Rising Phoenix (39 page)

Another thinly veiled insult. This time Jameson pretended he didn’t hear.

“Your recommendation?”

“We throw some manpower at it. Track down everybody this guy knows and find the ones who recently dropped out of sight. It’s only a matter of time.”

The Director cut in, speaking for the first time. “Mr. President—Perry and I were discussing the situation earlier. We think we have a better plan.”

Uh oh.
Sherman looked at Calahan with apprehension. The President looked with hope.

Perry Trent started. “Bill and I feel that we should
put out a press release saying that this guy’s gonna make a deal. Force the CDFS’s hand.”

“Force their hand to do what?” Sherman wondered aloud.

“A hit. Bring the guy in and out of the courthouse on a set schedule every day. Make it look easy.”

Sherman’s mouth gaped, revealing a half-chewed cookie. He slowly scanned the faces of the three men across from him. They all looked deadly serious.

Calahan continued the thought. “We can position enough men around the courthouse to guarantee catching the assassin. Maybe we’ll have more luck with him.”

The President nodded thoughtfully. “And what’s your opinion, Tom?”

Sherman had managed to close his mouth and begin chewing again. A thousand smart-ass comments came to mind. “This is a joke, right?”

“You have a better suggestion?”

“Yes. Track down all this guy’s known acquaintances. I know it’s not a particularly sexy plan, but, Jesus …”

“Hundreds of people are dying each day,” the President began. The sympathetic tone didn’t play as well in person as it did on TV. “Drastic circumstances call for drastic measures, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Drastic, yes. Desperate, no.” The eyes of his boss and the AG bored into him. “Look, sir, there’s no guarantee that they’ll try a hit. And if they do, there’s no guarantee that we’ll get the shooter alive—at all, for that matter. And even if everything goes right, there’s no guarantee that he’ll talk.”

Jameson buttoned the top button of his shirt and tightened the tie that had been hanging loosely around his neck. “As I see it, we’ve got nothing to lose here. If they don’t try a hit, we’ve in essence taken your road.” He pointed to Sherman. “If they do and you kill the would-be assassin, or he won’t talk, it’s still a productive operation. I assume that having two suspects will narrow down your search significantly. Won’t it?” The President looked pleased with himself for that piece of detective work.

“Yes,” Sherman conceded.

“Unless you have a better suggestion—and by better, I mean a faster way to stop these maniacs—I believe we’ve found our course of action.”

Sherman shifted uncomfortably in his chair. His resignation was on the tip of his tongue, but something was stopping him from uttering it. “Yes, sir,” was all he could get out.

“They want us to what?”

Beamon actually jumped from his chair as he spoke.

“Sit down, Mark.”

He ignored the advice and began pacing violently around the small conference room.

“You told them no way, though, right?”

Sherman’s tone was sarcastic. “Yeah, Mark. I told Calahan, the President, and the AG, no. And they said, ’Hey fine, if you don’t want to do it, we won’t.’”

Beamon ran his hand through his hair as he marched across the room, grabbing what was left on his crown. He stopped and stood motionless in that
position for a few seconds. “Why are you still here, Tommy? All you talk about is retiring. I’d have thought this would be the perfect opportunity.”

“I guess that, when I was faced with it, I just wasn’t ready to leave.”

That was a lie and Beamon knew it. He wouldn’t pull out and leave an old friend twisting in the wind. It just wasn’t in him. He went for the chair across from Sherman, deciding to let the subject drop. “Got any aspirin?”

“Took my last five an hour ago,” Sherman replied. They both giggled like schoolboys.

“So what do you think, Mark?”

Beamon pulled at his lower lip. “None of these young guys gets hurt.” He was referring to the team of agents assigned to protect the suspect. “If you and I don’t have the guts to stand up to the President, we’ve gotta be the ones in the line of fire.”

Sherman nodded in agreement. “This is gonna blow up in our faces, you know.”

“Oh, man,” Beamon slurred through the unlit cigarette clenched between his lips.

“
T
here they are.”

