The Assassin's List (29 page)

Her silence told him she wasn’t convinced.

“Margo, go home, please. I’m just having dinner. There will be plenty of police protection. Take Paul down to McCormick & Schmick’s, have some oysters, and put it on the office account. Just stop worrying,” he pleaded and ended the call.

He loved her like a sister, but sometimes she was too protective, too motherly. Not that he minded most of the time. Tonight, though, he needed a quiet moment in his office to clear his mind. Whatever else he thought about the familiar exhilaration he’d experienced when they stopped the terrorists’ attack at the depot, he knew more would die if Kaamil wasn’t stopped.

With that thought, he called Mike.

“Wondering when you’d call. My guys are on their way with the stuff you mentioned. I checked us into rooms in the Crowne Plaza off Kruse Oaks Drive. I’ll be in 301, so join me whenever you’re ready.”

“Outstanding. I’m in my office. After a shower and some coffee, I’m headed your way. How are we set for transportation?”

“Two commercial vans we use for surveillance and my Yukon. You think we need anything else?”

“That’s enough. I’ll drive my car to the Senator’s house. We can park the others on the street. See you in an hour.”

Chapter 51

Kaamil hated the town he was driving through, but he loved the thought of smashing its smug sense of security. He’d grown up in an all-black neighborhood in the virtually all-white city of Portland. Ten miles away from his neighborhood was the suburb of Lake Oswego and its ostentatious displays of wealth. People spent more money here each month taking care of their lawns than his mother had made in a month. Thirty-five thousand people living in a fantasy world, letting their children dress like little whores and drive BMWs to school.

The house he’d chosen as a base of operation was a seven-thousand-square-foot French Country mansion, with a boat dock on the lake. It belonged to a client with an ISIS home security system. Owned by a used-car dealer who had twenty-seven used-car lots spread across the city, it was also just around the point from Senator Hazelton’s home, less than five minutes by boat. It was just what he needed for the night.

At precisely six o’clock, Kaamil drove the borrowed catering van up the driveway and stopped in front of the elaborately carved double doors of the Peterson’s house. He parked the van so their front door was hidden from view, and jumped out wearing the catering company’s uniform. He carried an invoice on a clipboard, and held a silenced HK Mark 23 pistol underneath it. When Mrs. Peterson opened the front door, Kaamil jammed the pistol in her stomach and invited himself inside.

When the door closed behind him, Kaamil dropped the clipboard, grabbing the blond woman’s hair at the back of her head and pulling her close. Her frightened eyes made him smile.

“I don’t want you to say a word, or you’ll die where you stand. And then I’ll kill the rest of your family. Nod your head if you understand me.”

Casey Peterson was beautiful but not dumb. She saw the hate-filled eyes and powerful build of the tall black man holding her hair. She nodded quickly to show she understood.

“Signal with your fingers how many others are in the house right now.”

Casey raised her right hand and signaled with three fingers.

“Does that include your husband and your two children?” Kaamil asked softly.

Casey nodded yes.

“Are you expecting anyone else tonight?”

Casey shook her head no.

“I hope you’re telling me the truth, Mrs. Peterson. Take me to your husband.”

Casey led the way down the main hall to the den. Her husband was watching the news and enjoying his first martini of the evening. Thirty years old and thirty pounds overweight, Ron Peterson didn’t look as handsome as the billboards around the city made him look. When he looked up and saw a man holding his wife and pointing a gun at his head, he didn’t smile as brightly either.

“Stay seated. I asked your wife three questions, and I’m not sure she told me the truth. Too bad for you.” Kaamil shot Ron Peterson execution style. When Casey screamed, he grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, put the .45 beneath her chin and said, “If you lied to me, tell me now or I’ll kill your children. Nod your head if you told me the truth.”

Casey nodded. Kaamil let go of her hair. Then he slapped her with his left hand and gave her his last set of instructions.

