“There is something else. Joel says that when he got buried in the snow, he still had his radio in his ear. He heard Trestle Two report that he saw two targets.”
“Two targets?”
Beaumont spit juice into the cup again, not taking his eyes from the smaller Whitlock as he did so.
“Yep.”
Russ said, “Maybe he saw me when I engaged Gentry.”
“You told Babbitt you were behind the action. How do you suppose he would have gotten the impression the two of you were together?”
Russ said, “I don’t know, John. I know I couldn’t have made that mistake, but Trestle team was a bunch of dumb fucks. Hell, I have no idea what passes for a thought in any of you snake eaters’ brains.”
Beaumont’s low southern drawl slowed even more now. “Heard you got shot.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s the wound?” Beaumont took a half step toward Dead Eye now.
Russ did not back away. “It’s fine. Why?”
“I want to see it.” There was an accusation in the tone, and Russ picked up on this.
“What the hell for?”
“C’mon, bro. You caught a love tap from the Gray Man and survived it? You should be showing that shit off every chance you get.”
The men around him did not move, but Russ felt their presence close as the mood of the room darkened even more.
“Gentry was slinging a Glock 19,” Beaumont said.
“So?”
“Trestle team carried MP7s. Much smaller bullet.” He leaned closer still, looming over the smaller man. “Makes a noticeably smaller hole.”
“Are you suggesting I was hit by friendly fire?”
Beaumont spit tobacco juice on Whitlock’s boots. “I’m suggesting there wasn’t anything friendly about it. I’m suggesting you and Gentry both engaged Trestle.”
All eight Jumper men were up now. Russ saw no guns out of holsters, but he knew he was in serious trouble.
“You’re fucking nuts, Beaumont.”
“Let’s see if I’m nuts. Show me your wound.”
Russ chuckled, but it was just for show, there wasn’t anything funny about any of this. He faked indignation. “You want me to drop my pants and show you my GSW? Is that what passes for fun back at Team Jumper’s bunkhouse?”
Jumper Actual’s eyes narrowed. “Ten seconds, Dead Eye, or my boys do it for you.”
FORTY-ONE
At Townsend House the signal room evening shift had caught another ping a few minutes earlier, and this one was much more certain than the earlier hit.
An analyst buzzed Jeff Parks in his office, and he came running into the signal room moments later.
“What do you have?”
“We have a confirmed sighting of Gentry at the City Terminalin, Stockholm’s main bus depot.”
Parks walked to the front of the room and examined the grainy video of a man standing in the window of a ticket booth, in the process of purchasing a ticket. He wore a black knit cap and a big black coat, but no scarf. And it was clearly Gentry.
“This is real time?”
The analyst checked the time stamp on the feed with his watch. “About two minutes ago. We’re monitoring conveyance points out of the city, and this just happened.”
“Can we find out where he’s heading?”
“We’re on it.”
It took a moment for a signal room hacker to pull up the data from the ticket booth and match a sale to the time stamp of the image, but as soon as he did he said, “One-way ticket to Gothenburg. Leaves in forty minutes.”
Parks clapped his hands in excitement. “Get Jumper on it. I want the UAV overhead as well. Let’s take Gentry as he boards his bus.”
Russ knew that the entry and exit wounds in his left hip weren’t anything like the size of that from a nine-millimeter round. They were much smaller; Beaumont would take one look at them and know he’d been shot by Trestle Team, and then everything around here would turn to shit. He knew he could take any three of the men in this room simultaneously; he’d undergone extensive hand-to-hand training to turn his body into an effective defensive weapon, and even though these guys would all be wearing sidearms Russ knew he could overwhelm the first wave or two with speed, surprise, and violence of action.
But he wouldn’t take out all eight of them. Especially with the wound in his side still slowing him down.
When he did not move, did not unbutton his jeans, Beaumont said, “I’m going to take that as a no.”
A phone rang on the UAV desk; none of the Jumper men standing around looked at it, but Carl answered it, then quickly put it on speakerphone.
“We’re all here, Metronome. Go ahead.”
Parks’ voice came over the small speaker. “Gentry is somewhere near the central bus depot. He bought a ticket from a counter about five minutes ago, and his bus to Gothenburg leaves in just over a half hour.”
Carl said, “Roger that. I’m sending the Shark there now, but we will only have viz if he is standing around outside.”
“That’s fine,” said Parks. “Jumper, I need you en route immediately. Get over there and smoke him out.”
“What about Dead Eye? I can keep him here under guard.”
Parks muffled the phone for a few seconds. When he returned he said, “Babbitt wants your entire team after Gentry. He wants you to let Whitlock go, but before you do, disarm him and lock him out of the safe house so he can’t get to the weapons’ cache. We’ll deal with him after we deal with Gentry. Make sure the UAV team is armed.”
Beaumont ordered one of his men to frisk Russ, and he did so quickly but roughly, slapping his hand against the bandaged wound on Russ’s hip while doing so. Russ wasn’t carrying a gun, but a small knife was confiscated, and the operator stood back. “That’s it, boss.”
Beaumont loomed over Dead Eye a few seconds more, then said, “This ain’t over, dude.”
Russ stared back at him, bolstered now that the situation had changed so radically. “No shit. You owe me a pair of boots.”
Beaumont gave another few seconds of stink eye to the smaller man, then looked away from him and yelled to his men in the room.
“All right, everybody. Saddle up!”
Ruth woke at five twenty-five A.M. to the buzzing of her cell phone. She quickly rolled to a sitting position and put it to her ear.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Mike.”
“You got him?”
“I’ve got something. Two SUVs drove past the station and parked across the street at the City Terminalin.”
“The bus station?”
“That’s right. And guess who popped out of the trucks?”
“The Townsend shooters?”
“Right again. Can’t see any guns on them, but I don’t think they’re here to catch a bus to the coast.”
Mike asked, “You want me to move closer? I’m at the train station with visibility of the main hall and the street outside.”
“Negative. I want you to stay right there. We’ll check out the bus terminal.”
She hung up the phone, grabbed Laureen by the leg, and shook her. “Up! We’re out of here in sixty seconds.”
The younger officer, like Ruth herself, had slept in her clothes. Also like her boss, she had developed the skill of waking up quickly and moving instantly after years of surveillance work. She sat up now and shoved her feet into her boots even before she opened her eyes.
Ruth banged on the wall to the other room, and Aron banged back. He’d managed to catch only an hour’s sleep after returning from his watch at the train station, but he was moving in seconds.
The three operatives were outside in the parking lot in less than a minute.