A perfect target. I fired a group of three. Two in the chest, one in the head. He dropped hard.
Pogue acknowledged this with a nod. Two down.
I ducked to cover, as the other associate of Loving's fired blindly in my direction. I bent down. "You ready, Amanda?"
"I'm totally ready."
Pogue moved twenty feet away from us, to a spot where he'd draw their fire. He unscrewed the silencer and let go with five or six rounds throughout the room. The Beretta roared.
Crouching, Amanda and I dodged sputtering, white-hot fires and pushed through the exit door on the second-floor hallway. I was afraid that the door was locked from this side too but it wasn't and I kicked it open.
A machine pistol started firing, along with another flash-bang, then another. Loving understood that Amanda and I had escaped and the two remaining hostiles were doing all they could to take Pogue out and get past him.
Then the girl and I were in the stairwell and speeding down the steps. We made it to the corridor on the main floor and started down the endless hallway toward the exit ahead of us. I was dizzy from scanning the doorways, scanning the corridor behind, scanning the corridor ahead. Mostly looking behind, though, which was the direction Loving or his surviving partner would come from.
More explosions and automatic weapon fire but growing more muted as we hurried for the exit.
Then I heard a hollow cry of pain.
It was Pogue's voice. There was no doubt. It continued for a moment or two as, I supposed, the phosphorus burned through his jacket and slacks to the skin. Finally there was a single shot and the screams and gunfire stopped.
I wondered if he'd ended his own life.
A horrific thought but I couldn't dwell on it. This meant Loving and the other man would be after us at any moment. We pressed forward. The doorways were bothering me. They were recessed slightly and as we came to each one, I had no way of knowing if a door was ajar. I believed the guard outside that there were four people with the girl but it would have been possible that the primary along with other minders had arrived and, hearing the shots, were hiding here, behind one of the doors.
I decided, though, that it really didn't matter. We had to move forward fast.
But now Amanda was starting to lose it. With her adrenaline fading, hysteria was flowing in like a riptide. She was crying, breathing hard and stumbling.
"Come on, Amanda. Are you with me?" I gripped her arm.
She took a deep breath. The tears ceased. "Yeah. I'm with you."
Looking behind . . .
Nothing.
I could detect the horrific smell of burning flesh and I tried not to think about Pogue.
Ten feet from the front door. Five feet.
A glance behind. The corridor was still empty. Maybe Pogue had taken out Loving and the remaining hostile.
I pushed through the door fast, inhaling the sweet damp air. My strategy was to shoot the tires out of the other cars and SUVs here, then get to mine. And drive fast. I'd call Freddy from the road. Coordinate the assault here. Amanda clung to my arm with one hand and clutched her pepper spray in the other. I saw a Metropolitan Police Department label on the side.
My phone buzzed with a text. It was Freddy, reporting that the troops would be here in twenty minutes or so.
I paused in front of the building and glanced back down the corridor again. It was still empty. Then I turned toward the vehicles. I lifted my Glock toward the tires, whispering, "Cover your ears."
Before I could shoot, though, I heard a noise behind me. I turned fast but saw nothing. The corridor was still empty.
I realized then that the noise was coming from above us.
I looked up to see Henry Loving launch himself from the roof. He crashed down onto Amanda and me, sending us sprawling on the concrete apron. I landed hard with a stunning, painful jolt in my spine. Air spurted from my lungs, and the Glock tumbled out of reach through the dirt and weeds.
Chapter 65
HIS CLOTHING SCORCHED--some skin too--Loving rolled off me onto the sidewalk that led to the facility's parking lot. He'd lost his weapon inside and his face was bleeding, though the wound didn't seem bad. He winced as he gripped his side, where his cousin had stitched him up from my gunshot at Carter's lake house.
As he struggled to get to the gun, I grabbed his leg and jacket.
I realized he'd used a fire door on the other side of the hill and had sprinted here through the grass and foliage of the camouflaged roof.
Amanda crawled forward toward him, brandishing her pepper spray. I started to tell her not to but it was too late. She cried out in rage and pushed it close to his face.
