‘Nice night for a perv?’
Falling sideways off the stool as he recognised Gallen, the watcher scrambled to leave by the rear door of the restaurant. Gallen saw worked shoulders under the light windbreaker, suggesting a professional, and this was verified as the watcher shouted something into his cuff as he headed for the door.
Following at a walk, Gallen had to allow the waitress with the full drinks tray to move along before he could go after the panicking field-glasses guy.
Watching the man’s ankle disappear as the rear door flapped back on the spring, Gallen moved along the toilet hallway and paused at the door: who was on the other side? A man exited the washroom beside him and Gallen held up his arm.
‘Sorry, buddy,’ he said, smiling. ‘Just got my cast off and I can’t shift that door. Would you—’
The youngster didn’t even reply, just threw his shoulder into the swing door and held it open for Gallen.
‘There you go,’ said the Samaritan, and Gallen saw a black handgun reaching from across the doorway into the side of the man’s face.
The watcher’s face came into view, his face dropping as he realised he had a stranger. ‘Shit,’ he said, and turned for the car park.
The rear of the restaurant opened into a service and deliveries area, a black Escalade parked with a door open. The watcher leapt into the rear door and Gallen paused, seeing three shapes through the tinted windows. Panting in the stand-off, Gallen realised the Escalade was going nowhere. As he approached it slowly, a commotion on the other side of the vehicle made the four-by-four rock on its shocks.
The rear door flew open and the watcher dropped to the tarmac, handgun pointed at Gallen. Slowly raising his hands, Gallen eyeballed the watcher as two other men walked around the front of the Escalade, arms raised, a tall blond man following with an automatic handgun in each hand.
‘Hey, boss,’ said Winter, the guns trained between the shoulder blades of his captives. ‘Looks like we’re popular.’
‘That’s far enough, tough guy,’ said the watcher, getting to Gallen and standing behind him, gun jammed in his kidneys. ‘Drop the guns.’
‘Like watching a man eat?’ said Winter, slow as the sun. ‘Take you down McDonald’s, see plenty of it.’
Behind Gallen, the friendly Samaritan squawked, the fear getting too much. The watcher twisted as the restaurant door banged shut and Gallen pirouetted into the watcher’s chest, taking the gun hand away with a wrist slap and immediately changing to a Korean wrist-lock. Open-handing the watcher under the chin, Gallen brought the gun wrist back on itself and pushed it down hard with his body weight, snapping the ligaments and making the gun bounce free on the delivery apron.
The man opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out as he collapsed, unconscious, to the ground.
Picking up the gun — a SIG 9mm — Gallen turned back to Winter, whose captives gulped with fear but maintained their composure. A sandy-haired yuppie dressed like a lawyer muttered something like, Okay.
‘That civvie’s calling the cops,’ said Gallen. ‘Why don’t you pick up your buddy and leave?’
Gallen winked at the lawyer guy and stepped back as the two men retrieved the watcher with the busted wrist and dragged him to the Escalade.
Winter collected the handguns, threw them in a dumpster as they jogged through the service lanes, looking for a way out that the cops wouldn’t be using as a way in. They found a cab and took it to Santa Monica, silence enveloping them as they dealt with the adrenaline come-down. Crossing the road beside the pier, they cased the ground and found another cab, took it south to Venice Beach. Grabbing a booth at the back of a bar located three blocks from the sand, Gallen bought the beers and they finally looked at each other.
‘Any ideas?’ said Winter.
‘The dude with the glasses spoke into his cuff once I made him,’ said Gallen.
‘See the tyres on that Escalade?’ Winter scanned the bar over Gallen’s shoulders. ‘Self-sealers. Looked military, or—’
‘Those weren’t standard door pillars, neither,’ said Gallen.
‘Built for armour and one-inch glass.’
They looked at one another, the question hanging: what the hell did the US Government want with Gerry Gallen and Kenny Winter?
CHAPTER 8
Aaron didn’t give away much about himself but Gallen noticed that he liked his toast cold and his coffee black.
‘So, Mulligan not around?’ said Gallen, as they finished eating breakfast and Toby cleared the balcony table.
‘I run the Durville detail,’ said Aaron. ‘You’re dealing with me now.’
Gallen’s new boss had an oval face that twisted when he was pissed. His thin hair was cut in a side parting and he had reached forty with no busted facial features or missing teeth.
Gallen lit his first smoke of the day. ‘You okay with that? ‘
‘I’m okay with doing my job. I’m okay with others doing their jobs.’
Aaron took a manila envelope from the seat beside him, placed it on the glass-topped table and pushed it across. Gallen looked at it, felt the sun’s heat and wondered if Aaron was ex-Agency.
‘Employment documents, life insurance and the health packages,’ said Aaron. ‘I have you starting Monday week, gives you eleven days to get those signed and your crew on board. That a problem?’
‘Should be fine,’ said Gallen, glad he’d refused the seat opposite Aaron and taken one at his side. He wanted eyes on the other condos and on the street. Winter was still in the upstairs apartment, watching the environment with field-glasses, but Gallen didn’t want his back to the street — not now.
‘You got the measurements for your team?’ said Aaron. ‘Like Paul told you?’
Gallen patted the piece of paper in his jeans pocket.
‘Then let’s get the kit,’ said Aaron, looking at his watch. ‘Told my man we’d be in Longbeach before ten.’
Gallen shrugged, sucked on the smoke. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Wanna bring that gorilla you hiding upstairs?’ said Aaron.
Gallen wasn’t too concerned about Aaron making Kenny Winter— the Canadian wasn’t a long-term secret, just short-term insurance. ‘He wouldn’t miss it for the world.’
Toby took the Crown Vic off the San Diego Freeway at 9.48 and wove through the light industrial zone surrounding the port district, the part tourists don’t see.
Trying to keep his bearings, Gallen caught a glimpse of the Naval Weapons Station across a canal and figured they were in the south end of Longbeach. At the end of a trucker’s road into a distribution depot, they veered right, avoiding the loading bays, and drove into the dimness of a large warehouse with no signage.
The suspension squeaked as they emerged from the car, the four of them removing sunglasses as they looked around. It was a tin-sided facility the size of a hardware Supa Store, with six aisles between racking that extended to the ceiling. The front of the aisles contained boots and fatigues, tents and field shovels, some of them in sale bins and others modelled on military mannequins. Gallen knew what would be down the back.
‘This way,’ said Toby, leading them towards a metal scanner of the type used at the bag search area of airports. A tall security guy took the team through the scanner one by one, issuing white plastic bar-coded security numbers that they pinned to their shirts. The scanner beeped and they turned, watching Aaron remove a handgun from his hip and a bitch-gun from his ankle rig.
The security guy took the weapons and secured them in a lockbox under his desk. ‘This way,’ he said, walking them towards an office where a thickset black man in his fifties stood, lighting a cheroot.
‘Chase,’ said Aaron.