Dark Spies (21 page)

Or kill zone.

One of the cops ahead was looking at him; no, looking just slightly to his left, at the officers behind him. Was he receiving a silent signal from one of his colleagues, saying that the man walking between the two sets of cops was Will Cochrane?

He kept walking, and Emma maintained pace and retained her smile.

The two men ahead changed position, not much but enough so that they had good angles of fire should they need them.

Coincidence?

Will breathed in deeply while unslinging the backpack and rubbing his shoulder as if it were aching from the straps. “Emma.”

“Yeah.”

“You really a Bible Belt girl?”

“Perhaps you’d like to find out.”

“Sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m truly sorry that I’ll never get the chance to find out, and I’m sorry if I accidentally hurt you.”

“Hurt me?”

“Yes.”

Will slammed the backpack on the floor so that it acted as a cushion, pushed Emma over it, pulled out his handgun and fired two shots in under one second, saw both cops in front of him drop to the floor as his bullets struck their Kevlar jackets, then spun around and fired again so that the two cops behind him were writhing on the concourse as if they’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. He bolted while men and women around him screamed at the sight of a psychopath who’d gunned down four law enforcement officers with brutal precision and speed.

But Will wasn’t a psychopath. He’d aimed at the cops’ body armor, knowing his pistol rounds would not reach the officers’ bodies, but nevertheless would incapacitate them for a vital few seconds.

Will was almost out of sight as the first cop managed to get to his feet, his face screwed up in agony from the impact to his upper body, which would remain bruised for weeks, his feet unsteady, his mind disoriented but praising the Lord and Kevlar for saving his life. He tried to move, but his legs nearly buckled. One by one, his colleagues got upright, three of them removing their bulletproof vests and examining the gunshot hole that was dead center in the jacket, the fourth speaking in a near hysterical voice on his radio mic that they needed assistance and mobile patrols to scour Union Station’s surroundings.

All around them was chaos, noise, panic, and the acrid smell of discharged rounds.

Emma’s ears were in pain from the sound of Will’s pistol; she’d never known gunshots were that loud in reality.

But, despite her body shaking from fear and adrenaline and the needlelike pain in her head, she kept her eyes on Will Cochrane until he disappeared from view.

She knew they wouldn’t get him.

Not today.

Anyone who could nonlethally immobilize four law enforcement officers in that fraction of time was too good to be caught fleeing this place.

Emma smiled as she imagined her mom inevitably asking her if she had a man in her life. This time she’d be able to respond with words that would finally stop her interference. Something like, “Yeah, lovely guy. I was hoping to introduce him to you, but turned out he was a spy, and we decided to end things after he shot four cops.”

Her smile faded when she realized she’d never see Will again.

Just her luck to finally meet a guy who she could sleep next to with a feeling of utter contentment and safety, only for that moment to be snatched away from her.

Still, it gave her some consolation to know that during her visit to her parents he might be nearby this weekend.

In Washington, D.C.

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
hough she loved the city, there were two things that Marsha Gage didn’t like about Washington: it had far too many politicians for her liking, and early-morning traffic could be horrendous, particularly when rain was pouring out of the black clouds above the city. Thankfully, her car was tailgating Pete Duggan’s SUV as its siren and flashing lights forced a path toward Union Station. Duggan’s HRT colleagues weren’t in the vehicle because Marsha didn’t need them right now; instead she’d told Pete to come with her so that she could draw upon his expertise.

Twenty-three minutes earlier she’d received a call from Commander Bret Oppenheimer of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia telling her what had happened at the station, that all police leave had been canceled, that he was increasing the police presence in D.C., and that Will Cochrane had vanished. And while she’d been grabbing her car keys and Pete Duggan, she’d gotten another call from the chief of Washington’s Metro Transit Police Department saying that this morning he’d be unofficially telling every cop who worked for his department that none of them would be reprimanded if they spotted Cochrane at another transportation hub and shot him dead without issuing a warning. The chief had sounded furious, and Marsha didn’t blame him because it was his men who’d been shot.

Duggan was driving fast down Massachusetts Avenue, and Marsha kept pace with him as they raced onto the ramp that took them to Union Station’s parking zone. Two minutes later they were walking fast across the concourse where the confrontation had taken place. Most of it was cordoned off with police tape; uniformed and plainclothes cops were everywhere, including the four officers who were shot. Though they were merely bruised, the casualties had blankets over their shoulders, were drinking coffee, and were being attended to by paramedics. Beyond the tape, civilians were standing in near silence as they stared at the crime scene.

Marsha and Duggan ducked under the tape, flashed their FBI credentials at two officers who challenged them, and walked to the center of the crime scene. As they did so, Marsha estimated there were approximately fifty police officers on the concourse—a mixture of Transit and Met cops.

“Who’s in charge here?” Marsha’s voice echoed in the station.

The officers stared at her.

A plainclothes female officer stopped talking to three of her colleagues and called out, “That would be me. Detective Brooks. Met Department.”

Marsha and Duggan walked up to her. “We’re FBI. My name’s Marsha Gage and this is Agent Pete Duggan from HRT. I’m in charge of the Bureau manhunt to catch Will Cochrane.” She looked around. “What procedures do you have in place right now?”

