Текст книги "The Hit"

Автор книги: David Baldacci

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

“About a quarter-mile walk from here. The cabins are spread out in the woods, but there’re signs posted telling you where each one is. You can leave your car in the lot out front and walk back there. The trail starts right behind the center of the motel.”

A few minutes later Robie was walking on the trail toward Cabin 14 with his knapsack over his left shoulder.

And his Glock in his right hand.

CHAPTER

55

CABIN 14 WAS EXACTLY AS Gwen had described it. Rustic. He set his knapsack down on the bed that was barely more than a cot. It was shorter than Robie was tall.

Woodstove in the corner. A table. A chair. A toilet and sink behind a makeshift enclosure. Two windows on opposite walls. He went to one window and looked out.

There was no cabin in sight, just trees. People who rented them must want their privacy. He would have to do a walk around to get the lay of the land.

He had seen the sign for Cabin 17. It was to his left. He just didn’t know how far. He was so deep in the woods now that he could hear no cars, no people talking. No TVs or radios.

He could be alone with nature.

Only maybe he wasn’t alone.

He sat in the one chair, facing the door, his Glock in his right hand. With his left hand he slid the book on World War II out of his knapsack. It was the last unsolved clue.

Everything she did had a purpose.

She was linear.

I like to begin at the beginning and end at the end.

He opened the book. He had looked through it before, but not all that carefully. It was a long book and he just hadn’t had the time.

Now he felt like he had to make the time.

The light was rapidly diminishing and the cabin was not wired for electricity. As he slowly turned the pages and it drew darker, he put his gun aside and used a small flashlight to illuminate the page.

However, he kept glancing at the door and windows. The latter had curtains, but he was aware that his light made him a target. He had moved the chair to a point in the room where he was in no direct sight line from outside.

He had pushed the table in front of the door after locking it. He figured if someone burst in he would have enough time to douse the light, grab his weapon, aim, and fire. At least he hoped so.

He slowly turned the pages, taking in every word. When he came to the middle of chapter sixteen he stopped.

The section was entitled simply “The White Rose.”

Robie read swiftly. The White Rose was the name taken by a resistance group of mostly college students in Munich during World War II who worked against the tyranny of the Nazis. The group had taken its name from a novel about peasant exploitation in Mexico. Most of the members of the White Rose were executed by the Nazis. But pamphlets they had printed were smuggled out of Germany and dropped by the millions from Allied bombers. After the war the members of the White Rose had been hailed as heroes.

Robie slowly closed the book and set it aside.

Once more adopting Reel’s obsession with order and logic, he went through the ordeal of the White Rose and tried to graft those elements onto her situation.

The White Rose had fought against Nazi tyranny.

They had felt betrayed.

They hadn’t killed anyone, but they had attempted to stoke anger against the Nazis in order to see them stopped.

They had been killed for their troubles.

Robie slowly turned this over in his mind and then moved forward in time.

Reel had been fighting against something.

She had felt betrayed.

She had taken action to stop whoever was against her, and that included killing. But that’s what she did. The woman was no college student writing pamphlets.

The jury was still out on whether she would sacrifice her life or not.

Then Robie thought back to DiCarlo’s words.

Personnel missing.

Equipment moved.

Missions that never should have been.

And Blue Man. According to him a different dynamic seemed to be in place.

DiCarlo had been distrustful of people within her own agency. She’d had only two bodyguards with her because of this. And she’d been both proved right and paid the price for such limited protection.

Allegedly, Reel had gone off the grid and murdered two members of her own agency. If she’d done so, again according to Blue Man, it might have been because they were on the wrong side and Reel was on the side of right.

If all that was true, then the agency was full of traitors, and they went very high in the pecking order. At least as high as Gelder and maybe higher.

And then there was the matter of Roy West.

He had been with the agency. He had written some sort of apocalypse paper. He had joined a militia. He was now dead.

Robie picked up his gun and checked his watch. He had not come here simply to read a book.

It would soon be dark, and darker still where he was, with no source of light other than the stars, which were now hidden behind a gauzy veil of clouds.

He opened his knapsack and pulled out his night optics. He put them on and fired them up. They worked fine, turning the invisible to visible.

Robie’s plan was simple.

He was going to visit Cabin 17.

The darkness would be both a benefit and danger to him.

If it wasn’t occupied, Robie would find what he could. If the cabin yielded no clues he would have wasted a lot of time and come away with nothing.

