This is one of the “Tales from the Shack.” It is in LW in order to keep the series together. We really, really appreciate the Admin allowing us to keep these tales together in the same category. This story is where “Needles & Delaney” and “The Shack” series proper intersect, but it can stand on its own. Thanks to Chasten, SleeperyJim, sbrooks103x, and Bebop03 for the beta reads and editing. Special thanks to Doc for the medical advice and guidance. There are many others who I owe thanks to for this — it has been under construction for at least three years and I have frankly lost track of all the advice I’ve received. There are some who prefer not to be named; you know who you are; you are very much appreciated.
Run, Maria, Run
*****
I paused for a moment, trying to lean casually against the stone-tiled column, watching the holiday crowd as carefully as I could without being obvious. Clueless, they streamed by me intent on their shopping, flavored coffees, and apparently endless streams of text messages.
I made it another six feet and managed to sit at one of the mall food court tables. I pulled a leftover soda cup in front of me so it’d look like I had a reason to sit here. Any reason other than finding a quiet place to bleed to death. As painful as it was, I kept my purse strap pulled as tight against me as possible, keeping what pressure I could on it. The blood was invisible on my black wool coat, but it wouldn’t be for long if I didn’t keep the pressure on the bullet wound. I didn’t need it to soak through the coat; this wouldn’t get any easier if I started to leave a blood trail.
Everything had gone wrong, but I’d left at least one of them dead for sure — probably two.
Somebody must have forgotten I’d been a field agent for years before climbing the ladder. I’d been a damn good one. I’d left eight perps dead in my career, and now it looked like I might have added two federal agents.
If they really were FBI, they’d been dirty. They had to have been. Agents don’t usually carry armor piercing ammo, and they don’t start shooting without identifying themselves.
Certainly not at a deputy director of the FBI.
I fumbled out the cheap pay-by-the-minute smartphone I’d managed to buy at the kiosk. I didn’t think the guy had really bought my story about a computer crash at my bank, but two hundred dollars in cash had gotten me an anonymous phone and three hours of time. He’d probably report it up his chain, and I didn’t blame him. He could sense something was off, and I doubted an obviously recent immigrant from the Middle East wanted to get caught up in anything suspicious.
Let him call; it didn’t matter. The three hours of talk time I’d purchased were probably too much. I doubted I was going to live to use even half of it.
I fumbled with my purse, pulling out a scrap of a business card, then punched the number into the phone.
“K2 Executive Services.” A curt clipped woman’s voice.
I kept my voice as calm and level as possible. “I need help. I’m hurt and…”
A click sounded as the phone cut off. Bitch. I slumped and closed my eyes. Damn it. I couldn’t even think of where to go next. This was probably it. I was going to bleed out in front of a goddamn Panda Wok in a mall food court.
My phone buzzed in my hand; a text from an unknown number. All it had was an internet link.
Nothing to lose; I went ahead and pressed it, and the phone promptly replied with “downloading app.” A long few seconds later, an icon appeared on the phone. An icon of a stylized “K2.”
I pressed it, and the phone dialed.
“K2 Executive Services.” The voice sounded muffled and odd, like the speaker was under water. A scrambler code of some kind. “Please hold your phone at arm’s length and look into the screen.”
I followed the instructions and watched the screen pulse as the phone took my picture. It flashed the image on the screen for a moment. Not particularly flattering. My complexion was pretty gray, but then that was probably shock and blood loss. Almost instantly, the woman on the other end spoke again. “Name, please.”
“Maria Hawthorne.”
There was a slight pause. I got the distinct and uncomfortable impression she was checking my credit score. “Your operational status?”
“Unarmed, seriously injured.”
“What is the nature of your injury?”
“Shot in the upper right chest, three hours ago, I’m losing blood, and it’s getting hard to breathe…”
“Please hold.”
The damn thing actually began playing “hold” music. “The Girl from Ipanema” of all damn things. I stared at the phone in disbelief for a moment.
Then the voice came back. “Thank you for waiting. We have no standard assets in the area; I had to negotiate a subcontract with an independent contractor. Move to the south entrance of the mall and wait near the women’s restroom. The contractor will probably take thirty minutes to get there.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be conscious in thirty minutes.”
“The contractor will arrange for discreet medical aid if you are still alive when they arrive at your location.”
The line clicked with grim finality.
I pushed myself off the table and began to walk as carefully as I could. Trying to look casual, look like another busy holiday shopper. The south entrance was over a quarter mile away through the mall.
As I turned out of the food court, I glanced back and saw a crimson smear of my blood on the orange chair. A frazzled woman in a bright red coat with a ridiculous number of plastic store bags plopped into the chair without looking at it, just glad to be able to get off her feet.
Clothing stores, shoe stores, and restaurants crawled by as I worked my way along the edge of the crowds.
It took nearly twenty minutes, and I almost made it.
I could see the sign for the restroom and was almost shaking with relief when I felt a hand grip my right elbow tightly. A couple herded four kids in bulky, bright coats past me, using promises of hot chocolate to keep them in line.
“Keep moving, Director Hawthorne.” There was an ever-so-slight accent. Eastern Europe, maybe. Maybe Russian.
I looked over at him. Very nice black suit, black wool overcoat; even if I ignored the accent, he didn’t feel like FBI. He let me see he was holding a subcompact automatic on me from inside his coat. It took me a moment, but then I remembered seeing him during the ambush outside my apartment. “It’s Deputy Director.”
“Very well. Deputy Director. Please keep moving. I’d rather not do this here in front of all these children, but I will if you force me to.” He fell silent as we passed a teenage girl, pipe-cleaner skinny in a dark coat with a bright purple backpack, hair tucked up under a light purple crew cap, obliviously texting away on her phone.
“You guys caught up faster than I thought you would.”
“Facial recognition programs in the security software for the bridge cameras. We emplaced it in this area months ago for another operation. It was blind luck that it was still in place, and I just happened to be moving in this direction. I found your vehicle in the parking lot.”
I watched another family struggle past. The two kids were just out of toddler stage and had clearly reached breaking point. Even if I were in better shape and armed, there were way too many innocent bystanders around. “Lucky me.”
He shrugged eloquently. “Those are the breaks.”
He seemed awful polite for a contract killer.
I was just too weak even to begin to fight. He guided me into the utility hallway opposite the bathroom, and we walked down it until we reached a corner. I was out of time. He pushed me around the corner and brought his gun out.
A sound like a dull, heavy bell rang through the tile-lined corridor. He took a single staggering step forward then collapsed in a heap.
The girl in the light purple crew cap stood behind him, holding an almost comically large crescent wrench, poised for another swing. Face expressionless, she looked at me, then down at him, easily balancing the wrench across her skinny shoulder. Crouching, she checked his breathing and pupil dilation mechanically, then picked up the gun. She cleared it with casual proficiency, tucking it and her wrench into her backpack. Almost as an afterthought, she pulled his wallet from his coat and stuck it in a silvery envelope.
A moment later, she pulled the battery from his cell phone and dropped it into a trash can; then the phone joined his wallet in the envelope.
She stood and held her hand out with a stony expression. “Come with me if you want to live.”
I just stared at her until she smirked, eyes glittering. “Fuck, I’ve always wanted to say that. Let’s see the wound. Anterior right chest, right?”
“Yeah.” I hated that I could hear the weakness in my voice. I managed to pull my coat off and fumbled my shirt and the top strap of my not-so-bulletproof vest open.
She reached into her backpack and pulled out a Kotex pad package, tearing it open and pressing the pad against the bullet hole. “Hold this.”
I held it in position while she put another pad on top of it and then pulled out duct tape and taped them down tightly. “This will have to do for now. We don’t have much time. I heard what he said; they probably have others on the way, and they’ll be sweeping the mall any minute. My K2 contact says she already has someone taking those cameras off-line.” She gestured to a Bluetooth earpiece almost hidden under her cap.
She pulled a large, flowered wool shawl out of her backpack along with a truly awful women’s hat that I would never have chosen to wear and handed them to me. “Let’s change your profile a bit. Make sure you cover up the bloody shirt.”
Out of the backpack, she pulled out a couple of those large “eco-friendly” cloth shopping bags; both our coats and her backpack and crew cap were stuffed quickly into them. She finally handed me a pair of thick-framed glasses before shrugging on a red fleece jacket and taking my arm. “Keep your face down and try to look like a grandma.”
That wasn’t exactly hard given the circumstances; it was easier to walk slightly hunched over. She chatted loudly and excitedly all the way out to the parking lot. Something about being late to pick me up because she’d seen a small black and white cat in her school parking lot that might be hurt and looked all over for it. All the while, I could see her hyper-alert eyes surreptitiously scanning every shadow. I studied her as we walked. Something about her was weirdly familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
Out in the parking lot, she led me to a dull black battered sports car in a wheelchair spot. It even had a “Disabled Parking” tag hanging from the mirror. I painfully maneuvered into the passenger seat and paused, drawing in a ragged breath of what felt like broken glass. She promptly reached over and began to snap me into a harness more suited for a fighter jet than a car.
She yanked a strap up between my legs and snapped it in with a slight smile and a soft chuckle. “Easy there, just getting you strapped in.”
I waited until she’d buckled herself in. “This is a Q car, isn’t it?”
The old term for a tactical vehicle disguised as a harmless civilian car didn’t trip her up at all.
She gave a single nod and cranked the key. The powerplant rumbled awake with an evil, low growl. “Looks are deceiving. Top of the line engine, top of the line everything. My Billy here is a fucking beast.”
She touched the dash softely with a sad look, then glanced over at me. “If anything goes down, get below the door frame. I have high thermal blast blanket and some light ceramic armor plate in the doors, panels, firewall, floors, and seat backs. Not perfect, but it’s better than nothing.”
Despite her obvious fascination with the power of the car, she pulled out into the holiday traffic smoothly, slipping away from the mall quietly.
“You’ll need to ditch the car as soon as you can…”
“Don’t sweat it; it’ll be tucked away once I get you to the safe house, and the plates are fakes. It will look completely different the next time I take it out. Needles would be fucking pissed if I had to crush it. We’ve done a lot of work on this.”
She shook her head irritably. “It’s the time, not the money.”
I felt a rush of relief. Needles. That was a name I recognized. Michael knew… had known him. He was associated with K2 somehow. Something about a salvage yard with a convenient car crusher.
“You work for Needles? Thank God.”
“Yeah… He’s not here right now. K2 called me in.” She smoothly slipped the car down road after road, carefully checking for any surveillance. “You could have trackers…”
Damn, it was good to be working with an experienced professional. I was impressed as hell at how she pulled off that teenager vibe. “I found stick-on RFID trackers in the slide and grip of my service gun, so I had to ditch it. I bought new clothes and changed into them a few hours ago. New underwear, purse. Everything. Only thing left is the vest, and that just came out of the armory. It wasn’t assigned to me; I pulled it off the shelf myself, and I never took it off. Unless they tagged every vest at the FBI, there’s no chance it’s hot.”
