Sympathy For the Devil (35 page)

The man said nothing. He simply opened the door to the stairway and walked in tandem with Samuelson down the stairs; one step at a time.

As the stairwell door closed, he heard the whir of the elevator starting up on the other side of the stairwell. Hicks saw the smirk on the tall man’s face and prodded him forward with the barrel of the Ruger. “Keep moving.”

They made decent time going down the stairs; the sound of the elevator coming back up stayed with them the entire time. The sound stopped just as they made it to the bottom of the stairwell. One door led out to the lobby. The other back to Hicks’ car just to the left of the doorway. The door said an alarm would sound if it was opened, but he pushed the two men through it. No alarm sounded.

Samuelson and the tall man regained their footing in the parking lot and Hicks grabbed hold of Samuelson’s belt before they strayed too far. His Buick was right next to the door, but the red minivan was still parked to the left about fifty feet away.

The engine was still running and now two men were standing by the sliding door. They were just as dark as the tall man, but shorter and broader. And they’d already spotted their friend standing next to Samuelson, but not Hicks. He was crouched behind them.

The two men called out to the tall man in Arabic. He responded and they began walking toward him; reaching under their coats as they moved.

Hicks came out from behind them and shot the gunman on the left; center mass through the chest. The impact knocked him off his feet and sent the gun he’d just pulled flying. The second man broke to dive behind a car, but Hicks shot him through the back before he made it. The man landed on his belly, yelling in Arabic.

Samuelson and the tall man tried to move, but Hicks grabbed Samuelson by the belt and pulled them back from the Buick and away from the fire door, knowing he still had the men upstairs and the driver of the minivan to worry about.

But the driver never tried to get out of the van. Instead, he threw the minivan in reverse out of the parking lot.

Hicks pulled his hostages to the side and squeezed off two shots at the minivan. Both rounds punched through the windshield just above the steering wheel. The van rolled out into the street, popping the curb and backing into a stop sign, where it jerked to a halt. Hicks heard the blare of a car horn just before another car heading east slammed into the side of the van.

He knew whoever had gone up to Samuelson’s room would be on their way down in a hurry now that they’d heard the shots. He’d never be able to load these two into the Buick in time to get away before they came down. Best to end this now while he could do it at a place of his choosing. And while he had the two men as cover.

The tall man began yelling in Arabic and Hicks banged him in the back of the head with the butt of his Ruger. Not hard enough to knock him out, but enough to daze him while he reloaded.

Hicks knew he still had two rounds left in the Ruger and a nine millimeter tucked into his belt, but he wanted the stopping power of the Ruger. He broke the cylinder, dumped the spent shells, and used his speed loader to reload. In less than three seconds, Hicks was back in operation.

Hicks pulled them back even further as he heard yelling coming from the stairway. It could’ve been scared hotel residents running from the hotel, but Hicks doubted it. People tended to hunker down when they heard gunfire. They didn’t run outside unless they had to.

The two men who came through the fire door into the parking lot were no hotel guests. Both were as dark skinned as the three men he’d just shot, but leaner, more athletic. They looked at the wrecked minivan first as the tall man called out to them once more.

Hicks came out from behind the tall man and drilled the first gunman through the chest. Center mass again with the same result as before. One more dead bad guy.

The second man got off a shot in Hicks’ direction as he darted back inside behind the fire door. The shot went wide and shattered the rear windshield of a car parked two spaces away. But the car alarm went off, making it harder to hear what was happening.

Hicks’ instincts kicked in, and he followed his training. He focused less on what he heard and more on what he could see. Everything slowed down for him as it always had in situations like this. Close to the finish line. One bad guy left. Don’t fuck it up by getting careless. Work what’s in front of you and shoot.

Samuelson and the tall man tried to break right, but Hicks grabbed a handful of the tall man’s shirt and kept him in place. He aimed at the glass of the fire door as the men struggled. He held them with his left while his right hand adjusted for their movements. The Ruger was steady as Hicks waited for the shot.

He saw the gunman take a quick look out the door’s thick fireproof glass. The glass was too thick to shoot through. Hicks knew the door was fireproof, but it wasn’t bulletproof.

Hicks fired twice into the door and saw the man buckle and fall back from view.

The tall man tried to turn on him; trying to push Samuelson into Hicks to knock him down. But it’s tough to toss a man around a man who’s tethered to you as closely as Samuelson was.

Hicks sidestepped the move and brained the tall man in the temple again, this time knocking him out. He grabbed him before he fell and told Samuelson, “You’d better pull him, too, or I’ll leave you both here like the others.”

Hicks opened the trunk and pushed both men inside; still tethered to each other. Samuelson was crying when Hicks slammed the trunk. It was of the best reasons why Hicks drove a Buick. Plenty of trunk space.

Hicks could hear the din of police sirens over the blare of the car alarm as he climbed in behind the wheel and started the engine. He could hear Samuelson kicking the trunk lid as he pulled out of the lot and into South Philly traffic.

Just another car on a busy night in a big city.

Except for the two terrorists he had in the trunk.

T
HE CHEAP
plastic chair groaned and popped beneath Hicks’ weight as he stretched his legs. He wasn’t surprised to see a rat scurrying along the base of the wall only a few inches from his shoe. The rat looked well fed and didn’t pay Hicks any mind.

