Red Right Hand (25 page)

T
HE HARDEST PART
wasn't the fear of dying, Segreti thought. It wasn't the uncertainty. It was pretending to be asleep.

Segreti's mouth was open, his muscles relaxed. He watched through his eyelashes as Yancey leaped through the closing doors onto the train car and slammed into its unsuspecting passengers.

“Watch it, asshole!” A wiry punk in a Dead Kennedys T-shirt wheeled on Yancey and shoved him. Yancey pistol-whipped him in the face, and he went down bleeding.

The passengers recoiled, shouting and pushing toward the exits, but it was too late; the platform doors were closed. The train shuddered and began to move.

“Listen up!” Yancey yelled, holding his government-issued credentials in the air like a badge. “I'm a federal investigator, and I have reason to believe there's a bomb on this train car! For your safety, I'm gonna need you all to proceed to the adjacent cars immediately!”

Panic rippled through the crowd. People scrabbled over one another as everyone attempted to squeeze through the narrow doors at once. Soon, the car was quiet save for the clatter of the tracks.

Yancey strolled down the aisle toward Segreti. As he approached, Segreti closed his eyes completely, worried that parted lids would give the ruse away. Yancey reeked of cigarettes and aftershave. His shadow painted the backs of Segreti's eyelids a deeper black.

Yancey backhanded Segreti across the face. Segreti's lips split against his teeth and began to bleed. It took a supreme force of will for Segreti to keep his eyes closed and allow his head to loll, but he knew he had only one shot of leaving the train alive, and he had to make it count.

“Wake up, shithead,” Yancey said. “I want you to look at me and know that, after all these years, I've got you. That there's no one coming to save you this time. That there's nowhere left for you to run.”

Yancey leaned in close and punched Segreti in the gut. Segreti doubled over but failed to open his eyes, so Yancey slid into the row of seats behind him, yanked him upright by his hair, and rested the barrel of his gun against the nape of Segreti's neck.

“Aw, c'mon, Segreti,” Yancey continued. “Killing you won't be as satisfying if you're not awake when I do it. I confess, this setting ain't my first choice for an execution, but lucky for me, one of my company's subsidiaries operates the security cameras for the entire fucking BART system, including the ones in this train. All our surveillance systems are equipped with an emergency backdoor, so it'll be a breeze for me to wipe the hard drive before anyone's the wiser—once I send a copy to your buddies at the Council, that is. Which means I get the pleasure of painting this train car with your brains, and there'll be nobody to dispute my version of events. I'm thinking of going with
When I tried to bring him in for questioning, the crazy bastard went for my gun,
but I'm open to suggestions.”

“Yancey!”

The call came from the front of the train car. Segreti peeked through slit eyelids once more and struggled not to flinch. Reyes stood just inside the doorway to the adjacent car, his left pant leg caught on his empty ankle holster, a compact Remington R51 nine-millimeter in his hand.

“Christ, Reyes,” Yancey said, “I thought I lost you miles back. You can lower your weapon—this fucker's unconscious.”

“How about you lower yours?” Reyes said.

Yancey didn't. “I don't know how much you heard just now, but this ain't what it looks like.”

“Good. Because it looks like you were about to kill an unconscious man in cold blood. You told me this guy was a person of interest in the bridge attack, but this seems more like a personal vendetta to me.”

“You know, son, I'm starting to get the impression you don't like me very much.”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Then tell me what I need to do to, uh, rebuild our relationship.”

“How about you start by letting me turn this man over to the FBI?”

“Sure thing,” Yancey said. “In fact, I'll deliver him myself.”

“There's no need,” Reyes replied. “I called them from the station. They'll be waiting for us on the other side of the tunnel when we arrive.”

Yancey sighed. “I really wish you hadn't done that.”

“Why's that?”

“Because, whether you believe me or not, I promise you, Segreti's a lowlife piece of shit. You, on the other hand, may be a dick, but you're still one of the good guys. And now I can't let either of you walk out of here.”

Yancey grabbed Segreti's collar. Yanked him backward in his seat. Ducked behind him. And aimed his gun at Reyes.

With Segreti in the way, Reyes didn't have a shot—and at this distance, Yancey couldn't miss.