She glanced at me. “Shoes?”
“Those too. Dropped everything in a dumpster in an alley.”
“You better be clean. If this blows back on anyone, Needles will absolutely lose his fucking mind. You don’t want that. Nobody wants that. That man has serious fucking anger issues.”
She sure as hell sounded like she meant it, but she almost sounded proud of it at the same time.
“No chance.”
“In the glove box, there’s a bottle of Naprosyn. You better take a couple.” She reached behind my seat and pulled out a bottle, shoving it into my hand. “You need some pretty solid swallows of this.”
I looked at it. A pretty fancy whiskey bottle. Cask Strength. “Seriously?”
“I’m pretty fucking sure open container laws are the least of your problems right now. That should be some pretty good stuff. You wanna get some in you because they think you might have a collapsed lung and when we get where we’re going… let’s just say it’s gonna hurt like fuck. You wanna take the edge off it.”
It was pretty damn smooth. Drinking was tough, though. I just couldn’t seem to get enough air.
The houses were starting to get fancier and farther apart as we drove. She glanced over at me. “Any good?”
“If I live through this, I’ll hunt some of this down.”
Her grin flashed in the light from the dash. “I knew it. That’s why he kept it on the top shelf. Hundred dollar a bottle shit up there.”
“Needles?” I shifted and regretted it instantly, wincing in pain.
“No, Eric, Tiffany’s husband.”
“Tiffany?”
She suddenly fell silent, then sighed. “If you get rolled up, keep them out of it. They’re not supposed to be part of this; I just don’t have any other choices right now.”
“I don’t want to drag any innocent bystanders into this either.” I had to pull air in with each breath.
“With that hole in your chest, we have to. But then we get out and get fucking gone.” She turned down a genteel road lined with massive brick McMansions. “We’re almost there.”
“Pretty upscale for a safe house. I was picturing seedy motel rooms or the backroom of some bar.”
She pulled into a long drive, reaching up and pressing a button on a remote to open one door of the three-car garage. “This isn’t the safe house; we’re just here to get you patched up. She makes me park inside when I visit so I don’t bring down her property values.”
Before I could ask, she was out of the car and helping me get out. She took me into the main house, into an enormous kitchen, all dark wood and gold-flecked stone counters. Pointing to a center island the size of an aircraft carrier, she gestured for me to get up on it, then handed me the bottle of whiskey again. “I’ll be back in a couple minutes.”
She slipped up a broad set of marble stairs just outside the kitchen.
I pulled off the shawl and folded it as best I could, trying to keep blood off the countertop. Probably due to whiskey and blood loss, it took me a moment to notice an intense discussion in hushed tones drifting down the stairs she had gone up. After a long few minutes, my rescuer came back down the stairs, leading a pretty, heavily pregnant woman in a silk nightgown and robe.
There was enough resemblance to explain why she was helping. They were obviously related.
The pregnant woman glanced at the operative, then looked over at me with pursed lips, narrowing her eyes. “Get your vest and shirt off so I can see what we’re dealing with here.”
She started pulling a bunch of things out of drawers: hand towels, Glad Wrap. “Get some sheets and a stack of towels out of the linen closet, and go get my emergency bag out of the Lexus.” She looked at me. “I’ll be right back. Don’t fall off.”
I managed to strip down, dropping the bloody vest to the floor with the shawl and shirt, then settled back onto the broad kitchen island.
That’s when I knew I was dying. Black rimmed my vision as an invisible boulder crushed my chest. I tried to sit up but couldn’t get enough air, enough strength, to push up. Clammy sweat was running off of me, and my heart felt like it was spinning out of control. Panicking, I weakly tried to push myself off the island.
Suddenly I was sitting upright, the pregnant woman gripping my hair with surprising strength.
“That settles that.”
The operative was staring at us from the door to the garage. “What the hell, she’s fucking… gray.”
“My fault. I should have told her not to lie down.” The woman shook her head. “God, I hate this not-drinking-coffee stuff. I’m still waking up. Give me the stethoscope out of the bag.” She examined the dressing for a second. “That’s good work, Delaney. Kind of full circle. Nurses in World War One used wound dressings as disposable sanitary pads.”
At least I had the operative’s name. Delaney. Delaney nodded, and I could see her repeating the doctor’s words back to herself under her breath. I got the impression she was scribing that into her memory.
Tiffany listened to my breathing. “There’s no sound on the right. Sucking chest wound…pneumothorax — that’s a collapsed lung. No other wounds…no exit wound?” She looked down at the vest. “If it went through that vest…”
I patted her arm weakly. “Ricochet off a stone wall.”
She looked over at Delaney. “I need two Vicodin out of the bottle on the left.” She handed me the whiskey with the pills. “Take these; this is going to hurt.”
Pulling a sheet over the island, she laid out a water bottle, a package of plastic tubing, the Glad Wrap and several strips of duct tape. I had no idea what was about to happen, but her self-assurance was comforting. She sterilized the tubing with something from a very medical-looking bottle, then folded and snipped holes into the first six or seven inches of it. While she prepped, the operative made sure I stayed upright on the table. She glanced over at the woman, then took the whiskey out of my hand and took a tiny sip.
“Wow, that is the good stuff.”
The woman spun and snatched the whiskey out of her hand. “Give me that.”
I felt a moment of sudden horror as I realized what her reaction meant. “She’s not old enough to drink, is she?”
“Hell, Delaney’s not old enough to legally drive by herself.”
She glared at the suddenly grinning girl who gave a careless shrug. “I’ve had a license for over a year. It’s just not in my real name.”
“Shit.” I reached my hand out. “I’ll take more of that whiskey.”
“Hold on.” She glanced up at the clock and handed me three more pills. “It’s been five minutes, so you’re going to keep it down. Azithromycin and ciprofloxacin. I don’t need to do all this work and have you die of infection.” She shook her head. “Save me a drink or two of that if you can.”
Delaney smirked at her. “Sorry, Tiffany, you’re preggers. No booze for you.”
Tiffany gave me a weary smile as she sterilized the wound. “Once this baby’s born, I’m going on a week-long coffee and red wine binge. Eric can take care of the baby until I come out of it.” She looked over at Delaney. “And you can help babysit. Get up there and help her; just hold her still the best you can.”
Once Delaney settled in behind me, Tiffany taped the unpunctured end of the plastic tubing down into the water bottle, then opened a pack of surgical tools.
Tiffany looked me in the eye. “Okay, ‘whoever you are’ this is going to be rough.”
I faded in and out of agonizing reality over the next several minutes as she probed. Delaney’s grip never so much as wavered.
“There it is.” I felt a sickening tugging sensation, and then she held her forceps up, gripping a deformed chunk of metal. “Got it.”
I heard it drop on the table next to me with a dull thud.
She looked me in the eye. “Okay, I know that was bad, but this will be worse.”
I laughed weakly. “You need to work on your bedside manner.”
“That’s part of the premium package; you get that when you show up at the ER and not in my kitchen. This is going to sound crazy, but I need you to hold your breath while I do this next part.”
Searing pain flashed through me; by the time I managed to focus, she was thrusting the free end of plastic tubing deep into my chest; it felt like she was trying to drive it all the way through my body even though I could see she was barely moving it at all. She suddenly stopped, glancing down at the bottle. “There it is; just hold it for a bit longer.”
She pinned the tube down with a looped strip of duct tape, then slapped a square of Glad wrap down and secured that with more duct tape. “Okay, relax.”
Tiffany studied her work. I could see air bubbling into the water bottle. Despite the excruciating pain, it was easier to breathe. “We need to wait a bit, make sure this is working.”
I managed to turn my head enough to look at Delaney. “Just how old are you?”
“Sixteen. Well, sixteen in a month or so.”
“Must be one hell of a school you go to.”
“The ‘Life Skills’ class is a real bitch. Pass-fail grading.”
I shook my head weakly. “Sounds like it.”
She suddenly gave a kind of odd, introspective smile. “I’m homeschooled. I study stuff I’m good at.”
“Like what?”
“Welding, metal shop, auto mechanics. I’m better if I can do things instead of reading them.”
I could see Tiffany’s expression out of the corner of my eye. She looked sad and proud at the same time. She caught me watching her and pushed forward. “Let’s check vitals.”
She glanced up at Delaney. “There’s a spare curtain liner in the upstairs linen closet, second shelf; put it on the recliner in the great room and cover it with towels. We’ll move her there in a couple minutes.”
After Delaney left, I caught Tiffany’s eye. “Sister?”
“Half-sister by our mom. But she lives with Needles — my real dad — and his girlfriend.”
Before I could ask, she shook her head. “It’s even more messed up than it sounds. Mom and Dad absolutely hate each other, but Mom screwed up bad with Delaney. Dad ‘gets her’ better than anyone else. She’d be dead or worse if it weren’t for him. We almost lost her a couple years ago; she was spiraling out of control, and nobody bothered to notice. She ran away and got into real danger; we would have lost her if it wasn’t for Dad.”
“You’re caught in the middle?”
“Not really. My twin sister and I sided with Delaney after we found out everything Mom told us about their divorce was lies, and then some other stuff she did that caused problems. We still play along in public so that she doesn’t cause any problems for Delaney and Dad.”
“Sorry about getting you dragged into this.”
She shrugged. “I don’t think you had much choice. I know who you are. Deputy Director of the FBI, Maria Hawthorne. I watch the news, and you’re all over it.”
“You don’t seem as shocked as you should at your sister bringing me here.”
“Dad and Delaney have been involved in some pretty grim stuff. And… Delaney… he sends her to stuff besides welding classes. High-performance driving schools, some pretty serious first aid classes, outdoor survival. Other stuff. He has a friend in Texas who runs some kind of bodyguard training school, and she goes down there all the time.”
The school had to be run by K2. I knew they operated out of Texas. That explained how the woman at K2 knew to contact her. “That sounds kind of risky.”
“I see kids all the time in the ER who ended up a lot worse off. She’s living a dream, doing things she loves doing. Some people are just different. Some girls go to the Olympics at sixteen. She’s like that, in a way, doing what she’s really good at. There are other issues, too. She really does need to know all this stuff.” She stopped, obviously unwilling to say more about that.
“I can’t argue with the results, but it sounds dangerous.”
“Mom would have stuck her in a private mental ward if Tara and I hadn’t threatened to go ballistic and ruin everything. She’ll barely even say Delaney’s name anymore.”
