Cooper almost felt sorry for the guy.
Quinn strolled up the ramp with the bored ease of a campus security guard. Cooper moved in step with him but six cars back, staying down. Stealth wasn’t his great strength, but the guard would be focused on Quinn. Too bad you couldn’t ask Shannon to help; she could sneak into Fort Knox.
The thought sent a pang through him, and a memory of her body, naked and lithe, framed against the light of his refrigerator last night as she twisted the top off a beer and drank deep. As usual, she’d shown up without warning, and after the sex—he seemed only to get more hungry for her every time they touched, a kind of intoxication he thought had vanished with his teenage years—they’d talked. She had been circumspect with her language, but Cooper could tell that she’d been in action. It had stung a bit to realize she had no intention of telling him what she had been doing.
Of course, you’re doing the same right now. This op will almost certainly mess up your relationship.
He’d almost told her. Last night, stroking her hair as they both drifted off, Cooper had almost told her that he believed John Smith was trying to start a war. After all, he’d trusted her with his life, with the lives of his children. But could he trust her to side with him instead of with her old friend and leader? He wasn’t sure.
That’s the trouble with dating a terrorist, Coop. So many tricky breakfast conversations.
He put her out of his mind. No time for distraction. Whatever was between them, whatever he hoped might be, he had a job to do.
Fix it, Natalie had said.
Quinn reached the driver’s side of the SUV, rapped on the window. It slid down, and his partner said, “Excuse me, you’re Mr. Smith’s driver, right?”
Cooper dropped to his hands and knees, hurried past three more cars, and then crawled alongside the SUV. He’d be visible in the side mirror, but keeping the driver focused was Quinn’s job. Cooper slid the remote from his pocket and pressed the button. Newtech that Quinn had brought, an RFID decoder that quick-scanned through millions of codes. Funny, back in the days when cars had keys, they were a lot more secure. Now that everything worked at the touch of a button, all you needed was a master button.
“I understand that, sir, but you can’t park here,” Quinn said, the very model of disinterested officiousness.
With a click, the SUV’s doors unlocked. Cooper yanked open the door handle and slid into the passenger’s seat in one easy move.
The guard was good, already had his pistol in his lap. He spun, started to raise it, Cooper reading the move easily, the play of muscles in shoulders and chest. He didn’t waste time struggling for the gun, just locked three fingers and stabbed them into the man’s neck, spearing the carotid artery where it branched. The guard went instantly limp, the sidearm falling to the floorboards. Quinn leaned in the window with the hypodermic, jammed it into the guy’s arm, and depressed the plunger. Pressure point knockouts didn’t last, but the sedative would.
Together they dragged the guard out of the driver’s seat. Quinn opened the back of the SUV, and they hoisted the guard inside and dumped him behind the seats. Cooper pulled up the cuff of the man’s right arm, found the tight bracelet encircling his forearm.
“Valerie,” he said, “he’s got a biometric alarm.”
“Yup.” Her voice soft in his earpiece. “Just like we thought. I already hijacked it; it’s broadcasting healthy vitals.”
“You’re a marvel.”
Quinn walked to the front of the truck and hopped in the driver’s seat. He picked up the guard’s pistol, fluidly disassembled it, and tossed the pieces in the glove box. “You’re on, Coop.”
“Moving.” He headed for the stairs. “Luisa, how’s it going inside?”
“They’re wrapping up. The target is modestly enduring a standing ovation.”
“His body man?”
“Stage right, calm.”
“Roger.” He hurried up the back stairs of the subterranean parking deck and came out behind the auditorium. Even from outside he could hear the muffled roar of applause. The alley was cracked concrete and cigarette butts, the rear door rusted metal. There was another of the flyers taped to it. Cooper smiled, took a position leaning against the wall on the blind side of the door. In his ear, Luisa said, “Okay, we’re wrapped in here. Elvis has left the stage.”
Quinn said, “Are you sure he’ll go out the back? He’s an attention whore. Why not head out the front, soak up more adulation?”
“Easy,” Cooper said. “He glad-handed for an hour, signed books for two, then did an hour on stage.”
“So?”
“So, he’s a chain-smoker. At this point he’s jonesing for nicotine more than attention. Ten bucks says he’ll be lighting up as he steps through the door.”
“Seems thin—”
“Hold.” The metal door started to open. Cooper moved with it, using it as—
The body man will come out first, check the alley, and then signal the all-clear.
Take him fast.
Spin around the door, grab Smith, yank him out, drop him.
—cover.
A chop across the windpipe, pulled just shy of fatal, staggered the burly guard, his hands flying to his throat. Cooper ignored his gasps, slid past him into the auditorium loading dock, and came face-to-face with a man with easy good looks and a cigarette in his lips, his hand holding a lighter flame an inch from the smoke.
“Hi, John,” Cooper said, and then threw a right hook that snapped Smith’s head sideways and sent the cigarette flying. He grabbed the man by the lapels of his expensive suit, turned, and hurled him into the security guard, both of them tumbling to the ground.
He bent, picked up the smoke, then stepped outside and let the door close behind him.
“Target acquired. Come pick us up.”
The room was a portrait of urban decay, peeling walls covered in graffiti, the air thick with urine and rot. Cooper took a metal folding chair from the side wall and plunked it down in the center of the room. They undid the cuffs, then maneuvered Smith to the chair and forced him down. Quinn yanked off his hood.
John Smith blinked. He looked around the room, at the two of them. “This isn’t a government facility.”
Cooper locked eyes with him, smiled slightly, and shook his head.
The fear that flashed across the man’s face came and went quickly. “You’re not arresting me.”
“No.”
Cooper could see Smith processing the new data, reanalyzing. Wondering what was happening. He was, Cooper saw, living the kind of moment that happened to him exceedingly rarely—one he hadn’t planned.
“You should know,” Smith said, “that my security team will be here in seconds. I’m constantly monitored via biometric alarm.”
“Like this one?” Cooper held up the bracelet he’d taken from the second guard, now sedated atop his buddy in the back of the SUV. “It’s a good system. If you were to travel with a team of twenty people, you’d look like a third-world dictator. This way you can seem like a man of the people.”
“Problem is,” Quinn said, “it depends on your alarm sending accurate information.”
Smith nodded. “So you’ve co-opted the signal. A good move. But one I anticipated, I’m afraid. My team has to communicate an all-clear code every—”
“Twenty minutes. We know.”
The man’s face tightened. “And that code changes every time.”
“Yeah, a five-digit numeric that evolves algorithmically. It makes sense—you can’t expect that a team will memorize a day’s worth of codes every shift and never make a mistake, so instead you give them one code each day and a formula to apply. We’re sending those okays,” Cooper glanced at his watch, “right about now. Your bracelet is telling your security that you’re still at the auditorium. In the can.”