“Show me where your children are. I need to borrow your house for a while. If you can keep your children quiet until I leave, I promise they won’t be harmed. Will you do that for me?”

A stunned Casey Peterson nodded before she numbly accompanied Kaamil down the hall to the screening room. The two children were watching a Disney movie when she led Kaamil into the room. She stood frozen as she watched him quickly walk behind each of her children and shoot them in the back of their heads. She hadn’t moved when he turned, walked back, and raised his gun to her head.

The house was now his, Kaamil acknowledged with a smile, as he shot Casey Peterson.

Chapter 52

After a shower and change of clothes, Drake left his office and drove south on I-5 to meet Mike and his hastily assembled team.

There was no way to know what they would be up against if Kaamil tried to finish what he had started. Drake knew the layout of his father-in-law’s house in Lake Oswego, and the likely avenues of attack. But he had to make sure there was little or no collateral damage if Kaamil came.

Senator Hazelton’s house was located in the middle of a three-acre parcel on the southern shore of the lake. In addition to its other accommodations, the house also had a recently added safe room. If Kaamil attacked, Drake knew everyone inside would be safe if they reached that sanctuary. His concern was how to keep attackers away from the house so no one had to use the safe room. The grounds around the house were what he had to concentrate on.

Twenty minutes later, Drake turned off I-5 and followed Kruse Way east to Kruse Oaks Drive and the parking lot of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. Drake couldn’t fault Mike’s choice of accommodations for his men. The hotel was close to the Senator’s home, business-travel anonymous and comfortable. He entered the hotel. An atrium with a waterfall cascading from the upper floors did little to deflect his concentration as he made his way to the bank of elevators.

An elevator took him quickly to the third floor, and a short walk down the hall brought him to Room 301. Three knocks on the door and he was greeted by his smiling friend.

“Come in, meet my men,” Mike welcomed. “We delayed ordering room service until we knew a little more about what you have planned, and whether your credit card is any good. Hope you don’t mind.”

Drake gave his old friend a one-arm hug, then made his way around the room, greeting the team.

Mike made the introductions.

“This is Capt. Ricardo Gonzales, formerly of the Green Berets. One of the first guys I hired when I started the company. He’s one mean man, except when his wife Linda is around,” Mike said, punching the man’s shoulder.

“Sounds like a wise man,” Drake said. “Glad to meet you, Captain.”

Capt. Gonzales got up from his stool at the counter of the kitchen/wet bar and shook Drake’s hand. Gonzales stood five foot ten and looked like an Aztec Indian chiseled from obsidian, his features were so sharp. He was mid-thirties but carried his years like a proud eighteen-year-old recruit.

“Mike told me he served with you, and that you’re a good operator,” Gonzales said. “I look forward to working with you tonight.”

“Likewise. Mike said you’re good, which tells me you’re the best. What was your team specialty, Captain?” Drake asked.

“Weapons, medic secondary,” Gonzales said.

“Glad you’re here, Ricardo. We wore the uniform, but this is private, sort of. Call me Adam.”

Sergeant Billy Montgomery was next to stand and be introduced. Sandy red hair and freckles across his nose, he looked like the prototypical southern white soldier boy. Drake didn’t need to be told he was one gung-ho soldier. His look and confident glare said he’d been there and seen it all.

“Call me Billy. I’m only a Ranger, but then I’m younger than these guys. If you need someone with younger, sharper skills, then I’m your guy.”

“Billy, your accent isn’t what I expected,” Drake said, cutting off the boos from the others. “Where are you from?”

“Manhattan, sir, born and raised. Dad’s a Wall Street type, but he knows what’s going on in the world. He didn’t stand in my way when I chose the Army over an MBA.”

After Sgt. Montgomery, Mike introduced Sergeant Lawrence Green, a stocky black man standing six foot four at least, and weighing in, by Drake’s guess, at around two fifty. Sgt. Green didn’t smile when he stood and shook Drake’s hand.

