Split Second (43 page)

W
ILL
R
OBIE STARED
at the ceiling of his bedroom while the rain pounded away outside. His head was pounding even more, and it would not be over when the rain stopped. He finally rose, dressed, put on a slicker with a hood, and set out from his apartment in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C.

He walked for nearly an hour through the darkness. There were few people about at this hour of the morning. Unlike other major cities, D.C. did sleep. At least the part you could see. The government side, the one that existed underground and behind concrete bunkers, never slumbered. They were going as hard right now as they would during the daylight hours.

Three men in their early twenties approached from the other side of the street. Robie had already seen them, sized them up, and knew what they would demand of him. There were no cops around. No witnesses. He did not have time for this. He did not have the desire for this. He turned and walked directly at them.

“If I give you some money, will you leave?” he asked the tallest of the three. This one was his size, a six-footer packing about 180 street-hardened pounds.

The man drew back his windbreaker, revealing a black Sig nine-mill in the waistband that hung low over his hips.

“Depends on how much.”

“A hundred?”

The man looked at his two comrades. “Make it a deuce and you’re on your way, dude.”

“I don’t have a deuce.”

“Then you gonna get jacked right here.”

He went to draw the gun but Robie had already taken it from his waistband and pulled down his pants at the same time. The man tripped over his fallen trousers and fell.

The man on the right pulled a knife and then watched in amazement as Robie first disarmed him and then laid him out with three quick punches, two to the right kidney, one to the jaw. He added a kick to the head after the man smacked the pavement.

The third man did not move.

From the pavement the tall man exclaimed, “Shit, you a ninja?”

Robie glanced down at the Sig he held. “It’s not balanced properly and it’s rusted. You need to take care of your weapons better or they won’t perform when you want them to.” He flicked the weapon over them. “How many more guns?”

The third man’s hand went to his pocket.

“Drop the jacket,” ordered Robie.

“It’s raining and cold,” the man protested.

Robie put the Sig’s muzzle directly against his forehead. “Not asking again.”

The jacket came off and dropped in a puddle. Robie picked it up, found the Glock.

“I see throwaways at your ankles,” he said. “Out.”

The throwaways were handed over. Robie balled them all up in the jacket.

He eyed the first man. “See where greed gets you? Should have taken the Benny.”

“We need our guns!”

“I need them more.” He kicked a puddle of water into the unconscious man’s face and he awoke with a start and rose on shaky legs. He did not seem to know what was going on, which a concussion would surely do to a brain.

Robie flicked the gun again. “Down that way. All of you. Turn right into the alley.”

The tall man suddenly looked nervous. “Hey, dude, look,
we’re sorry, okay? But this is our sacred ground here. We patrol it. It’s our livelihood.”

“This is a public street paid for by me as a taxpayer. You want a livelihood? Get a real job that doesn’t involve putting a gun in people’s faces and taking what doesn’t belong to you. Now walk. Not asking again.”

They turned and marched down the street. When one of the men turned to look back, Robie clipped him in the head with the butt of the Sig. “Eyes straight. Turn around again, you get a third one to look through in the back of your head.”

Robie could hear each of the men’s breathing accelerate. Their legs were jelly. They believed they were walking to their execution.

“Walk faster,” barked Robie.

They picked up their pace.

“Faster. But don’t run.”

The three men looked idiotic trying to go faster while still walking.

“Now run!”

The three men broke into a sprint. They turned left at the next intersection and were gone.

Robie turned and walked in the opposite direction. He ducked down an alley, found a Dumpster, and heaved the jacket and guns into it after clearing out all of the ammo. He dropped the bullets down a sewer grate.

He did not get many opportunities for peaceful moments, and he did not like them to be interrupted.

He continued his walk and reached the Potomac River. This had not been an idle sojourn. Robie had come here with a purpose.

He drew the object from the pocket of his slicker and looked down at it, running his finger along the polished metal.

