It was like Costa Rica again. Every reflex, every self-preservation instinct Ben had was screaming, Get out of the car, engage. But he couldn’t. Larison’s dead-man trigger was protecting him like a bulletproof vest.
Ben peeled around the far end of the lot, his tires screeching, and got the car pointed north, toward Larison, keeping one of the parked cars between them. He reached across and opened the passenger-side door. If Larison tried to circle behind him the way Ben had seen him do to so many deceased-immediately-thereafter people already, Ben would be out the passenger side and laying down fire in a heartbeat.
But Larison didn’t try to maneuver. Keeping his gun on Ben, he walked calmly over and went around the front of the car. Ben tracked him with the Glock, his finger firm against the trigger, but didn’t fire.
Larison leaned over and looked into the open passenger-side door. He was carrying an HK, Ben noted. The Mark 23. Forty-five caliber, maybe the same he’d used in Costa Rica. Up close, Ben could see dark circles under his eyes.
“Hand over the gun,” Larison said, pointing the HK at Ben.
Ben had known men in his professional life who naturally radiated quiet danger. It was nothing they said, and nothing they did, at least not overtly. You could just feel it about them, that they were capable, competent killers. It’s what Taibbi had been talking about, with those soldiers he’d mentioned. Ben had thought the guy was being melodramatic when he called Larison the angel of death. But he got it now. The man just exuded lethality, a kind of uncomplicated readiness to kill. Combined with everything Hort had told him and everything he’d seen, it was intimidating. So it took a certain level of discipline and determination for him to respond as he did.
“Sorry, that’s not going to happen.”
Larison didn’t respond. He just looked at Ben, his eyes as flat and emotionless as mirrored sunglasses. Ben had never been faced with this much immediate danger while simultaneously being prohibited from engaging it. All his instincts were screaming, Shoot! Shoot! He gritted his teeth and his hand shook.
Larison squinted slightly. “You were the one in Los Yoses, weren’t you?”
Ben nodded.
“Why didn’t you take the shot?”
“Same reason I’m not taking it now. The diamonds are in that backpack. Just take it and go.”
Larison looked down at the bag. Then he got in the car and pulled the door shut. “Drive.”
Ben thought, What the hell?
They sat there, mirror images, each pointing a pistol at the other.
Another few seconds, and Ben would either have to shoot the guy or leap out of the car and bolt for cover. What he couldn’t do was endure the tension of neither.
“You want me to drive?” he said. “Holster that fucking HK and wedge your hands palms down under your thighs. Deep under.”
“You’re not paying proper attention.”
“No, you’re not paying proper attention,” Ben said, struggling to ignore the Shoot! Shoot! alarms screaming in his mind. “You know I’m not going to kill you. If I’d wanted to, I could have in Los Yoses. Or again just now. But there’s nothing preventing you from trying to kill me. Except this gun. Which is why I’ll be holding on to it and you’ll be putting yours away. Otherwise, we can just sit here until the police show up to investigate reports of gunshots. Or you can take the diamonds and go. It’s your call.”
There was a long, tense pause. Larison swiveled and looked through the rear window. He did the same to his right. Then he slid the HK inside his windbreaker. He looked at Ben, and Ben could swear the man was suppressing a smile.
“Drive,” he said.
Larison hadn’t sat on his hands, but Ben hadn’t really been expecting that much and decided he could live without it. The truth was, he wasn’t much more eager to be sitting there when the police showed up than he imagined Larison would be. He switched the Glock to his left hand and hit the gas. If Larison lunged at him, he could grapple with his right and shoot with his left.
“Where are we going?” Ben said.
“Get on Lee Highway. Head west.”
That made sense. Not a neighborhood street where they would stand out; not an Interstate where suspects in a shooting might expect to be fleeing. Just enough traffic for them to blend while they drifted in the direction of the Beltway, and from there, to anywhere.
“You can have the car if you want,” Ben said, checking the rearview, making sure no one was behind them. “You really need me driving you?”
“I need you to confirm you have what you’re supposed to have.”
“The diamonds are in that backpack, right at your feet. You can see for yourself.”
“I’ll let you take care of that.”
Ben got it. Larison was afraid of a nerve spray or a dye pack. He didn’t want to open the backpack himself. Smart. He looked at his phone and saw it had no signal. Larison must have been carrying a jammer, something that would take out the phone, GPS, and anything else anyone might have used to track the car. Again, smart.
They got on Lee Highway and headed west. Ben was paying the bare minimum of attention to driving. Most of his concentration was on Larison, whose hands had been resting on his knees since Ben had driven off. He knew what Ben would make of it if his hands went anywhere else, or if Larison made any sudden movement at all, for that matter. The good news was, that meant if he did move, Ben wouldn’t have to waste any time trying to interpret his intentions. The bad news was, Ben had seen how fast the man was. And if he made a move, Ben would have the action/reaction disadvantage. And Ben would be shooting left-handed.
One piece of good news, three bad. It would have been a lot easier to just shoot the guy and be done with it. Orders were a bitch.
Larison said, “How long have you been in?”
Ben glanced at him, trying to judge whether it was just a distraction. He decided the hell with it. If he didn’t talk to the guy, he was going to shoot him. He had to do something, or the tension was going to make him explode.
“The unit?”
“Yeah.”
“Six years.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah, I like it.”
“Why?”
Ben shrugged. “I’m good at it.”
“I can see that. You think that’s enough?”
“It has been so far.”
“Yeah, it was good enough so far for me, too.”
“What happened, then? Hort said you were the best.”
Larison smiled slightly. “Did he?”
It was amazing. Even over Larison, even after everything that had happened, Hort just had that power. “Yeah. It’s part of what made him suspect you. He said no one else could have pulled this off-taking the tapes, faking your death, all of it.”
Larison’s smile faded. For a moment, he looked almost wistful.
“I don’t know about the best. But I was up there.”
“Still are, from what I can see.”
“Thanks.”
“Not sure it’s a compliment, given what I’ve seen you do with it.”
“You talking about Los Yoses?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think they were going to do to me?”
“Well, it’s not like you’ve given people a lot of choices.”
Larison glanced left, then right, then behind. “People always have choices. They say they don’t to enable themselves to do what they wanted to do anyway.”
“You sound like Hort.”
“Hort said that?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, maybe he’s learning from his mistakes, too.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“How’d you do it, anyway? I saw them hit you with the tranq.”