He wondered what his next step would be if that turned out to be the case. Go back to D.C.? Go back on the grid? After what he suspected? That his agency was compromised and corrupted?

His last text exchange with Reel had without doubt been picked up by others. They would want to know what Robie had deduced. They would want to know where he had gone. They might want him dead, depending on his answers.

Well, then I just won’t give them any answers until I know which side folks are really on.

He had relied on a moral compass that by some miracle he still had inside him, despite what he did for a living. That meant he couldn’t walk away from this one. That meant he had to confront it at some point.

He waited until after two in the morning before setting out. He opened the door of Cabin 14 and stepped out into the pitch black.

Next stop, Cabin 17.

CHAPTER

56

IT LOOKED JUST LIKE CABIN 14, except there was a flowerpot out front on the porch with a single drooping flower. The first frost would kill it off. The flowerpot also had a cat painted on it.

Robie was standing back at the tree line. His gaze went to the door of the cabin, to the flower, and then to the surrounding darkness.

Through his night optics, the world was presented in sharp relief. But it couldn’t show him everything. There could be something else out there that he didn’t see.

So he studied that flowerpot for a long time, wondering why it was there. Just one droopy flower. And it was one that needed sun, as many flowers did. Yet there was no sun here. Which meant there was no reason to plant it in a pot and put it on the steps.

It made no sense. And thus it made perfect sense. Everything Reel did had a purpose.

He went back over the Eastern Shore fiasco frame by frame in his head. He had fired at the door and the porch, trying to set off booby traps from a safe distance.

He twirled a suppressor onto the muzzle of his Glock, aimed, and fired twice. The pot cracked, and dirt and flower parts flew up into the air.

There was no explosion.

But through his night optics Robie did see the remains of some device whirling off into the darkness.

He moved closer and examined some of this debris: the shattered parts of a surveillance camera. He picked up a piece of the clay pot. A hole had been bored into it and then hidden by the picture of the cat.

The pot had been Reel’s eyes.

And Robie had just blinded her.

It felt good.

And he also now had confirmation that the renter of Cabin 17 was indeed Jessica Reel. She had given him the clues to get here.

But that didn’t make him trust her.

He slipped his thermal imager out of his knapsack, fired it up, and pointed it at the cabin. Nothing living inside registered on its screen.

But that had happened last time and still Robie had almost fried.

Ultimately, he decided he just had to get it done. He moved stealthily toward the cabin, knelt, and fired at the door and the porch floor.

Nothing happened other than metal ripping through old wood.

He waited, listening for sounds.

A scampering in the trees was a squirrel or deer. Humans couldn’t move like that.

He crab-walked forward some more, squatted, and studied the structure.

There wasn’t much remaining to deduce from the outside. He hoped the inside would be a lot more informative.

He moved toward the porch and hurried up the steps to the door. One kick and the wooden door flew back. Robie was in the room in the next second and had cleared it five seconds after that. He shut the door behind him, pulled his flashlight, and shined it around.

What he saw was not what he had been expecting. There was no SORRYstenciled on the wall.

There could be a firebomb in here somewhere, but he didn’t focus on that. There was a woodstove, a table, chairs, and a bed. And a small toilet and sink. Just like his cabin. On the table was a battery-powered lantern. He examined it for booby traps, found none, turned it on, and the room became dimly illuminated.

Also on the table were two pictures set in frames.

One was of Doug Jacobs.

The other was of Jim Gelder.

Black slashes had been drawn across the pictures of the dead men.

There were three other frames lined up next to them. There were no pictures in them. In front of the frames was a single white rose.

He picked up the pictures of Jacobs and Gelder and checked to see if anything was hidden behind them. There was nothing. He did the same with the three other frames.

Robie wondered whose pictures Reel intended to insert in these when and if the time came. And he still didn’t know why, other than that for some reason she thought these men were traitors to their country.

Robie still had no proof of that.

But what had happened to Janet DiCarlo made him realize that something was off. He touched the white rose. It felt moist. Perhaps it had recently been placed here.

He whipped around so fast, he heard her gasp at the speed of his reflexes.

His gun was pointed right at her head, his finger past the trigger guard and near the trigger itself. One twitch of his finger and she was dead from a third eye between her other two.

But it wasn’t Jessica Reel.

It was Gwen from behind the counter at the Bull’s-Eye Inn who stared back at him.

