But at least the FBI man had died well. He had taken one of them with him and that had been unexpected. He had hit Nicholas three times in the head. Once might have been an accident; thrice, certainly by intent. He had seen the body armor, known what it was, shot for the head. Had he been a bit faster, he might have gotten clear of the initial attack.
In the front seat, the Snake muttered something, loud enough for Ruzhyo to hear. He gritted his teeth. Ruzhyo did not like Grigory the Snake. The man had been in the army in 1995, one of the units that had stomped into Ruzhyo's homeland of Chechnya to kill and rape. Yes, yes, Grigory had been a soldier, just following his orders, and yes, this mission was more important in the long run than any grudges Ruzhyo might have against the Snake, so he would endure the man. But perhaps one of these days, the Snake would speak of his beautiful Medal for Action in Chechnya once too often, and if that day came near enough to the end of the mission so he would not be vital, Grigory Zmeya would go to join his ancestors. And Ruzhyo would smile while he throttled the stupid oaf.
Not today, however. There was still much to be done, bridges to be crossed, objectives to be achieved, and the Snake was still necessary.
Which was lucky for him.
Alexander Michaels was only half asleep when the small monitor on the nightstand next to his bed lit. He felt the pressure of the light against his closed lids, and rolled toward the source and opened his eyes.
The screen's blue Net Force background came up and the computer's vox said, 'Alex? We have a priority-one com.'
Michaels blinked, and frowned at the timesig on the monitor's upper right corner. Just past midnight. He wasn't awake. What—?
'Alex? We have a priority-one com.'
The computer's voice was throaty, sexy, feminine. No matter what it said, it always sounded as if it were asking you to go to bed with it. The personality module, including the vox program, had been programmed by Jay Gridley, and the voice he'd chosen for it was, Michaels knew, a joke. Jay was a great tech, but a better cook than he was a comedian, and while Michaels found the vox irritating, damned if he would give the kid the satisfaction of asking him to change it.
The Deputy Commander of Net Force rubbed at his face, combed his short hair back with his fingers, and sat up. The small motion-sensitive cam mounted on the top of the monitor tracked him. The unit was programmed to send visuals unless he told it otherwise. 'All right, I'm up. Connect com.'
The voxax — voice-activated — system obeyed his command. The screen flowered, and the somewhat- harried face of Assistant Deputy Commander Antonella Fiorella appeared. She looked more alert than he felt, but then she had the graveyard watch this week, so she was supposed to be alert.
'Sorry to wake you, Alex.'
'No problem, Toni. What's up?' She wouldn't be calling him if it wasn't vital.
'Somebody just assassinated Commander Day.'
'What!?'
'His virgil sent out an alert. D.C. PD rolled on it. Time anybody got there, Day, his bodyguard Boyle and the limo driver, Louis Harvey, were all dead. Bombs and submachine guns, looks like. Maybe twenty minutes ago.'
Michaels said a word he seldom used in mixed company.
'Yeah,' Toni said. 'And the horse it rode in on, too.'
'I'm on my way.'
'Virgil's got the address.' A short pause. 'Alex? Don't forget the assassination protocols.'
She didn't need to remind him of that, but he nodded. In the event of an attack on a senior federal official, all members of that unit had to assume it might not be the only attack planned. 'I copy that. Discom.'
His assistant's image vanished, leaving the Net Force blue screen. He slid off the bed and started pulling on his clothes.
Steve Day was dead? Damn.
Damn.
2
Red and blue lights from the D.C. police patrol cars strobed the street with primary carnival colors, an effect appropriate to the circus of activity now going on. It was pushing one in the morning, but there were dozens of people lining the road, held back by police officers and bright plastic crime-scene tape. More curious onlookers peered down from nearby buildings. There was something to see, too, what with the blasted limo, the litter of shell casings, the three bodies.
It was a bad neighborhood to die in, Toni Fiorella thought. But then, when you got right down to it, any neighborhood was a bad one to die in when death came from a hard and sudden sleet of submachine-gun fire.
'Agent Fiorella?'
Toni blinked away her thoughts on mortality and looked at the police captain, who had, judging by the size and shape of his sleep-wrinkles, been roused from his bed. He was an easy fifty, nearly bald, and certainly, at this moment, a most unhappy man. Dead federal agents in your yard, on your watch, were bad things to wake up to. Real bad.
'Yes?'
'My men have come back from their initial canvass.'
Toni nodded. 'Let me guess. Nobody saw anything.'
'You should go into law enforcement,' the captain said. His voice was sour. 'You have an eye for detail.'
'Somebody in this crowd must have outstanding warrants for something,' Toni said. She waved one arm in accusatory benediction.
The captain nodded. He knew the drill. When a cop was killed, it didn't matter if he was local, state or federal, you did what you had to do to find whoever did it. Squeezing some low-life drug dealer or even a citizen with too many parking tickets for information was penny-ante stuff. Whatever it took. You did
Toni looked up, and saw the new Chrysler town car glide to a stop just outside the police barricade. Two men, the bodyguard and the driver, got out first and scanned the crowd. The bodyguard nodded at the passenger in back.
Alex Michaels alighted, saw Toni and headed for her. He held his badge case up, and was waved through by the cops blocking the street.
Toni felt that mixed rush of emotion she always felt whenever she saw Alex for the first time on any given day. Even in the middle of all this carnage, there was a certain amount of joy, of admiration, even of love.
Alex's expression was not grim, but as he habitually wore it, neutral. He didn't let himself show that he felt such things, even though she knew it had to be causing him great pain. Steve Day had been his mentor and his friend; his death must be stabbing deep into Alex's heart, though he would never let on, even to her.
Maybe even especially to her…
'Toni.'
'Alex.'
They didn't speak as they toured the murder scene. He squatted and examined Steve Day's body. She caught a flash of tightness in his face, a quick flex of jaw muscles as he looked at Day. Nothing more.
He rose, moved to the limo and looked at the other dead agents and the ruined auto. FBI and local police agents still circled around with light bars and videocams, covering the entire street. Forensic techs drew circles around each of the spent shells on the street and sidewalk, noting the location of each empty hull before they bagged it. Somebody would do the super-glue steam on those shells, the fine mist of cyanoacrylate ester that could, when done properly, find a fingerprint on a sheet of toilet paper; and they would do the biological-activity scan that could find a germ in an ocean. But Toni figured that coming up with useful prints or DNA residues wasn't going to be likely. It was almost never that easy. Especially on something as well planned as this obviously had been.
