had a machine gun.'
'Probably got it from Baker,' Lucas said. 'He neglected to mention it. Probably an illegal conversion.'
'What were we supposed to do? What could we have done?'
'Nothing. You may get some shit, but there's nothing you could have done except lock Dallaglio in his basement.'
They were looking at Jesse Dallaglio, who stood next to the Lincoln, talking through the now-open back door. The paramedic was still supporting her. 'Poor kids,' Sally said.
Lucas was staring at the dark sky past the lighted diamond of the control tower. He didn't respond, and after a minute, Sally asked, 'What?'
'Huh. Something… I think Clara just screwed up.'
'Yeah? Tell me.'
'Well,' Lucas said, 'think about what just happened…'
RINKER HAD NEVER had any intention of driving out of the airport. She'd seen too many car chases on television, the kind where the guy never escapes from the helicopter. She'd walked in, found a spot behind a low concrete drainage wall, where she could prop the gun. She'd dug up a square of sod to use as a rest, and it worked perfectly.
When the convoy arrived, she waited patiently until Dallaglio got out in the open, then nailed him with a single shot, a round of. 223 hollowpoint.
Then, flipping the selector switch, she sent the rest of the thirty-round magazine into the body and at the row of vehicles, concentrating on the tires. The agents and bodyguards scattered like dust, and when the magazine ran out, she slapped in another and fired carefully spaced bursts at each of the trucks and cars.
Halfway through, she became aware of return fire, but never heard or felt anything passing close by. Never felt threatened, as she was showing nothing but three inches of forehead and rifle. Then one of the trucks began backing away, and out of sight. Time to go. She hastily hosed the rest of the magazine into the line of trucks, then turned and ran.
She ran down the length of the airport, invulnerable in the darkness. She ran across a beanfield, down the rows of thigh-high plants, letting the rows guide her back toward her car, feeling the kind of excitement she'd felt as a kid, playing war in the fields around Tisdale. She ran almost a mile, in all, the last part of it across a golf course, and took, she thought, about seven minutes to do it.
When she got to the car, she tossed the AR-15 into the backseat and eased the car out of its parking spot and up a narrow lane through a residential area. Just before she lost sight of the airport, she stopped for a last look- there were ambulances coming in now, and she could see tiny dark figures dancing in the splash of light.
'Paulo,' she said aloud. 'That's another one for you.'
22
SALLY AND LUCAS GOT BACK TO THE FBI conference room at midnight. 'Washington's gonna call tomorrow. They'll want to pull the team,' she said. 'The perception is, we've screwed this to the wall. Even before Malone.'
'Can you stall for a few days?' Lucas asked, as Derik wandered in, carrying a six-pack of Diet Coke in plastic bottles. 'I think we can bag her.'
Derik dropped them on the table and gestured, and Lucas took one. Derik said, 'Sally said we're working tonight. And you think we can get her.'
'Yeah… where's that red-haired guy?'
'He's with Patrick-they're old pals.'
'Patrick's the guy who got it in both legs. Broken bones,' Sally said.
'Gonna be tough,' Derik said. To Lucas: 'Lay it out. How do we get her?'
'OKAY,'LUCAS SAID.'First: Rinker knew exactly where the Dallaglios were gonna be, and when. She knew- she knew exactly which jet company, and it seems to me that she knew that there wouldn't be a security sweep of the place ahead of time.'
'Which means somebody is talking to her,' Sally said thoughtfully.
'That's right. Somebody tipped her, and the person is close to the Dallaglios. Second: I keep thinking that there had to be a reason for the order that she killed these guys in. She took Dichter first, because he was going to be the hardest, except maybe for Ross. So she tricked him, lured him out before he really knew what was going on, when he might have thought he could still talk his way out of it. And she set him up so he felt safe, and bang! Then she took Levy, because she had another trick figured out, the cell phone. Then Dallaglio, because she had a source of information that could set him up, and she knew ahead of time-weeks ago-that she could do that. It's all very logical. We really didn't have a chance to step on any of it.'
'How about Ross?' Sally asked.
'We don't even know that she's going after Ross. That's kinda my point: Ross doesn't seem to be all that worried. He's like Ferignetti-careful, but maybe not as worried as he should be.'
'Maybe he's in on it,' Sally said. 'Maybe this whole thing is a way to eliminate competition.'
'It feels that way,' Lucas said. 'But the whole thing was touched off by Paulo Mejia's killing. How does that fit? Did the other guys go after her, and Ross try to help her out? Our problem is, we don't really have Rinker's story, or Paulo Mejia's. We don't know what they expected or felt. I mean, Mejia had a guy with him who was carrying a goddamn Mac-10. Why was that? Did they know something?'
'Maybe-'
'Wait a minute,' Lucas said. 'Hang on-one thing at a time. So we know something: Rinker was tipped by somebody close to the Dallaglios. So if we get with Jesse Dallaglio as soon as she can think again, she should be able to figure out exactly when they knew what time they were leaving for the airport. Probably sometime this morning. That's the first we knew that they were moving. So somebody was tipped after that, and she should be able to point us at every single person who knew. They were all penned up inside the house.'
'We should be able to get the phone records of every person in the house, and all the house phones. See where they went,' Sally said. 'That's good. We could have all of that in a couple of hours.'
'What we'll have is a few names, and most of them we should be able to eliminate immediately. So by tomorrow morning we should have the name of somebody who can get in touch with Rinker. Or who Rinker gets in touch with. And they won't know that we know. If Rinker calls whoever tipped her off, she won't be running, she'll talk for a while.'