As he'd been expecting.
His hand shot out, grabbed the canister and twisted the nozzle toward us both. Amanda's battle cry turned to a scream of pain as a stream of the orange liquid shot out between us, catching both the girl and me in the peripheral mist.
The pain was excruciating. I jammed my eyes shut as the tears started and then opened them, squinting. Amanda had rolled to the ground and was wiping at her face frantically. Through the damp slit of vision I could see the lump of my weapon ahead of us, no more than five feet away from Loving's hand. He dropped the spray and began to pound on my arm with one hand and claw his way toward the gun with the other.
He dragged me a foot closer to the weapon. How could the unimposing man be so strong? I thought at first desperation was driving him but then I realized it was calm determination. He began kicking. One shoe caught my cheek and I tasted blood. Loving's whole purpose in life had become reaching that gun.
Which he did just a moment later.
As he spun toward me, I dug my feet into the ground and leapt forward. Gripping his wrist with one hand, I pulled car keys from my pocket with the other. "Can you drive?" I called to Amanda.
The girl said nothing but was staggering to her feet. She looked defiantly at Loving.
I repeated my question, shouting.
"Yes," she gasped, wiping her eyes.
I flung the keys to her. "My car's up the road. The Honda. There's an address on the front seat. Go there and wait!"
"I--"
"Now! Do it!"
She paused only a moment longer and then fled.
Loving's efforts grew more ferocious as he tried to shake me off. We were locked in a sweaty, agonizing wrestling match, fighting fiercely for control of the weapon. A moment later I heard my car start and the tires squeal as the girl sped into the night.
The lifter glanced toward the vanishing taillights without reaction and renewed his battle to escape my grip.
Then I began to feel my grip loosen . . . and finally Loving wrenched his gun hand free and swung the boxy Glock toward me hard. I felt the metal barrel slam into my temple and I was suddenly on my back, blood in my eyes, making them sting all the more. In seconds, Loving had my hands in restraints, then pulled me into a sitting position.
The lifter staggered to his feet, he too nearly spent. Breathing deeply, he hawked and spat. He looked in the direction that the girl had gone and gave a blink. His expression was as if he'd missed a parking space close to his destination. He pulled out a phone and placed a call, stepping away but watching closely. I couldn't hear what he said but I knew the message was to explain to the primary what had happened and tell him not to come here. He disconnected.
We regarded each other for a few seconds. He looked around again and then said, "I know you've called people in. But I estimate I've got twenty minutes."
I recalled that it had taken him only seven to get all the names he needed from Abe Fallow, lying beside that creek in North Carolina.
He continued softly, "Now, the address in your car, where the girl's going? It's not the safe house. You wouldn't write that down. Where?"
I thought of Amanda, getting away, speeding through the night, up and down the hills on Route 15.
A distant memory of Peggy and the boys surfaced. Sam and Jeremy. This time I couldn't dispose o
f it. Nor did I want to.
I said nothing to Loving.
He slipped my gun into his waistband and stepped closer. He pushed me onto my back and put restraints on my feet too, keeping his face back in case I tried to kick him, which wasn't going to happen. I just didn't have the strength.
He looked around once more and took a small, well-worn manila envelope from his pocket and shook the contents onto the ground.
So there it was. His tools of the trade to get subjects to talk. The alcohol was in a small bottle, not much bigger than one allowed on airplanes by TSA. The sandpaper was fine grained. The sort you'd use near the end of a refinishing job. It all looked so innocent.
For a moment I expected we would fall into a conversation. Some repartee. After all, we'd been opponents for years and had in the past two days been playing a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors over and over again.
But he was as serious a player as I was and went about his task skillfully.
What's his goal?
To find Amanda.
What's the most efficient way to achieve it?
He pulled my right shoe off, then the sock. Toes, like fingers, I knew, had a plentitude of nerves. They're among the most sensitive parts of the human body. He knelt on my calf to keep my leg immobile--which was in itself excruciating--and then selected a piece of sandpaper. He began to work on the front of my big toe.