Brooks nodded toward the exit. “Detectives and uniform are doing door to door to see if we can pick up Cochrane’s trail. We’ve interviewed a woman who sat next to him on the bus he took from NYC and who was close to him when he opened fire here. She says he was holding a gun on her when they were walking across the concourse. I know she’s lying, but I also know she’s not an accomplice. At least, nothing more than trying to help a guy who she took a shine to. We know where she lives and who she’s visiting, so we let her go with the caveat that we might question her again if we need to.”

“You should have asked her about Cochrane’s physical and mental state, and anything about where he might be headed.”

“I did. He was pleasant, kind, and exhausted when on the coach. She reckoned cops would be able to knock him over with a feather duster, and was very surprised to see how he sprung into action. But he made no mention as to where he was headed. On that point, I know she’s telling the truth.”

“Have you done anything with the media?”

“No. I was told you were coming here, so knew you’d want to make a decision on how to handle this with the press.”

“Forensics?”

Brooks pointed at the men and women who were dressed in all-in-one white overalls and were crouching over a part of the floor that had a small inner cordon and was off limits to everyone else. “That’s where he made the shots. Empty cartridges have already been sent off for ballistics analysis. Plus we’ve taken hair and other samples from a cushion the woman lent him on the coach and from her clothes. It’s a formality though—the woman has positively ID’d him as the man she read about in yesterday’s
New York Times
. Plus, she said he spoke in a British accent. We’re in no doubt he’s Will Cochrane.”

“Some of my agents are on their way here now to help with picking up his trail. You got a problem with that?”

“No, ma’am. You have jurisdiction. And we need all the help we can get.”

Marsha smiled. “Detective Brooks, I can see this crime scene’s in capable hands.” She pointed at the four officers wearing blankets over their shoulders. “How are they holding up?”

“They’re in shock, and they feel like they’ve been hit by a truck.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

Marsha nodded. “They’ll be at least half as effective as they were before Cochrane opened fire on them.” She glanced at Duggan before returning her attention to Brooks. “Can we borrow them for a moment?”

“Sure.” Brooks raised a hand and called out, “Sergeant Kowalski, I need you and your men over here.”

The four officers walked over, their faces somber and sheepish.

Marsha said to Kowalski, “I want you all to stand in the exact same positions you were in when Cochrane pulled out his gun. Just before it happened, did you have your hands over your pistols?”

The sergeant nodded. “Our guns were holstered but unstrapped; we were ready to pull them out.”

“Okay. Time to stop feeling sorry for yourselves, get rid of the blankets and drinks, and move into position.”

The officers moved to the places where Cochrane had knocked them off their feet—two groups of two, spread apart from the area where the forensics team was working.

Marsha said to Duggan, “Stand next to the inner cordon. When I give the command, pull out your handgun and pretend like you’re firing on the two cops ahead of you, then the two cops behind. Say ‘Bang’ for every pretend shot.”

The former SEAL Team 6 member turned HRT commander nodded. “Got it.”

Marsha raised her voice so that she could be heard by the cops, who were now forty yards apart. “Kowalski—my colleague’s going to pretend to be Cochrane and reenact what happened. I want you to do the same, and that means unholstering your weapons if you get a chance.”

“We’re hardly in the best shape!”

“I know. And that’s important to me.” She smiled. “Just make sure your safety catches are on and no one accidentally discharges.”

She stared at Duggan, who was standing very close to where Cochrane had opened fire. Within the United States’ special operations community, no one was better placed to do this than Duggan. In person, she’d witnessed what he could do with a gun, and on one occasion she’d played hostage in the Quantico antiterrorism training house. It had been a terrifying experience seeing Duggan’s explosive precision and speed as he stormed into her room while firing live rounds inches from her face.

Duggan’s handgun was concealed under his jacket.

Marsha shouted, “Go!”

The HRT commander dropped low, pulled out his weapon, two “Bangs,” spun around, and stopped.

The other two injured cops had their pistols pointing at his chest.

Duggan got upright, put away his weapon, and walked back to Marsha and Brooks. “I’d have been incapacitated or dead before I could fire the third shot.”

Marsha nodded. “Killed by men who were half as good as they were earlier this morning.”

“Correct.”

Marsha’s heart beat fast as she looked at Brooks. “If they’re not doing so already, make sure every officer on door-to-door detail—detectives included—is wearing body armor.” She asked Duggan. “Your assessment?”

The HRT commander looked at the four cops who were now moving back toward their hot drinks, blankets, and colleagues. “Getting up close and personal with Cochrane is a real problem. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d get beyond two shots. I’d say we put a net over D.C.—get helos in the air, each carrying one SWAT spotter and one sniper. And get every other sniper-trained SWAT operative on rooftops. The SWAT commander will know where to put them, since this is his turf.”

“Can we get extra men from HRT?”

Duggan shook his head. “You were lucky to get eight of us. Half of my colleagues are overseas, protecting U.S. sites from terrorism. The rest need to be on standby for homeland threats.”

