earlier, and he hoped it was a permanent spot. Keeping a vigilant and appreciative eye on the cranes had come to occupy a large part of his day, and Glenn supposed that if he ever looked out to discover them farther up or down the harbor — or, worse, altogether gone — it might be a sign he’d have to find something else about the commercial harbor that might be of interest, which had been tough before their arrival. Or something other than standing by the window to keep him occupied. Either way, it would be a development worthy of consideration at UpLink’s San Diego overflow warehouse.
His lookout interrupted, Glenn went over and lifted the receiver.
“Yup, I’m here.”
“Glenn. It’s Tom Ricci.”
Glenn was surprised. Not a word from the guy for over a year. Then a phone call, a visit, and a second call in the space of a week.
“Lo and behold,” he said. “Knew I should have explained my picking up the tab the other night was a one- time deal—”
“I need help.”
Glenn’s face suddenly became serious.
“What is it?”
“Something you maybe don’t want to take on,” Ricci said. “Might not even want to know about, because just knowing puts you in it to where you have advance knowledge.”
“As in the sort of knowledge that might not be any good for my job status?”
“Could be,” Ricci said. “Could be that won’t be the worst of it. You say good-bye right now, it’s fine. You decide to take a pass, I’m okay with that, too.”
“How long do I have to think about this?”
“Till I hang up the phone,” Ricci said. “If you’re in with me, you have to be up here tonight. Early as possible.”
Glenn thought it over a few seconds, the receiver cradled against his shoulder, his eyes wandering toward the high, reliable cranes framed by his window.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Let me hear it.”
A country route near Portola State Park, half past eleven at night, a ground mist spreading over the roots of the oaks and madrones. Under a low roof of clouds the sky was moonless and starless.
The shingle outside the square, flat, single-story brick building read PARKVILLE VETERINARY CLINIC, KENNETH W. MOORE, D.V.M., PH.D., but there was scarcely enough light seeping from the windows on the clinic’s north side — and from the dashboard of the police cruiser parked out front — for someone even a yard or two away to see the sign with his unaided eye. Discerning the doctor’s name and credentials would be almost impossible.
In the thick woods that belted the clinic’s parking lot, Ricci would have known what the lettering said without having to use his portable night-vision binoculars — the vet’s name being one among many details he’d marked while driving past the clinic with Rollie Thibodeau almost twelve hours earlier, doing a canvass for reasons he’d kept to himself. Still, he found the definition with which it appeared in the high-mag, IR-boosted illuminator tubes exceptional. A clear, close, fully stereoscopic image. It was not so many years ago that night vision optics gave you green ghosts moving among ghost-objects and a poor sense of their spacial relationships. The ability to read a sign in pitch darkness at fifty yards and judge its distance was an asset he would have coveted as a SEAL, and later as a Beantown homicide cop. He did not take it for granted.
But now Ricci’s gaze held on the sign for only a moment before shifting elsewhere. A single prowl car did not automatically mean that two cops inside made up the entire watch. There could be others on foot patrol, though he’d have bet against it.
Beside him, Glenn’s thoughts were running to the contrary as he scanned the wide pool of shadows around the clinic through his own NV binocs. A hidden frown creased his brow under a black nylon balaclava.
“This just doesn’t wash,” he said in a hushed voice. He lowered the glasses and normal darkness poured into his eyes. “The police have a murder on their hands. The daughter of a famous businessman kidnapped. A war hero. And you tell me there might be important evidence in that animal hospital. But they’ve got one cruiser guarding it. No backup I can see.”
Ricci looked over at him.
“As of this minute, it isn’t an official kidnapping,” he whispered. “Tomorrow there’ll be feds all over the place.”
“Still…”
“Don’t think UpLink. Or U.S. Army,” Ricci said. “Think small-town police force. They haven’t got many resources. Don’t have a clue anybody besides Howell knows the dog’s alive, being kept here in the middle of nowhere.”
A grunt. Glenn raised his lenses again. Both cops were slouched against their headrests, relaxed, chatter from their police radio faintly reaching the trees. They had their windows open — the driver’s window lowered about a third of the way, his partner’s almost completely down on the other side.
Glenn wished it had been the latter facing him. He would need to make a perfect shot. If he missed by a couple of inches up or down, his.50-caliber plastic sabot — fired from an original VVRS, sound-suppressed barrel, his version of choice — would either strike the driver’s window or the rack lights atop the cruiser, jolt the patrolmen into alertness, and all hell would break loose. If his aim strayed a little to the right of his desired line of fire, he might hit one of the cops. Their heads were vulnerable. Their upper bodies, too. And even discharged at its lowest barrel speed a variable velocity round could inflict serious physical damage. It was why the military shied from the term
He turned his attention from the car windows to those on the near side of the clinic. All except the first of three or four running toward the back had their blinds raised. Glenn saw an overnight attendant in lab whites filling out paper forms at a desk behind the last window. Insofar as he could tell through his lenses, they were charts comparable to the sort nurses and doctors would hang from beds in hospitals that treated patients of the human variety. There was, he noticed, bluish light flickering from somewhere in the room… probably a television set. It wouldn’t hurt if the attendant had its sound up.
“Okay,” Ricci said. “You ready?”
Glenn nodded.
“Give me exactly two minutes.” Ricci tapped the face of his WristLink. “Remember… anything goes wrong, head straight for the car and take off.”
Glenn hesitated. This had been another point of disagreement between them, but Ricci had been relentless in his insistence on drawing the heat if there was a foul-up.
Ricci stared at him in the dark, waiting for his second nod. He gave it with slow reluctance.
“I thought it’d be ‘In for a penny, in for a pound.’ ”
“Bullshit,” Ricci said. Then he slipped away toward the left, bent low under the ponderous boughs of the hardwoods.
Hoping the cops would continue to lean back in their seats a bit longer, an eye on the tritium dial of his own watch — not quite as jazzed as Ricci’s, but accurate — Glenn knelt into position with the rifle.
Ninety seconds later he sighted through its night scope, counted down the final half minute to himself, and then pulled the trigger with a silent prayer.
The muted crack of the subsonic round leaving his weapon was no louder than the hammer click of a dry-fired revolver. It traveled straight through the cruiser’s open window, skimmed between the cops and the windshield, and struck the interior of the passenger door’s frame.
The startled cops jerked in their seats as the sabot burst open on impact to release its superconcentrated fill of dimethyl sulfoxide and zolpidem — a soporific aerosol formulated to be instantly absorbed into the bloodstream on contact with skin or mucous membranes. Glenn knew a microscopic amount of the agent would be enough to knock out someone the size of a pro-basketball center within moments, and neither of the cops was built like Shaquille O’Neal.