Tiffany paused, then fixed me with a stare. “Whatever is going on, make goddamn sure if anything happens to her, you don’t live through it. Needles will burn the Hoover Building to the ground just getting started. You really don’t want to know what that man is capable of.”
She was dead serious, and if Delaney was any indication, he might just be able to do it. “I’m not sure I wouldn’t help right now.”
Tiffany shifted and stretched, then started looking me over again. “So…murder?”
“I know how weak this sounds, but I’ve been framed.”
She gave a chuff of a laugh. “That does sound pretty damn weak. So who did you supposedly kill, anyway?”
“Michael Sandaman. He was my…close friend.”
She looked at me sharply. “From the way you said that, ‘friend’ might not be the right word.”
I took as deep a breath as I could, flinching from both kinds of pain. “He was a lot more than a friend.”
“So, what happened?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t even in town when he was killed, and I’m not sure why I was accused. I got a cryptic voicemail from Michael about a something he needed to give me, then I found out he was gunned down when the DA’s office called.” My voice caught at that.
“I told them I was coming in to see what was going on. I was ambushed before I even got to my car. I killed one, and the other was unconscious when I left. They both had FBI credentials. Then more cars started showing up, shooting. So I ran. I heard my name on the radio less than 10 minutes later as wanted for Michael’s murder.”
Tiffany looked curiously at me for a second. “The second agent died in the hospital. They’ve started talking about treason too.”
That didn’t make any sense at all. “Who?”
She thought for a moment. “Some tool on C-SPAN, named ‘Reasoner’ or something like that.”
“Reisner?”
“She nodded. “That sounds right.”
“Thomas Reisner. He’s the Assistant Attorney General for National Security.”
“You know him?”
“Standard issue corporate drone, he moves back and forth between private industry and government.” Reisner had always struck me as a typical bureaucrat.
“Well, he doesn’t seem to like you very much. He’s been on a lot.”
I puzzled over that. Reisner was kind of a bland bureaucrat nonentity, but before I could say anything, Delaney came back into the room. “All set up.”
It took about a century for them to get me to the great room and the waiting chair.
Delaney looked me over, then looked at Tiffany. “How long before I can move her?”
Tiffany shook her head. “We need to get…”
“I’m not getting you and Eric into this any more than I have to. I need to get her out of here, but I don’t want to kill her. If you kill the principal, you don’t get paid.”
“Eric has another twenty hours on shift, so give her at least 12 hours of rest, and we can monitor her. That keeps Eric completely out of it. I’ve worked with the government; they don’t move that fast.”
I shook my head. “Not everybody after me is government. The guys that kept catching up to me before I found the trackers weren’t. And they don’t want me in custody; they want me dead.”
Delaney nodded. “I talked to K2 and sent them a picture of the ID I took off the guy I whacked over the head.”
Tiffany shot her a glare, and Delaney held her hands up helplessly. “What? He’s alive. Just has a concussion.”
“This isn’t the movies. You don’t knock people over the head without doing serious damage. Concussions kill people all the time.”
I held my hand up. “He was going to kill me.”
The wind seemed to go out of Tiffany’s sails, but she gave a low look at Delaney before looking back at me. “I hear that an awful lot. You really wouldn’t believe how often.”
Delaney rolled her eyes and looked very, very sixteen for a second. “Jesus. The fucker’s alive, okay? Anyway. The… uh, contractor ID’d him as a mercenary, former Spetsnatz, who used to work for the Volkov Group. He had a ‘falling out’ with them.”
I let my head fall back. “Damn it.”
“What’s the Volkov Group?” Tiffany was lost.
“It’s technically a mercenary group.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “But they pretty much only work for the Russian government, so if they’re involved, it’s the Russian government.”
Delaney shook her head. “Ki…K2 doesn’t think so; they think he’s working for some transnational company.” She paused. “I was told to tell you they think this is about ‘Reinhardt.’ Whoever that is.”
I don’t use foul language, it just isn’t my thing, but sometimes nothing else will do.
“Fuck, I’d rather it was the Russians.”
I closed my eyes and let the mix of excellent bourbon and even better pills carry me away, thinking about what that likely meant.
*****
Refuge…and Gardening
*****
I blinked awake and stared up into Delaney’s eyes. She put a finger to her lips. “Shhh. We need to move. I know Tiff wanted us to stay longer, but you’re my problem. You’ve had eight hours. I don’t want her involved any more than she has to be.”
There was an undercurrent of fierce loyalty to all of Howard’s associates, no matter how far removed from him they seemed to be. I nodded in agreement. “I know.”
We slowly, painfully slipped out through the kitchen, and she settled me into the car, every movement agonizing until I was fully strapped in.
It was at least an hour before I asked the obvious question. “Where are we headed?”
“Gotta get you somewhere until I can hand you off. Somewhere nobody would ever look for you.”
“Sounds kind of grim.”
She snickered. “I don’t know about grim, but it sure as hell won’t be what you’re used to.”
There was no way I was going to try to pry any more information out of her. She was having too much fun, obviously very entertained by whatever the hell she was up to, and I didn’t have the energy for those kinds of games. I just closed my eyes.
At the edge of my mind, I tried to fit things together. Reisner. Evelyn. Reinhardt IG. Michael.
It was a good two hours before we reached our destination, a small, neatly kept mobile home in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere.
When Delaney had me up to the door, she banged loudly and shouted in a harsh voice. “Open Up! FBI!”
Her air of authority was immediately destroyed when she fell into a squeaky laughing fit at the sound of somebody inside scrambling in panic.
The door yanked open, and a pale young disheveled blond guy leaned out, his face unevenly red and blotchy. “C’mon, man, that’s not funny!”
Delaney descended into soft giggles. “It’s good for you! Besides, you fall for it every fucking time, Mooky.”
“It’s not funny, Delaney.”
“You weren’t busy anyway.” She stopped and cocked her head and eyed him suspiciously. “Wait, were you skeezin’ with a ho in the back?”
Mooky’s eyes widened in shock. “I’m not…”
He trailed off to an exasperated head shake.
Delaney made a mock sad face. “Too bad. We gotta find you a girlfriend. Help me get her inside; she’s been hurt.”
“Ooh, sorry. Is it like an accident of some kind?” He jumped down, clumsily helped me up the stairs into the trailer and awkwardly sat me in a rather careworn easy chair.
“Um, no, she’s been shot.”
The guy leaned over and looked at my face for a second, then backed away wide-eyed, holding his hands up defensively. “No, no, no, nono nooo! She can’t be here!”
“Where’s your sense of adventure, Mooky?”
“She’s on the news, she’s, like, the F.B.I. In here!” He gestured behind him, and I realized that most of the trailer was a collage of lush green marijuana plants, grow lights, and an overly complicated drip irrigation system.
As soon as he saw me looking past him, he jumped up, waving his arms frantically trying to block my view, sending Delaney into a paroxysm of giggles. I might have even given a weak laugh or two.
Delaney clutched his arm. “It’s okay. I’m pretty sure she isn’t going to call you in. She’s wanted for murder.”
“Mur…murder?” Mooky stumbled back until he ran into the kitchen counter.
“And treason, I think.”
His jaw dropped open. Then he shut it with an effort. “Treason?”
Delaney nodded eagerly. “This is perfect. They’ll never look for her here. She can’t report you to the police and…”
She trailed off for a second and twisted her mouth in puzzlement. “Okay, it is kinda hard to find a part of it that works for you, but I’ll figure something out.”
“Needles is cool with this, right?”
“Ummm, yeahhh…sure.”
Mooky suddenly looked far more frightened than when he thought his biggest problem was the FBI kicking in his door for accessory to murder and treason. “Aww, dude, tell me he’s good with this.”
Delaney shrugged. “I’ll tell him I made you do it.”
He weakly grabbed at the countertop, missed and slid down to sit on the floor. “He doesn’t know?!”
Delaney gave a “mea culpa” shrug with a half-smile and shook her head.
He buried his face in his hands. “This isn’t happening.”
“This isn’t your fault. I know he talked to you about not getting me involved in stuff, but…”
“Talk? Talk is kind of a two-way thing. Needles pinning me up against a wall threatening to kill me is not talking.” Mooky rubbed his eyes for a second. “I’ll be lucky if the dude just shoots me.”
Delaney held her hands up helplessly. “You didn’t do anything. I showed up here. He’d be a lot more pissed off if you didn’t help me.”
“You are NOT making things better.”
“Look, this is gonna take a few days, but I’ll try to get her out of here as soon as I can. You’ll want to be out of here sometimes. Some guy is going to drop by to try to figure out how to help her, but I don’t know when.”
Mooky looked up at her for a second. “I’m working all the time right now. Chris’ brother opened a surf shop in Florida, and he moved there to help.”
He stared through the wall for a minute. “My uncle needs me to work extra shifts until he can hire more help.”
Delaney looked a little relieved. “As soon as I find out, I’ll let you know when to be out of here.”
“Yeah. I can’t take any more guys like Needles in my life. It’s, like, way too intense.”
After several more minutes of discussion, Mooky eventually headed into wherever he worked, clutching a garish shirt and hat combo as he walked out.
After he left, Delaney carefully checked my dressing, tubing and the water bottle, snapping pictures on a cheap phone. “Still looks good. I’m sending pics to Tiffany. I left her a burner phone when we left.”
“So you think Mooky is safe? He won’t talk?”
Delaney shook her head. “He won’t say a word. He kinda owes me, and besides…”
She paused as she looked over a response on her phone. She sent another flurry of texts and looked over the answers.
“He doesn’t want to piss off Needles, right?” I watched her reaction to the texts she’d received.
She shrugged. “That’s just common sense. Like not stepping in front of a train…Tiffany’s a little pissed off at me for leaving, but she says the wound looks good, and she told me how to take the tube out.” She looked at it again. “She even sent a video. Cool.”
“So when does the tube come out?”
“Three days or so depends on if your breathing is still good and nothing else has gone wrong. We pull half the tube one day, the other half the next.”
I looked at her. A fifteen-year-old talking about field surgery like it ranked with fixing a sandwich. “Maybe we should go back to let her take it out.”
She shook her head. “No. I can’t do that. We’re staying away from her. Besides, I can do simple medical stuff; I help Needles at the clinic all the time.”
I didn’t have many options, and Tiffany seemed like she thought Delaney was pretty competent. And she’d said something about advanced first aid training.
Delaney pulled up another text and looked at it, her eyes widening suddenly. “Do you like vodka? I need to see if Mooky can get us some vodka or something.”
“Why?” I had a bad feeling I knew what she was going to say.
“Cause Tiffany says this is gonna ‘hurt like a motherfucker’ and she doesn’t ever say things like that.”
I decided Delaney was a bad influence on me. Foul language just isn’t my thing, but… “Fuck.”
