At all costs

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Conversation stopped dead as Jake entered the room. Irene recognized him first. “Oh, my God,” she breathed.

Her reaction drew Frankel’s head around, and he reacted explosively. “Donovan!” He leapt from his seat and instinctively reached for the weapon he’d been forced to surrender at the door, but Eddie moved in quickly to dispel any notions his guest might have had about picking a fight.

The senator just stared, his face forming a giant O.

“What’s he doing here?” Frankel demanded. He turned to Albricht. “What the hell kind of game do you think you’re playing?”

The senator shrugged, clearly befuddled yet mildly amused. “I have no idea. Agent Rivers?”

Irene eyed Jake cautiously, then suppressed a knowing smirk of her own. So Jake was going right to the top. “Not a clue,” she lied.

Eddie placed a beefy hand on Frankel’s shoulder. “Please take your seat, sir,” he said.

Frankel tried to shake the arm off, but it was like shedding steel. He sat. With a nod from Jake, Eddie backed out of the room, leaving the group alone to discuss whatever was on their minds. Jake pulled a chair around to the end of the table so he could face everyone at once.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said.

“Look, Donovan,” Frankel seethed. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not-”

“Relax, Peter,” Jake said easily. “I’m just here to turn myself in to Agent Rivers. I’m just not up to the chase anymore.”

Frankel fell silent, his mouth open, frozen in midsentence.

Jake smiled serenely at Irene. “But first, I thought I’d make my official statement.”

“I think not,” Frankel blustered. “This is neither the time nor the place-”

“Shut up, Peter,” Albricht commanded. “The man’s come a long way.”

“The hell I will!” Frankel boomed.

“It’s tough to have a big secret, isn’t it, Peter?” Jake taunted. “Especially when everyone’s about to hear it spilled.”

Frankel rose again from his chair. “Agent Rivers, keep an eye on this man while I-”

Jake rose, too, and shoved Frankel hard. He fell backward, his legs entangled in the chair, and ended up halfway under the table. “Sit down, Peter!”

Irene made a move to intervene but stopped herself. It just looked too good.

Frankel sputtered profanities as he pulled himself back into his chair. “Go ahead, Donovan. Just keep racking up the charges. We’ll have to clone your ass just to live long enough for early release. Rivers, you’re a witness.”

Irene sucked on a cheek. “At this point, sir, I’m not sure what I’ve seen.”

For the first time, Jake heard real equivocation in Irene’s voice, and he moved quickly to capitalize on it. “Does the name Wiggins mean anything to you, Peter?”

Frankel ignored him, but Jake didn’t miss the barely audible gasp from Albricht.

“C’mon, Peter,” Jake taunted. “Surely you must know him. I hear he goes by the name Clyde Dalton, too, if that rings a bell. He certainly knows you. I had a long chat with him just this morning, in fact. He said you guys go all the way back to Nam together.”

Frankel just stared at the table, his jaw locked.

“You guys worked SEAL team insertions back then, right? You drove the boat and he did the wet work.” Jake glanced over at Irene. “You might want to take notes, ma’am,” he urged. “This should all be verifiable stuff.”

Irene seemed momentarily stunned by the request, then embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of it herself. Frankel glared as she pulled her notebook out of the pocket of her suit jacket, then patted herself down in search of a pen. Albricht lent her one of his.

Jake went on. “Wiggins said that after the war, you guys sort of went your separate ways. You joined the good guys, while your buddy chose more interesting pursuits. Seems he became quite proficient at killing people.”

“Where’s this individual now?” Irene interrupted.

“He left the country,” Jake lied, staring the whole time at Frankel, who in turn stared at Irene with enough intensity to cut her in half. “Just pay attention. It’ll all come together for you in a minute.”

He nudged Frankel’s shoulder playfully. “How am I doing so far, Peter?” When Frankel didn’t respond, Jake laughed. “Yeah, I know. Scary, isn’t it? So anyway, let’s fast-forward to the eighties. Here you are, this Young Turk, moving through the ranks, making your mark on the Bureau, when along comes this case in Arkansas where an aging general named Albemarle is lured by the Iraqis into selling chemical weapons as a way to finance his only daughter’s medical bills.” Jake looked again to Irene. “You found some evidence on that, I assume?”

She nodded. She knew exactly where this was going.

