The Hit (41 page)

“How much time do we have?” asked Colwell.

Whitcomb rose, signaling an end to the meeting. “Apparently almost none at all.”

R
EEL AND
R
OBIE SEPARATED AFTER
they got out of her rental car and entered the mall through different doors.

They were communicating via earwigs on a secure frequency. Robie had insisted on treating this like an op, and Reel had quickly agreed. She apparently didn’t expect any trouble, but she also never expected everything to go perfectly either.

That was a good rule to live by, Robie knew, because perfection was rarely the case in the field.

She walked down the main corridor of the mall. It was in the afternoon and there weren’t as many people around as there would be later in the day. Still, she did her best to blend in.

She approached the GameStop from the east side of the mall. She spoke in a low voice. “Ten steps from target. Giving a signal and then heading west and down the hall to the restrooms.”

“Copy that,” said Robie.

He was on the upper level of the mall, hidden in his hoodie, looking down at her as she passed by. He watched as she strode past the GameStop. She slid her finger along her chin and then kept going.

Robie smiled at this. He had used that very same signal once. He watched her turn down the hall to the restrooms.

A minute later, Robie keyed on a short, skinny man wearing a black silkscreened T-shirt who came out of the GameStop and followed the path Reel had taken.

The next second Robie had his hand around the gun in his pocket.

There were two teams out there.

One coming east, the other west.

He had seen dozens of such configurations over the years. They all looked a little different, but to someone like Robie they all also looked the same.

They obviously hadn’t accounted for Robie. He was the wild card. He intended to make the most of that status.

He spoke into his mic. “Two bogie teams headed your way. East, west. Pair of deuces. Armed and commed so they can coordinate.”

That had been one way for Robie to ID the hit teams.

Their earwigs.

He had covered his with a hoodie. They had not seen fit to do that.

Their mistake.

“Copy that,” was Reel’s calm response. “Do what I can.”

“On your six.”

“Copy that.”

She was seconds from having to fight her way out of here, and she sounded like she was simply going to use the bathroom to relieve herself.

Robie would have expected nothing less.

He took the escalator three steps at a time. When he hit the first floor he was already at a full sprint.

One of the bogie teams had already gone down the hall toward the restrooms. The second team was two steps from there.

“FBI, freeze!” called out Robie.

The men did not freeze. Robie had called out on the off chance that they might be the authorities.

They weren’t.

It was burned into law enforcement folks to ID themselves when possibly confronted by fellow lawmen. Creds came out and people started screaming who they were with. The last thing a cop wanted was to get shot by another cop. Or shoot another cop.

These men said nothing, and the only things that came out of their jackets were guns.

Before they could fire on him, Robie shot one man in the knee. He screamed and dropped immediately, his gun flying from
his hand. Robie wasn’t worried about him reentering the fight. Destroyed knees were so painful that even the toughest men could only lie there and sob like babies.

The second man fired at Robie, shattering a large planter that a moment earlier Robie had been standing in front of. Robie crouched and turned to the side. He tasted acid in his mouth as bile was shoved up his throat. No matter how many times you did this, being shot at was not natural, and your body reacted in consistent ways. Robie had fear; anyone would in that situation. But he didn’t have panic, which was the key difference between those who lived and those who didn’t.

The man would not get another chance to shoot. No knee shot this time; Robie dropped him with a round between his eyes.

Robie raced down the hall. He ran even harder when he heard the shots.

He spoke into his mic. “Reel? Reel, you copy? You okay? Reel?”

He slowed, turned the corner prepared to fire, and stopped.

There were three bodies lying in pools of blood.

When Robie saw they were all men, he let out his breath.

But three?

Then it hit him. The friend. From the GameStop.

Reel stepped from around the far corner, her gun in her right hand.

He looked at her. “You okay?”

She nodded, but said nothing. Her gaze was on her friend.

Robie heard screams behind him. Feet running. Mall cops probably.

That was the last thing they needed. He was not going to fire on an unarmed young punk or retired geezer posing as the authorities.

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

“I know,” she said dumbly.

“I mean now.”

Robie looked past her. There was a set of exit doors there. Had to be a way out.

When he looked back at Reel, she was bending down next to her dead friend, wiping a lock of hair out of his face.

Robie heard her say, “I’m so sorry, Mike.”

He ran forward, grabbed her arm, and pulled her down the hall. He kicked open the exit door and the two raced through it.

Robie looked around. They were in a storage area.

“You know which way is out?”

Reel didn’t seem to have heard him.

He turned. “Jessica, do you know the way out!” he barked.

She focused, looked embarrassed, and pointed to the left. “That way, doors let out on the east side. Come on, follow me.”

