Into the Crossfire (27 page)

Jesus fucking Christ.

Outlaw melted into the shadows, moving beyond the cop's vision, thinking

furiously.

Now there were two cops to take out, besides the nurse. Count in Nicole

Pearce and her father, that made five fucking bodies. His usual fee didn't cover

that. Particularly not snuffing cops. Cops never gave up on cop killings. There was

no such thing as a cold case when a cop was offed. It remained hot till the end of

time.

Outlaw's hits were carefully planned and even more carefully executed. No

improv, no surprises. He'd avoided capture so far because he left nothing to

chance. No prints, no DNA, nada. He was meticulous, almost surgical in his

precision.

Tonight he was being forced to work on the fly, leaving behind a trail of

dead bodies, two of them cops.

Furious, he pulled out his Blackberry and sent an encrypted message.

Job now requires taking out two cops, a nurse and sick old man. Will need

backup. Awaiting instructions.

He was well hidden behind a neighbor's tool shed and was prepared to wait

all night for instructions, but it wasn't necessary. Fifteen minutes later, he had an

answer.

Check your bank. Then do it. Expenses OK.

When he checked his bank account, there was a payment for $1,000,000

there. Shit, for a cool million and a half, he'd off an extra two cops, a nurse and a

sick geezer. Particularly since he had the element of surprise.

Killing two cops was serious stuff, though. He'd have to take the money

and disappear for a while. A year, maybe more. There was a small property he'd

bought in Costa Rica. He could add to it, make himself real comfortable. Dollars

went a long way there. He could stay off the grid for a long time.

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His gun was untraceable: he'd loaded the magazines wearing latex. He

turned everything over in his mind, planning it step by step until he knew it was

feasible.

It was a go.

He waited. The cops rang the doorbell and talked to the nurse, then went

back to the patrol car and called in a report.

He quietly made his way back to the rental Lexus and pulled out. A couple

of minutes later, he was pulling up beside the Crown Vic parked outside the

Pearce home.

He buzzed down the window, a smile on his face. He knew what the cops

were seeing. A perfectly normal guy in a suit driving an expensive car, clearly lost.

He pasted a sheepish expression on his face.

"Good evening...officers." He let his eyes go wide, as if just noticing they

were in uniform.

"Sir," the uniform in the driver's seat said.

Outlaw widened his smile. "I need some help here. I think I'm really off

base. My GPS is on the fritz. I'm looking for the Gaslamp Quarter, and I've been

driving around in circles for the past hour."

"Well, you're going in the wrong direction. You'll have to--" The cop never

finished the sentence. A red hole blossomed on his forehead and a halo of pink

mist surrounded his head. The pink mist erupted around the other cop's head, too.

There had only been the softest of sounds, completely inaudible to anyone even

five feet away.

There was no one within five feet. There was no one within a hundred feet.

Outlaw had heard the cops checking in. This would be a routine

surveillance. They'd only check in a couple of times in the shift, but it would be

well to move fast now. As sure as hell as soon as the two cops didn't report in, this

place would be swarming with cops.

He wanted the whole job over fast. They'd be searching airports, bus and

train stations.

Time for backup.

Outlaw had a list of collaborators, ex-military all. Men more than willing to

use their gifts and training in the private sector.

He didn't need to check a Rolodex or his cell address book. Every number

he needed in his life he had committed to memory. He pulled out his Thuraya

satellite cell phone. The records were kept in Saudi Arabia. The US government

could not eavesdrop and could never requisition the records. Not even the NSA

could listen in.

The phone at the other end was picked up immediately. It was past

midnight, but the voice was alert. Warren Wilson, ex-Army, specialist driver, good

mechanic, good shot. But above all, he had a boat and he lived in San Diego.

"I'll need a hand for twenty-four, maybe thirty-six hours. Fifty grand."

Outlaw kept the amount low to leave room for negotiation.

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"You got it. What do you need?"

"A safe place for a couple of hours for an interrogation. Then a boat to take

me to near Cabo San Lucas in Baja and a car from there."

Silence for a moment, then Outlaw heard tapping sounds, someone on a

keyboard. "Okay. I'm sending you the GPS co-ordinates of an abandoned

waterfront warehouse right now. My boat will be anchored right outside. I'll get a

buddy of mine to meet us at Cabo with a car. It'll cost you, though. $150,000

because I need to give something to my buddy down in Baja."

"Deal." Outlaw flipped the cell closed. That went well. He'd been willing to

go up to two hundred grand.

He parked the car right in front of the Pearce house. Even if someone

noticed it, it didn't matter. The rental had been with fake ID and Outlaw had

switched plates with another Lexus at the airport. By the time they straightened it

out, he'd be south of the border.

He walked calmly around the house, gun held down by his thigh. Time to

pick that pathetic back-door lock, get rid of the nurse and get the old man to the

warehouse.

He had to move fast. It was late and he wasn't even halfway through

tonight's killing.

"You okay?" Sam asked for the millionth time. He shot another worried

glance over at Nicole, noticing all over again how fucking pale she looked. Every

time he saw the dried blood on her temple he winced, because it could have been

worse than some broken skin and clotted blood. It could have been a hole.

He knew exactly what that beautiful head would have looked like if the

fuckhead had pulled the trigger. Gun residue stippling the creamy pale skin

surrounding a neat round hole that wouldn't be so neat and so round on the other

side of her head.

Sam had seen so many dead faces, dead people in his time, hundreds of

them. So it wasn't hard to picture a Nicole with a hole in her head, collapsed to the

floor of her very small, very pretty office where she created miracles with

languages and was working hard to develop a fascinating young company. Sam

knew exactly what her dead face would look like, he could see it on the insides of

his eyelids when he closed his eyes.

