She was moments from leaving her position when the team sent to grab Bauer made a small mistake. A head poked up from the rear compartment of one of the SUVs. She barely caught it through the tinted windows, but a light across the street provided enough background illumination to see it. She’d low-crawled across the pavement to reach her current position, where she could accomplish her mission right now if she wanted.
All she had to do was attach a GPS tracking unit to the SUV, preferably somewhere hidden, though it wasn’t required. Graves said she could throw the damn thing at the vehicle as it was pulling away if the situation required. Powerful magnets would do the rest.
She had a better idea. Infinitely more risky, but exponentially more rewarding, a combination Jessica couldn’t resist. Daniel would not be happy with the revised plan. Not in the least.
“Alpha Three, Alpha One is moving to the transfer point. Get the GPS unit in place and get out of there,” said Graves.
“Alpha Three copies.”
Jessica waited, finally hearing a commotion in the SUV next to her. She slid behind the minivan and planted the GPS under the bumper, continuing to the driver’s side of the vehicle in a low crouch. She paused, peeking around the corner. The rear driver’s door slammed shut and revealed a man already pulling the driver’s door open. He got in the driver’s seat, too focused on the task at hand to see her moving down the side of the SUV.
She opened the rear driver’s side door and methodically fired into the cabin, starting with the guy in the cargo compartment and finishing with a single shot into the back of the driver’s neck after dispatching the man across from her. Jessica backed out and shut the door, headed for the back entrance to the coffee shop. She detected hurried movement through the clear glass door to the coffee shop and slowed her pace — to time everything perfectly.
The door flew open, and two men barreled in her direction. The first one barked orders into a handheld radio. She pretended to talk animatedly into a phone with her left hand, keeping the pistol hidden behind her right thigh. Neither of them noticed that the object in her hand clearly wasn’t a phone.
Jessica let the first man soft-shoulder her aside, bringing the business end of the suppressed pistol under the second man’s chin and firing. The leader abruptly stopped in his tracks. She flicked open the serrated blade in her left hand and stabbed him firmly, but not deeply in the upper left back. When his body automatically folded to the left in response to the pain, she slipped the arm over his lowered shoulder and placed the blade against his throat. The pistol went into the middle of his back.
“Drop the radio and keep walking,” she said.
He dropped the handheld and took a few choppy steps forward, faltering.
“You have no idea how quick I am with this knife,” she hissed in his ear. “I’ll have your carotid slashed and a bullet in your lower spine before you realize you made a mistake. You’ll bleed out in this parking lot, clawing your way across the pavement toward the coffee shop. You won’t make it.”
“What do you want?” he grunted.
“I want you to keep walking,” she said, pressing the pistol into his back again.
He moved stiffly but steadily past the bloodstained windshield of his SUV.
“Don’t look. Keep moving. We’re headed toward that dumpster over there,” she said.
Distant gunfire echoed off the buildings.
“Keep going. Don’t make me carry you,” she said.
They retraced the route she’d taken to arrive surreptitiously in the lot, stopping behind a two-story building on Park Street. Blue and red lights flashed off the building, the police officers both on and off duty at the Falls Church municipal center racing in their cars toward the reports of gunfire. She waited until the sirens faded and the street went quiet, prodding him forward onto Park Street.
“Alpha Three, I have a good signal on the tracker, but it hasn’t moved. What are you seeing?”
She tightened her grip on the knife and stuffed the pistol behind the small of her back, activating her radio. “I made an adjustment to the plan,” she said. “Will advise shortly. Tracker in place.”
“Who are you talking to?” asked the man in front of her.
“Friends. Keep walking,” she said, returning the pistol to his back.
“Copy that, Alpha Three.”
“We’re headed toward the police station,” he noted.
“They’ll be too busy cleaning up your friends to notice,” she said. “See that park bench over there?”
“I see it. You’re fucking crazy, you know that?”
“So I’ve been told.”
Jessica stopped him directly in front of the far right side of the bench. With the knife fixed firmly to his throat, she turned his body left and pulled him into a seated position, sliding past the edge of the bench into the bushes behind. She rested comfortably on both knees, adjusting the knife so it wasn’t so visible from the street. It took a few seconds to find the opening at the bottom of the bench’s back and reestablish contact with the man’s body, just to reinforce the obvious. She had two ways to kill him quickly if he tried to escape or draw attention.
“Now what?” he asked.
“We wait for my friends to finish their business.”
“You’re pretty confident in your friends’ abilities.”
“They’ve thwarted all of your little operations,” said Jessica.
“Is that so?” he said, not sounding convinced.
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“No idea,” he said. “Enlighten me.”
“Nicole Erak.”
“Never heard of you,” he said.
“Aka Jessica Petrovich.”
The man stiffened. It wasn’t the most obvious reaction, but she felt it. A dark cloud of dread settled over her. This man shouldn’t know either of those names. She hadn’t expected a reaction. In fact, she’d been hoping for zero response. This changed everything.
“My friends will be here shortly,” she said. “And yes, I’m confident in that assessment.”
Chapter 42
Audra Bauer peered between the vehicle’s front seats at the well-lit European-style villa that materialized beyond the thick trees. She knew a few well-connected and wealthy people living in the D.C.’s Virginia suburbs, but she’d never seen something like this behind the private gates separating the Beltway elite from the government-subsidized hoi polloi that saturated the area.
The SUV pulled even with a wide wrought-iron gate set in the middle of a vine-covered half-wall that defined the front entrance courtyard. A long clay-tile-covered porch wrapped around each side of the house. Her husband turned his head in the front seat and met her gaze, a look of deep concern evident on his face. She could read his mind.
“Who owns this place?” she said.
“Ernesto Galenden,” said Munoz. “He apparently owns several of these in the area.”
“Must be nice,” said Bauer, nodding imperceptibly at her husband.
“We’re safe here,” said Munoz.
“For how long?” said Bauer.
“The answer to that question is under constant reevaluation,” said Munoz.
“Great,” said her husband. “How many people do you have out here?”
“Right now, four inside,” said Munoz. “The rest are in this SUV or en route.”
“You don’t have anybody walking the perimeter?” said David Bauer.
“This place is untraceable,” said Munoz.
“Let’s hope so,” said David.
“Now I have your husband breaking my balls,” said Munoz. “This deal keeps getting better.”