Headhunters (20 page)

“Good,” I said at last. “Let’s take down the office and get
the hell out of Dodge. Jess? You holding up alright?”

“Doing fine,” Jess said. There was stress in her voice
though.

“Our tail is still there,” Billy supplied. "He’s
closing the distance. Still a few cars back, but not as concerned about being
noticed.”

That wasn’t good news.

“We’re on our way,” I said and signed off.

The three of us checked the servers and then began ripping
out the hard drives. It wasn’t going to be easy work, but the possibility of
leaving these kinds of files in the open, even after what we were planning,
could be disastrous.

We heard voices in the hallway and Ron killed the lights. I
ducked behind a desk and for one dismal moment, wondered if it could stop a
bullet, finally deciding that the answer was probably negative.

“We’ve got three… no four tangos…” Ron whispered.

Four against three wasn’t terrible odds, especially if we
had the element of surprise. I just hoped it was enough.

The moment crept on and we waited in silence. I heard their
footfalls growing closer outside the door, then saw the silhouettes of their
legs through the vent at the bottom of the door. If they planned to enter,
their time would be now. I readied myself, and prepared to do what was needed.
I thought of the man in the bathroom in Los Angeles and tried to force the
thought out of my mind. If I could pick a target, squeeze the trigger, stay
calm… I could get through this. I waited for the door to open, but it didn’t
happen.

The voices passed and the men moved on. We were alone again.

“Let’s get these charges set and beat feet,” Ron said at
last.

Ron and Geoff produced bricks of C4 explosive as well as
blasting caps and a hand-held remote detonator. The two men began setting the
charges while I took my turn watching the door.

“Where did you get the party favors?” Geoff asked. His
British accent gave the question a comical sound to it.

“Oh… you know… friend of a friend,” I replied noncommittally.

“More like an enemy of a friend,” Ron offered.

We all had a nervous chuckle at that. The idea of using
terrorist means and methods to combat the very same threat was something that
was never lost on me. If someone had told me two weeks before that I’d be
blowing up an office building on US soil, I’d have said they were crazy. Now, I
wasn’t so sure.

“Okay, charges are set,” Geoff confirmed.

Ron stepped to the door. At the same moment that he cracked
the door open, I heard the footsteps returning. And fast. It was the first
group of agents. They must have heard something, known something… somehow
figured out our position.

Ron was too far committed now to close the door and hope
they’d pass by. He cranked his CS rifle to the left, flipped open the monitor
and stuck the weapon out the door. Ron fired in doubletaps, the same way that
Isabelle had. The sounds banged against the walls in the closed room and nearly
drove me deaf.

A bullet hit the door frame where Ron had been a moment
earlier, but it was coming from the opposite end of the hallway.

“Cross fire! Cross fire!” Ron yelled. Geoff ran forward and
pushed his weapon to the right and fired down the hallway in the opposite
direction. The two men were holding agents at bay, but there was no way it could
last forever. I crouched impotently behind the desk I’d already decided
wouldn’t stop a bullet. My brain felt frozen in indecision. I struggled for a
plan but none came. The closer I got to a thought, the next burst of gunfire
seemed to push it away.

Ron turned and looked at me, his face illuminated in
staccato bursts of light from the muzzle flashes. He was yelling at me, but I
couldn’t hear him. I realized that I couldn’t move. He shouted again and I had
to force myself by sheer will to get up, make may legs work, to listen to his
voice.

“Simon! We need a way out!” Ron screamed. “We’re boxed in!
We’re cut off! There’s no way out!”

I blurted out a curse and began looking around the room, my
brain running through scenarios and possibilities. At last I saw the access
panel in the ceiling leading into the ductwork. My fingers fumbled at the four
latches holding the panel closed, I couldn’t get them open. I whirled around
feeling like a fool, performing carnival tricks in the middle of a gunfight.

On a shelf beside a server I found a shelf bracket. I took
it, climbed back on top of the desk and twisted the latches. The panel dropped
down and I could see the cavity of an opening that was big enough for us to
escape through.  At last, a plan began to form. If we could escape through the
access area, we could get away from the room and blow the explosives from
another part of the building.