Her eyes, so lively--the irises that amazing cobalt blue--lifeless, like

beautifully colored marbles. Her skin, ivory with the rosiness of good health right

underneath, would be the color of ice, and just as cold. All that grace, all that

beauty, gone in an instant.

That was if she'd had a bullet blown through her head. Being thrown out of

a ninth-floor window conjured up an entirely new set of ghoulish images.

Sam had watched, helpless, as the carabineer of a good friend snapped open

during mountain training in the Cascades, dropping the man 150 feet to crash onto

the rocks. Sam and the rest of the team had gone back down the mountain to pick

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up the remains of their fellow soldier. Every bone in the body had been broken and

it had been like a sack of marbles except for the torso, which had cracked open and

spilled out about a yard of intestine.

Nicole, after plunging nine stories to the sidewalk. Christ, that one was

enough to give him nightmares, too.

Nicole turned and drummed up a smile for him. Something in his face must

have betrayed what was going through his mind, because she laid a hand on his

arm. "I'm okay, Sam. Really. Just a little shaken up."

Not as shaken up as he was. His fucking hands trembled.

Whoa.

There was no such thing as a nervous or overly sensitive SEAL. They just

didn't grow them nervous, and if they were, they were weeded straight out in

selection.

Sam was known for being cold-blooded. During training in the shooting

house with live ammo, a pencil-dick geek had come and wired them up and taken

blood samples after each session. Doubtless sent by Christians In Action. CIA

refused to reveal the findings of the study but Cakewalk Potowski, who never met

a computer he didn't like and couldn't crack, found the results buried deep in the

heart of Langley.

Turned out the SEAL team's heart rate and the cortisol and catecholamine

levels--the stress hormones--remained stable even under live fire. Sam's heartbeat

hadn't altered even when a flashbang went off in the room.

The geek, with an alphabet soup of letters after his name, had concluded the

report with the morose observation that "efficient counterterrorism agents appear

to have an essentially inhuman nervous system, not subject to the normal flight or

fight reflex that has been part of the human legacy for ten thousand years."

Fuckhead called them aliens?

Well old pencil-dick would have been astonished to see him now. His heart

was pounding in his chest, still. Every time he started to calm down, he'd get an

image of a dead Nicole right there in front of his eyes--head blown apart or body

cracked open, take your pick of nightmares--in living color, and he'd start sweating

all over again.

Sam was normally a fast, good driver, but right now, he was driving as if

carrying sweating TNT.

He could barely concentrate on the road. Nicole in the car with him just ate

up all his hard disk. Having her by his side and driving seemed like mutually

exclusive things.

He didn't want to hurt her in any way. Sam had intercepted her on her way

toward the window, but her right side had crashed into a bookcase. Sam turned

corners like a seventy-year-old grandmother because he couldn't stand the thought

of her jostling against the car door.

"You're not okay." Sam ground his teeth. "You nearly died. Twice." Just

saying it made his heart rate pick up even more.

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"Yes, I know. Believe me, I know." She gave a deep sigh, her slender hand

tightening on his arm. "But I didn't. That was entirely thanks to you. You have no

idea how grateful I am that you can pick locks like a pro."

"Well, goddammit, that's another thing," Sam said heatedly, aggrieved.

Happy that anger chased a little of the fear away. "Why the fuck didn't you put in a

security system? The guy just fucking waltzed into your office, just about anyone

off the street could just fucking--"

His cell phone rang and he put it on speakerphone. "Yeah?" he barked.

Mike's deep voice came through, slow and reassuring. "Our guys gave a

perimeter check outside Nicole's house, talked to the nurse, checked on Nicole's

father; everything's okay. They'll be relieved tomorrow morning and another twoman team will take over."

Nicole slumped in relief, eyes closed. "Thanks so much, Mike."

"Yeah. No problem." His voice grew louder. "So the old man's taken care

of, Sam. You hold up your end. Make sure nothing happens to Nicole."

"Oh yeah. Count on it." If Sam had to tie her to a chair and stand guard, he

would. "Did you get a face off our camera?"

"Yeah. Harry got two really good shots, one full face, one in three-quarter

profile. He sent it as a JPEG here to headquarters. It's already in the system. If this

guy so much as jaywalked in the past ten years, we'll know about it. I'll stay here

until we get an answer, and I'll let you know right away."

That made Sam feel better. Once they got the fucker's name, they could

find an address and he could go kill him. Discreetly. He'd take care of it himself.

Just disappear for a day or two, do the job and then nothing else would ever

threaten Nicole again. He wouldn't let it.

"Good," he grunted. "Stay on top of it."

"You bet. Harry's with the building night guards right now, trying to figure

out how he got in and out. We'll nail him. Don't worry about that." He closed the

connection.

Nicole turned to look at him. "I'm really grateful for all you're doing for me,

Sam. And all that Harry and Mike and Mike's police officer friend are doing."

A bruise was starting to blacken at her temple and he could see dark flesh

under her light white shirt along her right shoulder.

He shuddered.

"You've stepped into something nasty, Nicole." He picked up her hand and

raised it to his mouth. "We've got to keep it far away from you and from your dad

while we track it down. But you've got to help us, honey. You've got to come up

with what he's looking for. We need to know that to keep you safe."

Nicole rubbed her forehead with her free hand, looking troubled. "You

think I don't understand that? I do, believe me, I do. I keep running over

everything that might be in my computer and I come up with basically nothing that

could possibly be of interest to anyone. Wordsmith simply doesn't get vital or

confidential texts to translate. Though we will, you can count on that. And we'll

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charge top dollar for them. Oh yeah." She smiled at the thought.