*****
I watched through the window as Delaney pulled up in yet another non-descript compact car. She seemed to have an endless supply of them. She’d apparently shelved the armored powerhouse she’d originally picked me up in.
She walked in scowling. “They aren’t planning to extract you when they get here. My K2 contact said the problem is a lot bigger than just you. They need some time.”
“How long?”
“Maybe ten, twelve days.” She frowned. “I want to get you out of here before Needles and Sheree get back.”
“When is that?”
“A couple weeks, right before Christmas. They had a reservation for a place on the beach in Mexico earlier this year, but Needles sort of… got hurt. They delayed it as long as they could without losing the deposit so he could enjoy it.”
She gave a slight smile. “They normally time the vacations with my trips to Texas.”
I took a stab. “For training.”
She gave a slight shake of her head and a sardonic twitch of a smile. “If you hadn’t worked that out by now, I’d be real fucking worried about the FBI.”
“They’ve put a lot of work into training you.”
She ignored that probe. “What do we have to work with?”
“Not much. Michael said he left files for me where we first met.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. But knowing Michael, it’s significant.”
“You know where it is?”
I sighed. “Yes, I do. That is the problem. It’s a park bench on the Smithsonian Mall, just a few blocks south of the Hoover Building.”
“The FBI?”
“Yes. The FBI. If I were them, I’d be watching the FBI.”
“We’ll just have to get in and get out before they catch on. After you heal enough.”
*****
The second half of the tube coming out hurt like hell, but it was easier on Mooky than the first half. I drank a lot more vodka, and Delaney tied my hands to the chair before doing the second one.
I wasn’t sure what Mooky would tell people about how he got the black eye when she pulled the first half out. He pretty much refused to talk to me for a couple of days.
He was still eyeing me suspiciously whenever I moved around the trailer. Delaney was out again; she was in and out more than I’d have expected. I was concerned until I realized she was spreading out her communications patterns, changing cars constantly. Fifteen or not, she’d had some serious training.
Either way, Mooky was always nervous whenever it was just the two of us in the trailer, and I didn’t need him completely losing it, so I decided to try to get him to relax. “You could really make your lighting more efficient if you could get several old mirrors. You’re losing a lot of light here. You can use mirrors to reflect your lost light back onto the plants.”
He looked startled, but I was starting to suspect that he usually looked like that. “Really?”
“We did a study on grow houses, and that was one of the things we learned. You can reduce your electrical use a bit, get stronger growth and bud production, and keep the plants from getting leggy on you.”
He perked up. “Did you guys try LED lights?”
“We did, but it’s touchier than you think. You have to get the spectrum just right; LEDs aren’t like HPS or some of the others, so you have to use a mix and get it just right, but it will cut down on your electric. But LEDs also reduces heat, so in winter here, that could be a problem.”
Mooky nodded. “That’s what I heard. I’m going to try it someday.”
“They’re starting to make them commercially. You might want to ask someone who has tried them and see what they think.”
He looked down glumly. “I don’t know anybody using them right now.”
I pulled myself out of the chair, wincing at the pain. “Your water system, though. I know how to make that a lot better.”
*****
Delaney stared at us with a frankly confused look. “Are you two going into business together or something?”
“We pulled about twenty-five feet of pipe out of his watering system.” I gestured to the stack of Pvc pipe in the corner. “Shortening it keeps the pressure higher, and we get a more even distribution of water.”
Mooky, his face pretty much covered in dirt, stuck his head out from behind the racks. “Dude, she knows, like, everything about this stuff. Did you get my message?”
She looked suspiciously between us and settled on me. “You do remember you work for the FBI, right?”
I shrugged, then winced in pain. “I’m not exactly worried about it. Assuming I survive being taken into custody, which is pretty unlikely, I suspect this wouldn’t even make the charge list.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. “I don’t need you to kill yourself trying to do stuff either.”
“I just told him what to do and stood back.”
“She even drew this cool diagram; it’s like professional-level stuff.” Mooky waved it around.
“Jesus. It’s drawn on a fucking napkin.” The pained disbelief on her face gave way to pained acceptance. “Fuck it. You guys go ahead and do your own Breaking Weird thing. Whatever. I got your message, and I brought something like twenty of those plastic bathroom door mirrors they use in hotels. We had a stack of them from when they renovated the no-tell motel out on Caper Road.”
Mooky stood up. “Cool! I’ll go bring them in.”
Delaney watched him walk out. “K2 says they have someone coming by tomorrow evening. It’s not really one of their assets, but they’ll bring some legal help and try to see what else can be done.”
I was relieved. I didn’t have any doubt that Delaney was competent and well trained, but relying on someone, a teenager, who might think of the whole thing as a game worried me.
At least I was certain that, in trusting Mooky, Delaney had made a good choice. I’d been worried that she had been just coercing him to cooperate, and coercion isn’t as reliable as most people think. As we talked, though, I realized that the ties between him and Delaney were more like close family ties than anything else. And more than that, he had faith in her. He trusted that whatever the hell Delaney was doing was “righteous”, no matter how it looked to anyone else.
He was also a lot deeper than I’d thought. He saw marijuana as a real miracle drug, and I found out many of his trips were to a nearby retirement home, where he felt his “product” could really help. Maybe it wouldn’t always cure, but it could at least ease the pain and make life easier. One of the reasons he liked his job was because his uncle always gave him time off to attend the inevitable funerals and celebrations of life.
I hoped whatever happened, he didn’t get burned by this.
*****
Meetings and Options
*****
Delany had pretty much pushed Mooky out the door the night before, making him promise not to come back for at least three days if she didn’t contact him. She also told him to bring the sheriff if that happened.
She growled about keeping amateurs out of the way, but I knew what she was really doing; she was protecting him as best she could. Making contact with other, unknown entities is one of the most dangerous things an operative can be tasked with.
Too many unknowns. Too little certainty. And almost no trust at all.
It was just at nightfall when the car pulled up in front. Right on time, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a damn thing, as my aching injury reminded me.
The door slowly opened, and I could feel relief as I saw the white-haired form of Pogo lean in. “Thank God.”
He nodded to me. “Maria.”
“Passphrase.” Delaney’s voice was flat and emotionless. I looked over at her.
She was holding the automatic she’d taken from the hitman leveled at Pogo’s chest.
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous; she obviously knows me.”
“I obviously don’t. What’s the fucking passphrase?” The gun didn’t waiver the slightest bit.
I tried to head everything off. “Delaney, I know him. If he’s compromised, we’re screwed no matter what.”
She ignored me. “Passphrase. Asshole.”
The worst thing I could think of happened.
A grin split Pogo’s face. He was finding this funny, and Pogo’s sense of humor was decidedly dark. “So you’re seriously going to shoot me if I try to come in?”
“Step in and find out.” Nothing in her voice even hinted that she might not shoot him.
I tried again. “Pogo, she’s serious as hell; just give her the damn passphrase.”
His grin widened. “Oh, no, this is just too funny. I’m being held at gunpoint by a munchkin.”
He looked back at her. “Okay, so what’s your plan? That’s what…?” he paused. “A Glock 43?”
She gave an annoyed sigh. “So it’s a Glock. I didn’t buy the damn thing; I just took it off the last asshole who pissed me off.”
Pogo laughed quietly. “Glocks are reliable as hell, and it’s a more-than-decent gun for close work like this, but you’ve probably got six or six plus one rounds there. You might have time to get another magazine in, if you’ve got one, but what if I’ve got four more guys with me, and they have vests?”
Delaney shrugged. “That won’t matter to you.”
“I believe you, but I’m curious. What happens when you run out of rounds?”
“Imma pick up a fuckin’ rock.” She spat it out with narrowed eyes, her patience getting low.
Pogo squinted at her, then shook his head slowly. “You’re Needles’ kid, that’s for damn sure.” He suddenly seemed very serious. “Crash test dummy. Fourteen minutes 34 seconds.”
“Black rum.” Delaney gave what I assumed was the countersign and lowered her gun but didn’t take her guard down.
Pogo stepped in, and another form filled the doorway. The man, Hawaiian or Samoan from what I could see, had to be six-and-a-half feet tall and probably weighed about as much as a small truck. A wall of muscle and odd geometric Polynesian tattoos.
Delaney looked at his enormous form and then down at the gun in her hand. “Shit. I need a bigger fucking gun.”
She glared at Pogo. “How the fuck did you even fit Shrek in a car?”
Pogo just chuckled while the man-mountain did a poor imitation of looking hurt. “Hey, for your information, kids love me.”
He glanced around the grow house and nodded slowly, grinning. “Nice. A pakalolo house. At least the FBI probably won’t look for her here.”
“Derek, get what you need and get out of here.” Pogo’s voice held a little gravity. He turned to me. “This is Derek Keawe; he’s going to be your lawyer of record. He’s covering Kim’s office for a month, she said she had to leave. Some kind of emergency. Sign the forms, and give him a retainer. Attorney-client privilege, he can open a line of communication with the FBI and Justice.”
I shrugged. “He’ll be taking a big risk. Whoever is after me will probably try to get to me through him.”
Derek shook his head. “I have a two man protective detail on me. I also have a full set of K2 phones for comms, so we should be good.”
“They aren’t shy about it; two men won’t be enough.”
Pogo shook his head. “Monster will be with him. Derek is married to his daughter.”
That ended that. If Monster was watching over Derek, anyone unwise or ignorant enough to go after him would probably be dead before they even realized a fight had started.
“Jesus. They’d need a fucking elephant gun anyway.” Delaney eyed Derek and gave an exasperated shake of her head.
I held my hand up. “I don’t exactly have access to money right now. Kind of hard to pay a retainer.”
Delaney pulled a kitchen drawer open and rummaged around for a bit. “There, seventy-three cents and a Dave & Buster token.” She stopped abruptly and looked him over suspiciously. “Seriously, you’re a fucking lawyer?”
Derek peered down at her. “You have a problem with that?”
She scrunched her nose. “A couple of them have tried to have me killed.”
“Didn’t work?” Derek gave her a slightly twisted smile.
“They’re dead. I’m not.” She looked steadily at him, daring him to challenge her.
“Well, I don’t plan to have you killed, so we should be good.”
She handed me her treasure, and I passed it on to Derek, then dutifully signed the forms.
He started to hand them to Delaney. “This would be better if it were witnessed.”
I waved him off. “Derek, she’s fifteen.”
His eyes widened, and Delaney cut in. “Besides, I don’t need to get dragged into court over any of this. I’m going to have to tell Needles about this. I won’t lie to him, but I don’t need to remind him a bunch of times and piss him off.”
Pogo straightened up sharply. “Needles doesn’t know?”
Delaney shook her head.
“Shit. I thought Kim had more goddamned sense than that. At least that explains the sudden desire to get the hell out of Virginia.”