“Ron!” I screamed. He reloaded and fired four quick shots,
then looked back at me. “We’ve got a way!”

Ron gave me a thumbs up and then slapped Geoff on the
shoulder. Geoff looked and Ron pointed for the access panel above me. Geoff
didn’t hesitate, but not out of fear, but simply because there was no time.

Geoff ran toward me and for a moment I feared he might
tackle me. Instead he leapt up onto the desk, threw his gear up into the access
duct and then boosted himself up, disappearing inside. A half second later, he
was facing me again, hand out. There was no time to think. I grasped his hand
and jumped. I struggled getting up into the opening. Geoff was trained for
this. Not me. I barely managed to heave myself into the duct when I looked back
down at Ron and realized that he still had  the detonator.

Ron straightened his Cornershot into a standard rifle
configuration then fired the weapon one handed down the left corridor. In his
opposite hand he held his backup pistol and fired it down the right corridor.
In what seemed to be slow motion, both weapons locked back, empty. Ron dropped
them both, his ammunition gone. He turned and ran for the access panel. I
reached down, stretching out my hand to grasp his.

I heard the last gunshot and actually felt pain in my own
chest when I saw the bullet rip through Ron’s shoulder. He was falling then,
but at the same time, forcing something into my hand. To my dismay, I realized
it was the detonator. Ron was dropping away, his face a mask of pain. Another
bullet hit him under the arm as his body twisted and this time I saw his body
go slack, his face become expressionless. If I had the time, I would have wept
over the body of Ron Crawford. He was my friend and died in that building
trying to help me.

I had the sense of Blackthorn agents filling the room and at
the same time, Geoff Spanner pushing me.

“Go, go, go, God damn it, ya bloody fucking Yank…” he
screamed.

 And I went, but I fell into a numbness as I did. Ron had
died for me. Not for some grand ideology, but because I’d asked him to come. He
was my friend and my downfall was that he trusted me. What had I done?

I crawled as fast as I could and the minutes that followed
were a dark blur of ductwork and spiderwebs and screaming. And over it all was
the lasting image of Ron Crawford dying because he’d done what I’d asked him to
do.

At last we came to an open utility room and I found a duct that
was loose enough. I pounded it with my feet and at last it gave way and fell to
the floor with a clatter. I expected hundreds of agents to swarm on us then and
if they had, I would have welcomed them and embraced my fate. Perhaps it was
what I deserved.

Geoff and I made our way to the back of the building. We
found a conference room that looked serviceable and entered. Geoff tugged
rappelling lines out of his pack and worked at securing them to the conference room
table. I watched the door.

Some part of me wanted to be caught just then. To see agents
stream through the door and just begin shooting until I couldn’t anymore.

“We’re ready,” Geoff said simply. He’d secured two
rappelling lines to the massive conference room table. We could descend from
there.

I lifted a conference room chair and threw it at the window
with all my might. The glass spiderwebbed, but the chair fell to the ground. I
picked it up and threw it again and this time the chair went through the glass
and the pane broke into a thousand pieces.

I hooked into the rappelling harness and Geoff and I stepped
up on to the ledge. Geoff gave me a thumbs up and clicked his tongue before
starting down. I wanted to return the gesture but he was already gone, bounding
down the side of the building.

I realized then that he wasn’t indicating a thumbs up. Not
at all. He was indicating that I should push the button on the detonator. Of
course. I lifted the detonator and thought of Ron, thought of my promise to
make certain that everyone went home, thought of the agents surrounding his
body at that very second.

I pushed the button on the detonator and stepped off the
window ledge and fell into open space.

Chapter Nineteen

I was running down the side of the
building in an Australian rappel. I was facing the ground, holding the rope in
my hand, trying to control the speed of my descent. I could see Geoff ahead of
me, just below. I would have been scared, just frightened out of my mind, had
it not been for the explosions.

I had depressed the button on the detonator and for a full
second, nothing happened. I’d already begun my descent and cursed myself. A
more experienced agent would have waited, ensured that the charges went off. In
retrospect, there’s not much I could have done. I couldn’t face down Kendrick’s
agents alone in the hopes of detonating the charges manually.

