Once again no one paid him the slightest attention. He began to have doubts. What if the listeners at the other end of the bugs in his house had given up after Jordan’s arrest, and he was putting on a performance for an audience that wasn’t there? He hated to think his elaborate plan was for naught, but on the other hand, if his adversaries had given up, that opened the door for him to work unimpeded.
It also meant that he’d forever lost his chance to find out who, and what, was behind Abe Jacobs’s murder.
That was a personal failure he would not contemplate, and so he refocused on the task at hand. He checked his tag. He had timed this perfectly. The appointed hour was just a minute away, and the subway was decelerating as it approached the Pentagon stop. The platform was crowded with commuters, many in civilian attire, many others in the uniforms of the four major military branches.
Mercer stepped into the press of humanity on the dimly lit platform, looking for Jason, but also watching for anything suspicious. He figured that of the original five-person team he’d encountered in the Leister Deep Mine, he had killed one in the Lauder Science Center at Hardt College, and another in Roni Butler’s kitchen, so he was looking for two perfect strangers and the leader — the man whose posture, walk, and movements he would know in an instant. It was an odd feeling. He’d gotten only a few fleeting glimpses of the guy, but it felt like he’d been studying the gunman for years.
He saw nothing except harried commuters wanting to get home. As he exited the platform, within sight of the entrance to the Pentagon itself, he felt a quick movement behind him. It was the rumpled guy from the car that he’d spotted earlier. He must have phoned in a description to someone already here at the station. The man made a hand signal over the heads of the streaming commuters. Mercer whirled in time to see Jason. The NASA scientist saw him too and raised a hand in greeting.
“Jason! No!”
It was too late. Jason had been spotted, and no sooner did he lower his hand than a shape slid through the crowd the way a shark parts a shoal of fish, and Jason’s leather satchel had been cut free of its sling. The shape moved on, leaving Jason in its wake, a surprised look on his face at the audacity of such a blatant robbery. He looked ready to give chase.
“No, Jason. Stop,” Mercer shouted as he himself was about to launch into a run to catch the thief. He felt something hard ram into his kidney and dig a little into his flesh. It took no imagination to know it was the barrel of a snub-nosed revolver.
“Leave it be, or I drop you and take my chances in the confusion.” The voice was a Brooklyn cliché.
There was no way this old guy had been part of the assault team at the mine. Mercer tried to turn to get a better look at the man’s face. His earlier impression was a bad shave, sallow skin, and drooping eyes. As had been intended, Mercer could better describe the hat the man wore than his features. Whoever he was, Mercer realized he was good at this.
“I’m putting a pair of zip cuffs in your hand.” Mercer felt the wiry length of plastic press against his palm. “Secure them around your ankles.”
When he bent to comply, Mercer felt his Beretta being lifted from its pancake holster. It was a good thing he wasn’t sentimental about guns, because that one was about the fourth or fifth he’d lost. The gunman stayed close enough that no one rushing by them saw or suspected a thing.
“Thanks for the piece,” the New Yorker said.
Mercer straightened, and he was abruptly shoved from behind. The plastic tie around his ankles meant he fell like a sawn-down tree and took the brunt of the impact on his hands, wrists, and arms. A woman gasped at his collapse. Mercer turned to see the rumpled suit and cheesy gangster hat vanish out of the building lobby. He moved well for an older man.
“Are you okay?” a pretty petty officer in navy camouflage asked. She looked more closely and saw the white plastic band securing Mercer’s legs together. She got suspicious. “What’s going on?”
“Remember the ‘knockout game’ from a couple of years ago?” Mercer said, feigning anger. “I think this is similar. I felt something around my ankle, then someone pushed me. Down I went.” He fished into his pocket for a folding pocketknife. The blade easily sliced through the plastic.
She helped him to his feet. “Do you want me to get an MP?”
“No,” Mercer said. “It was just some stupid kids who are long gone. Thank you for your help.”
“My pleasure, sir,” she replied and headed off without a backward glance.
By then Jason had made his way over. He looked a little pale. Mercer asked, “Are you all right?”
“Never been mugged before. Don’t like that feeling one bit.”
Mercer straightened one of his earbuds so the integrated microphone was close to his lips. “Book, you got him?”
Jason’s expression registered surprise.
“Oh yeah,” Mercer heard over his cell connection to Sykes. “It was a skinny white kid wearing baggies like a gangbanger. Dumbass nearly tripped on those stupid pants coming up the escalator. Wait a second…what kind of car did you tag earlier?”
“Six-year-old silver Caddie. That’s what the older guy got into.”
“Bingo. Kid just dove into a silver STS. Pennsylvania plates, but two’ll get you ten it’s a rental from Dulles.”
“I’m in on that action. The rumpled guy sounded like he’s from Brooklyn — bet they came down on the JFK-to-Reagan shuttle. That’s where they rented the Caddie.” He hadn’t even noticed the kid in the Cadillac’s backseat. They must have been a professional black bag crew, most likely hired as outside contractors to supply and monitor the bugs, and then tasked today with the robbery.
Mercer was casually scanning the crowd when his blood turned cold.
The team leader. The animal Mercer had vowed to put down.
He was there watching the whole thing, looking down onto the subway from the top of the escalator. The man was mostly shadow from this distance, but Mercer recognized the tilt to his head and the way he carried his shoulders. He must have been waiting for Mercer to recognize him, because he gave a mocking wave and vanished from sight.
Mercer cursed into the microphone. “Book, guy at the top of the escalators.” He pushed his way to the mechanical stairs. Normally Washingtonians are conditioned to stay to the right if they intend to stand so others can climb the escalator on the left, but such niceties vanished during rush hour, leaving the entire breadth of the escalator blocked.
Booker Sykes heard the panic in Mercer’s voice. “What guy?” he asked crisply. “Describe him. There are dozens.”
“My height, white, medium/large build. I don’t know hair color or what he’s wearing.”
Sykes was positioned in a room at the nearby DoubleTree hotel, glassing the Pentagon through some borrowed special-ops binoculars. He wasn’t looking for a man who fit the description; there were too many. Instead he looked for someone moving fast through the crowd — and there were none. “No one like that’s drawing attention, Mercer. The Caddie is pulling away. You sure you don’t want it followed?”
“Positive. But we can end this now if you find that guy.” Mercer did his best to bull his way up the escalator, but he was making poor progress, and earning a lot of angry looks.
“I still have no illicit movement. There must be a hundred people out here and twenty buses. He could have jumped onto any of them.”
Mercer stopped fighting, sagged a little. He’d been defeated and he knew it. The man wouldn’t give himself away by running from the scene. He’d come here to taunt Mercer, show him how big his organization was, to brag that they could get muscle down here from New York, and finally to vanish without a trace as the ultimate insult.