I finally had to ask. “Everybody I’ve run into is concerned with pissing him off. Why is everybody so worried about him?”
Pogo scratched his head for a second. “Needles…” He shook his head. “The man just has no sense of proportion. Piss him off, and the sky is the limit. Columns of fire and brimstone. Real Old Testament unto-the-seventh-generation shit.”
I waited, then noticed Delaney listening with a smug pride as Pogo continued. “My team was called in to stop a massacre in Mogadishu. A small-time warlord had decided to rob a medical team.”
Delaney looked at me. “Needles was a Special Forces medic.”
Pogo nodded tersely. “I thought we were going to stop the warlord’s gang from killing civilians. But when we showed up, there were dead bodies everywhere. Bodies of gunmen. Seems the robbery was going fine until one of the gunmen shot a pregnant woman right in front of Needles for no reason. By the time we got there, the street was empty except for bodies, a deuce-and-a-half was literally parked on top of the warlord’s car, and Needles was standing there with a.45 in one hand, a hatchet in the other and a foot-long knife sticking out of his face, looking for somebody else to kill. He had three bullets in him, but he only stopped because he ran out of bad guys.”
He paused and looked at Delaney. “He tell you about it?”
“Not all of it, but Sheree found his medal and pried stuff out of him, so she told me. We’re tight like that.”
Pogo nodded. “It was either charge him with a crime or give him a medal with a classified write up and sweep it under the rug. I recruited him to our unit as soon as he got out of the hospital.”
Derek looked over his papers. “I’d better get going. I won’t be doing you any good here, and it’s probably best if I leave before you guys start discussing anything else I don’t want to know. Officer of the court and all that.”
Pogo waited until Derek left, then turned to me. “Do you know why you’re being targeted? The guy that tried to take you out in the mall used to work for Reinhardt IG security. Mostly off-the-books stuff.”
“I think it’s something to do with Michael. When he found out he had cancer, he said he had some things he had to ‘finish,’ took sick leave and disappeared for almost a month. He never said what it was. I got a voicemail from him saying I had files waiting in the place we first met.”
Pogo nodded. “I’m sorry to hear about Mike; he was one of the good guys.”
“He was.” I paused, thinking. I know a bit of sadness crept into my voice, despite every effort I made to contain it. “Maybe he would have preferred this. Dying that way. The cancer was way past any treatment, and he was in more pain every day.”
I sounded cold, even to me, but I knew that was me trying to suppress and deflect my feelings. It might have been true anyway.
Pogo gave a slow nod. “I didn’t know him as well as you did, Maria, but he was the real thing. A real warrior. Dying in a hospital bed, wired to a bunch of machines…he wouldn’t have wanted that.”
We just waited in reflective silence for a few moments, and then Pogo shook his head. “We can’t help much; there’s stuff going on. Maybe it’s related, maybe not, but we’re sure there’s some surveillance in place on Evie and Howard, maybe on the rest. I was already out here on family stuff, Derek was on a business trip, and Monster was wrapping up his semester before this started, but if I delay getting back and they’re watching, it will raise alarm bells. They’d start looking, and I’d be a liability. We’ll just have to risk Derek and Monster. It works anyway.”
I leaned back. “This is just getting better and better.”
“Donna can’t do anything. This is too high profile; she can’t expose her organization like that.”
“I figured that, but I was hoping your people might be able to help.”
“Derek can help on the legal end. We’re pretty sure they weren’t keeping tabs on him, so we got him the K2 phones, and they’re not likely to have broken that.”
Delaney shook her head. “If they could break the K2 phone crypto, we’d already be dead.”
Pogo looked grim. “You’re going to have to depend on K2 and whatever they can put together. Maybe Wendy can extract you.”
“No. I need to figure this out and try to fix it. There has to be a reason for all this. Nobody would expend this level of effort for anything minor.”
“That’s a big risk; you can’t hide out in Virginia forever.”
“Shit. I was hoping to just hand you off.” Delaney gave me a decidedly less-than-happy glare. “I think K2 can send my team up, but it’s going to cost you.”
“That’s a little mercenary.”
“That’s a little mercenary, or she’s a little mercenary?” Pogo grinned. “Actually, I have a pretty good line on Thugbunny and her team…”
Delaney jolted at what was obviously a nickname and brought her gun back up instantly.
Holding his hands up, Pogo let his smile widen. He carefully looked over at me. “I have it on good authority the Camp Mayhem team isn’t cheap, but they’re worth every penny.”
I caught it before Pogo did. Knowing Needles didn’t grant automatic trust and immunity. Everything he knew about Needles was old information. The nickname wasn’t. She was sure she’d been compromised.
Delaney’s eyes shifted over him, and I had a momentary chill as I saw her eyes. She’d said it before, facetiously; her sister had even commented on it. But it was apparent now. The flippant “treat it as a game” attitude was all a mask. She’d been hunted and survived. She expected more to come, and she was willing to do whatever it took to stay alive.
Barely controlled anger radiated from her. She’d claw, fight, and bite to the bitter, bloody end.
Pogo saw the feral look and realized his use of what she considered sensitive terms had crossed a of line; she saw him as a direct threat to her survival. “Easy there. Nobody is going to get anything out of me. I know one of your trainers. Spooky told me about you.”
For a fraction of a second, I wondered what kind of insanity would bring Donna’s most lethal asset in to train a teenage girl. Especially this one. Maybe I would have focused on that more if I wasn’t so concerned that Delaney was probably less than a hair’s breadth from putting several holes in Pogo.
She cocked her head at him, eyes coldly lit. “You know her?”
“I’m married to her. We have a son.”
Delaney lowered the gun again, but not all the way. A muscle twitched in her jaw as she bit back barely harnessed fury. “No one who knew her name would be stupid enough to lie about that.”
Pogo looked back at her, unblinking. She was no longer amusing or funny; I could see him drop her into the ‘very dangerous’ category in his head. He slowly looked over at me, his movements more precise and cautious. “They do occasional work for K2. It’s a small team, specialized in surveillance and infiltration, but they’ve done a contested extraction.”
Delaney’s mouth twitched in quirk of a malevolent smile. Or at least something like a smile. “Contested extraction? I like that.”
Pogo nodded. “Sounds a whole lot more professional than ‘smashed things and wrecked shit until we got them out,’ doesn’t it?”
“I’m puttin’ that on my fuckin’ resume. The whole ‘wreck shit’ thing is pretty much my usual plan.” A little tension seemed to drain from her, but I already knew she had unending reserves of that tension.
“I hear it a little differently. I think the words ‘unpredictable and prone to violence’ are used a lot, but Spooks considers your little team to be professionals. She doesn’t do that lightly.”
I saw a shimmer of pride pass over Delaney’s face.
He switched back to me. “What about Emma?”
Emma was my protégé, an executive assistant director, and the closest thing I had to a daughter. Unfortunately, everyone knew it. And she was married to the head of one Donna’s CUMULOUS programs, the slightly more respectable GREEN program, which often worked with us, but it made this worse. “I’m sure she wouldn’t buy off on the charges against me, and I am just as sure that they’ve got someone all over her and her husband, which is probably why Donna isn’t willing to take the risk of exposure.”
He glanced over at Delaney for a moment and made a helpless gesture. “Best advice I can give you is to go with her team. Spooky says she’ll try to render some assistance, but her hands are mostly tied, at least in any official capacity. Unless you have something in your back pocket, I don’t know about?”
I shook my head. “If I did…”
“You wouldn’t be here.” He looked down for a moment. “Then her team is your best bet.”
We talked for a few more minutes, but it was pretty clear we had reached the end of the discussion.
*****
A Walk in the Park
*****
There was nothing for it but to try to find whatever Michael had left for me. We went over maps of the area. I was gaining strength enough to be, well, fairly mobile, if not ready to run my regular five miles.
“It’d be safer if I did it myself.” Delaney was less than happy about my decision to go.
“I can’t be sure which bench it is; I’ll have to get eyes on it to be sure. Besides, he might have left a sign or signal specific to me that you’d never pick out.” I wasn’t exactly prepared to just hand off whatever it was to a mercenary who worked for a private military company. I might occasionally forget what she really was, but I made a habit to remind myself.
She frowned. “The last part is true.”
A twist of a smile crossed her face. “The part about being sure it’s the right bench is bullshit, though. You’d be a lousy cop if you weren’t sure. Still, if I were you, I wouldn’t completely trust me or K2 either. I know you can, but how would you know?”
I sighed. She’d pretty much read my mind. “I’d say you’d make a good police officer yourself, but I’d never get it out with a straight face.”
She rolled her eyes. “I wouldn’t last a week as a cop.” She took a breath. “Alright, I figured you’d say that, so we need to make sure you can make the distance from the Metro stop to the bench and back without collapsing…”
It sucked. She meant it. She figured it out and refused to go until I could go twice the necessary distance.
*****
Nothing ever goes smoothly. It was four days before Delaney felt I was healthy enough to make the run to the park bench.
Four hours in the car and on the train to reach the station.
Four minutes to reach the open expanse of the Smithsonian Mall.
Four blocks to reach the bench.
Four seconds to realize it had gone wrong.
The man turned toward me and his face split in a harsh smile of recognition; he hadn’t been sure it was me until he got close.
“Hey, Asshole.”
He glanced over at Delaney, freezing for a moment, eyes narrowed. She set her can of soda on the bench and took a step back. “Wanna see a magic trick?”
He looked at her in confusion; he hadn’t realized we were together. She’d been following behind me, head down, hoodie pulled up, looking like a standard-issue disgruntled teen.
She gestured at the can.
It disintegrated in a shower of soda, the spray of liquid hanging in the air for a surreal moment.
He blinked, then froze.
A rifle shot of some kind, but it was obviously suppressed. She smiled, but a smile so malevolent it radiated darkness. “Look down, Dickhead.”
A red laser dot showed briefly on his shirt, almost motionless in the center of his chest, then flicked off. She glanced around casually. “I’m starting a collection. It’s called ‘Guns I took from Assholes.’ Thank you for your contribution. Put the gun and your phone on the bench and step the fuck back.”
He looked around carefully, but wherever the shooter was, they were well-hidden. He looked at her, and she returned his stare with a slight, absolutely evil smile. He put the gun and phone down wordlessly.
“Okay, turn around and start walking in that direction for at least five minutes. If you do anything else at all — turn around, pull another gun, pull out another phone – they’ll fucking kill you. The only reason you’re not dead already is that I don’t want to deal with the fucking mess.”
Delaney scooped the gun up and dropped it into her jacket pocket, then picked up the phone, tossed the battery into the grass, and dropped the cell into her potato chip bag.
I searched the bench. Nothing. I’d have seen a dead drop from Michael if one had been there.