He had no idea why Jason had insisted on meeting in a dump like this; an old pizza joint in Alphabet City that had gone out of business more than a year ago. The place looked as dirty and tired as the day they’d closed up shop. Not even the junkies and other undesirables who made up the social fauna of the Lower East Side had bothered to break into the place since it closed. If only Jason had been as wise.

In fact, Hicks didn’t know why Jason had insisted on calling a meeting at all. Hicks hated University meetings. He hated the waiting. He hated not knowing how a meeting would turn out. And he didn’t like walking into a room full of people who’d had the same training he’d had. They might not have his level of skill, but they usually knew who and what he was. Hicks had spent a good portion of his life being ambiguous. Certainty, especially when it came to himself, made him anxious.

An emailed response to a report was easier than attending a meeting. Far more antiseptic. Even the harshest email was better than biting his tongue while some son of a bitch yelled at him from across a table. And Hicks hadn’t been yelled at in a long time.

He looked over at Roger, who was perched on an old bar stool against the wall. Hicks thought about starting up a conversation to pass the time, but Roger was busy tapping away at his phone; smiling and biting his lip at whatever image someone just sent him. Hicks had neither the urge nor the stomach to ask what he was looking at.

That’s why he was surprised when he said, “I don’t know why you’re so worried. You’re a fucking hero, after all.”

“Who said I’m worried?”

Roger finally looked up from his handheld. “Maybe worried is too strong a word. Perhaps tense is more accurate or pensive, even. Either way, there’s no reason to be worried or tense. Not with all the information you’ve given them. They’re probably going to give you some kind of medal.”

Hicks watched a rat descend on a cockroach struggling across the floor. “If they were giving me a medal, we wouldn’t be meeting in a shithole like this.”

Roger watched the rat begin to eat its catch. “I don’t know. I think the place has a certain charm to it.”

“You would.”

“Maybe they’re not going to give you a medal, then,” Roger offered. “Instead, maybe it’s a special meeting with the man himself. Our elusive Dean. Ever think of that? Ever wonder what he looked like?”

“No.” And Hicks never had. The man’s appearance didn’t mean a damned thing to him because he’d seen what the man could do. He could coordinate an embassy evacuation or a drone strike or make a multi-million dollar transfer with a few keystrokes. In his experience, men like that were best kept at a distance.

Jason came out of the kitchen and quietly beckoned them to follow him. He was wearing a charcoal gray suit and a dark red tie; looking very much the banker. That worried Hicks. Jason was a J. Crew boy at best and never one for formality. If he was wearing a suit, whoever they were meeting with was important enough to warrant the sartorial effort.

Four plastic chairs had been arranged around a high stainless steel preparation table in the middle of the pizzeria’s kitchen. Three of chairs were empty.

One of them was not.

The man sitting in the chair had his back to the door and didn’t turn around when they walked in. He was a black man, maybe sixty years old; neither thin nor heavy. His hair was still mostly black, but silver highlights had begun to creep in at the sides and back.

Jason motioned to Roger and Hicks to take the two chairs on the other side of the table, which they did. As Hicks sat down, he saw the stranger’s face wasn’t as full as it should’ve been and his brown eyes looked tired, like the color had been washed out of them long ago. His shirt collar looked like it used to fit him well, but he’d since lost enough weight to make it look just a little big on him. His hands were folded on the table, but Hicks still noticed the slightest tremor in his left hand.

Hicks had never seen the man before, but he knew exactly who he was.

And that’s why Hicks knew this conversation wouldn’t end well.

As soon as Jason sat down, the stranger began, “You know who I am, don’t you?”

“I thought I did when I walked in,” Hicks said, “but now that I’ve heard your voice, I’m sure.”

The Dean neither smiled nor nodded nor unfolded his hands in order to make himself accessible in any way. “Let me guess. I sounded taller on the phone, right?”

Hicks knew what he was implying, but didn’t take the bait. “I never cared what you looked like, sir. And I still don’t.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t.” He looked at Roger. “What about you?”

“Makes no difference to me,” Roger said, “though I always think men in your position should look like Donald Sutherland for some reason. Perhaps it’s the stoic vulnerability, especially around the eyes.”

The Dean looked at Jason. “You were right about him.”

Roger laughed. “No one’s ever been right about me, sir. Not now. Not ever.”

Hicks knew the banter was meant to break the ice. But all it did was make him feel more anxious.

The Dean looked back at Hicks. “I know how much you hate these face-to-face meetings. You think they’re a big waste of time and energy. Besides, a voice on the phone or an email in an inbox is easier to deal with than flesh and blood. Anonymity in an anonymous world.”

Hicks hated that he knew what he was thinking. He hated being easy to read most of all. “It is, sir.”

The Dean’s gray eyes narrowed just a bit. “How long have you been working for us?”

“Going on fifteen years, sir. I believe you hired me.”

“Thirteen years and four months to the day, to be precise,” the Dean said. “One of the smartest hires I’ve ever made. But in all that time we’ve never met, not even once. You never asked for a meeting, and I never offered one. Why do you think we’re meeting now?”

“Because something has changed.”