“Can we get extra men from HRT?”
Duggan shook his head. “You were lucky to get eight of us. Half of my colleagues are overseas, protecting U.S. sites from terrorism. The rest need to be on standby for homeland threats.”
Marsha silently cursed, wishing she’d been allowed to continue her pursuit of Cobalt so that she could stop his reign of carnage.
“Anyway, I can’t afford to put my team on static observation duty. SWAT’s perfectly capable for that detail. We need to be ready for a hot takedown once Cochrane’s pinned down to one location.”
Marsha agreed with Duggan’s proposed course of action. She said to Brooks, “Hotels, motels, anywhere that Cochrane can rent a room in D.C. — phone them all, in case he turns up at one of them.”
The detective replied, “I’ve already got officers doing precisely that.”
Marsha smiled. “Absolutely no doubt in my mind that you’re the right person for this job.” Her smile vanished as she looked around the Union Station concourse. “In a moment, I’m going to tell the media that Cochrane’s in D.C., that every transportation hub in the city has been bolstered with extra Transit officers who’ll be carrying submachine guns as well as their usual weapons, that the number of Met Department cops on the streets has been increased, that Secret Service is on high alert in case Cochrane’s going for high-value targets, that SWAT snipers will be looking over the city from on high, that routes in and out of the city will be heavily monitored, that citizens should go about their normal business but cooperate fully if we give the order for them to stay at home, and that starting right now the city of Washington, D.C., is a police state.”
One of the men in the crowd of civilians turned and walked fast away from the Union Station crime scene toward the escalator that would take him to the parking zone. Aside from his good looks and athletic build, he looked like an average guy who had every right to be in the building. His clothes were functional and cheap — jeans, boots, a bomber jacket — and his movement was indicative of someone who’d decided he’d wasted enough time rubbernecking a police incident and needed to get to work. He could have been a construction worker, a courier, or maybe an off-duty cop or security guard.
He wasn’t.
As an SAS operative, Oates had hunted down and assassinated terrorists in the backstreets of war-torn Baghdad, been a key participant in the near suicidal yet wholly successful mission to rescue five British army soldiers who’d been held hostage in Sierra Leone, fought toe to toe with tough jihadists in the Tora Bora cave complex, singlehandedly killed twelve rebels in a confrontation on the Pakistani border, and walked into a mosque in Afghanistan and shot its imam in the head for no other reason than that the soldier thought the cleric had been spouting a load of poisonous crap. When unproven suspicion had fallen on him for the murder, he was sacked from the Regiment. At the end of their military careers, Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen had also stepped into the wrong side of the morally ambiguous gray zone that separated right and wrong in covert combat. Shortly thereafter, all four men became guns for hire. Recognizing their skills and inability to enter the more traditional private-military-contractor career path open to former special operatives, Antaeus had snapped them up and given them additional training in his dark art of espionage.
Oates moved into the vast parking zone and within minutes was sitting next to Scott in their vehicle.
Scott turned on the ignition as he watched Marsha Gage walk quickly to her car. “How did it go?”
Oates pulled out his handgun and fixed it in between his seat and the underside of his thigh. “Lots of cops standing around drinking coffee.”
“Doughnuts?”
“Nah.”
“What a shame.”
“Yeah. Come all this way to America, and you deserve to see cops stuffing doughnuts in their gobs.”
“What do you reckon happened in there?”
Oates shrugged. “Gunfight. Cochrane took down four cops.”
His fellow former SAS colleague asked, “Killed them?”
Oates shook his head. “Nope. Put them on their asses.”
“Shots to vests?”
“Precisely.”
“How very generous of him.” Scott put the car in gear and slowly moved it out of the lot as Marsha’s car began to move. “Could you hear what Gage was saying?”
“No, but I didn’t need to. She wanted to examine the scene to find out what Cochrane was capable of. There was a big guy with her. Wasn’t wearing uniform, but absolutely no doubt he’s Hormone Replacement Therapy.”
Scott laughed.
“She used him to see how quick the job could be done.”
“Did HRT man pass?”
“Not quite, but he’s very fast. We’ve got to be careful.”
“Would you have passed?”
“Of course.”
“You saying that just because I’m team leader?”
“Wish you’d fuck off with this team leader shit.” Oates shook his head. “Next time, I’m going to tell the boss that I should be team leader.”
“I’d love to be a fly on the wall when that happens. Antaeus doesn’t really get on well with people who try to tell him what to do.” Scott drove the car onto Massachusetts Avenue and ensured that three vehicles were between him and Marsha Gage. “What do you reckon Gage is doing now?”
“She had a powwow with the HRT guy and some other cop bird. I think the test scared the shit out of Gage and she’s going to escalate matters.”
“The media will latch on to what happened at the station.”
“Meaning she’ll want to speak to them before they speculate.”
“Good. When Amundsen and Shackleton take over Gage-stalking duty, let’s you and me put our feet up with a nice brew and watch a bit of telly. Sounds like this morning there might be something interesting to watch.”
The fact that over six hundred thousand people lived in Washington, and at least three times that many worked here during daytime hours, was little consolation to Will Cochrane as he walked north along Seventh Street NW. He felt totally exposed, as if every passerby were looking at him and he were seconds away from hearing, “Police! Get your hands on your head.”
Icy rain was penetrating the gap between his jacket’s collar and his back, causing his skin to tingle and rise in goose bumps. His muscles ached from fatigue, his earlier exertions, and stress; his mind was awash with self-doubt and anxiety that Ellie Hallowes wouldn’t deliver on her side of the bargain they’d reached in Norway.
Norway.
It seemed that he’d been there in another age.
So much had happened between Scandinavia and here.
And maybe all of it was pointless.
He entered D.C.’s Chinatown as the dark clouds above him clapped and thundered, as if they were summoning sentinels to lash the air beneath them with bolts of electricity.
Will continued walking through a sea of umbrellas held by tourists gawping at the delicious food on display in the restaurant windows. How enticing the rotisserie chickens and other exotic cuisine looked, and he felt engulfed by the urge to step into one of the warm eateries, sit at a table, and order enough food to feed an army. That’s where he would be shot, like a mobster taking a reflective and indulgent moment away from death and extortion, eating a meal in the comfort of civilized refinement, unaware that it was his last.
He kept moving, wondering if this place had looked similar when Ellie Hallowes came here.
If she’d come here.
He felt his left eye twitching, an involuntary movement prompted by nerves and tiredness and a body that was crying out for him to finally stop. The feeling made him recall how Chief Inspector Dreyfus’s eye would start to twitch as Inspector Clouseau’s unwavering incompetence would escalate in the Pink Panther movies. The image temporarily made him smile, though also made him question where his mind was.