They reached the outside and fast-walked back to the parking garage. They got to Reel’s car. It looked like they had made a clean exit.

Until they heard the screech of tires coming fast.

The dead men had backup.

And they were coming fast.

Robie only had time to say, “Look out.”

R
EEL SMOKED HER WHEELS AND
drove in reverse right at the larger vehicle. Robie braced for impact, but it never came.

He saw the front grille of the SUV for an instant. It seemed to swallow up the whole of the back glass of their car. Then somehow Reel had turned just enough to slide through a gap between the SUV and a concrete support column.

She cut a J-turn and rammed the car into drive before she had even finished the 180-degree maneuver. She left a quarter inch of tire rubber on the concrete floor of the garage and the car careened through the exit and out into traffic entering the mall.

Reel cut her wheel to the left, jumped the median, and punched the gas. The car shot to the right. She slammed into a line of orange traffic cones, cut the wheel to the right, and slid into another turn.

Robie barely managed to buckle his seat belt. His gun was out but there was nothing to shoot at.

There was traffic up ahead, but it was only on one side. Unfortunately it was on their side. Reel solved this problem by going British and driving on the opposite side of the road.

She cleared the logjam, didn’t bother to stop at the red light, slashed into oncoming traffic, managed to somehow bend the car’s path into a left-hand turn, losing a hubcap in the process, and pushed the gas pedal to the floor as she got back on the right side of the road.

Sirens were coming from all over the place now.

Robie looked behind them. “We’re good. Dial it back so the cops don’t get a clue.”

She eased off the gas, held for a second at a yield sign, and then merged into traffic. A few minutes later they were on a highway going seventy with the traffic flow.

Robie put his gun away. “Sorry about your friend.”

“I’m sorry you keep having to say that,” she replied.

“Who was he?”

“His name was Michael Gioffre. And I’m the reason he’s dead.”

“Really? I thought it was the guys shooting at you.”

“I didn’t check for an observation team, Robie. I knew there used to be one there. A legit one. I always checked. But I didn’t today.”

“How did it go down?”

“Shot from one of them ricocheted off a trash can and caught Mike right in the eye. He was dead before he hit the floor.”

“Then what?”

“I shot the guys. One round each. They weren’t very good. Came running in like I wasn’t going to even fight back. Stupid.”

“My guys weren’t that good either, actually,” said Robie.

She looked at him sharply. “I wonder why not?”

“Maybe their best guys are already in Ireland.”

Robie turned the radio on. “I want to hear if there’s anything on the news about the mall yet.”

There wasn’t. But there was another story that captured their interest. The news anchor was succinct with the details, although right now there weren’t that many of them.

When the anchor went on to another story Robie turned off the radio and stared over at Reel. “Someone murdered Howard Decker,” he said.

“They’re cleaning up loose ends, Robie. These sons of bitches are planning to pull this off and then get away scot free. But they’re not. I’m going to put a round into every single one of them. I’m going to keep shooting them over and over until I run out of bullets.”

He placed a hand on her arm and gripped it.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“I’m sorry about Mike. We can go somewhere and you can grieve for him. And for Gwen—”

“I don’t need to grieve for anybody—”

“I think you do.”

“You don’t know anything about me. So leave your damn grieving sermon for somebody who cares. I’m a killer, Robie. People are usually dying all around me.”

“But not usually your friends, Jessica.”

She started to say something, but then the words seemed to catch in her throat.

Robie continued, “I’m not playing grief counselor. Once we get to Ireland, there will be no time for you to get right in your head. So you’re either in this a hundred percent and I know I can count on you, or you’re useless to me and you can drop me at the next exit.”

Reel blinked. “You used that ploy on me once before, Robie.”

“Yemen. We lost Tommy Billups. You blamed yourself. More to the point, you checked out on me for about half an hour.”

“Until you kicked my ass.”

“Because a team is a team, Jessica. And there’re only two people currently on our team. A house divided is screwed. Which in our case means dead.”

She took a long, calming breath. “I’m good, Robie.”

“Turn the anger into something that will guarantee we beat these pricks, Jessica. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I know. You’re right.”

They drove in silence for a few miles.

Reel broke it by saying, “That’s why you always were number one.”

He turned to look at her.

“You never let your emotions get the better of you, Robie. Never. You were a machine. Everybody thought so.”

He stared down at his hands. He actually felt embarrassed by her words.

By how wrong they were.

He reached into his jacket and rubbed the stock of his pistol. Not for luck. It was never about luck.

This was his talisman. This was his tool of choice. This was what he did.

I am a killer.

I am also a human being.

The only problem is, I can’t be both.

Reel glanced at him. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

“Nothing important,” he answered.