CHAPTER

57

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” demanded Robie.

He did not lower his pistol. She was old but she could still be a threat.

She said calmly, “I could ask you the same question, young man. This is not Cabin 14. This is Cabin 17. As I told you, it’s already rented.”

“Doesn’t seem to be anyone here. Doesn’t look lived in at all. Just photos and a white rose on the table.”

Gwen looked past him to the photos and flower then drew her gaze back to him. “Doesn’t matter. They paid, and it’s theirs to do with what they want.”

“Who exactly are ‘they’?”

“Like I said before, confidential.”

“I think we’re well past confidences, Gwen. I think you need to tell me right now.”

“She won’t but I will.”

Robie swung his pistol around to take aim at the newcomer.

Jessica Reel was standing in front of him.

What surprised him was that she had no gun. Her arms were down by her sides. Robie ran his gaze quickly over her.

Reel said, “No weapons, Will. No throwing knife. No tricks.”

Robie remained silent as she took another deliberate step into the room. He kept swiveling his gaze between both women.

Reel had said she was unarmed, something he didn’t believe. But she hadn’t said the old woman wasn’t packing. And at this short distance even an eighty-year-old could shoot and kill him.

“You two know each other?” he asked at last.

“You could say that,” replied Reel. “She was my security blanket.”

Robie cocked his head questioningly at her.

“I thought if she was here you wouldn’t put a bullet in my head.”

“I didn’t in Arkansas.”

“I appreciate that more than you’ l l ever know. But circumstances change.”

“Yes, they do. But why would you think her being here would stop me from killing you now?”

“Because if you kill me, you’d have to kill her. And you don’t kill innocent people. It’s not how you’re wired.”

Robie shook his head. “How do I know she’s innocent? She doesn’t seem surprised by any of this.”

Gwen said, “But I was. Didn’t think you could move that fast. Scared me.”

“He always did move fast,” said Reel. “But no unnecessary movement. Everything calculated for maximum efficiency. I saw that in Arkansas vividly. A one-man army.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“With you pointing a gun at me. Like back in Arkansas.”

“Doesn’t really answer the question.”

“What do you want the answer to be?”

“You killed two members of the agency in cold blood. Under normal circumstances that would be enough of an answer for me. That’s what I told you in Arkansas, and that’s what I’m telling you now. Back there I asked for an explanation. I’m asking again.”

She took another step forward. “Under normal circumstances?” she said.

Robie let his finger slide past the trigger guard and close in on the trigger. Reel noted this and stopped moving. They both knew he was close to the point of no return.

Gwen hovered in the background looking tense, her gaze focused on Reel.

Robie said, “DiCarlo? She made it clear to me that the situation was not normal.” Robie gestured over his shoulder to the table. “White Rose? Resistance group in World War II. Fought against what they considered the traitorous Nazis.”

“I was afraid they’d police the roses I left.”

“They did, only they missed a couple of petals. Probably the only reason they left the book in your locker for me to look at. They didn’t think I’d have any evidence of the flower.”

“Good to know they make mistakes.”

“My problem, though, is that maybe you’re the traitor and all this is a smokescreen.”

“Maybe I am.”

“Jess!” snapped Gwen. “You know that’s not true.”

Robie let his gaze flicker over the old woman. He had already noted she was fully dressed, though the hour was very late.

This was all planned.

Robie asked Gwen, “Who exactly are you?”

Gwen looked at Reel but said nothing. Reel slowly turned to look at her. Robie thought he saw her smile, though it was hard to tell in the poor light.

Reel said, “An old friend of mine. A very old friend. Family, actually.”

“I didn’t think you had any. Your mom’s dead. You old man’s in prison for life.”

“Gwen was the only decent foster parent I had.”

“When they took you away...” Gwen began, but her voice faltered.

“If you were a good foster parent, why was she taken away?”

Reel answered, “There is no logic in foster care. What happens happens.”

“Okay, but that doesn’t explain why she’s here.”

Reel said, “I bought this place four years ago. Under an alias, of course. I brought Gwen up to run it.”

“You own the motor court?” said Robie in surprise.

“I had to put my money somewhere. And while I wasn’t that concerned about turning a profit, I did want a place where I could get away.”

“Literally get away?” said Robie.

She glanced past him to the photos on the table. “Aren’t you going to ask me about them?”

“I thought I already did. I don’t remember hearing an answer other than they were traitors but you had no proof.”