Nothing for a moment, then I felt discomfort and finally an intense searing burn that coursed straight up into my face. I gasped involuntarily and finally shouted out in pain.
My nose hurt, my teeth, my throat.
All from his gentle sanding.
Loving reached for the bottle of alcohol and unscrewed the top, which he carefully put into his pocket. He didn't bother to look at me or say a word. The rules of play were obvious. Either I'd tell him where Amanda had gone or I wouldn't.
He tilted the bottle and I felt a burst of cold--this too merely irritating at first. But then the excruciating agony rose again to my jaw. Pain like pain I'd never felt. It was a creature, moving where it wanted throughout my body. Living, pulsing. Clever and driven. I could see it as colors, I could hear it.
"Rock, paper, scissors," I muttered between teeth jammed together. "Rock, paper, scissors." Through tear-filled eyes, I noticed Loving put the bottle down and pick up the sandpaper again.
"Rock, paper, scissors."
Peggy, Peggy, Peggy . . .
"Rock, paper, scissors . . ."
He started on a second toe.
I screamed.
Rock paper scissors rock paper . . .
Another scream.
He picked up the alcohol once again.
Then, as I gasped for breath, I heard two noises. The first was the snap of a branch not far away, in the direction of the road.
The second was a metallic click. A particular click that nobody in my line of work would mistake.
Loving knew it too, of course, and in an instant he'd dropped his implements of torture and was pulling my Glock from his waistband. He fell to his belly, wincing, as the first shot shook the night. It was a miss--but close. Dirt kicked up behind us.
The lifter rolled away from me seven or eight feet--he couldn't afford for me to get killed by a stray shot before he learned where Amanda was headed--and went prone again. We were in a lawn of low grass, which offered very poor cover.
Another shot. I glanced in the direction it came from and saw a man lumbering through the bushes, a revolver held forward in his hand, cocking and firing toward Loving. Initially I was surprised to see the newcomer's identity. But then I realized I shouldn't have been.
Ryan Kessler was one of the few people who knew where Pogue and I had been going.
The cop wasn't dodging or crouching. He didn't even slow down or cringe when Loving fired a burst of three. I couldn't see if Ryan had been hit; he just kept moving forward, squinting into the dark to find a clear target.
Then there was silence. Even in the dim light he was well within range of the Glock and yet Loving didn't fire again. I glanced up and saw why. Shooting my gun, he hadn't known how many rounds were left. He'd emptied the magazine; the slide was locked back, awaiting reloading.
Loving realized that I might have a fresh magazine on me, which in fact I did. He glanced toward Ryan, making steady progress, limping forward, trying to find a target.
Loving moved and Ryan fired. Then he too was out of ammo. I heard the click of the hammer on spent brass. He pulled a speed loader off his belt and flipped open the cylinder of the gun to eject and reload.
Loving scrabbled toward me and reached for my jacket pocket. I immediately spun over on my belly, ignoring the excruciating pain in my toe, to keep him from getting the extra ammo. Loving glanced at Ryan, who was inserting the round rack of shells, and then he tugged my jacket out from underneath me, reaching for the pocket. Ryan started walking closer.
Now, Loving was desperate.
I summoned whatever strength I had left and jerked my knees up, striking Loving hard in the side, where I'd shot him earlier. He gasped in pain and, off balance, sat back.
Then, grimacing, he blinked and leaned forward once more for my jacket. He fished for and found my full clip. He yanked it out and reloaded.
His face was only a few feet from mine when Ryan Kessler shot the lifter twice in the chest. Henry Loving blinked and slumped, then fell to his side. And as he died, it was my eyes, not the cop's, he was staring into.
Then Ryan Kessler too sat down, studying a bloody tear in his belly. His eyes were dismayed. Though not, it seemed, at this wound--which looked bad to me; it was Loving's second hit that troubled him most. He gave a disgusted sigh as he pressed his bleeding thigh. "My other leg." He looked at me. "My good one. Son of a bitch." Then he passed out.
Chapter 66
A HALF HOUR later--the old government facility lit up like a carnival and populated with a hundred agents and emergency workers--I was standing near the front of the compound.
