The morning gave way to afternoon, not that Evan could tell inside the Vault. His eyes ached, and his hands cramped from pounding the keyboard for hours. He’d risen at 5:00 A.M. for a workout and then gone straight through the looking glass of his shower wall to the Secret Service databases, burying himself in route assessments, security updates, and GPS imaging of the blocks between the White House and the Hill.
Choosing the exact method was even more challenging than he’d anticipated. The plan, such as it was, had to be impeccably executed. He whittled away at the options until he saw maps and calculations floating ghostlike behind his lids when he closed his eyes.
It was barely, barely possible.
But not as a solo operation.
As he neared the eight-hour mark at his desk, he rose and stretched his stiff back.
Vera II eyed him from her glass bowl.
“I’m not bad at asking for help,” he told her. “I just prefer not to.”
She sagely withheld further counsel.
He paced in front of his desk, the projected classified data scrolling over his body, shadow and light, shadow and light.
Now that he’d had more time to scour the Secret Service databases, he’d seen that they did not contain a single detail pertaining to the 1997 mission. Whatever mystery President Bennett was guarding against, he’d kept it even from the agency sworn to protect him. Evan was beginning to think that the secret had been redacted so thoroughly that it now existed only in Bennett’s mind. If so, Evan would never get the answers he sought.
Sitting heavily in his chair, he brought up the Drafts folder of his Gmail account.
“You there?”
A moment later: “i’m in calculus. so yeah. this shit is boring. + easy.”
“Glad you’re getting the most of your education.”
An eye-rolling emoji bleeped onto the screen.
He grimaced, fingers poised above the keyboard. Then he typed: “I can’t find anything about 1997 in the Service databases.”
“97? like the mission Dear Leader wants you dead 4?”
“That’s right. I’ve checked call logs, visitor records, official movements, off-site meetings. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places. Anything you can scare up with your algorithms or whatever, let me know.”
“algorithms. yer cute.”
“Need me to open up a portal to get you on my system?”
The light rippled within the Vault, and he realized that Joey had replied inside his own computer, projecting her answer onto the wall before him.
“dummy,” it read, “i’m already in.”
Vera II smirked at him.
He typed, “Oh.”
“i’ll look into it after class. any luck picking your spot?”
“Yes. Can you do some route analysis? I need specs on wind factor, visibility, height above target, distance, ease of access, stability, etc.”
“not remote. haveta be onsite for that. happy to fly to d.c. it’d get me outta this final.”
“Not safe. I’ll figure it out.”
He deleted the rough draft, erasing their correspondence.
He stood up and paced around some more, doing his best not to think about the bottle of Tigre Blanc waiting for him in the freezer. A few fingers of ice-cold vodka might take the edge off the upcoming phone call he had to make.
He plucked his RoamZone off the desk, glowering at Vera II. “All right, all right.”
He dialed.
As it rang, he continued walking in tight circles.
Candy McClure’s voice came like a purr across the line. “I thought you’d never call. Here I am, all dolled up and nowhere to go.”
“I need you in D.C.”
“I’m already here.”
“Why?”
“I saw the press briefing, too. Bennett just announced precisely when he’s gonna be on the mark. I knew you’d jump at it. You’d better hope Bennett’s not playing you.”
“I thought about that. But I don’t think he’ll pull out of a congressional testimony. He’d lose more political capital than he can afford right now.”
“What do you need?”
“Secret Service protocols designate three primary high-alert routes from the White House to Capitol Hill, ranging from 1.9 to 2.3 miles. They’re all circuitous, so we can’t count on the straight shot up Pennsylvania Ave. Right now that stretch of blocks is under heavier surveillance than anywhere on the planet. I can’t risk being seen in the area again, not until the day of. I’ve identified three potential perches. Can you go to them and get me a comprehensive set of data for each hide?” He told her the measurements he required. “I need it down to the inch.”
“I was thinking to the millimeter,” she said. “But if you want me to work sloppy, I can back off my game.”
“I’m down to ninety hours, and I still have to procure the weapon. I need this ASAP.”
“I’m out the door,” she said. “But, X? One more thing to consider.”
“What’s that?”
“If I can predict you, they can, too.”
* * *
Orphan A sat on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, hands folded. The four surviving Collins cousins had departed earlier that morning, but Wade remained hunkered down on the Pelican case, hefting various weapons. He refused to leave. He wanted to be right here at command central, manning the fort so he’d know the instant his shot at revenge came through the line.
His face was red from crying, blood vessels blown out around his nose and eyes. He was the only person Holt had ever seen whose sobbing conveyed not grief but rage.
There was no more Sound. Only Fury.
The authorities had identified what remained of his cousin’s and brother’s bodies and leaked a story about a drug heist gone bad. The speed and deftness of the cover-up was particularly impressive—amazing what got done behind the scenes when the commander-in-chief was tugging the marionette strings. People who said the government was inefficient didn’t know the right parts of the government. The media was having a field day with the incident, calling it Watergate-gate.
Wade and his cousins failed to find it amusing.
Holt’s disposable phone vibrated.
Wade’s hands stopped moving at last, the pistol at rest between his massive palms.
Holt looked at the text, the sender ID nothing more than a redacted space. FRIDAY. BE READY.
Holt rose and handed Wade the phone as he passed him. Resting by the front door was a black duffel bag that had arrived earlier this morning. It was zippered shut and secured with zip-ties.
Wade read the message and rose from his perch.
It seemed, for a time, that he kept rising.
“I’ll round up the boys,” he said. “You get us within range of him. That’s all you need to do. Just get us within range.” He wiped at his nose. “Can you do that?”
Holt crouched over the duffel, flicked out a folding knife, and severed the zip-tie. He tugged the duffel open and dumped its contents by Wade’s feet.
Scattered on the floor were emergency-response-team jackets, Secret Service badges, department-issued combat-utility uniforms.
Holt grinned. “Wolves in wolves’ clothing.”