John Hobart followed his partner’s gaze up the street. A red Nissan Maxima sat inconspicuously between two other cars parallel parked on the quiet, tree-lined street.

“They were there yesterday,” Swenson continued, pointing to a narrow side street along Hobart’s east property line. “And there on Tuesday.”

Hobart grunted an acknowledgment, pulled back around the corner, and walked back to his Jeep.

His house was perched on a steep, one-acre lot. The trees scattered across the property were old and plentiful, blocking the structure from view. Hobart had taken his privacy seriously, even before his recent change in profession.

He turned the key in the ignition halfway and punched a button on the CD player. A Bach concerto surged through the interior of the car as he watched Swenson stroll casually down a side street, finally turning and leaving his line of sight. Hobart leaned forward
and looked at the sky through the front windshield as raindrops began to slap the glass.

The wind started to pick up, gently rocking the Jeep. Sturdy-looking trees bowed submissively as the first thunderclaps echoed down the streets. Hobart smiled. The large, well-kept houses surrounding him were almost invisible now, obscured by the coming darkness and thickening wall of water. The weather gods were smiling down on him. The street was deserted.

The shrill ring of his cellular phone interrupted his musings. His partner was on the other end.

“There’s no sign that anyone’s been in here—it’d take a wizard to beat your security system. I walked around the grounds. No sign of anyone there, either.”

“Are you ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

“I’m coming in.” Hobart flipped the phone closed and laid it on the seat next to him. He started the car and moved slowly around the block, passing close to the parked Nissan and turning up his driveway. He couldn’t see the expression on the faces of the Nissan’s occupants, but he could detect excited movement in the car as he passed. A feeling of relief passed through him. Amateurs.

Hobart hit the garage door opener well before getting to the house and was able to pull in without pausing. He hit the button again and watched his rearview mirror to see if his admirers had followed him up the drive. They hadn’t.

Climbing out of the Jeep, he pulled on a Gore-Tex jacket that had been lying in the back seat, and
escaped out of the garage through the side door. The rain hadn’t let up, and his boots sank in the softened earth. He struggled through his thickly landscaped backyard and alongside the house, finally stopping in a dense group of trees. In theory, his position should have given him an unobstructed view of the front door about twenty yards away. Through the storm, though, all he could see was the dim glow of the carriage lights.

Hobart crouched down and waited. The driveway was the only practical entrance to his property, due to a tall wrought-iron fence protecting the perimeter. While the fence had been installed by the previous owners for aesthetic effect, its arrowlike pinnacles effectively discouraged climbing.

He didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes after he took up his position, two shadowy figures could be seen hurrying up the steep drive. About halfway to the front door, one of them broke off and positioned himself twenty-five feet to the right of the door. The man stood motionless next to a tree, melted into it by the rain.

Hobart walked carefully along the edge of the lawn, staying out of sight. He stopped ten feet behind the figure. The man’s shoulders were broad, and well-defined muscles could be seen through the cheap suit plastered to his back by the downpour. A .45 dangled loosely from his left hand.

Hobart crept up behind him. His feet made an inevitable sucking noise as he moved, so he walked slowly, stopping at odd intervals to mask their rhythm. The combination of the noise from the storm and the man’s focus on the door made him an easy target.

He stopped just behind the man—so close that he had to control his breathing for fear his quarry would feel it on the back of his neck. Gazing down at the man’s gun, he confirmed that his finger was not on the trigger.

In one swift motion Hobart grabbed the gun, switched hands, and pressed the barrel into the man’s cheek. The man stood in the same position as before, except that his eyes strained right—focused on the barrel of the gun.

Hobart grabbed his shoulder and pressed down. The man sank slowly to his knees and then lay face first in the deep mud. Hobart knelt over him, keeping the barrel behind his ear, and watched the activity at his front door with silent anticipation.

The other man, who was still only a vague form to Hobart, had moved to within a few feet of the front door and was standing on tiptoe, peeking in a large bay window. He stood like that for almost thirty seconds, despite the downpour from the overflowing gutters. From that position, he reached over and rang the doorbell, and then pressed his back against the wall next to the door.