The pain in my chest surged as I let my breath out. “We need to get moving. Odds are they’re stretched thin, but I’m sure someone is calling everything they have in on us right now.”
She nodded in response. “We’re covered until we get into the Metro station.”
*****
An After School Special
*****
We finally reached the trailer, and I dragged myself up the steps. My confidence that I could just will myself to push through the injury was pretty much gone.
Two girls were sitting in Mooky’s kitchen chairs, eating peanut butter sandwiches and potato chips. The way they were watching the door, it was clear they knew we were coming. One of them, a fairly tall willowy blonde girl with “high school head cheerleader” written all over her, stood up and glanced at me before smiling at Delaney. “Took you long enough.”
Delaney snorted with disdain. “We had to take the Metro and make sure we didn’t have a tail. All you had to do was wait till we were clear and drive out.”
“In DC traffic. It’s as bad as Dallas.” The blonde girl wrinkled her nose cheerfully.
“It was Saturday traffic; that’s not as bad. You should see it on a weekday. I’m glad you made it, though. I thought I was going to have to kill the guy.”
The other girl at the table took a sip of her soda. “We wouldn’t leave you hanging.”
“I know.” The way Delaney said that was heavy with meaning, and the three of them just went silent for a second, exchanging glances. It was instantly clear that this was the “Camp Mayhem” crew Pogo had talked about.
Delaney broke the silence. “Maria, this is the team.” She pointed to the blonde girl. “This is Mackenzie. And this…” She walked over and stole a chip from the other girl. “Is Tess.”
Both of the girls gave very polite hand waves.
I gave an equally polite nod and sagged into the easy chair I’d temporarily escaped. My backup consisted of teenage girls.
Tess laughed softly. I got the feeling she knew exactly what I was thinking, and she confirmed it almost instantly. “It’s like an after-school special, isn’t it?”
She pointed at Mackenzie. “She’s the pretty one.” That earned a scowl from her target.
“I’m the geeky one.” She pointed at Delaney with a huge grin. “And Delaney is the outlaw girl with a heart of gold.”
“Oh fucking shoot me now.” Delany threw her hat at Tess.
Tess ducked it easily, and I realized they’d played this scenario out dozens of times. Mackenzie shook her head at the two of them, then looked over at me. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Tess straightened up, suddenly serious. “It isn’t. You already know Delaney. Mackenzie is one of the best shooters you’ve ever met…”
“Tess is our tech geek, and she’s a ghost when she’s following someone.” Mackenzie obviously didn’t want to give Tess a chance to understate her own abilities. “And she’s an awesome spotter.”
I looked at Mackenzie. “So what did you use at the Mall? I didn’t even hear the shot.”
“A heavy-duty air rifle. A pretty heavily modified Benjamin Bulldog.357 with a custom moderator on it. It isn’t my favorite gun, but it was the right one for the job. I usually use it for hog hunting.” She almost seemed to be running numbers in her head. “Limited range compared to a conventional rifle, but we made the most of it. And with the moderator, the sound is different enough to avoid most automatic shot detection systems; still loud, but it doesn’t sound like a gunshot. The Capitol Police have to have shot detectors all around the Mall, so it was an issue.”
I blinked, thinking back. The hair was different, they must have been wearing wigs, but… “The art students sketching near the Museum of Modern Art.”
Tess looked unhappy all of a sudden. “Crap. I thought that was perfect.”
“It was; I just figured it out. No vehicles nearby, and I only saw one pair that could be you.” I focused for a moment. “You used the sculpture garden as your cover.”
She nodded. “Those ugly granite wall sculptures channeled the sound of the shot straight up. It had the field of view we needed, and it was perfect to stage a normal scene. Two girls drawing the sculptures; obviously working on some kind of school art project, eating a picnic lunch on the mall, reading texts on a phone together, and listening to music. Those easels and the carry tubes made it easy.”
Mackenzie shrugged. “The bullpup is fairly short. We could shield it long enough to take any shots we needed.”
My memory of the two girls looking at the phone together sitting with their easels set up and their long black art carry tubes was suddenly much clearer. They made is sound easy, but the window had to be incredibly narrow.
“You were ranging the bench when we walked past you, weren’t you?”
“But you didn’t notice it at the time, did you?” Tess asked the question mostly off-hand, but I realized they were both studying me intently; they were using me as an after-action review. Delaney was fixing herself a sandwich, but she was tracking every word as well. These girls didn’t just have some individual skills; K2 had trained them in higher-level stuff. That meant they’d invested a lot of time and effort; post-mission analysis and planning aren’t exactly beginner level.
I was pretty sure asking detailed questions about their training would be a bad idea. I shook my head. “Not at the time.”
Tess shrugged. “We couldn’t exactly bring a vehicle-blind in close enough, even if we could guarantee a good parking position. The DC sniper killings made that tactic obvious to the police.”
“And anyone else who might pay attention.” I paused. “I’m really concerned that they knew about the bench.”
“We think he just caught up to you at the bench; it was facial recognition that found you. Or lack of it. K2 thinks they were surfing the feed off the Internet of Things — all the cameras, sensors, traffic lights and stuff – around the FBI, the Mall, everything in the area. K2 wasn’t sure if they could finesse it enough to get the right ones, so they had their associates use a bigger hammer method and take all the cameras near the Mall offline. Took out the ones in the Metro system too. That might have triggered the tangos to look around the Smithsonian. Or maybe they were already there.”
Tess glanced up at me. “It looks like an eastern European hacker group called ‘GoGoPiggy’ was paid to do the facial recognition program and surveillance.”
I shook my head. “The damn world is changing too fast.”
“The technology for facial recognition has been around a long time. People are fighting it legally, but…” Tess shrugged.
“They tried to ban the crossbow too, but it was effective, so it was almost an inevitability. It stayed in use until guns took over.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mackenzie and Delaney hanging on every word. I didn’t get this much focus when I lectured the FBI Academy students at Quantico. “K2 sounds like they have a pretty good cyber capability.”
Mackenzie shook her head at Tess in a warning, then looked at me. “Nice try.”
Delaney gave a lopsided smile. “Sorry, principals don’t get to know everything, just what they need to know.”
Tess glanced at her computer screen. “GoGoPiggy has other priorities now. They were sloppy, and their bitcoin wallets were taken down. They lost a lot of money on this one, and it has been communicated to them that it can get worse.”
“I’ve always been told that bitcoin wallets are absolutely secure.”
Tess shrugged. “Nothing is impossible; some things are just really, really expensive.”
I looked around at them. After school special or not, it was nice to be working with professionals.
*****
Later that evening, well after Delaney had headed out on one of her “errands,” Mooky walked through the door and looked around in confusion.
Tess gave him a warm smile. “Hey, Mooky.”
Mackenzie looked up from where she was sitting on the floor in the middle of an equipment layout, examining the seals on her air rifle. “Hey, Mooky.”
“Hey…” He stopped, blinking in confusion.. “Who are you?”
Tess pointed at the big carry-out bag Mooky put on the counter. “Dude! Are those the tacos?”
“Yeah, I uh…Delaney called, and…” He stopped as both girls jumped up and surged past him.
Tess dug through the bag and pulled one out. “Chipotle?”
Mackenzie reached over and took the offered taco. “Thanks, Mooky!” She looked back over at Tess. “Can I get a couple Napalm Sauce?”
Mooky watched, completely lost as they sorted out a couple of tacos each. He finally looked at me.
I shrugged. “They’re Delaney’s… friends.”
“Yeah, I kinda figured that out, but what are they…” He ground to a halt as he saw the heavy air rifle. “Is that some kind of ray gun?”
“It’s an air rifle.”
He blinked twice. “Like a BB gun?”
Close enough. “A really powerful BB gun.”
He looked over the equipment laid out on the floor. Low profile protective vests, a couple of handguns, night vision scopes and more. “I don’t want to know, do I?”
“Not really.” I pointed to each of the girls in turn. “That’s Tess, and that one is Mackenzie.”
Each girl waved cheerfully as I pointed them out.
Mackenzie pointed to the counter. “There’s twenty-five bucks there for the tacos. Delaney left it when she had to go check on the salvage yard.”
Nodding slowly, Mooky walked toward his bedroom, dragging his steps and mumbling. “I’m gonna go clean up.”
Something in Tess’s face twitched. “Hey, Mooky? Thanks for letting us crash here for a few days. Really. We’ll get out of your hair as soon as we can.”
He nodded slowly and trudged into his bedroom.
*****
No matter how professional they acted at times, it was still disturbing as hell to realize the mercenaries watching over me weren’t even old enough to be out of high school. Their conversations flashed dizzyingly from the relative merits of custom rifle loads to the price of lip gloss, to the latest pop song, and then to surveillance tactics without missing a beat.
Even to the glimmerings of teen romance. I had to admit they had a slightly different perspective than when I was a teenage girl.
“So… Matthew asked me to the Valentine’s Dance at school,” Mackenzie announced with a bit of pride, but I could sense that she wanted some approval.
“Really? He’s cute.” Tess turned away from her laptop.
“He’s too stupid to live.” Delaney was lying on her back on the countertop finishing the last of yet another candy bar.
“Hey! You don’t even know him!” Mackenzie scowled at Delaney.
“Same Matthew you talked about in chat?”
“Yes.”
Delaney rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “Too stupid to live.”
“Hey!”
“He goes to the same school as you and Tess, right?” Delaney carefully folded her candy wrapper.
“Yes, but…”
“So he has to know you won the Texas State small-bore rifle competition, right?” She eyed her little wrapper and folded it again.
“Yes.” Mackenzie pulled herself up to her full height. “And HE thinks it’s really cool.”
“Too stupid to live.”
“Stop saying that.”
“He wants a torrid summer romance…”
“It’s not summer.”
“It’s always summer in Texas. You need to install a damned air conditioner for the whole state.”
Mackenzie just gave her a sour look.
Delaney shrugged. “He’s trying to start a first-love romance with a hormonal…”
“I’m not hormonal!”
Tess snickered. “So, two weeks ago, when the world ended because you couldn’t find your pink blouse…”
“It was Dreamsicle orange, not pink…” Mackenzie suddenly caught herself. “Okay, maybe I’m a little hormonal.”
Delaney drove on mercilessly. “Starting a torrid first-love romance with a hormonal teenage girl who can drill a dime at 600 meters. Too… Stupid… To… Live.”
Mackenzie stared at her open-mouthed, then looked at me.
I held my hands up. “She has a point.”
Mackenzie looked like she was going to say something, but Delaney cut her off. “Just let me know when it goes wrong; I’ll drive down and help bury the body. It’d be easier if you get him up here so I could use the car crusher, though.”
Tess giggled.
