We were driving through a landscape of liquor stores and car dealers and gas stations. The Escalade turned left on Franklin Street, and I followed, apprehensive. This was a lightly trafficked street in Brookland, the neighborhood around Catholic University. Even though I slowed to keep a good distance between us, I was still immediately behind them.
I didn’t understand why Vogel’s driver wasn’t taking evasive measures. How could he not have detected me by now? I’d followed them for miles through the city.
Either he wasn’t any good — not operationally skilled — or he wasn’t looking for a tail. Which was sloppy. Maybe the Centurions’ reputation for black-ops expertise was just overblown.
I passed by a block of connected brick row houses, each painted a different color. I followed the Escalade as it turned onto Rhode Island Avenue, which was heavily trafficked. I was relieved, because the traffic would provide cover. I let the Escalade get a few hundred feet ahead of me and watched it turn left onto Reed Street, which was small and not at all busy.
I hesitated. If I turned there, too, I’d be made right away. I’d already pushed my luck almost beyond the breaking point. Vogel’s driver still apparently hadn’t noticed me.
Unless he had.
And this was his attempt at a kind of countersurveillance called “dry-cleaning.” And he was waiting for me to turn left onto Reed Street — at which point he’d have flushed me out.
Or maybe this was a trap.
So I had a decision to make. Abandon the tail outright, which seemed foolish after coming this far. Or keep at it, and risk a confrontation, possibly armed. Those were the only choices I could see.
I turned slowly into the narrow street. Just in time to see the Escalade turning left again, a few hundred feet away.
I accelerated up the street and then stopped at the point where the Escalade had turned. It wasn’t a street so much as an alley, a cul-de-sac. On either side, a row of brick warehouses, hulking and dismal. Many of the windows looked broken. Some of the warehouse units appeared to be abandoned. But maybe not all of them. The Escalade had parked most of the way down the street, on the left. I saw Vogel and his driver get out of the vehicle and enter the last entrance to the warehouse row. Just before entering, Vogel glanced around.
The fact that the driver didn’t remain in the car told me this was probably not a business meeting. Was this, then, Centurion headquarters, in this mostly abandoned warehouse building?
It seemed possible. If not headquarters, then at least some kind of rendezvous location, and it bore closer inspection.
I parked the car on Reed Street. There were no other cars in the alley; driving down the cul-de-sac and then parking there would be risky. Approaching by foot would be risky, too. But less so.
With the scope I examined the section of the building that Vogel and his driver had just entered. No movement that I could detect. Still, I waited about fifteen minutes. No other cars approached. No one else came in or out.
Curtis Schmidt’s Glock was loaded — I’d bought a couple of boxes of ammo at a gun shop in McLean — but out of force of habit I thumbed the cylinder release latch and checked again. Jacketed hollow-point ammo to increase the odds of stopping them. Then I pulled out my shirt and stuck the pistol under my belt, under my shirttails, and got out of the car.
I started out walking along the row of warehouses, keeping close to the brick wall, approaching slowly. When I reached the doorway to the last warehouse, I stopped, kept still, listened.
The distant low murmur of voices from within told me there were at least two men inside, Vogel and his driver. Maybe there were others, but at least the two.
Given the element of surprise, I could easily handle two. More I could handle, just not as easily. After all, I wanted only to talk to Thomas Vogel.
I pulled out the pistol, cocked it, and, holding it in a two-handed grip, swiveled around to the entrance until I faced all the way in, the weapon at low-ready.
No one there.
Up six steps to a black-painted solid metal door. I stopped, listened. I heard the voices again, somewhat more distinctly. Shifting the gun to my right hand, I pulled the lever to the door. Very slowly. It moved; it was unlocked.
Now there was no turning back.
I made a split-second decision. The front doors of most homes swing inward, but the entry doors in most public buildings swing outward. For fast egress in case of fire. It’s common fire-safety building code.
So with one violent movement I yanked the door open, the pistol trained on the area to my right.
I was looking at an office room of some kind, plain and functional. I processed the details at once: a metal receptionist’s desk with a computer on it, a coat tree, a few chairs, gray wall-to-wall carpeting.
And on my left, a guy with a gun.
Pointed at me.
“Freeze,” he said.
Now I understood.
66
I stood still, the Glock I’d confiscated pointed at the guy.
His weapon was a semiautomatic pistol as well. It was matte black and looked like a Glock, too. He was a young guy, in his twenties, with a military haircut, high and tight. He was holding his pistol two-handed, his grip and stance expert. But he looked tense. He was blinking rapidly.
I didn’t like that. A tense guy with a gun could easily do stupid stuff.
“Put the gun down,” he said. His voice was high and strained.
“You first,” I said.
I was cursing myself for doing this without backup, a team, without at least one other guy. That had been both sloppy and arrogant. Or maybe I was simply being driven by my anger, which made me careless. Because I’d just walked right into a trap.
He blinked some more. “I mean it.” There was a slight quaver in his voice. “Put the gun down.”
“Or what?” I said.
I heard a door behind me open, and in my peripheral vision I could make out a human shape. I shifted my eyes to the right, keeping the pistol trained on the tense guy.
Without turning my head I couldn’t see the new guy clearly, but I could make out enough to know he had a gun pointed at me, too.
“Drop the gun,” the second guy said in a deep voice. He didn’t sound nervous.
I calculated my odds. They weren’t favorable. But it was the first guy, the anxious guy, that worried me. He was likely to have an itchy trigger finger. He looked like he wanted to shoot someone. That someone being me.
I didn’t really have a choice, or at least not one that would end with me alive. I lowered Curtis Schmidt’s Glock and then dropped it onto the floor, where it clattered loudly.
The two men moved in toward me, weapons still pointed, their movements coordinated. I turned to my right, finally able to look at the second guy. I recognized him as Vogel’s driver. A man of multiple talents. He was pointing a semiautomatic at me, too, a Glock 26. I wondered where all the Glocks were coming from, whether there’d been a big sale, and then I remembered that Glocks were the Metropolitan Police Department’s weapon of choice. Their service weapon was the Glock 17, probably the most popular law-enforcement pistol in the world. Off-duty, MPD cops were allowed to carry a Glock 26, the so-called baby Glock.
This guy looked around ten years older than the first guy, a little beefier, with black hair that was short but not military-short. He pointed a finger at the nervous guy and said, “Cover me.” Then he slid his pistol into a holster on his right hip.
Coming closer to me he pulled out of his back pocket some long pieces of white plastic. Flex-cuffs. Disposable restraints. They were planning to cuff me, not kill me. Unless I struggled with the second guy. Then the itchy-trigger-finger guy would get to pull the trigger.