It was a medal. It was the highest medal that the Central Intelligence Agency gave out for heroism in the field. Robie had earned it, together with another agent, for a mission undertaken in Syria at great personal risk. They had barely made it back alive.

In fact, it was the wish of certain people at the Agency that they not make it back alive. One of those persons was Evan Tucker, and it was unlikely he was going away because he happened to head up the Agency.

The other agent who had received the same award was Jessica Reel. She was the real reason the head of CIA had not wanted them back alive. Reel had killed members of her own Agency. It had been for a very good reason, but some people didn’t care about that. Certainly, Evan Tucker hadn’t.

Robie wondered where Reel was right now. They had parted on shaky ground. Robie had given her what he had believed was his unconditional support. Reel did not seem to be capable of acknowledging such a gesture on the part of someone else. Hence, the shaky parting.

He gripped the medal’s chain and, like a slingshot, he whirled the medal around and around. He eyed the dark surface of the Potomac. It was windy; there were a few shallow whitecaps. He wondered how far he could hurl the highest medal of the CIA into the depths of the river that formed the boundary of the nation’s capital and separated it from the commonwealth of Virginia.

The chain twirled faster and faster. But in the end Robie stopped twirling it. He slipped the medal back in his pocket.

He had just started back when his phone buzzed. He took it out, glanced at the screen, and grimaced.

“Robie,” he said tersely.

It was a voice he didn’t recognize. “Please hold for DD Amanda Marks.”

“Please hold”? Since when does the world’s most elite clandestine agency have its personnel say, “Please hold”? It made them sound like a TV cable company. Next, would he have to hit 1 for assassination instructions and 2 for complaints on working conditions?

“Robie?”

The voice was female, crisp, sharp as a new blade, and in its undertone Robie could detect both immense confidence and
a desire to prove oneself. That was a potentially deadly competition for him, because Robie would be the one doing this woman’s bidding in the field while she safely watched from a computer screen thousands of miles away.

“Yes?”

“We need you in here ASAP.”

“You’re the new DD?”

“That’s what’s on my door.”

“A mission?”

“We’ll talk when you get in here. Langley,” she added quite necessarily because the CIA had numerous local facilities.

“You know what happened to the last two DDs?” Robie asked.

“Just get your butt in here, Robie.”

The line went dead.

J
ESSICA
R
EEL COULD
not sleep, either. And the weather was just as bad, if not worse, on the Eastern Shore as it was in D.C. She stared at where her home had once been before it had been destroyed. She had actually done the deed herself. Well, she had booby-trapped the place, and Will Robie had triggered the explosion that had almost claimed his life. It was incredible how a partnership could have been born out of such circumstances.

She pulled her hood tighter against the rain and wind and continued to tramp over the muddy earth, while the waters of the Chesapeake Bay to the west continued to pound this little spit of land.

She had left Robie feeling both hopeful and lost. It was an unfamiliar, unsettling feeling. She had no idea how to work through it. For most of her adult life her work had been her life; there had been nothing outside of that. Now Reel wasn’t sure she really had a job left. Her agency despised her. Its leadership wanted her not merely out of the way, but dead.

If she left her employment there, she felt she would be giving them a license to terminate her in a permanent way. Yet if she stayed, what would her future be like? How long could she reasonably survive? What was her exit strategy?

All troubling questions with no apparent answers.

The last few months had cost her all she had. Her three closest friends in the world. Her reputation at the Agency. Perhaps her way of life.

But she had gained something. Or someone.

Will Robie, initially her foe, had become her friend, her ally, the one person she could count on, and Reel had never been able to do that easily or convincingly. This job made you a loner, unable to trust. You were either in control or you were dead.

But Robie knew her way of life as well as she did. Her way was his way. They would forever share that experience. He had offered her friendship, a shoulder to lean on if it came to it.

Yet, part of her still wanted to withdraw from such an offer, to keep going it alone. She had not figured out her response to that or him yet. Maybe she would never have one.

