Fletcher found himself reacting as though he was actually standing inside the room — as though he could grab the operator’s wrist and disarm the man.
On the screen the operator opened the knife and dropped it to the floor. Karim saw it, and was about to stand when an elbow smashed across his jaw.
Fletcher was already on his feet. Over his earpiece he heard a garbled scream from Karim. He punched the code into the glowing keypad, knowing that if he didn’t act quickly Karim would surely die.
56
Special Agent Alexander Borgia slipped on his sunglasses when he reached the living room. The local SWAT agent he’d put in charge of guarding the front door, a former Marine who had seen plenty of combat in his time, hand-signalled to the nearby officers to stand down. Borgia was glad to see the man bark a quick order into his chest mike. At least this one knew what the hell he was doing.
The cold wind blew sand across the driveway packed with FBI and New Jersey police officers. They wore bulletproof vests underneath their winter jackets, each man braced behind the vehicles and holding their weapons on car roofs and hoods. FBI snipers were set up on the dunes around the house. Technical Investigative Equipment teams had finished setting up auditory surveillance devices mounted to stationary platforms.
As Borgia moved down the driveway, threading his way through the bodies, he caught men glancing away from their gun sights, their high-powered binoculars and thermal-imaging devices, to take the measure of him, to see if they could read something in his body language that would hint at what had happened inside the house. Everyone here knew this wasn’t an ordinary fugitive situation.
Borgia wasn’t a natural gambler; he hadn’t felt entirely comfortable rolling the dice on this. While all the information he collected pointed to Malcolm Fletcher’s involvement with Karim (especially the description from Karim’s pilot), Borgia still had no visual or auditory confirmation that Fletcher had been inside Karim’s home that morning. The agents had tried. Their thermal-imaging devices couldn’t penetrate through Karim’s garage door or his mansion walls. The laser mikes aimed at the windows had failed to pick so much as a single noise — not entirely surprising, as Karim was in the security business and had access to the same counter-surveillance toys the federal boys played with. The man had remodelled his home to prevent every conceivable surveillance scenario.
But when Karim’s Range Rover had pulled out of the garage, agents had picked up not one but two heat signatures sitting behind the tinted windows. Karim had brought someone along for the ride, and Borgia’s gut told him that that someone was Malcolm Fletcher. Borgia imagined the positive swells he would receive for capturing the elusive fugitive and, gripped with the fever of a man enraptured, had given the go-ahead for Hostage Rescue to breach the house.
Borgia reached the main road. Tactical Operations Command had set up a post within the inner perimeter. He opened the door for the mobile trailer and entered the warm space, grateful to be out of the cold. Agents sitting at the long consoles kept a close eye on their surveillance monitors while listening over their headsets to incoming radio-intelligence information from TOC agents set up in sniper positions.
Special Operation Commander Howard Cronin stood in the room’s centre with the thumbs of his meaty hands hooked in the pockets of his Wranglers. Tall with a beer-belly neatly hidden by a generous-fitting khaki field shirt, Cronin took great delight in swinging his dick to let everyone know just who the hell was in charge. Red-faced and wearing a headset, he saw Borgia and yanked the phones away from one ear.
‘ What’s with this bullshit with the radio and camera silence?’
A few men flinched. Cronin had been in a foul mood since he’d been informed that Borgia would be speaking to Karim. Alone.
Borgia kept his cool — a task made easier by how much he detested the man. ‘Karim’s a security expert,’ he said. ‘He knows everything he says and does is being watched and recorded. I wanted to try a more informal approach first — try to strike a deal with him, so I told Operator Jackman to turn off his radio and camera.’
‘I don’t give a shit if the man asked for Jesus H. Christ himself, you don’t — ’
‘It was my call, since I’m the one in charge of this operation,’ Borgia said. ‘If you have any questions about the scope of my role, you can call Director Oberst and ask him — ’
‘Did Karim give up Fletcher?’
‘I gave him a moment to weigh his options while I checked out his gun permit.’
Cronin looked like his head was going to pop off his shoulders.
‘I wanted Karim to stew in it for a bit,’ Borgia said. ‘He’s got a lot to lose here — his reputation and his business if this makes the papers and — what’s going on?’
Cronin had slid the headphones back over his ear. Two quick steps and he plopped himself down on a chair, his attention swinging to the monitor showing a grouping of windows. Borgia saw shattered glass, the drawn blinds shaking in the wind.
Borgia beckoned with his hand for a pair of headphones. A nearby agent quickly handed his over, stood and moved away.
Over the headphones Borgia heard a clear voice shouting over the wind: ‘Repeat, two shots fired from inside the master bedroom.’
Not from Karim, Borgia thought. The man had been searched for weapons. Has to be Jackman, but why? The HRT operator had been instructed to drop the concealed knife on the floor — a knife that Karim had had in his possession but was missed during the search. Then Jackman would radio in that Karim had attacked him, and during the confrontation Jackman had had no choice but to defend himself with his own knife.
‘Let’s flush the son of a bitch out,’ Cronin said. ‘Alpha Team, move into position. Jackman, report.’
Borgia watched tear-gas canisters being launched and then the sound of shattering glass filled his headphones. A quick glance to another monitor and Borgia saw Alpha Team, wearing gas masks, funnelling through the front door.
Three gunshots rang out over the headsets.
Cronin again: ‘Jackman, report.’
Over his headset Borgia heard coughing followed by a Darth Vader-like breathing.
‘CP, this is Jackman. I’m hit.’ Jackman’s painful wheezing voice had a mechanical, robotic tone; he was speaking over the gas mask’s voice-amplification system. ‘Tango is armed and on the move. Fired three return shots.’ A long wheeze and then Jackman said, ‘I think he’s hit.’
Borgia stirred with excitement. Fletcher had been inside the house, but where? Where had he been hiding?
‘Stand by, Jackman, help is on the way.’ Cronin covered his mike with his hand and, turning over his shoulder, barked at the room: ‘Move SWAT paramedics into position.’ He released his grip on the mike. ‘Snipers, if you have a clean shot, take Tango down. Jackman, keep talking to me, son.’
No answer from Jackman, just that sickly wheeze. Had he been shot? All the operators wore bulletproof vests. But if Fletcher had used armour-piercing rounds…
Borgia prayed to God Jackman had managed to get in at least one critical stab wound. If he had, Karim would die before he reached hospital.
Borgia’s stomach climbed with equal measures of hope and fear. Please, God, let Jackman be dead along with Karim. Three could keep a secret if two were dead.
Cronin again: ‘Talk to me, Jackman.’
On another monitor, grey smoke billowed from the front doorway and scattered in the rough wind. Over the headsets came the sounds of heavy boots crunching over broken glass. No gunshots, not yet.
Elbows on the console top, Borgia rested his chin against his folded hands and stared at the front door, watching and waiting.
HRT operators emerged from the smoke, one of their own slung between them — Operator Jackman, head bowed and bobbing, chest and gas mask smeared bright with blood. Jackman’s boots bounced against the steps as he was dragged away. When the trio came into closer view, Borgia caught sight of the bullet holes on Jackman’s chest, right above the heart. If Fletcher had used armour-piercing rounds, Jackman was as good as dead.
SWAT paramedics came next, holding a gurney, an unconscious Karim strapped down to it. The man’s head