I shook my head. “If it helps any, I’m pretty sure most boys that age are too stupid to live when it comes to pretty girls.”
I could see Mackenzie trying to work out what I meant by that; I noticed she didn’t brighten up when I said “pretty girls,” though and remembered her slight annoyance at Tess when she had introduced them.
I waited until Delaney and Tess went out on a communication run to talk to her.
“I didn’t mean to insult you when I called you pretty.”
She eyed me for a second. “It wasn’t an insult. I know what I look like. It just isn’t… part of this. Everybody at school, everybody at the mall, that’s all they see.” She raised her hands. “Look, a pretty cheerleader girl! But with K2, with Tess and Delaney… I get to be the badass with a rifle.”
“So are you the team leader? I’m having some trouble with your team dynamic. It’s odd.”
“We don’t really have a team leader. I’m more like a spokesman because Tess would rather be invisible and Delaney…” She laughed. “Delaney’s just not good with people sometimes.”
I nodded. “I can see where that could be a problem.”
She tilted her head, studying me. “So are we playing the twenty questions game? We figured it was coming sometime soon. You’d want to do it when only one of us was here, and not Delaney. You had your shot at her and probably didn’t get much. So we already decided what we would talk about and what we wouldn’t.”
I blinked. K2 had spent some serious effort training them. “Okay. Let’s do that. How did this happen?”
“Mostly by accident. Delaney’s dad and my stepfather, Tony, were teammates in the Army, and I kind of dragged Tess into it.” She looked thoughtful. “Kim told me you met my stepfather once, a long time ago. His nickname is ‘Hollywood.'”
Hollywood. I damn sure knew that name. I remembered him, most women would since he was a walking talking wet dream. He was also an assassin. Or at least we thought he was. Michael had tracked him carefully, just in case he went rogue. He was a sniper, probably one of the best in the world, and he had worked, or maybe was still working, with Pogo and Howard’s crew. We weren’t certain; Howard could be touchy if we looked too closely at his people. I was pretty sure Hollywood mostly took his occasional contracts from the murkier side of the government. Taking out terrorists, arms traders, that sort of thing.
“That explains your ability with a rifle.”
She nodded.
“Doesn’t school get in the way of all this mercenary stuff?”
“Not as much as you’d think. Mom and Tess’s mom thinks we’re part of a junior law enforcement club; learning from police, doing ride-alongs and all that. We do enough of that to convince anyone, and we’ve built a pretty convincing legend with K2’s help. I’m pretty sure Mom suspects. She’s not stupid, and I know Hollywood knows better, but they never say anything. Mom was only a little over a year older than I am now when she joined the Army, so that’s probably why she ignores it. Tess’s parents are divorced, and she bounces between them, so there’s a lot of room to work with there. Delaney… she has some kind of deal about this with her family. Most of the time, we just do courier work, sometimes we do short term surveillance or counter-surveillance, and occasionally we help with plumbing jobs — infiltration and planting bugs. A lot of it is just a couple days. Sometimes just a few hours. Kim is usually pretty careful about everything. This one is different. We normally don’t do babysitting…protection details.”
“It’s a different kind of work.”
She caught my thoughts almost before they were fully formed. “You’re wondering if I could kill someone. We’ve seen a few dead bodies. I go hunting a lot, and it’s all about keeping your focus. I know it will probably happen sooner or later. I’m okay with that.” She paused. “Tess would rather not. I’m sure she would if she had to. But that’s why it’s either Delaney or me with you for now.”
“Delaney…”
Mackenzie gave me a cool look. “I don’t think you have to wonder if Delaney would do it.”
“I’m not. I’m pretty sure she already has.”
She nodded. “I do this because I want to, so does Tess. I don’t think Delaney has a choice. She won’t go into it, and she doesn’t want to get us involved. All I know is that people keep trying to kill her, and whatever the reason is, they can’t just take it to the police.”
That fit with what Tiffany had said.
“Pogo said you’ve done a contested extraction…”
Her mouth tightened into a grim line, and she suddenly looked much more like a hardened mercenary than a teenage girl. “That was supposed to be a simple surveillance job with a protective babysitting team on site, but it went sideways. It turned out that an oil sheikh’s daughter ran away with her own daughters. His men killed her escort and snatched them right as we got there. Our backup team was held up.” She stopped and made a sound dangerously like a snort. “Did you know Delaney knows how to drive a bulldozer?”
“Why am I not surprised.”
She shook her head. “You asked if I was the leader. We all are, sort of. We’re good at different things. Kurt calls us a team of experts. We each take the lead when we need to. But when things go really wrong, it’s Delaney. She makes decisions even when all the choices suck.”
I studied her for a second. “Most of the time, making any decision is better than making none.”
“Delaney says Needles told her there are an awful lot of flattened squirrels on the road that wouldn’t make a decision.”
“I think I want to meet Needles one of these days.”
She eyed me with a touch of concern. “You know he’s dangerous, right? Like really, really, dangerous. My stepdad told me that, and he doesn’t say much about his old unit or the guys in it. He met Delaney, and he told me she has Needles’ eyes.”
“I thought they weren’t related?”
“They aren’t.” She stared at me meaningfully.
I took a bite of my sandwich and thought about the simmering rage I’d glimpsed in Delaney. She had it under control; absolute iron-clad control. But it wasn’t gone. It was just on a chain. When she needed it, it would always be there. “A bulldozer?”
“A bulldozer.”
I pictured the trail of destruction an enraged Delaney could wreak with a bulldozer. And Needles thought it was a good idea to teach her that. I needed to think about whether I ever wanted to meet him. “Sounds a little messy.”
Mackenzie nodded. “It was messy. But it worked.”
*****
A Simple Plan
*****
“So we need to get into the FBI.” Tess stated it matter-of-factly, like she was talking about buying a hamburger.
“No, I said the file or whatever it is has to be in the conference room down the hall from my office at the FBI. We can’t get in there.”
I could hear the frustration in my voice. I’d screwed up, and I knew it. The whole damn trip to the Smithsonian Mall had been pointless. I’d been thinking of what amounted to a first date with Michael, not where we’d first met. I hadn’t been concentrating enough. The injury, his death, it all had me focused on our relationship, and I’d screwed up. “The first time I met him, we were both in that conference room for a planning meeting; he was one of about a dozen agents there. I didn’t think of it because we were just introduced; we didn’t really talk or anything.”
“It’s not the most secure place in the world. The building is right on the street, not on a separate campus.” Tess looked over a CAD diagram of the building I was pretty damn sure the FBI security team wouldn’t have been happy to know was available. “If we could get over here… there’s a cargo elevator that would take us to the right floor. It’s only about 50 feet and a corner from there to the conference room door.”
She seemed entirely too comfortable with that. I frowned and shook my head. “Inside the main security perimeter, up a secure cargo elevator, and into a locked conference room, all secured with key card readers.”
Tess shrugged. “Could be worse, could be biometric locks, like a fingerprint or retinal scanner.”
Delaney grinned evilly. “Oooh. Then we’d have to chop off a finger or pull out an eyeball and take it with us.”
Tess sighed and shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. An eyeball might be good for a retinal scanner for maybe five hours, if everything goes just right, but the fingerprint scanner wouldn’t work. It’s not like the movies.”
Delaney scowled. “That sucks.”
“It’s a two-part issue. A severed finger has no electrical field to even activate the sensor and then the RF sensor wouldn’t be able to find living tissue to scan. You can’t use a dead hand to open a phone either. Same problem.”
Mackenzie stared at her. “What if you put just put the skin of someone’s fingertip over your own? As long as it’s fresh, right?
Tess shook her head. “You might be able to trigger the scanner because you do have an electrical field, but would the RF scanner actually read the print? I don’t think so. That scanner uses RF to look at the fingerprint so it ignores even the chapped or dry surface of the finger. I think it would probably just read your print, and not the skinned fingerprint. I don’t know for sure, not without testing it.”
They were taking entirely too much ghoulish glee in the whole discussion, so I cut in. “Ignoring the fact, just for a moment, that you really are talking about chopping off my finger, I think they frown on that kind of testing.”
Delaney made a sour face. “This would be in the name of science, right? Doesn’t matter anyway. She said there are none of those kind of locks.”
I grimaced. “Not exactly. The conference room has a standalone computer for presentations, and it uses a fingerprint scanner for access. If I had to guess where Michael left me something, it would be on that computer.”
Mackenzie shook her head. “You’d be locked out. I mean, they can’t be stupid enough to leave your computer access turned on.”
Tess shook her head. “If they do, it’s a trap to try to find out where you are accessing the network from.”
“On the network, sure, but the stand-alone computers wouldn’t be locked up. People on that one are given access individually as needed. Not much chance of anyone even thinking about that one. It isn’t used much. But I wouldn’t give us good odds on reaching the room.”
Tess gave me a sly look. “So you’re sayin’ there’s a fuckin’ chance.”
I stared at her with a bit of shock. Not only had the soft-spoken girl never really used foul language before, but she also wasn’t using her own voice. If I hadn’t been looking right at her when she said it, I’d have never known it was her.
Delaney winged a wadded up candy bar wrapper at her. “I do NOT sound like that!”
Mackenzie started laughing. “You do! You sound just like that.”
Tess batted her eyelashes at Delaney. “You do. You sound just like that.”
That wasn’t her voice either; it was Mackenzie’s. Maybe a spectrum analyzer could tell the difference, but I couldn’t hear it.
Candy wrappers snapped back and forth for a couple of minutes until they got the horseplay out of their system.
I looked at Tess. “You’re pretty good at impressions.”
“I found out I was good at it when we studied voice imitation in counter-surveillance…” She stopped abruptly and looked at the other two girls. “I bet she would tell us a way in.”
Mackenzie shook her head. “You know her agency can’t get involved, Kimmi told us that.”
“Maybe they can’t, not directly. But she isn’t big on being told what she can and can’t do; you know that. I’m sure she can at least tell us how to get in.” Tess sounded convinced.
I had a sick feeling that I knew the answer, but I had to ask. “Who?”
Delaney gave a feral grin that amped up my sick feeling. “Nobody.”
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
The Nobody Girl, aka Spooky, aka who-the-hell-even-knew. Donna’s operative. I’d tried to look into her, find out who she was, once. I looked until a nicely worded hand-written note card appeared in my office safe, asking me, quite politely, to stop poking around in her business. Spooky was feral, almost rabidly anti-social, and fiercely dedicated to Pogo, her son, and what she saw as her duty. As best I could tell, she’d started as a surveillance asset and graduated to something of a “removal specialist.” She hunted people, some of whom were nearly as dangerous as she was.
On the bright side, she had obviously managed to get into my office on at least one occasion.
Tess pulled out her phone. “All we can do is ask.”
