shoulder gave way. The thin wail of approaching sirens came audible.
Walker let the gun sweep north over Chase's head.
His voice shaking, Dean said, 'No.'
Chase's yell, now more anger than pain, raised the veins in his neck. It was terminated with the final bullet.
Dean's knees buckled, but he caught himself with a little half step. The sirens were louder now, maybe within a few blocks. Dolan stayed twisted on the bench, face turned away. Dean leaned against the wall, fighting off a faint, then straightened up.
Walker flicked out the cylinder and tapped the extraction rod, the spent casings popping out. The new bullets, held by the speedloader, nosed into place, reloading the wheel with a single titanium thrust. 'You can run,' he said, 'but you'll just die tired.'
Walker slid the Redhawk into the waistband of his jeans and strode from the room. Dean again set his weight forward against the door, his lips cracked. Behind him Dolan wept quietly.
Less than a minute passed before the house shuddered with boots and shouted commands. Dean punched the code into the panel, and the shield slid upward, disappearing into the ceiling. Unsteadily, he walked out and kneeled over his favored son. He closed the corpse's eyelids, then leaned and kissed the forehead, still unblemished above the entrance wound.
Removing the BlackBerry from Chase's pocket, he slid it into his own.
Chapter 51
The pay phone rang, and Tim snatched it off the hook, hunching to the concrete wall of the liquor store and plugging one ear to muffle the traffic. He nodded at Bear, sitting an admittedly conspicuous shotgun in the Electronic Surveillance Unit van across the parking lot. Bear turned around to confer with Roger Frisk, the ESU deputy in the back. Frisk had opted for a straight tap off the junction box at the pole to cut interference.
Tim pressed the phone to his ear, but instead of Walker Jameson, it was Thomas from the command post, his words coming hard and fast.
Tim stood in the hydrangeas, staring into the hole blown in the ballistic glass of the front window. He had his hands full-Percy Keating's perforated body in the guesthouse, a sobbing Thai widow trying to convey useless facts in broken English, Chase's gray matter caking the carpet upstairs, and two ER-bound security guards who'd recounted Walker's appearance as if he'd descended from Valhalla on a phantom steed. The first phone call-which had led Tim and Bear to Arcadia, where they'd waited, holding their dicks while Walker mounted a full-frontal assault on the Kagan estate-Walker had managed to route through the Vector switchboard, icing Tim's embarrassment. The news crews massed at the resurrected cordon had it over European soccer fans for vehement persistence, and judging from the questions battering Tim on his approach, the next round of media portraits were to be-deservedly-none too flattering for the Troubleshooter.
Aaronson had teamed up with Maybeck, breacher for ART and for the Service's national Special Operations Group, to assess the explosive residue. As Tim suspected, the front window had been blown through with a linear shape charge, its firing assembly consisting of a blasting cap, a shock tube, and an initiator. The lab would need time to determine further specifics, but Tim already knew how the rest had played. To minimize on-site prepping, Walker would have prefabbed the charge, adhering a ring of the taffylike explosive cutting tape to an oval of cardboard. In about two seconds, he could've thunked the self-sticking charge onto the window, paid out the shock tube to a good standoff distance, and clicked the detonator. The distraction of the grenade had prevented the guards from redirecting their attention when Walker slapped the charge onto the ballistic pane. Walker had engineered the device with military precision, using exactly the right amount of ECT, the mark of a skilled breacher. The components were relatively common; none would be traceable.
Precisely how Tim would have made the assault.
Walker had reconned from a distance, waited for Keating's return. Then he'd taken him out-strong man first- extracted information, and moved on the main house. He'd been geared up for the raid, but the girth of the safe room's walls had come as a surprise, requiring a higher net explosive weight than he-or Tim-would've thought to lug along given binoc surveillance.
Picking through the aftermath of a Spec Ops attack launched on a house felt eerie and unsettling. It was something that generally happened in the Third World, not in Bel Air. A taste of Kandahar, right here in L.A.'s backyard.
The jagged edge of the glass had been caramelized. Tim tested the dark brown flakes with the tip of his finger. Freed paused on his way out the front door, Thomas at his side.
'He should've killed the guards,' Tim said, mostly to himself. 'Easier, more secure. It's not like he's concerned with his sentence.'
Freed asked, 'So why didn't he?'
'He's only killing those he considers guilty.'
Thomas said, 'Fugitive after your own heart.' He gave Freed a little shove, moving them down the walk before Tim could respond.
Tannino stormed by, his feathers and dated Italian Afro ruffled from navigating the camera zone. He pressed his cell phone to his side, the barking voice on the other end muffled by one of the love handles that had softened his frame in the past year or so. 'I got you your goddamned task force, Rackley. Now find me this fucker.'
He, too, breezed by, leaving Tim with the hole in the house. Edwin the butler appeared at the front door, holding a cordless phone in two honest-to-God white gloves, regarding Tim in the flower bed with a look of reserved contempt that he must have rehearsed to perfection in butler school. 'Mr. Rackley. Telephone.'
Tim stepped up onto the porch, splitting the stream of criminalists, paramedics, cops, and deputies, and took the phone. 'Rackley.'
'Sorry I stood you up.'
Tim looked around. The movement continued, every worker bent to a task. Tannino was arguing with Aaronson over by the guesthouse. They were not set up for a tap on Dean Kagan's phone, and Walker knew it.
Tim keyed the radio freq of his Nextel, sending Bear a double-chime and a 911 text message. 'Come by, let's talk it over. I'm sure we could work out a way for me to forgive you.'
Bear came jogging around the corner. Tim pointed to the phone, mouthing Walker's name. Bear snapped open his phone, got Frisk on the line, then pointed inside. If they could get a verbal from Dean, Frisk would be able to jockey the phone line at its entry point to the house and save the time of shinnying up the pole.
A chuckle from Walker. 'Escape offense. Multiple homicide. Put the coffee on. I'll be there in five.'
'In the meantime…' Tim said, moving swiftly up the walk, heading inside. The foyer was full of criminalists who sounded off like birds when Tim passed through the crime scene.
Frisk met him in the hall and mouthed, 'What?'
'In the meantime?' Walker repeated.
Tim thought about Walker on the line, a rare opportunity to talk to his fugitive one-on-one. Being on an untapped line presented him a narrow window of opportunity he didn't want to squander by tracing a throw-away phone that was gonna be ditched within a few minutes anyway.
Tim shook his head, waved Frisk off. Frisk shrugged and headed out to his van.
Tim said quietly, 'There's no reason we can't share information.'
'Until you bust my ass.'
'Until I bust your ass.'
'Or until I kill someone else.'
'You're not gonna kill anyone else.'
'Why?'
'Because we'll get you before that.'
Another chuckle, then: 'You were a Ranger.'
'That's right.'
''If you are brave and bold, you, too, may wear the black and gold.''
