wave, then returned to the kitchen. Brian took up station at the end of the hall, eyes fixed on the front door.
From the floor, Maria whispered, “What-”
Dominic held his palm up, shook his head.
Outside the kitchen window came a pair of hushed voices. Ten seconds passed. The doorknob on the back door turned, creaking, first one way, then the other. Dominic crab-walked around Anton and Maria, then pressed himself against the wall beside the door on the knob side.
Silence.
More hushed voices.
From the side of the house came shattering glass. Dominic heard what sounded like a rock thump against the floor. A feint, he decided, knowing Brian would have reached the same conclusion. The screen door creaked open.
Something bulky crashed against the door. Then again. The wooden jamb beside Dominic’s head splintered. On the third crash, the door flew inward. A forearm and a hand holding a revolver appeared first, followed a second later by a face. Dominic waited for his target-the soft spot just beneath the earlobe-to appear, then straight-armed the knife, burying it to the hilt in the man’s throat, then using it as a lever to bring him farther in the doorway. The man dropped the gun. Dominic kicked it down the hall, where Brian scooped it up. Dominic withdrew the knife, then reached across, grabbed the door, and slammed it shut, driving the man back outside.
From the front came two gunshots. The windows shattered. Brian crouched down and pointed the revolver at the front door. Dominic stepped around Maria and Rolf, ducked down, then peeked through the kitchen window. Outside, two men were kneeling over their partner. One of them looked up, saw Dominic, and fired two shots through the window.
On his hands and knees now, Dominic asked Maria, “Cooking oil?” She pointed to the opposite lower cabinet. Dominic ordered them into the living room with Brian, then retrieved the oil and dumped the bottle on the linoleum floor five feet from the door, then headed for the living room. As he stepped around Brian, the back door burst open again. A figure rushed through, followed by a second. The first hit the oiled floor and went down, taking his partner with him. Revolver outstretched, Brian stepped down the hall, right shoulder pressed to the wall, then opened fire. He put two rounds into the first man and three into the second, then grabbed their guns and tossed one to Dominic, who was already heading down the hall, pushing Maria and Rolf before him.
Careful to avoid the oil, Dominic stepped over the bodies, peeked out the back door, then pulled back. “Clear-”
From the living room the front door crashed inward, followed by the grating of furniture legs on the hardwood floor.
“Go for the car,” Dominic told Brian. “Start it up, make some noise.”
“Got it.”
As Brian ushered Maria and Rolf out the back door, Dominic looked down the hall in time to see a figure push through and begin crawling over the stacked furniture. Dominic ducked out the back door and sprinted across the lawn and around the back corner of the garage; inside it, Brian had Rolf’s car started and was revving the engine. Dominic dropped to his knee and peeked around the corner; the fence at his back was dark and covered in shrubbery. It would make his outline all but invisible.
The last man appeared in the doorway. Having seen his dead comrades in the kitchen, this one was more cautious, looking this way and that before stepping out. He paused again, then slid down the wall and checked the driveway before starting across the lawn. Dominic waited until his hand had almost touched the knob of the garage door, then rasped, “Hey!” He let the man turn ever so slightly, just enough for a good solid-mass shot, then fired twice. Both shots took the man in the sternum. He stumbled backward, dropped to his knees, then toppled over.
37
T
“Well, we’ll see what they pay,” Ding observed. “I’m ready to be impressed.”
“Don’t get too enthused,” Clark warned as he started the car. “Hell, I never expected to see a hundred grand from Langley when I started there. My starting salary was nineteen-five a year.”
“Well, the guy said their IRA plan-whatever you call it-works pretty well, and I saw all the Beemers in the parking lot. I’ll let you do the talking,” Chavez suggested.
“Yeah, you just sit there and look menacing.” John allowed himself a laugh.
“You suppose they really want us to whack people?”
“I guess we’ll have to find out.”
The traffic on the American Legion Bridge wasn’t too bad with the approaching end of rush hour, and soon enough they were northbound on U.S. 29.
“You decide what you’re going to do about my fuckup?”
“Yeah, I think so. We’re going down the rabbit hole, Ding-a lot farther than we’ve been before. Might as well go all the way. We’ll hand it over to them and see what they can make of it.”
“Okay. So this Hendley guy-what do we know about him?”
“U.S. Senator from South Carolina, democrat, served on the Intelligence Committee. They liked him at Langley-smart, straight shooter. Ryan liked him, too. Hendley lost his family in a car accident. Wife and two boys, I think. He’s very rich. Like Ryan, he made a pile of money in the trading business. He’s good at seeing things other people don’t.”
Both men were properly dressed, in decent suits both had bought in London during their Rainbow tour, with Turnbull & Asser ties and nicely polished shoes. Actually, this was something Chavez still did every day, from his time in the U.S. Army, though Clark occasionally had to be reminded.
They parked in the visitors’ lot and walked inside. Ernie Chambers still had the desk duty. “Hi. We’re here to see Mr. Davis again.”
“Yes, sir. Please have a seat while I call upstairs.”
Clark and Chavez took a seat, and John picked up a current copy of
“Thanks for coming back. You want to follow me?”
Two minutes after that, all three were in Tom Davis’s office, looking out at some Maryland horse country.
“So are you interested?” Davis asked.
“Yes,” Clark replied for them both.
“Okay, good. Rules: First, what happens here stays here. This place does not exist, and neither does any activity that may or may not happen here.”
“Mr. Davis, we both know about secrecy. Neither one of us talks much, and we don’t tell tales out of school.”
“You’ll have to sign another round of NDAs on that. We can’t enforce anything with statutory law, but we can take all your money away.”
“Are we supposed to have our personal attorneys review them?”
“If you wish, you can. There’s nothing compromising in the agreements, but then you could tear it up. We can’t have any lawyers wondering what we do here. It’s not all, strictly speaking, legal.”
“How much travel?” John asked next.
“Less than you’re used to, I suspect. We’re still figuring that out. You’ll spend most of your time right here, looking over data and planning ops.”
“Source of the data?”
“Langley and Fort Meade, mostly, but skim a little from the FBI, Immigration and Customs, DHS… Those kinds of places. We’ve got a damned good technical team. You probably noticed the hedgehog on our roof.”
“We did.”