“Larry was with LAPD before he took a bullet in his shoulder last year. With his master’s in criminology from USC, he advises me on criminal behavior, and generally keeps me out of trouble,” Mike said.

Drake leaned a step closer and said, “Larry, Mike needs someone to keep him out of trouble, thank God it’s you and not me. When I worked with him, it was, well, difficult.”

“He’s said the same of you. You two must have been a hell of a team. His being good with a gun, and you being good with the ladies,” Green said amidst a chorus of hoo-ahs.

Drake laughed with them. “When we have time, gentlemen, I’ll be glad to set the record straight. For now, all you need to know is it wasn’t my good looks that kept saving his butt.”

“Last, but not least, I want you to meet William Richard,” Mike said. “He’s fondly known among us as ‘Dicky,’ our best long gunner next to me. Two-time one-thousand-yard national champion.”

“Dicky, I’m impressed. I don’t think Mike ever officially won that championship, but then some of the stuff we did they didn’t give medals for. Welcome to the party.”

“Thanks for the invite. Been a while since I’ve had the chance to do some real shooting.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Drake said. “Take a seat, gentlemen, and I’ll go over what I need from you tonight. If you’re hungry, order something light now, because I think we might be out for quite a while. But when we’re finished tonight, I’m buying steaks and cigars, so keep that in mind when you order.”

While Mike took orders for a light, pre-op dinner, Drake told them what he knew and what he thought might happen that night. When he left Mike and his men, all dressed in dark jeans, black T-shirts, and dark blue windbreakers, they were checking their weapons one last time before heading out.

Chapter 53

Drake left the hotel confident in Mike and his team. Their plan wasn’t foolproof, and it wasn’t rehearsed, but it was the best they could do on short notice. A week ago he was busy, albeit morose, in the day-to-day mundane routine of a lawyer’s life. Now he was thrown back into a life he once loved.

He had changed into a blue blazer over a cream polo shirt and tan slacks back at his office. The .45 in its small-of-the-back holster, however, was a constant reminder he wasn’t on a social call tonight.

The drive from the hotel to the Senator’s house took all of ten minutes in the light evening traffic. There, he was greeted by an Oregon State Police trooper who inspected his ID, matched it to his face and his name on the small list of visitors allowed on the property for the night, before allowing him to proceed. No, this clearly wasn’t the usual dinner with the in-laws, he thought.

Drake drove up the curving driveway. Lines of fire, natural protection, avenues of ingress and egress, likely deployment of attacking force calculations flooded his mind. It was training he had left behind, but it was still available in his memory bank. He worried about possible civilian collateral damage and was, for once, thankful that the size of the Senator’s estate limited that possibility greatly. Unless Kaamil attacked by air with a bomb, the Senator’s neighbors were far enough away to be safe.

When he arrived at the residence, Drake stopped his Porsche next to a second Oregon State Police trooper, who waived him to a parking location. Drake walked to the front door and waited for it to be opened by another trooper. Meredith Hazelton was waiting for him and hugged him tightly, kissing him on the cheek.

“Thank you for protecting my husband today. He said if it wasn’t for you, he doesn’t know if they would have made it,” she said, with a glint of tears in the corners of her eyes.

“I didn’t do it by myself, Mom. I had the help of an old friend and the Army. We were lucky, that’s all.”

“Adam, don’t waste my time talking like a politician, telling me what I want to hear. Tell me what happened out there. I’m not blind to the extra security outside. Is my husband in danger?”

“It’s possible, but I think they were after the Secretary. He’s the bigger headline.”

“But he’s here for dinner. Is he still in danger?”

“Mom, relax. No one’s supposed to know Secretary Rallings is here. We have the State Police outside, and I’ve asked a few friends to hang around for a while. We’ll be okay.”

“I don’t know how the Israelis put up with this stuff all the time,” she said, leading him into the house. “I’m finishing up in the kitchen. Go find the men.”