State of War

had to come up through that system to get a shot at it. Alex Michaels didn’t have any clout to offer anybody for putting him in charge of a bigger agency. And in truth, he really didn’t want the headaches that came with that kind of job; this one was bad enough.

Besides, Alex had never worried much about promotions. He hadn’t taken this job in the first place because of what he himself could get out of it. He had taken it because Steve Day asked him, and because he felt he could make a difference.

These days, watching the carts of paper go by, feeling the pressure from Mitchell Ames, he felt that all he was doing was marking time.

He began stretching, working his legs, watching himself in the mirror. There was a handful of people around the place exercising instead of eating, though most of them looked to be pretty fit.

Did he even want to stay in Washington? Yes, this was an important job, even if it didn’t always seem like it, and somebody had to do it. And, he had to admit, he was pretty good at the job, but there was so much about the work that he didn’t like. The politics. The groveling for appropriations. Things like this lawsuit, which called into question almost everything he had done during his entire term as commander.

Who needed it? All it did was stress him. When he’d been alone, he could deal with it all right. He was remarried now, though, with a young son, and there were things in life that seemed a lot more important than lying awake at night worrying about a lawsuit without merit.

He shook his head. He still couldn’t understand how this lawsuit could have ever gotten this far. How in the world could anybody feel sorry for a murderous thug who’d been shooting at his men? How could that thug getting shot in return be worth a lawsuit, be worth all the cost and all the waste?

Probably some jury would give his widow ten million dollars. Where was the justice in that?

Alex could get other work. He knew that. He’d been offered good jobs, making more money and doing a lot less to earn it, in places where you could hear yourself think, too. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a house in the country somewhere, trees, fresh air, a home for his son to grow up among normal people? Wouldn’t it be great not to be at the mercy of congressional whim, to not have to sit in front of a committee while some bozo from Wide Patch, Ohio, who didn’t have two IQ points to rub together, asked questions that a third grader should know the answers to?

Yeah, that sounded pretty good. Kind of like a dream.

Of course, he had to think about Toni, what she wanted. Was she ready to bail from the biz, go off to some rural spot, sit home and make cookies or spend her time at PTA meetings? She could work, too, of course, the net gave a lot of freedom in that way. She could probably even work at whatever company hired him, if she wanted. But he’d have to discuss it with her before he started gathering himself to jump, find out what she really felt like.

Toni had told him, during those times when things got really bad and he found himself complaining about work, that she would go wherever he wanted. All he had to do was point at a place and she’d go looking for a house. But that had been him just venting steam, and her saying what he needed to hear at that moment. Would she still feel that way if it was real?

He sat on the mat, stretched his legs out in front of him, and bent to grab his feet, working his hamstrings and calves. Maybe it was time to move on. He really needed to think about it.

33

Richmond, Virginia

Sitting in a decent motel just off I-95 on the north side of town, Junior stared at the audio-only throwaway cell phone and blew out a big sigh. Might as well get it over with.

He punched in the number, a one-time use that should connect to one of Ames’s throwaway cells. Maybe he’d be lucky and Ames wouldn’t answer—

“Where have you been?” Ames said, a hard edge in his voice.

“Busy,” Junior shot back, instantly defensive. Yeah, okay, he should have called the man by now, and yeah, he had screwed it all up, but he did not like being talked to like he was some wet-behind-the-ears kid. Ames didn’t know what had gone down. Junior had killed men with guns, straight up, face-to-face. He was a man to be reckoned with. He didn’t have to take anything from any lawyer, even one he worked for.

“What happened?”

Junior took a deep breath, and went with his plan:

He lied.

“It’s all done. It was a little trickier than I expected, which is why I couldn’t call before, but I got rid of the old unit.”

“Permanently?”

“Of course.”

How would Ames know he wasn’t telling the truth? And this gave him some time to think things through. Come up with a plan.

“Well, that’s good.”

“You need me to, uh, get a replacement model?”

“No, I don’t think we’ll be doing any more business in that particular arena. How far away are you?”

“Day or so.”

“Head on back. Call when you get to town. We, uh, are relocating headquarters.”

Junior frowned. Something must have spooked Ames if he’d dumped his safe office. Could it have anything to do with Joan?

Nah, he decided. It couldn’t. She didn’t know anything about who they worked for. Her only contact had been Junior. It must be something else.

Junior broke the connection, dropped onto the king-sized bed, and stared at the phone. Joan was out there, but she sure wasn’t in Atlanta anymore, he’d bet his life on that. And even if she had stuck around, he couldn’t. He needed to get back to his place, change out the barrel on his right-hand Ruger, and ditch the old one. It wasn’t likely anybody was going to tie a dead Baltimore cop to one in Atlanta, but he wasn’t going to take any chances. There were all kinds of guys in gray-bar hotels who had hung on to a favorite piece after they’d capped somebody with it.

No, he would go by his place and pull a new barrel out of the safe. He was running out of them. He’d have to get some new ones — but not for a while, not until enough time had passed that the feds wouldn’t be checking that, too. It would be safer to buy a whole new gun and switch out the barrel with that. More expensive, and since he’d already had to replace one gun altogether, he was getting low on his preferred hardware. He only had a couple left, but when the alternative was maybe going to the gas chamber or a lie-down on the needle gurney, you didn’t decide to go cheap all of a sudden.

He still didn’t think Joan would be talking to the heat anytime soon. Oh, that would get her off on the prostitution and blackmail stuff, maybe even let her sell her story to the National Enquirer or something, but she had to know that as long as Junior was alive, she’d be in danger. And if she ratted him out, he had ways of getting to her, even from prison. She’d have to stay in hiding her whole life, and Joan wasn’t that kind of girl. She liked to get out and party down. So he should be okay, even after what had happened in the bar. She’d still be trying to figure out a way to turn it into gold. Until she did — and figured out a way to contact him and cover herself while she did it — he ought to be okay on that score.

So, he was safe, for now. For a little while.

There wasn’t anything he could do about it now, anyhow.

Net Force HQ Quantico, Virginia

Toni stared at the documents that had been scanned into the computer, copies of the police and FBI field- agent reports on the unsuccessful surveillance of the office building on Long Island. They couldn’t afford to keep men on the place, but they had gotten the building manager to watch. The man who’d rented the place had never come back.

Must have gotten spooked, Toni figured.

While she was looking at the projected images above her desk, one of the little LEO NewsAlerts flashed and