My heart was sinking when I finally heard the explosion. I
expected something, but I didn’t know what. Would it be a minimal explosion and
smoke? A Hollywood fireball that toppled the building? I didn’t know until it
happened. The explosion ripped through the tenth floor and glass shattered in a
cacophony of noise and light and shards of glass. My feet left the side of the
building for a second and I feared I might fall, not like in the elevator
shaft, but freefall ten stories and meet a sudden, terminal stop on the
pavement below.

I saw a black-suited agent fall past me then, screaming,
arms flailing. His face held a look of sheer terror as he plummeted past me
like a fish suddenly plucked out of water and thrown onto dry land. I saw him
tumble through the air in a slow rotation, fall past Geoff below me and strike
the ground in a sickening crumple of tangled bones. He’d been thrown out of the
building by the force of the blast. I thought back to the World Trade Center
attack and the people that had fallen to their deaths, either by the explosion
inside the building or the fires that had made them want to jump.

I considered that for a second. If the agent was a victim,
like the people in the towers on 9/11… what did that make me? I fought back the
thought, refusing to embrace it. I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t a terrorist. I
was doing the right thing here. Of that I was sure.

At last I arrived at ground level. Geoff was waiting for me.
I tried not to look at the fallen agent’s body, but the crimson splash was hard
to avoid. It was all I could do to continue on.

Geoff fished out something from his pocket and handed it to
me. I accepted it without thinking and discovered it to be car keys. He pointed
then and I saw twin Cadillac CTS’s sitting nearby.

“Hell of a way to go…” Geoff said. He was looking up at the
building. I shared his thoughts. Ron Crawford was in there. His body, at least,
and it tore us apart to think of our friend being inside. The building was
burning and Ron’s body would be incredibly difficult to recover. I had no idea
if such a feat were even possible.

“Let’s make sure he didn’t die in vain,” I said.

Geoff jumped into his car and the engines roared to life. We
took a moment to attach headsets to our radios so that we could communicate.

“Are we running hot?” I said, testing the throat mic. “Give
me a headcount.”

“We’re all here, Simon,” Jessica replied, her voice
strained. I knew what a trial this all must be. I could feel it in her and I
vowed then and there never to put her in the middle of something like this
again.

“Geoff here,” he reported.

“Where’s Ron?” Billy asked finally after a long silence.

“He didn’t make it,” I said. I tried with all my might to
keep my voice even, but feared that it didn’t come across that way. I heard Nan
curse and surely couldn’t blame her. I wanted to curse too. To hang my head or
shake my fist at the heavens. But there was no time for that. We each do what
we can, where we can. There is no other option.

“Billy, give me a sit-rep,” I barked. I hit the accelerator
and backed the car out, shifted and fell in line behind Geoff. I was a good
driver. I’d been trained by escape and evasion experts with years in tradecraft.
But Geoff put me to shame.

“We’ve got the black sedan closing on us fast,” Billy said.
A moment later, “Aww, shit… he just turned on his lights in his grill. Looks
like an unmarked.”

They were trying to pull over the van now. Word must have
gotten back from Kendrick what had happened. If they traced the hack and they
knew we were in the data center destroying the hard drives and files, they knew
the data had to go somewhere. Kendrick’s boys were going after the van.

“Where are you?” I asked. “Jess, where are you right now?”

“North side of the city, Simon,” she said. “We’ve been
circling and taking random streets. I don’t know how they found us…”

“That’s not important right now. You have to get back into
the city,” I said. “Come back into the downtown area.”

“I thought you said not to get in anywhere that I’d have to
stop,” Jess asked, her voice pleading.

“I know, I know,” I replied. “Trust me here. We have to stay
as public as possible. If we try to run right now, those agents will crash your
van and come after you. They won’t risk doing that in the city.”

“I thought you said this was going to keep me safe,” Jessica
laughed humorlessly. “I thought this was supposed to keep me out of danger.”