“So here comes Peter Frankel, supercop,” Jake continued, “and you find yourself the perfect crime. Nobody but this Albemarle clown even knows about this stash of weapons in East Jesus, Arkansas. He’s making himself a fortune. So you offer him a deal. If he cuts you into the action, you’ll cut off your investigation.” Jake leaned forward, forearms on the table. “What was the split, Peter? Sixty-forty? Seventy-thirty? Knowing you, you had to be wringing him pretty hard.

“Well, logistically, you can’t sell all your weapons at once, right? People might notice the comings and goings. So you dribble them out, a piece at a time, for a shitload of money. If I did my math right, and if your pal Wiggins was telling the whole truth, I figure that this went on for a good six months. Maybe more. Then you get blindsided.” Jake feigned a gasp and clutched his chest. “Somebody finds your stash and reports it to the EPA! Well, what’s a body to do now? Overnight-literally-you’re out of business.”

Jake leaned away from the table again and made a show of tapping his temple. “Now, here I’ve got to do a little guessing, but my money says the good general got a serious case of the guilts and wanted to punch out. Pretty close?”

Frankel didn’t move.

“But you can’t let that happen. So you call up your old buddy Wiggins to stage a suicide. I mean, why not? The guy’s already dishonored, he’s lost a kid. He’s got plenty of cause to off himself. You leave a note, you pop him, and you move on. How simple can it get?”

As the story droned on, Jake watched with satisfaction as Frankel sank further into his chair. He could only hope that the son of a bitch was suffering.

“But you can’t just kill one, can you, Peter? I bet it’s hard as hell to know when to stop the killing. Just to be safe, you pop the old man’s wife, too, in case she knows something.”

From there on, Jake concluded, it was just a comedy of errors. “You had this grand plan to cover your tracks: Slip something into Tony Bernard’s food to give him the pukes, then frame him for your explosion. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that Carolyn and I screwed it up so badly for you.”

Hearing it all played out, with even greater detail, the whole thing still seemed wildly speculative to Irene. Grand conspiracies with mysterious disappearing witnesses made it all too convenient.

“The guy you had call me with your blackmail threats was named Wiggins, too, Peter,” Clayton said, leaning forward. “What kind of coincidence is that?”

“This is all bullshit,” Frankel blustered, and at that moment, from his expression alone, everyone saw just how close Jake’s theory had landed to the truth.

“Oh, my God!” Irene breathed. “What have you done?”

Frankel tried to look outraged; like he’d never heard anything so outrageous in his life. But the fear showed through, anyway. “I refuse to listen to any more of this.” He stood one more time.

This time when Jake rose to meet him, Frankel was ready, leveraging the edge of the table and using it to shove Jake backward over his chair. “Stay out of my way,” he growled as he prepared to launch a lethal kick to Jake’s head.

“Stop it!” Irene commanded. She lunged across the table to intervene, but a stunning backhand sent her staggering.

“You incompetent bitch…”

Eddie Bartholomew materialized at the doorway, his weapon drawn. “Everybody freeze!” he yelled. “I said no violence, and I meant it! Now, Mr. Frankel, you just back off.”

Frankel stood in place, his chest heaving, his face red. “You gonna shoot the next director of the FBI, Eddie? Wouldn’t be good for business.”

Eddie ignored the bait. “Bullshit. This place’d become a tourist attraction. I can charge double to eat on the spot where you fell.”

Frankel laughed. That was a good one, all right. His eyes darted from side to side like a cornered animal, and everyone in the room knew instinctively to stay away from him. “No one will believe your lies,” he said, and suddenly his eyelids glistened with tears.

“You okay, Jake?” Eddie asked.

Jake raised himself to a sitting position and nodded, exploring a damaged rib with his fingertip.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Agent Rivers? Senator Albricht?”

Clayton helped Irene back onto her feet as she rubbed the swollen spot on her cheek.

“I’ll live,” Irene said. She sounded more embarrassed than injured.

“That’s good,” Eddie said. “Now, all of you, get out of here.”

“Yeah, Frankel,” Jake seconded. “Get out of here. You try running for a while, you weaselly little shit.”

Frankel was speechless. He scanned the faces in the room, then sneered, “This is far from over.”

As he turned to make his exit, Frankel raked his gaze from Eddie’s eyes down to the muzzle of his gun. “Put that thing down,” he said. A final command before the end of his reign.

Eddie hesitated but ultimately complied, letting the muzzle rotate in a slow arc down to his side, until the barrel pointed harmlessly at the floor.

That’s when Frankel struck, with amazing speed. Before Eddie could react, his hand was bent at an impossible angle behind his back, and the pistol was free from his grasp. An instant later, Eddie felt the press of steel against the base of his skull, and then his brains were all over the expensive Oriental rug.