“I walked in here with no weapon. What does that tell you?”

“That you want to talk, so talk. I especially want to hear about the apocalypse.”

“It’s a very long story.”

“My calendar is clear for the rest of the year.”

“Can you lower your weapon?”

“I don’t think so.”

She held out her hands. “You can cuff me if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Tell me what you need to tell me. Explain to me why you put a bullet in Doug Jacobs when you were supposed to be planting a round between the eyes of a man who has sworn to destroy our country. Tell me why Jim Gelder had to die. And tell me why you killed an analyst turned militia freak. I’m really looking forward to the answers. It might save your life. Might,” he added.

“I told you, I didn’t kill Roy West. He tried to kill me and I defended myself. He died from shrapnel wounds when his house blew up.”

“Why go out there at all?”

“He had something I needed.”

“Yeah, you told me that in Arkansas. But what? You told me you’d already read the paper he’d written.”

“Confirmation.”

“Of what?”

“Of which people had seen the paper.” Reel watched him expectantly. “You had figured that out. I can tell by your expression.”

“You killed those people over think-tank bullshit?”

“It wasn’t a think tank. And it wasn’t bullshit. At least to certain people it wasn’t. The paper was not widely circulated. But a few key people read it. People in a position to make the plan contained in the paper a reality. And if that happens, Robie . . .” Her voice trailed off.

He was just about to ask what specifically the paper said when they both heard it.

People were coming.

Not deer. Not squirrels. Not bears.

People. For it was only people who moved with stealth like that. And both Reel and Robie recognized the movements.

Reel snapped her head around at Robie. The accusation in her face was clear. “I didn’t expect this of you, Robie. You led them right here.”

In answer Robie reached behind his back, slid his spare gun out of its holster, and tossed it to her. She caught it, racked the slide, and held it loosely in her hand.

Now it was Reel’s turn to look surprised.

“They’re not with me,” said Robie.

“Then you were followed.”

He turned off the lantern, plunging the cabin into darkness. “Looks that way. I just don’t know how. Is there another way out of here?”

Reel said, “Yes, there is.”

CHAPTER

58

REEL WENT TO THE CORNER of the room, shoved the table aside, knelt down, and lifted up a section of the floor, revealing a three-foot-square opening.

“Where does that go?” asked Robie, who sounded chagrined that he hadn’t noticed it before.

“Away from here.”

She sat on her butt and dropped down into the hole. “Let’s go. They won’t be waiting out there long.”

“Then let me persuade them they should exercise some caution,” said Robie.

He moved to the window and fired five shots through it. He placed his rounds in a wide enough array that anyone approaching would be forced to take cover. Then he moved to the hole and dropped through. He stood up and motioned to Gwen. “Come on.”

Gwen shook her head. “I’ll just slow you down.”

Reel stood next to Robie. “Gwen, you’re not staying behind.”

“I’m old and just worn out, Jess.”

“This is not open for discussion. Come on.”

Gwen slipped a revolver from the front pocket of her dress and pointed it at Reel. “You’re right. This is not open for discussion, Jess. Go.”

Reel looked at her in disbelief.

Robie pulled on her arm. “Not much time.”

They heard footsteps approaching from all sides.

“Go!” snapped Gwen. “I didn’t raise you to die like this. You’re going to go and finish this, Jess. Now.”

Robie slung his bag over his shoulder, pulled Reel down into the hole, and then moved the piece of flooring back into place. Gwen scuttled over and repositioned the table back over the opening. Then she turned to the door to face what was coming.

Robie and Reel had to crawl on their bellies. At one point in the tunnel there was a large knapsack. Reel snagged it, slung it over her shoulder, and kept crawling.

“Where does it come out?” asked Robie.

“In the woods,” she whispered. Her voice was strained.

Robie knew where her mind was. On Gwen. On what was about to happen to her. But maybe they wouldn’t hurt the old woman.

The gunshots they both heard moments later settled that question. Barely inches behind her in the tunnel, Robie ran up the backs of Reel’s legs as she stopped at the sound.

They just lay there for several seconds. Robie could hear Reel breathing fast.

“You okay?” he finally asked.

“Let’s go,” she said in a husky voice, and she started crawling again.

What they heard thirty seconds later made them accelerate their movements. Other people had dropped into the tunnel. Robie and Reel whipped their bodies back and forth, performing a hyper-speed version of the Army crawl.

