Thom fell backward, his weapon still in his gun hand, and crumpled like a rag doll against the counter, his mouth open in surprise and his eyes staring at the floor.
“Get it,” Jorge ordered as he pulled the Browning and stuffed the empty Ruger in his waistband. He centered the pistol on the fallen cop—
What did the guy yell? “Something” agent?
—to make sure that Tomás could get what they had come for.
Tomás turned back to Portero and spread his coat, checking the inside pockets. Nothing. It had to be...the shirt pocket. There was a rectangular bulge, which he reached in and retrieved. “Got it.”
“Come on.”
* * *
Sullivan’s eyes were locked on the scene, his hands holding the Chrysler’s wheel with a death grip.
Oh, shit! Oh, shit! I was supposed to be there!
The two men were moving outside, a crowd of terrified lunchtime eaters preceding them. Were they coming for him? He was not about to wait and find out. Traffic ahead was not moving, so he cranked the wheel all the way to the left and floored it, heading across traffic for the alley.
* * *
The last of Art’s bacon-chili cheese dog was on its way to his stomach when the distinctive sound of gunfire echoed through from the back of Pink’s. “What the hell?”
Frankie drew her weapon first, followed quickly by Art. “Call nine-one-one,” she said calmly to the cook, her eyes looking through the back windows.
Where’s Thom?
“Let’s check it out,” Art said. He led off through the inside of the hot dog stand’s small interior dining room, which opened to a parking lot on the alley at the rear. He stopped at the building’s corner and listened. Screams told him where to go. “Clampett’s.”
Oh, my God.
They moved quickly through the lot toward the back of the restaurant across the alley, Art in the lead as he and Frankie—
“Jesus!” Art swore, the right-side tires of a beat-up car almost taking his toes off. “You get the plate?”
“Partial,” Frankie said, her eyes watching the gold sedan speed away from them. It could be whoever did the shooting, or just someone trying to get out of the line of fire.
Art walked quickly along the windowless wall at the building’s east side, his gun to the front. Frankie was behind him, her attention focused to the rear. A good number of people were running east on Melrose, passing the alley entrance in front of Art. That was a sure sign that trouble was to the west. “Where the hell is Danbrook?”
He reached the corner just in time to see two men jogging across Melrose toward a van on the opposite side. One went around the back, out of Art’s view, and the other went for the driver’s door, his free hand holding a...
“FREEZE!” It was an automatic response cops have when a weapon is sighted. Art brought his 10mm up to eye level in a two-handed grip, his knees bending slightly, centering it on the—
Damn!
Another wave of frenzied pedestrians rushed past, just feet from the barrel of his Smith. He instinctively cleared them, lifting the barrel skyward, waiting for them to—
“COVER!” he screamed at the sight of the gun pointing directly at him from across the street. His body started down as the first shot rang out, sending the world into a weird kind of slow motion that blocks out all things not directly related to one’s survival. Art heard another shot, and he rolled to the right, trying to get closer to the stuccoed wall of the restaurant. And another shot, which he heard impact just above his head.
Then the sound of tires grabbing at asphalt broke the trancelike state, and his head came up. He saw the van, a white windowless model, cross to his front, going east on Melrose. His weapon was pointed at it, but he knew he couldn’t fire at it as it sped away. There were just too many people around, and the thought of sending a two ton vehicle crashing into a crowd was not his idea of a successful felony stop.
“Goddammit!” Art swore, jumping up from prone using his free hand for a push-off of the alley’s rough surface.
“You okay?” Frankie asked from behind.
“Yeah. You?”
“Close one,” she commented, her breath coming in mild heaves. Getting shot at had the tendency to do that to a person.
“I got a good look at it,” Art said as he moved around the corner to Clampett’s front. It was all glass. He looked inside carefully and saw, not two feet through the glass, the recipient of the gunfire. His eyes swept left across the dining room toward the entrance, looking for...
No. NO!
“Thom’s down!”
They raced to the entrance, keeping their weapons out as they entered the almost-empty restaurant. The only obviously live person they saw was a young blond woman standing less than ten feet from the man slumped against the window, her eyes locked on the body, both hands covering her mouth.