“So did I,” I replied. I seemed to be making bad choices
here wherever I turned. This felt right though. I had to trust my instincts.
“Head into the city, right into the heart of the— “

“Oh my God!” Jessica screamed, cutting me off.

I could hear the screech of tires over my radio. My face
flushed with fear and frustration. I was helpless to do anything, wanting
desperately to crawl through the radio, to be there. To help her through.

“What’s happening?” I shouted.

“They’re trying to cut me off!” Jess cried. “Oh shit,
there’s a car in the road… there’s another car blocking the road.”

This was it, I thought. They were trying to stop the van
where it was, to take them down before they could back into the city. I had to
find some way to stop it.

“Jess, you can’t stop!” I said. “You have to go, just go,
just hit the gas.”

“But they’re blocking…” Jess began.

“Trust me… do it,” I said. There was a coldness, a cruelty
that had crept up into my voice and I didn’t like it one bit. I could hear Nan
yelling profanities and then Billy’s direct voice as well, urging Jessica on,
but my focus stayed on her.

She made a sound of regret and fear in her throat and then
screamed but not the scream of a frightened woman. This was a battle cry,
fierce and loud. I heard crunching metal and and tires screeching in protest at
being dragged across blacktop. Then silence.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

Silence.

“Fine. We made it through,” This last bit was punctuated by
a nervous laughter from Jess.

“Bloody good show,” Geoff said over the radio. “You showed
those wankers!”

I was following Geoff as best I could and while the urge to
encourage him and push him to go faster rose in my throat, I feared I might not
be able to keep up if I did.

“Good girl,” I said. “Are there any more?”

“I hope not,” she said immediately, then, “Not right now.”

“Good, keep moving,” I replied. “Geoff and I are coming to
you. Get in the open and stay there. We’re going to try to contain this thing.”

“Thank you, Simon,” Jessica said and it made me want to hold
her, comfort her. But now just wasn’t the time.

“Geoff, we need to get there any way we can, man,” I said.

“I know…” his voice came back to me.

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and speed dialed. A
second later a distracted voice picked.

“Gibson…”

“Kenny,” I said as kindly as I could.

Silence.

“You broke my fucking wrist, Simon,” he growled.

“I understand that you’re upset about that,” I replied.

“Upset? I’d be upset if I misplaced my car keys,” Gibson
shot back. “I’d be upset if I burned my pizza while I was watching the Redskins
game. Breaking my wrist doesn’t just make me upset…”

Gibson’ voice was rising now, edging into a rant.

“Ken…” I began.

“I have to wipe my ass with my other hand, Simon,” he
continued. “My other fucking hand! Do you understand me? So don’t tell me that
I’m upset. I’m not left-handed. So please pardon me if a call from you makes my
ass itch.”

Wow… I’d ventured into some unfamiliar territory here. Ken
was more than upset. I’d need to change tactics here.

“Ken, I want to turn myself in,” I said at last. That slowed
him down.

“What?”

“I want to turn myself in,” I repeated.

“Are you kidding me?” Gibson asked, his voice thick with
cynicism. “You have blazed a path of murder and mayhem across this city, stolen
government secrets and sold them to the frickin’ Russkies for all I know. You
assault a police officer, evade a warrant and now you want to give up pretty as
can be?”

I had a moment where I needed to swallow my sarcasm. Gibson
had no idea what I’d seen in the past few days and trying to convince him now
would do no good.

“I’m tired of running, Kenny,” I said and realized I was
telling the truth. “I miss my family. I think I screwed up, man. I think I
screwed up real bad and… and… I just want to make it right.”

There was a hitch in my throat at the end and I didn’t have
to work too hard to manufacture that. I could hear Gibson pondering what I was
telling him.

“Was that you…? At Jacobson Tower?” Gibson asked. His tone
was low, his voice almost reverential.

“It was,” I confessed. “Listen, Ken. I can explain…”

“Where can I pick you up?” Gibson cut in.

I thought about it. Chicago was steeped in landmarks and
places to work from. I needed someplace public. Somewhere that no one would
dream of trying to take us down.

“Ken, I need you to close down the Michigan Street Bridge,”
I said. “Lock it down from the south. I’m coming from the north. We’re
southbound on Lake Shore Drive.”