A minute later Reel stood, pushed against something, and then her legs disappeared from sight. Robie scrambled up after her, gained purchase on the dirt, and looked around.

They were in the middle of the forest.

The cover for the tunnel had been well designed: a fabricated tree stump made of lightweight materials.

Reel unzipped her bag, slipped out a grenade, counted to five, pulled the pin, bent down, and tossed it as far down the tunnel as she could.

Then they both ran for it, Reel in the lead because she knew where to go, Robie right behind. His gun was out and he was alternating between following Reel and covering their rear flank.

The explosion wasn’t loud, but they could both hear it clearly.

“That was for Gwen,” Robie heard Reel say as they raced through a barely discernible path between the trees.

Up a he ad was an old shack. Reel headed right for it. She unlocked the door, darted inside, and a few moments later came out, rolling a dirt bike behind her.

“I wasn’t expecting company. It’ll be a tight fit.”

They could barely sit on the seat together. Reel drove and Robie clung to her. He was now carrying both bags over his shoulders. As they wound through the trees he was nearly thrown off several times, but just managed to maintain his seat.

Twenty minutes later they finally hit asphalt after clearing a cleft in the trees and then a broad ditch that Reel simply jumped. They landed so hard that Robie thought he would leave his privates behind. But he gritted his teeth and clung to the woman. She rotated the throttle to maximum and roared off down the road.

“Where to?” Robie shouted in her ear as the wind whipped them both.

“Not here,” she yelled back.

They drove for what seemed like hours, and finally ditched the bike behind an abandoned gas station on the outskirts of a small town. They walked into the town, which was made up of decrepit buildings and mom-and-pop stores.

The sun was starting to rise. Robie looked over at Reel, now revealed in the coming dawn. She was dirty, disheveled. As was he.

She looked straight ahead, the anger on her face almost painful to see.

“I’m sorry about Gwen,” said Robie.

Reel didn’t answer him.

An Amtrak train station loomed ahead. It was just a tired-looking old brick building on a raised platform with a slender ribbon of track next to it. A few people were sitting on wooden benches waiting for their early morning ride to somewhere.

Reel went inside and paid cash for two tickets. She came back out and handed one to Robie.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Not here,” she said.

“You keep saying that. But it doesn’t really tell me anything.”

“I’m not prepared to have this discussion yet.”

“Then get prepared as soon as this ride is over,” said Robie.

He walked down the platform and leaned against the wall, looking in the direction from which they had come.

How did they follow me? How did they know?

There wasn’t anybody. I could swear there wasn’t anybody who could have known.

In his pocket was his Glock. He gripped it with one hand. He had a strong feeling that things were not safe yet.

He was still holding both the bag from the tunnel and his knapsack. He glanced over at Reel. She was just standing there next to the tracks.

Robie assumed she was thinking about Gwen lying dead back there.

Ten minutes later he heard the train coming. It came to a stop with a long screech of brakes and release of hydraulic pressure. He and Reel boarded the middle car.

This was not the Acela bullet train. The car looked like it had been in service since Amtrak was created in the early seventies.

They were the only passengers on this car. There was a single attendant, a sleepy-looking black man in a uniform that didn’t fit him very well. He yawned, took their tickets, stuck them to the back of their seats, and told them where the café car was located if they were hungry or thirsty.

“The conductor will be along at some point to take your tickets,” he said. “Enjoy the ride.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Robie, while Reel just stared straight ahead.

As the train rolled out of the station the attendant walked up the aisle and disappeared into the next car, probably to make his spiel to the few passengers there.

Robie and Reel settled down in their seats, he at the window, she at the aisle. Robie had put both bags at his feet.

Minutes passed and he said, “So where are we going?”

“I’ve booked us through to Philly, but we can get off at any stop in between.”

“What’s in your bag besides grenades?”

“Things we might need.”

“Who was the old guy in the photo with you?”

“Friend of a friend.”

“Why not the friend?”

She glanced at him in mild reproach. “Too easy. If I’d done that, do you think they would have left the photo for you to see? They’re an intelligence agency, Robie, so you have to assume they have somedegree of it to exercise.”

“So the friend?”

“Give me a few minutes. I’m trying to deal with the loss of another friend, maybe my last one.”

Robie was about to push her, but then something told him not to.

The loss of a friend. I can relate to that.

“Did you dig that tunnel?”