“Thom!” Frankie holstered her weapon and dropped to her knees, easing her former partner’s weapon from his fingers and laying it on the counter above. “Thom. Thom. Can you hear me?” She could see his chest moving, and his eyes didn’t have the far-off look of someone on the edge of death. She had seen that before. Thom didn’t have that. She was sure of it. He couldn’t look that way. She wouldn’t let him. Would not let him!
Art swept the room as his partner did what she could for Thom. He walked to the other victim, passing the obviously catatonic woman standing among the upended tables and chairs. This guy was dead. No question about it. The brain matter that hadn’t been blasted through the back of his head to the wall behind was dropping in tiny, bloody clumps from the exit wound.
The door to the kitchen, on Art’s left, opened slightly. He trained his weapon on it, but only a frightened, weeping busboy was behind it.
“I call... I call the
policia.
” He buried his head in his hands and stood against the wall.
“Anyone else in the kitchen?”
The young man took several deep, heaving breaths. “No. The men who do this, they run.” He pointed to the front door. “They do this. Why?”
Art patted the young guy’s shoulder and put his weapon away. The kid had probably left his home to get away from stuff like this. “Dammit!”
Frankie had Thom’s head in her arms, his body braced against her legs. He was still alive. “Talk to me, Tommy. Come on.” The tears were streaming down her face. “Talk to me.”
Art stood over the scene, the memory of what had happened a year before to his previous partner bringing past and present together in a collision of emotions that left him numb.
Frankie looked up, her face asking what to do. Art knew the truthful answer would only add to the anguished feeling of helplessness. “Ambulance is coming. Keep talking to him.”
She did just that, encouraging, almost willing, him to answer, but there was no response. The sirens a minute later announced the arrival of the first Los Angeles Police Department officers. The rescue ambulance of the L.A. City Fire Department rolled up right after them, and, after a quick look at the wounded FBI agent that convinced them there was no time to waste trying to stabilize him on scene, loaded him into the R.A. and, with Frankie in the back, headed straight for Cedars-Sinai Medical Center behind a caravan of police cars clearing the way.
Looking down at the carnage remaining where Thom Danbrook had fallen, Art knew that the heroics surely to be attempted once they reached Cedars would be for naught. It was the most painful admission a cop had to make. One of his own was going to die. Art would never say that, just as he hadn’t to Frankie. The living often needed hope more than the dying. He stared down at the blood until the rhythmic wail of the ambulance faded to nothing.
Nothing
. It was all that could be done for Special Agent Thom Danbrook. It was all Art had been able to do for his first partner, more of a mentor, right out of the Academy. You couldn’t bring back the dead.
But you could bring those responsible to justice. That was something, despite the hollowness that the concept of ‘justice’ held when compared to the fate just dealt his brother agent. And to the other victim. Art looked to the body of that man. It was the starting point in a very familiar, and a very distasteful, process. Art Jefferson knew that the investigation of a murder had just begun.
He could not imagine where it would lead.
* * *
The gleaming white Gulfstream descended from the blue Colorado sky and touched down on runway one-seven at Falcon Air Force Base, a relatively small site that served primarily as a support facility for the North American Aerospace Defense Command located deep inside Cheyenne Mountain. It slowed and swung right onto the last taxiway, heading north toward the group of men who had awaited its arrival—some eagerly, some otherwise.
“The Devil is strapping on those ice skates about now, the way I see it,” General Henry Granger, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, theorized, capturing the realized likelihood of the historic event. He looked to the man just behind. “What do you think, Paul?”
“Hmmm,” General Paul Walker, commander in chief, NORAD, grunted, eyeing the approaching jet, which bore the marking of his beloved United States Air Force. He felt no such endearment for the human cargo just delivered to Falcon, and only slightly more for the man who had made this all happen.
“Still not on board, General?” National Security Adviser Bud DiContino asked, looking over his shoulder at CINCNORAD.
“I was never invited.”