Reyes watched helplessly as Yancey's finger tightened on the trigger. Then Segreti opened his eyes, slipped his hand free of its cuff, and twisted in his seat. He drove an open palm into Yancey's shooting arm as Yancey's gun roared and stuck his other hand into the pocket of his sweatshirt. Reyes tensed for impact, but the shot went wide and blew a hole in a nearby window. Wind, cold and metallic, whistled through it.

Three more gunshots quickly followed. Yancey jerked upright in his seat. Then he swayed a moment and slumped into the aisle, the revolver falling from his hand.

His eyes were wide. His face was pained. His stomach blossomed red.

Segreti rose from his seat, the .45 Hendricks had given him trained on Yancey. In his seat back were three bullet holes, their edges scorched by muzzle flash.

Yancey cupped his hands over his stomach, trying in vain to keep his blood where it belonged. It bubbled up between his fingers when he pressed down. Yancey's face paled, then slackened. His hands fell away. His sightless eyes stared vaguely toward the ceiling. He was gone.

Segreti aimed his gun at Yancey for thirty seconds longer, making sure, and then he lowered it.

“Thanks,” said Reyes, his gun still aimed in Segreti's general direction. “You saved my life.”

“No problem,” Segreti replied.

Reyes nodded toward the handcuffs dangling from the metal handgrip on the seat back. “How'd you manage to slip those things?”

“They're not real—they're plastic toys. Got a hidden release button on the side. Buddy of mine broke into a fetish shop on our way here and stole 'em.”

“The same buddy who sprung you from our custody at the Broussard house?”

Sadness flitted across Segreti's features at the mention of Lois's last name. “That's the one.”

“You didn't have anything to do with what happened at the bridge, did you?”

“No, I didn't.”

“Then how about you put the gun down and tell me why Yancey wanted you dead?”

“It's a long story,” Segreti said. He kept his weapon pointed at the floor but didn't drop it. Reyes slowly lowered his.

Reyes looked out the window at the darkness blurring by outside. The car rattled down the tracks, empty but for the two of them, Yancey's bleeding corpse sprawled in the aisle between. “Seems like we've got time.”

“Hey,” Segreti said, “did you mean what you said about the Feds or were you bluffing?”

“I wasn't bluffing. I gave 'em a ring when I began to suspect that Yancey wasn't what he seemed. They'll be waiting for us at the station.”

“Goddamn it. I can't let them take me.”

“Why not?”

“The people Yancey worked for won't stop coming for me until I'm dead. And if I'm in custody, they'll know right where to find me.”

“I don't get it—what does Bellum want with you?”

“Not Bellum,” Segreti said. “The other ones.”

“What other ones?”

Segreti frowned. “You got anybody in your life you care about? Friends, family, pets, whatever?”

“Sure. Doesn't everybody?”

“The lucky ones do. And if you count yourself among them, you're better off not knowing.”

“Fine. Don't tell me who's after you, but you should tell the Feds, at least. I'm sure they can protect you.”

“You have no idea how fucking wrong you are,” Segreti said. “The worst part is, I actually thought I'd gotten clear of all this shit. Now I realize there's no escaping your past—anywhere you go, it's always right behind you. Hey, you ever hear of a guy named Heraclitus?”

“Who?”

“Never mind. It's not important. What
is
important is, I'm sick of this life—it ain't mine anymore. And the truth is, I'd rather go out on my own terms than wait around for the fuckers Yancey worked for to catch up with me.”

“Don't talk like that,” Reyes said. “You and me are walking out of here together, okay? The rest will sort itself out. You have my word.”

“Your word,” Segreti echoed. “I've heard that one before. Even, once, from him.” He nudged Yancey's body with his foot. “For what it's worth, I'm sorry you're gonna hafta see this—but if it makes you feel any better, I'm sick. The Big C. I didn't have long left anyway.”

“Whatever you're thinking about doing—” Reyes said, but by the time the words cleared his lips, it was too late.

Segreti inhaled sharply. Raised the .45 to his head. As Reyes screamed for him to stop, he pulled the trigger. His head snapped back, and his body fell to the floor.

C
AMERON AND HENDRICKS
watched Segreti die on the nightly news as they sat holed up in a shitty hotel room. The train's surveillance cameras captured the whole thing. It was a somber, horrifying affair, traumatic enough that Cameron had to look away. Hendricks watched every second of the footage, though. He felt he owed Segreti that much.

