Colburn collapsed into the doorway, blocking it, but for now that didn’t matter. All that did was getting the weapons away from reach.
Colburn tried futilely to grab hold of him. Tom turned, brought the pistol down against his thigh and zapped off another round.
That one definitely hit the bone. He heard the thud and crunch. Colburn’s screams drowned out the others’.
Tom grabbed him by the feet and pulled him into the room. The expanse of blood on the floor made it easy. He closed the door.
Don was closest to him. Tom bent down into his face and screamed at him: ‘Why are we all fucked up because of the van?’
All Tom got was a mouthful of blood spat out at him. There was no time for this. Don got another round, this time into his gut, before Tom turned and went back to Colburn.
Colburn had got the message. ‘It’s been seen.’
‘By who? By Jefferson?’
He got a shaky nod.
‘Zuabi? You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? What about Zuabi?’
He didn’t give any indication whatsoever. Tom leaned down again. ‘What the fuck has it got to do with Jefferson? What was his problem with Zuabi?’
Colburn hesitated.
‘Yes, Jefferson’s dead. Want to join him?’
Tom could see it clearly in his face, even if it was screwed up in pain as he breathed in short, sharp pants: message received.
‘Mogadishu — Black Hawk down, man. He lost his brother. Those fuckers cut him into little pieces. Motherfuckers cut him up. And now they’re over here, taking over the country. That’s the fucking problem.’
Tom went over to the CCTV and ripped out the hard drive. Some wires were screwed in, some clipped. Leads dangled out of the back, like long, slim dreadlocks.
Then he grabbed hold of the cordless phone as the monitor started to pixellate and threw it through the door to join the weapons in the shop.
Colburn gave a sob and his breath came shorter and weaker.
Tom stuck his head back through the door. ‘If you fuckers tell anyone about what’s happened here, you know I’ll be back looking for you.’
He closed the door, then wiped the handle with his sleeve and headed for the van.
59
Back in his hotel room, Tom showered off the dust and blood, then had a much-needed shave. He put on his lightweight Hugo Boss suit with a fresh shirt and studied himself in the mirror, checking for the moment he turned back into the polite, reasonable envoy from Invicta. There were two missed calls from Rolt, neither of which he had acknowledged. Instead he texted a non-committal All good so far. Stutz meeting next. He knew what he needed to do and didn’t want to have to talk to him right now. He went downstairs.
Beth was waiting for him. ‘Howdy! How was your night?’
‘Good. Yours?’
She giggled. ‘Aw, just fine. You have a good time with Kyle? You two go way back, right?’
‘Yeah, that’s right.’
A slight dilating of the pupils suggested she wanted to know more, but that was all she was getting.
Stutz was in the boardroom, alone, hunched over some documents. ‘Just waiting on Skip. He needs to be here for the formalities. How was your evening with Kyle?’
Tom closed the doors behind him. ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news.’
Stutz looked up.
‘We paid a visit to Jefferson. Kyle didn’t make it.’ Stutz’s eyes narrowed. ‘But neither did Jefferson.’
Relief spread over Stutz’s face. Tom described the ambush much as it had happened, with a few cosmetic changes. When he was done, Stutz’s expression softened into a grin. He stood up, came round the table and pumped Tom’s hand. ‘I knew I could count on you.’
That confirmed he had arranged it. How far had he expected Tom to go?
‘Kyle was loyal, but he was losing his edge. Good job you stepped up.’
‘You’ll look after his family?’
‘Oh, yeah. You can count on it.’
There was a pause while Stutz returned to the document in front of him. Evidently it was no trouble for him to digest the news about the loss of one of his closest lieutenants. But Tom couldn’t leave it there, couldn’t walk away from two corpses without knowing more about them.
‘So Jefferson was a problem for you — what had he done?’
‘Not what he’d done, what he was going to do. That’s what Skip’s software is all about, catching them before it’s too late.’
‘Who was his target?’
Stutz smiled. ‘Let’s just say he was a threat. Better you don’t know. It’s less complicated that way.’
There was an air of finality to his reply, and in the interest of keeping in with him, Tom changed the subject. ‘The presentation last night, the whole digital fortress concept, Skip really blew me away.’
Stutz grinned. ‘Drives me nuts, but the kid’s a goddam genius.’
‘Other than taking them out, like we did Jefferson, what happens with all the others? When you’ve run your checks on the individuals you’ve decided are a potential problem.’
Stutz got up and indicated the huge picture window. Forty-five floors down, office workers criss-crossed the plaza, oblivious to the ambitions of the man looking down at them.
‘See those folk down there? We’ve not done right by them. We’ve spent their taxes on two expensive wars supposedly to protect them. We’ve failed to win either, and we haven’t made those people any safer. We owe them, big-time.’
Tom waited for him to go on.
‘What’s happening in Britain right now, the same could happen here, maybe even worse. But our government’s hands are tied. After Nine/Eleven we should have pulled up the drawbridge, built the fortress. Instead, we send our best people, men like you, like Kyle, God rest his soul, to risk their lives in yet more costly and futile conflicts we’re still kidding ourselves we’re gonna win — you get what I mean?’
He looked at Tom, to gauge his reaction.
‘Yeah, I follow.’
‘And down there, they’re all still looking around, watching their backs, wondering if they’re standing next to a jihadi. There are people right here in our midst who want holy war, want terror, want a caliphate, want revenge for Iraq and Afghanistan, want to take us back to the Dark Ages. So we’re gonna find someplace else for them to live.’
There was an alarming messianic zeal in Stutz’s expression.
‘How will you do that?’
He grinned. ‘Simple. We have money, we’ll do deals with those countries, pay them to take them back. One payment. Job done. Imagine freedom from fear, at a fraction of the cost of Desert Storm, Iraqi Freedom, even Enduring Freedom.’
Tom kept his composure. The sincerity behind Stutz’s vision would have been laughable if the implications weren’t so shocking — and naïve.
‘So, no more “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…”, then?’
Stutz nodded. Evidently the prospect of sweeping away the fundamental principle on which his nation was founded was not keeping him awake at night.
‘What about the moderates? The guy running a café or driving a cab? Or his cousin, who wants to come here and open a shop? Won’t they get caught in the net?’
Stutz tilted his head and pressed his lips together in a way that implied both regret and finality: a man of integrity just telling it like it was. ‘We got a full house. America is closed.’
And yet you had Jefferson killed because he was threatening an imam. This still didn’t add up, not by a long way.
‘Now, you tell me, son. Do you think Invicta’s up to the job?’