“Oh, hell, Paul!” Granger protested. He and Walker went all the way back to the class of sixty at Colorado Springs, a lineage also shared by the NSA, who had paraded past the spires of the United States Air Force Academy Chapel that last time two years later. “This is going to make your job easier in the long run.”
“I suppose.” CINCNORAD really didn’t. He was part of this because he had to be.
“You promised to make nice with our Russian friends, remember,” Granger pointed out for good measure, though he knew Walker would not let his personal feelings mingle with his duty.
“I’ll take them home for dinner to meet the Mrs., if it’s necessary,” CINCNORAD assured his boss and friend. “Sufficient, Mr. DiContino?”
Bud let the cynicism slide. “Just make sure they don’t have any reason not to trust us. The only thing making this possible is trust.”
And a whole lot of work.
The twin-engine jet, identical to those in use by many of America’s larger corporations, stopped fifty feet short of where Bud and the two Air Force officers stood, its door folding downward less than a minute later. Its two special passengers emerged behind the Air Force captain who had accompanied them on the entire four-leg journey from Moscow.
“Ugly-ass uniforms,” Walker commented, aware that his opinion of the puke-colored Russian dress greens was shared by many in the service. Ivan never could make anything pretty, weapons or battle dress. Function—what there was of that—came before aesthetics in their world. America had learned to make things bad and beautiful. CINCNORAD defied anyone to watch a Strike Eagle unload a stick of thousand-pounders on a target and dispute the claim.
“What’s that about beauty being skin-deep?” Granger wondered jokingly as the two Russians left their escort at the jet and began to approach. “My guess is that you can strip old Vasiliy there down to his unmentionables, and you’d then see the purpose of those dashing dress greens.”
Bud suppressed a laugh. The guests whose visit he had arranged were too close to risk an errant chuckle escaping. “I’ll have the President bust you down to a junior bird, General, if you make me lose it. Straight faces.”
General Walker pasted on a sweet smile as Marshal Vasiliy Kurchatov and his aide neared. “Two weeks, DiContino?”
“Guaranteed,” Bud affirmed from the side of his mouth. “The Japanese will have the new computers up and running at
Voyska PVO
in ten days, tops. That’s the promise.”
“My last protest,” CINCNORAD began. “I do not like giving access to
our
strategic systems just because the Russians couldn’t build a BMEWS worth crap. That and pulling our boomers in just pushes it, DiContino.”
“Trust, General Walker. We can’t very well have our missile boats running around during this. The Russians have to be able to
see
our strategic platforms. We can’t leave the ICBMs and bombers out for all to see and expect them to overlook the subs. Quid pro quo, General. Theirs are in as a gesture during this, and ours have to be, too. You’ll be glad we were able to work this out once the new warning system is up and running over there,” Bud said with certainty. “That last false alarm their computers gave them left them forty
seconds
from a launch order.” The NSA swiveled his head a bit toward the general. “That kind of fuckup could ruin
everybody’s
day... Marshal Kurchatov!”
“Ah, my friend!” The huge Russian, as round as the most reverent artist’s depiction of Saint Nick, pulled the NSA into a hug that ended with kisses to both cheeks. The same gesture was given by both Russians to each of their three hosts. “My English is improved, yes?”
“Very good, Marshal Kurchatov.” Bud gestured to his two companions. “You have met General Henry Granger before, at the Force Reduction Conference in Geneva.”
“Yes. Yes.” Kurchatov dipped his head respectfully toward the chairman.
“And this is General Paul Walker, commander in chief—”
“I am very familiar, Mr. DiContino,” Kurchatov interrupted tactfully. “The general and I share a passion.”
“Oh?” Walker probed passively.
“A fine deer hunter you are, I am told. Your exploits have been chronicled in many sporting journals.” The marshal smiled admiringly. “Those have become more available in my country in recent years. A
Boone and Crockett
record, I believe.”
Walker’s eyes widened with some astonishment at the Russian’s knowledge of his third love, after the Air Force and his family. “You are a hunter, Marshal?”
Kurchatov stepped closer. “Sometime soon, when the work of the coming days is finished, I will make arrangements to show you the finest hunting on this earth. The Siberian reindeer is a formidable quarry.”