She looked up at the sky and let the pelting raindrops hit her in the face. She closed her eyes and a rush of images came to her. Images of the dead. Some were innocent. Others not. Two had been killed by someone else. All the rest had died by her hand. One, her mentor and friend, lay in a vegetative state from which she would never awaken.

It was all pointless. And it was all real. And Reel was powerless to change any of it.

She slipped the medal and chain from her pocket and looked down at it. It was identical to the one Robie had been awarded. It had been given to her for the same mission. She had performed the kill shot—Agency orders. Robie had helped her escape certain death. They had made it back to the States to the chagrin of a powerful few.

It was a meaningless gesture, this medal.

What they really wanted to do was put a hole in her head.

She walked to the edge of the land and watched the waters of the Bay spray over the dirt.

Reel tossed the medal out into the Bay as far as she could. She had turned away before it struck the surface of the water. But metal didn’t float. It would vanish in a few moments.

She turned back around and with her middle finger she flipped off the sinking medal, the CIA in general, and Evan Tucker specifically.

Then she pulled her gun and ducked down low.

Over the sounds of the water had come a new intrusion.

A vehicle was pulling to a stop near the ruins of her waterside cottage.

There was no reason for anyone to be visiting her here. The only reason a vehicle would stop here would have to be a violent one.

She raced over to the only cover there was: a pile of rotted wood stacked near the water’s edge. She knelt down and used the top board on which to rest her gun. She could see nothing clearly, while they might have night optics that would reveal all, including her location.

She managed to follow them only by subtracting their darker silhouettes from the darkness around them. She centered on one spot and waited for their movements to cross this point. By this method she counted four of them. She assumed they were all armed, all commed, and here for a specific purpose: her elimination.

They would try to outflank her, but her rear was not capable of being flanked, unless they wanted to jump into the Bay’s cold and storm-tossed waters. She focused on other spots and waited for them to cross. She did this again and again until they were within twenty meters of her location.

She wondered why they were staying packed together. Separating during an offensive was standard tactics. She could not follow so easily multiple groups coming at her from different places on the compass. But so long as they stayed together her chances of killing them all would be far better.

She was deciding whether to fire or not when her phone buzzed.

She was not inclined to answer, not with four bogies bearing down on her outgunned butt.

But it might be Robie. As corny as it sounded, this might give her an opportunity to say good-bye in a way that was not possible before. And maybe he would go after her killers and slay them for her.

“Yes?” she said into the phone, keeping her shooting hand on her Glock and her eyes on the forces coming for her.

“Please hold for DD Amanda Marks,” said the efficient voice.

“What the—” began Reel.

“Agent Reel, this is Amanda Marks, the new deputy director of Central Intelligence. We need you to come into Langley immediately.”

“I’m a little busy right now, DD Marks,” replied Reel sarcastically. “But maybe you’re already aware of that,” she added in a harsh tone.

“There are four agents currently at your cottage on the Eastern Shore. Correction, where your cottage used to be. They are there simply to escort you to Langley. Please do not think of engaging with them and perhaps doing them harm.”

“And are they planning to do
me
harm?” snapped Reel. “Because it’s the middle of the night, I have no idea how they even knew I was here, and they’re coming toward me like four gunslingers in a B movie.”

“Your reputation precedes you. Hence, they are acting with care. As to your location, we determined you were nowhere else.”

“And why do you need me to come in ASAP?”

“That will all be explained when you get here.”

“Is this about a new mission?”

“When you get here, Agent Reel. I can’t trust that this line is secure.”

“And if I choose not to come in?”

“As I told Agent Robie—”

“You called Robie in as well?”

“Yes. He’s all part of this, Agent Reel.”

“And you’re really the new DD?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what happened to the last two?”

“The exact same question Agent Robie presented to me.”

In spite of everything Reel smiled. “And your answer?”

“The same as yours will be. Just get your butt in here.”

The line went dead.