Marsha silently cursed, wishing she’d been allowed to continue her pursuit of Cobalt so that she could stop his reign of carnage.

“Anyway, I can’t afford to put my team on static observation duty. SWAT’s perfectly capable for that detail. We need to be ready for a hot takedown once Cochrane’s pinned down to one location.”

Marsha agreed with Duggan’s proposed course of action. She said to Brooks, “Hotels, motels, anywhere that Cochrane can rent a room in D.C.—phone them all, in case he turns up at one of them.”

The detective replied, “I’ve already got officers doing precisely that.”

Marsha smiled. “Absolutely no doubt in my mind that you’re the right person for this job.” Her smile vanished as she looked around the Union Station concourse. “In a moment, I’m going to tell the media that Cochrane’s in D.C., that every transportation hub in the city has been bolstered with extra Transit officers who’ll be carrying submachine guns as well as their usual weapons, that the number of Met Department cops on the streets has been increased, that Secret Service is on high alert in case Cochrane’s going for high-value targets, that SWAT snipers will be looking over the city from on high, that routes in and out of the city will be heavily monitored, that citizens should go about their normal business but cooperate fully if we give the order for them to stay at home, and that starting right now the city of Washington, D.C., is a police state.”

One of the men in the crowd of civilians turned and walked fast away from the Union Station crime scene toward the escalator that would take him to the parking zone. Aside from his good looks and athletic build, he looked like an average guy who had every right to be in the building. His clothes were functional and cheap—jeans, boots, a bomber jacket—and his movement was indicative of someone who’d decided he’d wasted enough time rubbernecking a police incident and needed to get to work. He could have been a construction worker, a courier, or maybe an off-duty cop or security guard.

He wasn’t.

As an SAS operative, Oates had hunted down and assassinated terrorists in the backstreets of war-torn Baghdad, been a key participant in the near suicidal yet wholly successful mission to rescue five British army soldiers who’d been held hostage in Sierra Leone, fought toe to toe with tough jihadists in the Tora Bora cave complex, singlehandedly killed twelve rebels in a confrontation on the Pakistani border, and walked into a mosque in Afghanistan and shot its imam in the head for no other reason than that the soldier thought the cleric had been spouting a load of poisonous crap. When unproven suspicion had fallen on him for the murder, he was sacked from the Regiment. At the end of their military careers, Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen had also stepped into the wrong side of the morally ambiguous gray zone that separated right and wrong in covert combat. Shortly thereafter, all four men became guns for hire. Recognizing their skills and inability to enter the more traditional private-military-contractor career path open to former special operatives, Antaeus had snapped them up and given them additional training in his dark art of espionage.

Oates moved into the vast parking zone and within minutes was sitting next to Scott in their vehicle.

Scott turned on the ignition as he watched Marsha Gage walk quickly to her car. “How did it go?”

Oates pulled out his handgun and fixed it in between his seat and the underside of his thigh. “Lots of cops standing around drinking coffee.”

“Doughnuts?”

“Nah.”

“What a shame.”

“Yeah. Come all this way to America, and you deserve to see cops stuffing doughnuts in their gobs.”

“What do you reckon happened in there?”

Oates shrugged. “Gunfight. Cochrane took down four cops.”

His fellow former SAS colleague asked, “Killed them?”

Oates shook his head. “Nope. Put them on their asses.”

“Shots to vests?”

“Precisely.”

“How very generous of him.” Scott put the car in gear and slowly moved it out of the lot as Marsha’s car began to move. “Could you hear what Gage was saying?”

“No, but I didn’t need to. She wanted to examine the scene to find out what Cochrane was capable of. There was a big guy with her. Wasn’t wearing uniform, but absolutely no doubt he’s Hormone Replacement Therapy.”

Scott laughed.

“She used him to see how quick the job could be done.”

“Did HRT man pass?”

“Not quite, but he’s very fast. We’ve got to be careful.”

“Would you have passed?”

“Of course.”

“You saying that just because I’m team leader?”

“Wish you’d fuck off with this
team leader
shit.” Oates shook his head. “Next time, I’m going to tell the boss that I should be team leader.”

“I’d love to be a fly on the wall when that happens. Antaeus doesn’t really get on well with people who try to tell him what to do.” Scott drove the car onto Massachusetts Avenue and ensured that three vehicles were between him and Marsha Gage. “What do you reckon Gage is doing now?”

“She had a powwow with the HRT guy and some other cop bird. I think the test scared the shit out of Gage and she’s going to escalate matters.”

“The media will latch on to what happened at the station.”

“Meaning she’ll want to speak to them before they speculate.”

“Good. When Amundsen and Shackleton take over Gage-stalking duty, let’s you and me put our feet up with a nice brew and watch a bit of telly. Sounds like this morning there might be something interesting to watch.”

The fact that over six hundred thousand people lived in Washington, and at least three times that many worked here during daytime hours, was little consolation to Will Cochrane as he walked north along Seventh Street NW. He felt totally exposed, as if every passerby were looking at him and he were seconds away from hearing, “Police! Get your hands on your head.”