Swenson began moving along the front of the house. He would have been in full view of the man at the door, had the man’s attention not been focused in the other direction. Swenson moved smoothly, trying to keep out of the waterfall coming off the roof.

It would have been impossible to hear Swenson’s approach. Hobart later theorized that the cartel enforcer had been alerted by the water splashing off his partner’s body. Whatever it was, he spun to his right just as Swenson moved within three feet of him.

The struggle was short. Swenson was able to block the gun arcing toward his face and charge the man, lifting him off his feet and landing him hard on the brick porch. As his back impacted, the gun went off. Hobart tensed, inadvertently pressing the pistol harder into his captive’s ear. To his surprise, the pathetic whimper floating up from beneath him was more noticeable than the gunshot, which had blended seamlessly with the crash of the storm.

Hobart grabbed his captive by the back of the hair and dragged him to his feet. They marched toward the door. A scared-looking Robert Swenson was standing over the man’s companion, gun shaking slightly.

“You all right, Bob?”

Swenson swallowed hard and nodded, stepping back and inviting his prisoner to stand.

As they descended the basement stairs, Hobart came to the realization that he would never live in that house again. Nor would he ever be able to exist under the name John Hobart. The drug cartels had a nasty way of holding a grudge. In essence, the thing he prized most—his privacy—had been stripped away. The price of fame in this case would be a bullet in the head.

“Gentlemen. I always like to know who I’m talking to. What are your names?”

The two men sat under a bare bulb, wrapped in an almost comical amount of rope. Coils of white nylon twisted and turned across their bodies, pinning their arms painfully behind their backs. Swenson had gone
back to the warehouse after he had finished tying them.

The basement was typical of Baltimore’s older homes. Rotting overhead beams dripped water on the dirt floor. The cement walls were pockmarked and stained by a dark line running horizontally about three feet from the floor, suggesting that the basement at one time had been under water.

Hobart rarely used it, and with the exception of the large, well-equipped tool bench, most of the junk in it belonged to prior owners. Old bicycles, golf clubs, a bathtub. He had been meaning to clean it out for years, but had never received the proper inspiration.

“Fuck you, man,” spat the one who had grappled with Swenson. Hobart looked at his deeply lined face for a moment. The man’s stare glowed with hatred and sadism. Hobart moved his eyes to the man’s partner, who didn’t meet his gaze. There was weakness there. It could be seen in the curve of the mouth. The slightly flared nostrils.

Hobart stood and walked past the men toward the work bench.

“What if we just start yelling, man. Your neighbors won’t like that too much,” the angry one said in thickly accented English.

Hobart shouted for him. “Help! I’m being murdered!” He lowered his voice to a conversational tone. “You’re in the basement of a house sitting on an acre of land in a rainstorm. Who the hell’s gonna hear you?”

He selected a scratch awl from the tool bench. The angry one was straining his neck, trying to see what
Hobart was doing. The quiet one was dead still, head drooped forward.

The angry one gave up trying to see what was going on, shouting an idle threat instead. “You’re dead, man. Dead.” The sentence had a practiced finality to it.

“Maybe,” Hobart answered, “but you first.” He clamped his hand over the man’s mouth and nose, and pressed the awl into the base of his skull. The bone resisted at first, but gave way with a sickening crunching sound when Hobart put his full weight behind the tool. Once inserted to the handle, he rotated it in a slow circular motion.

Hobart felt the muscles in the man’s jaw go slack, and he released him.

The surviving man, who had appeared dead before, jumped as if someone had run an electric current through him. His head snapped up and every fiber in his body tried to move away from Hobart, who was busy wrapping duct tape around the corpse’s neck, sealing the small, oozing wound. Despite the man’s valiant effort, the chair only teetered slightly. A tribute to Swenson’s overzealous rope work.

Hobart walked around the chair-bound corpse and took his seat. The quiet one stared at him, wild-eyed.

He had the look of a flunky. No doubt he had hung on his companion’s every word, convinced that he was the ultimate killer. Lean, mean, fighting machine. What little strength he had, had drained from him with the blood and brains of his companion.