Chapter 29
Darryl Jackson squeezed between his front bumper and a minivan that hadn’t been there when he parked the car with Berg.
“Goddamn. Get any closer?” he muttered, remembering the vast space separating the minivan and the car in front of it.
A black Suburban zoomed past, headed east on the tight street at an extremely unsafe speed.
“It’s not the interstate, you fucking idiot,” he said a little louder.
Jackson looked around the minivan to make sure the first SUV wasn’t part of some VIP convoy. Especially the diplomats. They wouldn’t even stop if they hit you. They’d drive to the embassy and dial it in ten minutes later. No harm, no foul. Diplomatic immunity. Satisfied that the streets were safe, he got in his car and spent the next minute inching backward and forward between the minivan and the car parked uncomfortably close behind him. Berg was probably swigging from the bottle at this point.
He arrived at the corner of Prospect and Thirty-Sixth Street, assuming Berg would be waiting for him on the side of the street. A quick look around killed that thought. A few students walked past the restaurant entrance on Thirty-Sixth, turning west on Prospect, toward the university. Jackson eased the car through the intersection slowly, still not seeing Berg. His friend was probably still inside, dealing with the wine. He parked between the no-parking sign and corner of Thirty-Sixth, far enough into the pedestrian crosswalk for Berg to see him if he emerged from the restaurant, and waited.
Jackson considered himself to be a patient man, but when three minutes passed and Berg didn’t appear, he started to get impatient. Karl knew a lot of people in this town, and it wasn’t unlike him to get distracted by an acquaintance, particularly a lady friend. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise him in the least to find Karl inside, chatting it up with someone and generously sharing the rest of the bottle. Tonight wasn’t going to be that night. He still had to drop Karl off at his apartment and check in to the hotel.
He left the car double-parked and headed into the restaurant, where the hostess immediately approached him with the corked bottle of Barolo.
“I thought you might be back,” she said, holding it out for him. “It’s a wonderful bottle.”
“It is,” he barely uttered, searching the restaurant for Karl.
“Is everything all right?” asked the hostess.
He absently took the bottle. “My friend didn’t come back inside?”
“I’ve been here since the two of you left. By the time the bottle reached me, I didn’t see either of you on the street. I went outside to check. Sorry.”
“No. That’s… uh, that’s fine. Do you mind holding onto this while I check the men’s room? Just in case. He was supposed to have grabbed the wine and waited outside.”
“Sure. No problem.”
The bathroom was empty, and he returned to the hostess with a bad scenario developing in his head.
“Didn’t find him?”
He shook his head. “You didn’t happen to see a black government-looking Suburban around a few minutes ago, did you?”
“Absolutely. It sat at the stop sign for a little longer than usual. I thought it might be some kind of VIP drop-in. I even looked through the reservation book to see if I could create a table, just in case.”
Jackson stood in front of the hostess stand and looked at the street. “You couldn’t see the entire vehicle. Right?”
“Just the front, really.”
They took him. Those motherfuckers had actually grabbed him off a public street, in front of a restaurant. Karl must have been onto something bigger than he guessed. He started for the door.
“Sir? Your wine,” said the hostess.
Jackson didn’t reply. He hustled down the sidewalk and got into his car, opening the dashboard and removing a concealable holster. He released his Sig Sauer P228 from the holster and placed it on the front passenger seat along with two spare magazines. The pistol was far from legal in the District of Columbia, but so was snatching people off the street. He shifted the car into drive and continued west on Prospect Street until he found a parking spot just past the “Welcome to Georgetown University” sign.
He grabbed the pistol and spare magazines and got out of the car, quickly concealing them on his way toward the campus. He needed to make a call, and he couldn’t make it from his car. They might have bugged it. In fact, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to use it until he could sweep it for electronics. He’d have to do that from the tow lot. Without a parking sticker, the car wouldn’t last the night parked on campus.
With that in mind, he returned to the vehicle to get the concealable holster. No reason to raise any alarms with the D.C. police. They had a tendency to take unauthorized firearms seriously in this town and would be on the lookout for him by morning. Jackson couldn’t afford to be stopped at this point. His friend’s life depended on it.
Chapter 30
Daniel pulled the covers past Jessica’s shoulders and kissed her on the forehead. Whatever they had given her had been potent, delivered by an auto-injector. He found the nasty wound it had inflicted on her right thigh. This hadn’t been a little EpiPen. Something far more serious, like the kind of injectors used in the military-issued Mark I kits to counter the effects of a nerve gas attack. The thick needle had been powerful enough to penetrate her jeans.
He had no idea how long she’d be out, but he wanted to be the first face Jessica saw when she opened her eyes. She’d likely seen her mother stabbed right in front of her, unable to stop the man or make a sound to help her. He had no idea what kind of mental state she’d be in when she woke, but he assumed it would not be a good one. He needed to be there to hold her, make sure she knew everything was safe.
Once she was ambulatory, he would contact the private jet company and expedite their departure, no matter what the price. They had a number of jets on standby in the area, and he wanted be on one capable of a nonstop flight to Anguilla as soon as possible. He kissed her again and stepped out of the room, leaving the door open wide enough to hear if she called out. Not that he planned on being out of her sight for long.
The bedroom hallway led directly into the dining room, where Anish Gupta and Timothy Graves, long-standing members of the team’s electronics warfare branch, sat next to each other at the dining room table, their open laptops illuminating their faces. The usual array of wires, power cords, black boxes, and other gear cluttered the table. Daniel once again marveled at the electronic miracles they could work with that mess.
He felt oddly comfortable having them here. Their type of warfare might as well be magic spells and potions as far as he was concerned. Daniel was far from a technophobe, having been extensively trained in the use of commercial and military-grade encryption devices, communications gear, and electronic field gear, but he was just an end user. Guys like Graves and Gupta stood on the cutting edge of technology, creating the gear and carving out the cyber advantages that gave people like Daniel and Sanderson an edge. It was easy to take them for granted.
Nights like this reminded him how critical they could be to the success of an operation, not that he needed reminding with these two. He’d heard the stories about Uruguay. Graves had done more than type at a keyboard that day. Daniel leaned on the table with both hands, careful not to disturb any of their gear.