The train was halted soon after. The passengers were forced to hike single file down the tunnel's narrow service walkway to the nearest station—still Oakland, at that point. The tunnel was shut down for hours afterward so it could be inspected for damage and so the crime-scene techs could do their thing, and BART service between the cities was suspended.

The news identified Segreti by name and peddled a slanted version of the whole sordid tale. A gangster in hiding. A retired federal agent recognizing him and making it his mission to track him down, hell-bent on bringing in the one who got away. A bloody altercation leaving both men dead. One was painted a two-bit lowlife, the other a hero.

If you asked Hendricks, that wasn't far off—only they had it backward which was which.

Segreti's death didn't dominate the news cycle for long. Later that evening, the White House announced that government operatives had raided a body shop in South San Francisco and—after what was described as a protracted gun battle—had killed two members of the True Islamic Caliphate, one of them the man from the video. Inside, they found handguns, assault rifles, and a pair of partially assembled explosive vests, as well as a map of San Francisco on which the Federal Building and several targets in the Castro District were marked.

The statement never mentioned Bellum by name, but come Wall Street's morning bell, their stock soared nonetheless.

Hendricks's memories of the next sixteen hours or so were spotty. His wound was in bad shape, and a brutal fever had taken hold of him. He slathered it with antibiotic ointment and popped aspirin like Tic Tacs until his fever broke. Cameron was so worried about him, she refused to get checked out at the nearby urgent care clinic until he threatened to go off his meds. It turned out she needed stitches and a tetanus shot, but thankfully, Yancey and the assholes at the hospital hadn't broken any bones.

When Hendricks was feeling well enough to move, he and Cameron parted ways. She seemed bummed but didn't argue. “Guess it was silly of me, thinking I could help you…do what you do,” she said.

“I don't know,” he said. “You did all right out there. And I may still need a favor from time to time. IDs. Aliases. A little background work, maybe. You know—the kind you can manage from your dorm room, well out of the line of fire.”

“Deal,” she said. “But I'm not going back to college, not until I decide what for.”

“What are you going to do in the meantime?”

She shrugged. “There's a lot of advocacy groups out there that need volunteers. I think I'll try to do some good while I figure out what's next.”

“Something tells me you'll do plenty.”

They hugged. She squeezed him so tight, his stitches hurt. When she finally let him go, tears brimmed in her eyes. “Do me a favor out there, would you?”

“What's that?”

“Don't die.”

Hendricks smiled, but said nothing.

He didn't want to make a promise he couldn't keep.

C
HARLIE THOMPSON STOOD
in an apartment full of boxes and wondered where the hell she'd put her keys.

Officially, she'd moved out of O'Brien's house four days ago, once her transfer had come through. That's when the movers picked up her boxes and drove them here. But unofficially, she'd been sleeping at a hotel every night since the shit went down in San Francisco. Hard to believe that less than three weeks ago, she and Kate were engaged. Now she was single, living in a condo with a partial view of Lake Michigan, and working out of the Milwaukee field office.

She'd never seen a transfer go through so quickly. But O'Brien had been motivated. “You're lucky you're keeping your badge,” she'd said. “If it were up to me, you'd be leaving here in chains.”

Thompson spotted her keys atop the mantel. Snatched them up and headed for the door. She was late. Halfway out, she doubled back and grabbed the manila folder on the counter. She'd brought it home from the office yesterday and needed it today. If she'd forgotten it, she would have had to turn around.

Once she was on the road, she let her car's GPS guide her through the unfamiliar streets to I-43. She headed not south toward the field office, but north toward a small town called Grafton. Toward her new assignment.

The sky was clear and bright, the Saturday-morning traffic sparse. The September air was just crisp enough to remind her of summer's passing. She drove with the windows down, the radio off, her hair blowing, enjoying the roar of the wind in her ears, and the sun's warming glow through the windshield.

The drive was flat and green, the highway divided by a strip of grass and lined with trees on either side. Occasionally, the trees would fall away, and farmland would peek through.

She exited the highway and headed west on a commercial stretch. Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot. Eventually, a town sprung up around her.

Ever smaller streets, ever more residential, until finally she stopped outside a modest ranch in a nondescript suburban neighborhood. The house was white with red shingles. Arched windows and doorways lent it an almost Spanish air, making it something of an oddity on this block.

Thompson strode up the short walkway onto the porch and rapped twice on the front door. An agent peeked through the narrow window to the side of it. He unlocked the door—bolts clunking, chains rattling—and let her in. “Where is he?” she asked.