“Are you nuts?” Gibson asked. “I can’t just shut down the
bridge. It’s going to be rush hour in a few hours.”

“Ken, they’re going to try to kill me. They’re going to try
to kill Jessica. I need to do this someplace public. Then I’ll come along with
you quietly.”

I let Gibson chew on that for a moment. I was struggling to
keep up with Geoff. He was moving through traffic like a wraith, several moves
ahead each time. All I could do was follow as best I could.

“Fine, I’ll do what I can,” he replied.

“Something else, Ken,” I replied. “We’re coming in hot.”

I could hear Gibson suck in a breath.

“Are they chasing you right now?”

“Yes,” I said. It was close enough to the truth to warrant
the response I needed. “I need a police escort. Helicopter, squads. Whatever
you’ve got. Bring me home, man.”

“Simon… don’t screw with me,” Gibson warned.

“I swear to you,” I replied solemnly. “On my wife, I swear
to you.”

“Okay, Simon,” Gibson said. “We’ll be there.”

I closed the phone and dropped it on the seat. There was
nothing more to say. I weaved around a Toyota and closed the distance on Geoff.
Traffic was getting heavier now as the daylight began to creep over the
horizon. Geoff was driving a wedge through the middle of them and I followed
close behind, the hammer driving us forward.

“Jess, can you hear me?” I said, transmitting over the
radio.

“I can hear you,” she replied. She was slightly calmer now,
but I could hear the adrenaline in her voice like a steel rod.

“I need you to head straight down Lake Shore and head for
the bridge, okay?” I asked. “We’re getting picked up by the police at the
bridge.”

“Simon, are you nuts?” Nan cut in. “We can’t go to the
police. We just blew up a building!”

“We have no choice now, Nan. It’s a bullet in the head or
deal with the cops.”

“You’ll never make it, son…” a voice spoke into my earpiece.

I thought I was hearing voices then. Because it certainly
couldn’t be…

“It’s Randall Kendrick here, Simon,” the voice said. “Your
secure radio frequency wasn’t nearly as secure as you thought it would be. In
fact, it gave you away…”

Damn it. It was him. I wasn’t hallucinating. I wasn’t
hearing things. Kendrick was actually broadcasting over our frequency. The
whole team could hear him.

“You ran away like a naughty little boy, Simon,” Kendrick
taunted. “I had no choice but to look for you, son. And it didn’t take long to
uncover your radio frequency. The NSA is ever so happy to lend resources when
we’re tracking down terrorists.”

I should have known. I should have known he’d be able to
find us. It was my fault. He’d tracked the signal. Discovered it was ours.
Overheard that we were in the data center… the radio signal gave us away… led
to Ron’s death… I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“We’re not terrorists,” I replied.

“Simon, you detonated illegal explosives inside a building
in a populated area and killed a number of federal agents,” Kendrick said. “I’d
say that puts you pretty firmly in the “enemy of the state” column.”

I focused on driving. The closer I got to the bridge and
Jess in the van, the better off we’d all be. There was no harm in letting
Kendrick talk.

“People like Mitchell Burr are enemies of the state,
Randall,” I spat back. “And the only way to deal with them is the way that I
did.”

My hackles were up, what Kendrick was saying was only
enraging me, but the fact that he was chuckling disquieted me even further.

“He’s not dead, son,” Kendrick replied. “If you hadn’t been
so headstrong, you might have seen that. But in the end, you only did half the
job.”

I saw a black suburban pass me then, no mean feat
considering the speed at which I was moving. Time seemed to slow in that
instant. I lifted my head, looking up at the passenger in the Suburban. I
recognized him immediately, despite the blood-soaked bandage at his throat, it
was not difficult to see that Mitchell Burr was very much alive. The dressing
was fat and packed in place under his chin, and I could see then that I’d
missed my mark in the darkness. As I’d always known, I had no taste for
killing. For “wetwork” as Kendrick called it… close quarters murder where you
were near enough to your victim that their blood could get on you. I was no
field agent. And I feared for what that meant.