“Promise?”
“Yes.”
Russell Gadds would get back from his trip to Paramaribo and Lima in one week, which gave Evan a four-day window to eliminate him and his operation before Kiara hit U.S. soil.
Cat-Cat rubbed up against Evan’s calf, and he leaned over to scratch him. The cat hissed, clawed his knuckles, and then scuttled away.
Charming.
Trevon didn’t seem to take note. “I have no Mama no more. No relatives. I’m a orphan now. All by myself.”
Evan stared at him.
“If they kill Kiara,” Trevon said, “I’ll be all alone in the world.”
“I won’t let that happen to you.”
Trevon’s chest shuddered with each inhalation. Evan rested a hand on his shoulder for a few minutes until his breathing slowed. “Will you stay just till I fall asleep?” Trevon finally said.
“Sure.”
Evan followed him to the bedroom, and Trevon climbed heavily into bed. He adjusted the stuffed frog beside him and lay in the darkness. “Will you turn the TV on, please, sir? It’s good to have a house full of voices.”
Evan clicked on the television and sat in the same spot on the floor, his back to the wall. It was quiet for a long time, just the Channel Five sports anchor running down scores and Mexipop pumping from up the block.
Trevon said sleepily, “We don’t cry and we don’t feel sorry for ourself.”
Evan wasn’t sure if Trevon was talking to himself or to Evan, so he said nothing. A few moments later, Trevon’s breathing grew regular and took on that familiar rasp.
As Evan rose to sneak out, a breaking-news update cut in on the television. “—confirmed that President Bennett will appear before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this Friday to respond to long-standing questions about improper relationships with defense contractors before he assumed office, one of a host of scandals that have plagued Bennett since he’s taken office. The press secretary stressed that this is a voluntary appearance, that Bennett is devoted to full transparency, and that he is eager to set the record straight.”
Evan paused in the doorway before easing out of the room. He had the sense that another stopwatch had begun, another clock counting down the days and minutes. But he felt excitement also, a quickening of the blood.
At last he had a time and place. A When and Where.
Now he just had to nail down the How.
42
Cut Both Ways
The wholesale district, known on official zoning maps as Central City North, was an unlovely throw of warehouses, refrigerated-storage facilities, and factories slapped down between the L.A. River, Alameda Street, and the Union Pacific Railroad Line. It was even more depressing at night. To the north sparkled the not-quite-famous downtown skyline, a jagged rise of domino tiles. The glow of the city backdropped rows of palm trees that shot skyward like frozen fireworks, all tails and bursts.
Evan had set up on the roof of a commercial bakery, posting up next to a vent that smelled of yeast. Various pipes exhaled cumulus clouds of condensation, shrouding him from view.
The elevation gave him a good vantage over the high fence next door lined with privacy filler strips and topped with concertina wire.
Terrance DeGraw was right. A fucking fortress. The cinder-block building was virtually windowless. A control pad and a security-controlled metal door defended what seemed to be the sole point of entry; the other doors had been boarded up with metal plates. Anyone who entered was trapped inside.
Of course, that could cut both ways.
The front entrance opened now, a fat man emerging, and as the door swung shut, Evan glimpsed the front room. It had been reinforced as Trevon had described, a DIY sally port with blastproof walls. A cadre of armed men came visible for a moment. Evan doubted they were the only guards posted up inside.
The fat man boasted a handgun on either hip like a Turner Classics cowboy. He joined four others already patrolling the area like junkyard dogs. News of their colleagues’ untimely demises must have reached them by now, as they were clearly on highest alert, covering all sides of the building. Carrying AK-47s, they circled the various shipping containers littering the yard, moving in and out of cover.
If Evan picked off one or two with a sniper rifle, the others would fall back to reinforced positions.
If he made a full-frontal assault through the gate, he could take out several, but there’d be no getting through that reinforced-steel security door to the others waiting inside.
He wanted them all.
He wanted to eradicate Russell Gadds’s operation like Gadds had eradicated Trevon’s family.
Gadds didn’t return until June 25. That afforded Evan some much-needed time to devote his attention to Bennett.
Given Bennett’s Friday appointment on the Hill, Evan had to get home and start assessing the variables and charting the plan of attack. When he thought of the airtight security measures in place, he felt a creeping concern that Candy McClure might be right, that the job was impossible.
And after the promise he’d made to Trevon, he couldn’t get killed in D.C. That wouldn’t just be inconvenient. It would be inconsiderate.
He stared down once more at the heavily armed guards and the daunting barriers of razor wire, cinder block, and steel. Between Russell Gadds and Jonathan Bennett, Evan faced two herculean challenges.
In his next life, he vowed, he’d be a Starbucks barista.
He drew back from the edge of the roof and vanished into the billows of rising exhaust.
43
Wolves in Wolves’ Clothing
The morning gave way to afternoon, not that Evan could tell inside the Vault. His eyes ached, and his hands cramped from pounding the keyboard for hours. He’d risen at 5:00 A.M. for a workout and then gone straight through the looking glass of his shower wall to the Secret Service databases, burying himself in route assessments, security updates, and GPS imaging of the blocks between the White House and the Hill.
Choosing the exact method was even more challenging than he’d anticipated. The plan, such as it was, had to be impeccably executed. He whittled away at the options until he saw maps and calculations floating ghostlike behind his lids when he closed his eyes.
It was barely, barely possible.
But not as a solo operation.
As he neared the eight-hour mark at his desk, he rose and stretched his stiff back.
Vera II eyed him from her glass bowl.
“I’m not bad at asking for help,” he told her. “I just prefer not to.”
She sagely withheld further counsel.
He paced in front of his desk, the projected classified data scrolling over his body, shadow and light, shadow and light.
Now that he’d had more time to scour the Secret Service databases, he’d seen that they did not contain a single detail pertaining to the 1997 mission. Whatever mystery President Bennett was guarding against, he’d kept it even from the agency sworn to protect him. Evan was beginning to think that the secret had been redacted so thoroughly that it now existed only in Bennett’s mind. If so, Evan would never get the answers he sought.
Sitting heavily in his chair, he brought up the Drafts folder of his Gmail account.
“You there?”
A moment later: “i’m in calculus. so yeah. this shit is boring. + easy.”
“Glad you’re getting the most out of your education.”
An eye-rolling emoji bleeped onto the screen.
He grimaced, fingers poised above the keyboard. Then he typed: “I can’t find anything about 1997 in the Service databases.”
“97? like the mission Dear Leader wants you dead 4?”