The Hit (27 page)

R
EEL JUMPED INTO HER TRUCK,
gunned the engine, and made her way back to the main road on a route that took her away from the sirens and screeches.

She finally hit firm asphalt, slammed down the gas pedal, and the Ford hurtled down the road. She was twenty miles away and could no longer see the smoke plume above the tree line before she slowed the vehicle to under eighty.

She pulled off the road, disassembled her weapons, stowed them away in her bag, and drove back toward the airport. Along the way she slipped into a car wash and got most of the dirt off the Ford, although there were some scratches and dents that hadn’t been there before. She drove on and reached the airport.

When she turned the rental back in the attendant didn’t even look at the vehicle. He noted her gas and mileage and printed out her receipt.

“Fast trip,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Hope you enjoyed your time here. We’re known for our slower pace and peace and quiet.”

“Better rethink that,” said Reel as she walked toward the bus that would take her to the terminal.

She changed back into her old woman’s disguise in the restroom and boarded the next flight east.

When they were wheels up and the sun was burning down into the horizon, Reel put her seat back, closed her eyes, and thought about what she had learned.

Someone with top-top-secret clearance, at least three levels above Roy West, had read that white paper.

That was two years ago. The level and clearances could have changed. In fact, they most certainly had changed. The person would be higher-placed now. That was both instructive and problematic.

Had it been Gelder? Two years ago he would have been easily at least three levels above someone like Roy West, if not more.

But that was assuming West had told her the truth. She had no way to verify that there even was someone with the code name Roger the Dodger.

But she knew the white paper existed. She knew the plan set forth in that paper was being executed. She knew some of the people who were trying to execute it.

She had killed two of them and tried to kill a third.

But I don’t know all of them.

And if she didn’t know all of them there was no way she could truly stop it.

She looked out the window.

An hour later, as they flew east, it was dark. And in that vast blackness all Reel could see was hopelessness.

She had gone all that way, nearly been killed, and really had nothing to show for it. But she did, actually. She turned her mind to what was really important about this trip.

It was the man.

She still couldn’t quite comprehend what had happened out there. The killing that had taken place was, for her, routine. Dead bodies, explosions, devastation. That was her world. But this was something different.

She closed her eyes and the image of Will Robie instantly appeared. He was pointing his gun at her head. He was telling her to close her eyes so he wouldn’t have to face her for the kill shot.

But he hadn’t fired. He had let her live.

He had let her escape.

She had been surprised by this. No, she had been stunned by this.

Exactly what she had been surprised by was an emotion she had never encountered in her work.

Mercy.

Will Robie, the most accomplished assassin of his generation, had shown her mercy.

When she had seen Robie killing her enemy for her, Reel had thought it just possible that he would become her ally. That they would finish this together. That had been a ludicrous thought. This was her fight. Not his.

And yet he had let her live. And escape.

His mission would have been complete. The agency would have lauded his performance. Maybe he would have been promoted out of fieldwork, or been given extensive time off. He would have bagged their number one problem, in record time.

And he had just let her walk away.

She had always admired Will Robie. He was the calm, cool professional who did his work and never talked about a single triumph. And yet she saw an infinite sadness in the man, which she could never quite get her arms around. She saw that very same emotional state in herself.

They were a lot alike, she and Robie.

And he had let her live.

Killers didn’t do that. Killers never did that. Reel wasn’t sure, if the positions were reversed, that she would have let Robie walk away.

I probably would have shot him.

And maybe she had lied to Robie. About not wanting his help. She actually did want his assistance, because it had finally struck her that she couldn’t possibly accomplish this alone. So she had failed.

And now something happened that had not happened to Jessica Reel since she was a young girl.

Tears slid from her eyes and down her cheeks.

She closed her eyes again. And didn’t open them until the plane touched down.

When she did open them, she still couldn’t see anything very clearly.

T
WO HUNDRED MILES.
Robie drove this distance without stopping. He headed directly east, which was the direction he needed to go. But finally, even his iron will broke down and he had to stop because he could no longer see the road.

He checked into a motel right off the highway, paid for his room in cash, and slept for eighteen straight hours to make up for a week of barely being able to sleep at all.

It was the heaviest sleep he’d had in years.

When he woke it was fully dark again. He had lost nearly a day of his life.

But he could have easily lost his life a day earlier.

He found a diner and ravenously ate two meals in one. He couldn’t seem to get enough to eat or drink. When he set his coffee cup down for the last time and rose from the table he felt his energy returning.

He sat in his truck in the parking lot, staring at the dashboard.

He’d had Reel lined up in his gunsight. One trigger pull and it would have been over. Reel dead. His mission accomplished. All worries gone.