“Kitchen,” the agent replied.

He was eating breakfast when she walked in. Half a grapefruit. A cup of coffee. A pill organizer sat beside his plate, the kind with a compartment for every day of the week. A tan ball of fur snored quietly on his bony lap. “Agent Thompson,” he said, smiling.

“Morning, Frank,” she said.

She hadn't liked Hendricks's plan one bit when he'd called to read her in. It was too dangerous, she thought, and there were too many opportunities for it to go wrong.

Honestly, it
had
gone wrong. The deal had been that Yancey would be delivered alive and made to answer for what he'd done. But in the end, he'd given Segreti no choice. Thompson wouldn't lose any sleep over it. Yancey was a bad man. The bomb blast that leveled Segreti's safe house killed nine federal employees, some of them her friends. And then there was that poor bastard who Yancey shot dead in the parking garage—a case that officially remained unsolved because Cameron could never testify without compromising the Bureau's case against the Council.

Thompson knew nothing about Yancey's role in bringing the members of the True Islamic Caliphate into the country. Bellum made sure anything that could implicate them in the bombing of the Golden Gate was buried.

Segreti's apparent suicide, which was supposed to happen once Yancey was safely neutralized and removed from the train car, was another sticking point for her. She thought it reckless and unnecessary. But Segreti refused to testify against the Council unless the world thought him dead—not to protect himself, he insisted, but because he couldn't stand another Albuquerque on his conscience—so it was unavoidable.

Staging it had been easy enough. Every BART train is equipped with between eight and twelve cameras; they simply leaked the most convincing angle to the press and had Hendricks's Bellum contact, Reyes, delete any footage that made it clear Segreti shot six inches past his own left ear.

Enlisting Reyes in the effort, however, had taken some work. Hendricks reached out to him a few hours before he was supposed to exchange Segreti for Cameron, using the number from the texts Cameron had intercepted. At first, Reyes was furious—Hendricks had assaulted him, after all, and put several of his men in the hospital. Hendricks let him vent. When Reyes finally ran out of steam, Hendricks told him what he knew of Yancey's interest in Segreti.

“You really expect me to take your word for it that Yancey's in the pocket of some vast criminal conspiracy?” Reyes had asked.

“No,” Hendricks had replied. “That's why I need you to get in contact with Special Agent Charlotte Thompson of the FBI.”

Hendricks provided him with no contact information, instead insisting Reyes do the legwork, so he would know she wasn't fake. In the time it took for him to track down her phone number, Hendricks filled her in on his exchange with Reyes and gave her a rough outline of his plan. Once Reyes was onboard, it was simply a matter of moving the pieces into place and everyone playing his or her respective part.

In a way, she thought, Segreti's apparent demise was fitting. He'd been resurrected on camera and killed again the same way. This time, the FBI wasn't leaving anything to chance—aside from Charlie and her handpicked detail, the only people in the Bureau who knew Segreti was still alive were O'Brien and the director himself.

“How'd your appointment with the doc go?” Thompson asked. Segreti looked like he'd lost weight since she'd last seen him—which seemed impossible, since it was only days ago—and he'd developed a sickly pallor.

“Good,” Segreti said. “He says the cancer's responding to treatment. I might have another year in me after all. And he gave me something for the nausea, so food's been staying down a little better.”

“Glad to hear it.”

The dog, Ella, stirred and looked at Thompson. Then she yawned and went back to sleep.

“How's she been doing?” Thompson asked.

“A little better every day, but the agents tell me she still whines something fierce whenever I leave.” He smiled again. “Whatcha got there?”

Thompson opened the manila folder. Handed him the top page. When Segreti saw it, he laughed. It was a death certificate with his name on it.

“Thought you might get a kick out of that. In the eyes of the U.S. government, you're officially a dead man.”

“Twice over now. You got anything else in there for me?”

She handed him the second document. “That's a copy of your immunity agreement. Everything's exactly as we discussed, and as you can see, the attorney general has signed off on it.”

Segreti read it carefully, nodding when he reached the section that ensured that Cameron and Hendricks could not be prosecuted for what went down in San Francisco. Then he set the document aside.

“So,” Thompson said, “what now?”

Segreti smiled. “Now you pull up a chair and I tell you everything I know about the Council.”