*****
Somehow or other, it seemed fitting that rain was drumming on the trailer. All three girls were looking out the windows, intense, nerves on edge.
Tess had gotten an answer back within a half hour. Spooky wasn’t just going to tell them how to get in; she was going to come by to drop off things they needed.
Their reaction to the news was somewhere between joy and panic. I’d never really thought of Spooky as a possible subject of hero-worship, but there it was.
Somehow or other, she’d not only managed to teach them surveillance and counter-surveillance, she’d managed to make them really like her, if that was even the right word. All of them seemed enthralled with her.
When she finally arrived, she simply parked in front of the trailer, pulled a suitcase out of her car, and walked up. As soon as the headlights showed, the girls carefully spaced themselves around the room.
Tess let her in wordlessly without waiting for a knock.
Spooky looked around, then gave a slight smile. An actual smile. Like a human would. “A grow house?” She focused on Delaney. “Good choice. Did you consider incidental discovery?”
Delaney gave a single quick nod. “The sheriff knows about the grow house and tolerates it. He doesn’t consider it worth the effort.”
“What about the owner?”
“He won’t talk.”
Spooky gave a curt nod, and I barely managed to keep my shock from showing. She’d accepted Delaney’s word with no hesitation. From someone like Spooky, that was almost unheard of. Pogo had drastically understated Spooky’s opinion of the team. Probably deliberately.
Even as professional as the girls had seemed, the idea of Spooky actually trusting someone was something I’d never even considered possible.
If I got through this, I needed to put some effort into keeping an eye on these girls.
*****
Girl Scouts on Parade
*****
“This is BULLSHIT! Tell me you’re fucking kidding me?” Delaney stomped out of the backroom, shaking her head and waving a tan piece of clothing around. “C’mon, please.”
Tess started to giggle, and Delaney looked helplessly at Mackenzie. “Mack, please…”
The tall blonde girl shook her head and sighed. “It’s the best we can do. It was the only thing we could think of that could get us into the FBI building. There’s a classroom that’s perfect for us. It’s right there near the corner stairway.”
Delaney unfurled a tan Girl Scout vest with an array of badges on it. She looked over at me. “Could you just shoot me now? Please?”
Tess was dissolving onto the bed laughing, and Mackenzie wasn’t doing much better.
Spooky stopped working on me and looked over her shoulder at Delaney then over at Tess and Mackenzie. “The second she opens her mouth, I don’t think anyone is going to believe she’s a Girl Scout; I hope you two are more believable.”
Mackenzie straightened up. “We really are Girls Scouts; we’ll just be wearing our real uniforms. We’re Ambassadors.”
Delaney started to respond, then stopped and stared at me. “Holy shit. It worked. You don’t look like you at all.”
Spooky nodded. “Prosthetics, high-end stuff. CIA has a whole department for it for serious undercover work, but there are theatrical supply stores that sell top of the line stuff. With makeup, it works even at close range. I use it a lot on the fly, so I had to learn to apply it myself.”
Tess and Mackenzie got up and came over. Mackenzie leaned in close. “That’s just eerie. When do we get to learn this?”
“This summer, maybe.” Spooky finished, then flipped through a stack of driver’s licenses, finally selecting one. “This will work. Texas license, age and height are close enough, and the picture is close enough to work.”
“Where’d you get those?” Even as I said it, I felt my gut sink.
“Wendy.”
“How much did that cost?”
“A favor to be repaid later.”
“Damn it. I can’t do that. Not in my position.”
Spooky nodded. “I owe her, not you.”
“Wendy?” Tess had keyed in on the discussion.
“She’s a smuggler with a lot of connections. Expensive and pretty mercenary, but she’s completely reliable as long as she gets paid. You can trust her, but don’t ever run out on the bill. She has a lot of reach and a lot of people who owe her favors.” Spooky pulled a badge out and turned her attention back to me. “An FBI ‘No Escort Required’ cleared contractor badge from the Bethesda facility. It’ll read right in the system.”
Like any government agency, the FBI had countless contractors; everything from carpet cleaning to computer support, and technical experts of all kinds: international finance, military equipment, even online gaming systems.
I looked at the badge. “What is in the system?”
“You’re listed as a retired agent, working as a contracted consultant on transnational finance issues.”
“That’s just about perfect.” That was exactly the type of person who could get tagged with taking a group of Girl Scouts on a tour of FBI headquarters.
She nodded. “They’ll all be registered in the system, and the tour is on the schedule.”
“I’m not sure if I want to know how you did that.”
She tweaked a corner of the latex and started lifting it away. “I’d normally have made a tour request like anyone else and just submit it through a congressional staff office, but that takes a couple of weeks, so I had to expedite this one. I had someone arrange for a short-notice tour.” She turned and placed the prosthetic piece over the mannequin head. “You know how to apply the finished piece, right?”
“I’ve done it a couple of times. It’s been a while, but I’m familiar with this kind.”
She peeled off her surgical gloves and dropped them into her case. “Good. This is as far as I can go.”
I leaned back. “I understand. No suggestions?”
“No, they can figure it out.” She glanced over the girls, then back to me. “You’re in good hands. Just keep Delaney away from construction equipment and breakable things… like buildings and bridges.”
“Geez. It was just that one time…” Delaney rolled her eyes, but she ruined it with a malicious smile.
As she left, Spooky reached to each of the girls and brushed the fingertips of her free hand to each of theirs.
They just stood silent until she pulled away, and for a long moment after.
Delaney gave one last glance after her. “Okay, can someone tell me about this brilliant plan?”
Tess walked over to the computer and flicked it on.
*****
Delaney didn’t look much like a Girl Scout. She’d grudgingly put on the white polo shirt and khaki slacks, draping the sash on as well as she could. She’d even traded her steel-toe boots for a pair of plain white tennis shoes. It all fit perfectly, at least physically, but it just looked strange on her.
Mackenzie eyed Delaney critically. “Smile. Girls Scouts are supposed to be friendly.”
A pained expression somewhere between a grimace and a snarl crossed Delaney’s face.
“Don’t smile.” Tess shook her head and shuddered.
Delaney pasted an even more implausible smile on. “How-dy-do, Ya-all.”
Tess stifled a giggle, and Mackenzie snorted. “What is that supposed to be?”
“Ah ahm from the Great State of Texas.” Delaney made an awkward movement that I suspected was supposed to look like a two-step or some other kind of cowboy thing, but it just looked like she had a hurt leg.
“What if we told everyone she was mute?” Tess choked it out as she struggled desperately not to laugh out loud.
“I’m trying.” Delaney pointed down dolefully. “I’m even wearing these duck feet shoes instead of my boots. And I don’t even know what these badges are.”
Tess walked over. “I pulled out ones on stuff you’d know, just in case anyone asks.” She began pointing. “First Aid, Water, Cyber-Security Basics, Photographer, Dinner Party, and Survival Camper.” She looked over her shoulder at me. “Going out camping with Mack is like camping with Davy Crockett. Delaney just starts building stuff until she’s comfortable and fed.”
Mackenzie snickered. “I thought Kurt was going to die laughing. He left us out for three days last summer, and when he came out to check on us, Delaney practically had a small city built.”
I checked my disguise in the mirror of the van. “Some of those tents get pretty elaborate these days.”
“Tents? All the camping gear we had was the radio, belt knives, a plastic sheet, food, and a flint. Delaney built beds, a table, and stools before the first day was over. By the time Kurt and Katie came to check on us, we had a two-room house. With a barbeque pit, a fireplace, and an outhouse.” Tess threw her hands up in fake exasperation.
“It was just a couple of round lodges.” Delaney looked a bit less unhappy. “And you can’t blame me for the roast pig. Mack shot it.”
Tess nodded. “That was really good.”
They all sat for a moment, apparently fondly remembering delicious roast pig.
For a second, I wondered why Girl Scouts would carry guns. They sounded so much like ordinary teenage girls at times that I kept losing track of what they really were.
It should have been clear. They’d spent half the night preparing. They’d gone over the layout of the building, their cover stories, and the plan repeatedly, at a level of detail that would have gotten approval from any deep cover operations planner on the planet.
They’d quizzed each other over and over. Room numbers, hallway turns, the number of flights of stairs, how many steps in each flight, locations of maintenance closets, parking garage details. Emergency exits, power outlet locations. Escape routes, exfiltration routes.
Tess had even chased down the type of capacitor in the stairwell emergency light sets so they “wouldn’t have to wing it like that one time.”
I didn’t ask, and they didn’t volunteer details. Tess muttered something about “if you don’t know, you can’t testify about it.”
They even religiously repeated a mantra I had heard since I was a junior agent. “Good operations are smoke and mirrors. They aren’t easy; they just look easy because the effort and planning are done beforehand.”
One last gear check and they loaded up.
I’d frankly rather have had Delaney drive than Mackenzie, even though I was certain Mackenzie was competent and well trained. I’d had enough drivers to recognize that Delaney was one of the extremely rare few with an innate talent and a natural rhythm with machines. You can’t train that; it’s just wired in the nervous system. Once you’ve seen a few ugly motorcade incidents, you really start trying to find those rare few.
Makenzie was just more believable; she had height and a naturally closer-to-adult look that would draw less attention as a driver. Delaney still looked like she should be sitting on a telephone book. The Girl Scout uniform made her look even younger.
The drive into the city seemed to take forever, but Mackenzie handled the insane DC traffic as if she’d been driving in it all her life, eventually pulling into a parking garage a few blocks away from the Hoover Building.
*****
Tourists…
*****
We processed into the FBI at the visitor center along with several other visitors; senior citizens with a case of curiosity, congressman-sponsored tour groups and even a large high school group from Georgia.
The Girls Scout “legend” was a brilliant choice. With cranky senior citizens and deliberately obnoxious high school seniors, a small group of well-behaved Girl Scouts working on an achievement escorted by an actual cleared contractor was practically a breath of fresh air. We slipped through with minimal scrutiny.
Whatever strings Spooky had pulled worked perfectly.
As the girls’ designated escort, I had no trouble taking them in, and while the woman in charge of processing followed every protocol perfectly, there was no reason for her even to suspect a problem.
We started working our way through the displays. The girls asked carefully thought-out questions about every display, taking careful notes — even Delaney. While I expected her questions to veer toward the bloody and more graphic displays, she asked several serious questions about the lines of jurisdiction between the FBI, state agencies, and county level law enforcement.
With the key card, it wasn’t particularly difficult to slip from the public access area into the bureau itself.
We might as well have been invisible. While everybody we passed noticed us, they had no real interest in us. Admittedly, I would have probably reacted the same way except to maybe stop and introduce myself and voice some platitudes about citizenship and community service. Friendly engagement with visitors, after all, was a policy that I had implemented at the Bureau as a form of public relations.