His finger had actually slipped to the trigger. Every other time in his entire professional life when his finger had gone to that point he had fired.

Every single time.

Except that time.

Jessica Reel.

He had ordered her to close her eyes. When he had done so Robie was fully committed to making the kill shot.

And walking away.

To let someone else figure this whole thing out. He was just the triggerman. All he had to do was pull the damn trigger.

And I didn’t.

Once before in his life he had failed to make the shot. It had turned out to be the right decision.

Robie didn’t know if that would be so in this case.

Reel looked different. Not totally, just subtly. But that was enough. Most people were terrible observers. And even those good at observing were not very adept at it. Reel had done just enough to beat the odds that someone would spot her. Not too much. Not too little. Just enough.

Robie would have done the same thing in her position.

And by not pulling the trigger maybe I
am
in her position now.

He drove back to the motel, went to his room, stripped down, and stood in the shower, letting the water wash off the grit he felt over every part of his body.

But the water couldn’t get to his brain, where it felt like muck a foot deep had gathered, dulling his senses, obstructing his ability to think clearly.

He dried off and dressed. He leaned against the wall and slammed both hands into it so hard he felt the drywall crack. He dropped fifty bucks on the bed to repair the wall and grabbed his bag.

He had a long drive ahead of him. He had better get to it.

He switched on the radio when he reached the interstate highway. The news was full of it. A massacre on a lonely ridge in the middle of nowhere, Arkansas. No one was talking, but apparently rival militias had had a go at each other. A cabin had been blown up. Trucks too. Men lay dead.

One of them was identified as Roy West, a former intelligence analyst in D.C. When and why he had headed to Arkansas and taken up his new life of guns and bombs was as yet unknown. There were intimations that folks from D.C. were heading to the site now to begin an investigation.

Robie looked up, almost expecting to see a government jet fly over en route to the crime scene.

As the news went off in other directions, Robie thought more about what Reel had told him.

West had written the apocalypse. What exactly did that mean?

West had worked at the agency. His official title had been “analyst.” That could cover lots of different things. Most analysts whom Robie had encountered spent their days on real-time issues. But there were some who didn’t.

Robie had heard that the agency had papers written on lots of different scenarios. They took into account the changing geopolitical landscape. These white papers would almost all end up on the shredder pile, unexecuted and largely forgotten. But maybe West’s hadn’t ended up on that pile. Maybe someone was taking it seriously.

Writing the apocalypse.

Reel had risked a lot to come out here. If Robie hadn’t been there too she would be dead. Reel was a first-class killer with few peers. But she had been outgunned more than twenty to one. Even the best trained person could not survive that.

If she knew that West wrote the apocalypse, this meant she had either read the paper or knew of its contents. In fact, she’d said she had the document. So she probably hadn’t come out here to ask West about it. Robie doubted she cared what his inspiration or reason was for doing it.

So what then?

He drove on for fifteen more miles before the answer hit him.

She wanted to know who he’d given the report to.

If it hadn’t gone through official channels, then it could have gone to someone who wasn’t official. That must have been what Reel wanted. The name of the person or persons who had seen the apocalypse paper.

More miles went by. Robie stopped for gas and another meal. He sat at the counter, his attention focused on the food in front of him, but his mind racing well beyond the confines of the roadside diner.

There was her shot list.

Jacobs first. Gelder next. She said they were traitors.

She also said there were others.

But she had killed Jacobs and Gelder before she’d come out to see Roy West. So she had to know they were part of the apocalypse paper before she’d confronted West.

That could only mean one thing.

Robie had lifted the glass of iced tea to his lips but then slowly set it down without drinking.

There had to be someone else out there. Maybe more than one who knew about the paper, who were perhaps actively pursuing its goals but were still unknown to Reel.

She was methodically killing off these conspirators—that was how Robie naturally started to think of them—but her list was incomplete.

So many more questions assailed him now, chief of which was why and how Reel had become involved in all this. What was the catalyst that had prompted her to risk everything to do what she was doing?

He had looked the woman in the eyes. He had come away with a definite conclusion.

This was not simply another mission. This was personal.

And if Robie was right about that, there had to be a reason. No, there had to be a person involved who made it personal for her. She said they had killed someone who meant a lot to her. And he or she had been killed because they were going to expose the plot.

Robie had lots of questions and no answers. But he knew one thing.

An apocalypse was never how you wanted it to end.

C
HILDREN WHOOPING.
Balloons all the colors of the rainbow. Presents that each cost well into three figures.

Judge Samuel Kent looked around the room and smiled at the antics of the elementary school–age kids in the large sunroom where the birthday party was taking place. Kent had married later in life, and his youngest child was a guest here at the home of a well-heeled lobbyist who made his money by selling whatever needed selling on Capitol Hill.