She shook her head. “It was already there. Maybe bootleggers. Maybe some criminal owned it and that was his escape hatch. When I bought the place and found it I made Cabin 17 my hideaway for that very reason.”

“Good thing you did.”

She looked away. She obviously didn’t want to talk anymore.

“You want something to eat or drink?” he asked a few minutes later as the train started to slow. They were probably approaching another podunk station where a few more sleepy people would climb aboard.

“Coffee, nothing to eat,” she said curtly, still not looking at him.

“I’ll get some stuff, just in case you change your mind.”

He walked up the aisle and kept going until he reached the café car. There was one person ahead of him, a woman dressed in a jean skirt, boots, and a tattered coat. She gathered up her coffee, pastries, and a bag of chips and headed on her way. She stumbled as the train slid into the station and stopped.

Robie helped right her and then stepped up to the counter. The uniformed man behind it was about sixty with a full gray beard and small narrow eyes behind thick glasses.

“What can I get you, sir?” he asked Robie.

Robie looked at the offerings on the menu board behind the counter. “Two coffees, two muffins, and three packs of peanuts.”

“Just brewing a fresh pot. Coming up.”

“No hurry.” Robie turned and looked out the window. This station looked even smaller than the one at which they had boarded. He couldn’t even see the name of the place, although he assumed it had to be posted somewhere.

The next moment he forgot about that.

At the far side of the station, its bumper hanging out just far enough that he could see it, was a black Range Rover.

Robie looked at the few passengers getting on. One was an old woman carrying her belongings in a pillowcase.

Another was a teenage girl with a battered suitcase.

The last passenger was a black man in his forties. He was dressed in not overly clean bib overalls and falling-apart work boots, and he had a dirty knapsack slung over one shoulder.

Robie did not like to stereotype, but none of the new passengers looked like patrons of the Range Rover brand.

When the man behind the counter turned to him with two fresh cups of coffee, Robie was gone.

CHAPTER

59

GUN OUT, Robie reentered the train car. He looked down the aisle. Reel was still in her seat, but she looked stiff, unnatural.

Robie looked around. He saw no obvious breach points.

He looked back at Reel, squatted low, and moved forward, prepared to fire in an instant. He cleared each row of seats until he got to Reel and looked up at her.

Only it wasn’t her.

It was a man.

With his throat cut.

Robie glanced down. Her bag was gone.

Where was Reel?

A voice called out softly, “Robie, over here.”

He glanced up. Reel was at the rear of the train car.

“We have company,” she said.

“Yeah, that one I’d figured out,” replied Robie. “Where did he come from?” he asked, gesturing to the dead man.

“Rear door. Advance guard, I guess.”

“They should have sent more guards,” noted Robie.

“He was tough to kill. Very well trained.”

“I’m sure.” Robie looked around. “The train’s not moving. Station’s not that big. All passengers should have gotten on by now.”

“You think they’ve commandeered the train?”

“Wouldn’t bet against it. They’ll do a car-by-car search.”

“The dead guy was trying to call in that he’d spotted me. But he never made it.” She looked around. “Got a plan?”

Before Robie could answer the train started to move.

“What do you think that’s about?” asked Reel.

“Too many questions in the station, maybe. They want to be rolling through the country when they hit us.”

“Toss us out on the fly?”

“After they make sure we’re dead.”

“So, again, got a plan?”

Robie looked behind him. The attendant who had greeted them hadn’t come back. He might be dead too.

Robie raced up the aisle to a small storage closet located at one end of the car and grabbed a large metal bowl from inside it. He rushed into the small bathroom compartment, turned on the water, and filled up the bowl. Then he emptied half the bowl of water in front of each of the connecting doors into their train cars. He rubbed the slickened metal floor with his foot and came away satisfied.

Then Robie looked at the dead man.

Reel joined him and said, “He had no creds. No ID, nothing.”

“Missing personnel, missing equipment.”

“Is that what DiCarlo told you?” asked Reel.

“Yes.”

“The apocalypse scenario has been a long time in preparation, Robie.”

“I’m starting to see that.”

He climbed up on a seat and squatted down.

Reel did the same.

“You left, me right,” said Robie, and Reel replied, “Copy that.”

A few seconds later armed men came racing in from both directions. It was a designed pincers move, to trap Reel and Robie between two flanks and catch them in a crossfire they could not withstand.

Only they had not counted on a slippery floor.

Three of the men went down hard and slid along the floor, while a fourth staggered around trying to regain his balance.