Freddy's tac people, in respirators and masks, were working their way through the building and over the grounds, clearing the place for the fire crews. They'd found the other three hostiles, all dead, but the flames were still raging where Pogue had made his last stand and they couldn't get to his body yet. The guard out front was now conscious and in cuffs.
Nearby, medics were preparing to take Ryan Kessler to Leesburg Hospital for surgery. He'd regained consciousness and didn't seem as badly injured as I'd thought. "In and out," he told me, the same phrase Dr. Frank Loving had used to describe the course of my bullet through his cousin's side.
I'd called Joanne and told her that her stepdaughter was fine and that her husband had been shot. "He's stable," I told her. I gave her the name of a doctor to call. Then I broke the news to her about Pogue. There was a beat of a pause and then she thanked me for letting her know.
I wondered again about their history.
I asked, "You let Ryan out, didn't you?"
Another pause. "Yes. I kept Lyle distracted."
She must have watched one of us punch the code to deactivate the alarm to the door and memorized the number. Or maybe she had some special app in her security-blanket purse that cracked locks.
I explained to her, "He saved my life."
I saw Freddy approach. I told Joanne I'd call her back.
"Wait, Corte," she said.
"Yes?"
"Hold on."
A moment later I heard Maree's voice. "Corte?"
"Yes."
"You get hurt?"
"Nothing serious."
Silence.
"I'm glad." Then, incongruously, she added, "I just wanted to say . . . I got an image of you. When we were by the river? Remember?"
I digested this for a moment. "Yes."
"It's really good."
"An image."
She hesitated. "You're sure you're all right?"
"I'm fine, yes. I have to go."
"All right. Call me when you ca
n."
Now I hesitated. "Sure." We disconnected. Freddy now joined me.
I asked, "What'd you find?"
"This's a mystery wrapped in whatever else that expression says."
I glanced his way impatiently.
"Okay, here we go. Loving we know. The others?" He swept his hand around the compound. "They were capital C contractors. As in former-Blackwater-type contractors. Not that outfit but you get the meaning."
Mercenaries, security forces. I wasn't surprised, given what I'd seen in the wallet of the guard we'd knocked out. But I was discouraged. Groups like that were expert at leaving no traces back to their primaries. "So we just don't know," I offered.
"That pretty much says it, son."
"And him?" I looked toward the revived guard.
Freddy said, "Wants a lawyer like a baby wants a bottle."
"Loving made a call. I'm sure he warned the primary off. You check his phone?"
"No record of anything. You didn't expect there would be, did you?"
"No."
"We got Loving," Freddy pointed out. Probably thinking I'd consider this a major victory.
I muttered, "But I want the primary." I found myself gazing at the tarp covering Loving's body.
I asked the agent, "You clean out your department?"
Freddy's lips tightened. "An assistant in Communications. I checked her phone records. She'd been making calls through a dead letter line in the Caribbean over the past day. Loving got the names of her kids and the school they go to, so she fed him everything he wanted."
Edge . . .
"Her kids are okay?"
"Yeah. Sometimes all you need is to mention a name or two. You don't need implements of torture."
"That'll do it." Aware my toe was still in agony.
"I don't know about bringing charges against her. I don't like the idea but I may have to."
"And Zagaev? His family?"
"You were right. Loving paid them a visit, too--to get him to pretend he was the primary. But they're fine." A shrug. "The guy didn't do anything wrong, either, except lie to us and cart around some guns he shouldn't've. So . . . I don't know, we'll have to see about charges for him too." Freddy laughed. "He apologized for saying bad things to you about the pumpkin. He didn't want to. He said you seemed like a nice man."
Freddy headed off to consult with his teams and the state police.
I found myself looking over at Henry Loving's body. All his personal effects had been gathered and were sitting on a tarp next to him. I walked over and looked down at them. A wallet, a small wad of cash. A knife. The sandpaper and alcohol. An empty pistol magazine. Maps and pens, scraps of paper. Six cell phones. All encrypted and missing call logs. I knew the models and the software; it would take Hermes weeks to get information from them--if at all.