Waiting was the single element of police work that Paul Boersky had never gotten used to. In his early days, back in Minneapolis, all he ever seemed to do was wait. And in a part of the world that has only two seasons-shovel and swat-every wait was as physically uncomfortable as it was mentally exhausting.

At least there was purpose to it all back then. Maybe a bad guy was going to move from one point to another, or an as-yet-unidentified suspect was about to take some bait. Here, today, in the chilly streets of Washington, D.C., Paul wasn’t at all sure why he even came along on the trip. This was between Irene and the senator-she could not have been any clearer on that point. As for his role, well, he really didn’t have one.

Nonetheless, they’d come a long way together over the years, and together, they had a long way to go on this particular case. Whatever transpired, he felt a need to be there with his partner. God knew that no one else would get within fifty feet of her. This screwup was that enormous.

So he waited. For going on a half hour now. He wondered if maybe he shouldn’t just peek inside and see what was going on. Thus far, no one else had arrived, and certainly, no one had left. Even with his partially obstructed view of the door he could see that.

He climbed out of the car at 4:37, according to the digital clock on the dash. Years of surveillance assignments had taught him always to mark the time. His back screamed from all the sitting, and a long stretch felt good. The autumn air felt good, too. What he missed most about living in the Deep South was the change of seasons. Sure, the leaves turned in the fall, but without the cold air to go along with it, the colors somehow meant less. Of course, come February, when the rest of the world was buried under a foot of snow, he’d feel damned smug about his southern digs.

He was in the middle of a huge yawn when he heard the first gunshot. His mind processed the sound in an instant, evaluating and rejecting a hundred alternatives. That was no bursting balloon or backfire or firecracker. And it was coming from inside the building!

He drew his weapon and charged up the front steps three at a time. Once on the stoop, he turned the knob and pushed. Nothing moved. He pounded on the heavy door with his fist.

“Federal officer!” he yelled. “Open up!”

He heard a second shot, and then a third right away.

Holy shit! Why hadn’t they informed the Washington office? At least then, they’d have had an official vehicle and a radio channel. Shit! He rammed his shoulder into the heavy wood panels, but the door wouldn’t budge.

He heard yelling from the inside now. And another shot.

“Shit!” He yelled it aloud this time. Stepping off to the hinge side of the door, he took aim at the lock.

Jake yelled at the sudden explosion of Eddie Bartholomew’s head. An instant later he saw the gun in Frankel’s hand, and the heat of the man’s anger filled the room as he swung the weapon up to finish what he’d started.

Jake’s body reacted before his brain could tell him to stop. Even as Irene and the senator dove for cover, he charged at Frankel and hit him with all his driving force, propelling him backward toward Eddie’s lectern. Despite the impact, Frankel wouldn’t go down. He backpedaled quickly, little staccato steps that kept him from losing his balance, as Jake focused every ounce of his strength on the attacker’s gun hand. For just an instant, the muzzle crossed in front of his face, but Frankel missed his opportunity for a sure kill.

Jake shoved his adversary hard into the corner molding of the archway to the dining room, and the impact triggered a grunt. He thought for sure that he heard something break in Frankel’s back, but the man still stayed on his feet. The gun discharged just inches from Jake’s face; a deafening blast that punched a hole in the plaster ceiling. Half a second later it went off again, disintegrating a crystal globe on the chandelier. Jake winced as grains of burning gunpowder bit into the flesh of his cheeks.

He had both hands on the gun now, struggling to loosen Frankel’s grip, and as he reached across the other man’s face, he howled in pain as Frankel’s teeth burrowed into the flesh of his upper arm. The pain was unspeakable as an incisor found a nerve, but he still hung on. To let go now was to die.

In his peripheral vision, Jake thought he saw Irene dash past. She’s running away! he thought. Then he knew better. The gun drawers!

Irene knew she needed to do something. Jake was losing his fight, but she worried that if she interfered, Frankel might somehow work his hand free. If that happened, they were all dead. If only she had her weapon!

Leaving the senator to fend for himself, she dashed through the dining room and out into the hallway, praying the whole time that Eddie hadn’t locked the drawers. There were eight of them altogether, and she pulled on the one she thought housed her black S amp;W. Sure enough, the drawer opened, and there it was.

Snatching the weapon into both hands, she drew down on the second most powerful man in American law enforcement. “I got him, Jake!” she yelled. “Break away!”

Frankel was a vampire! Once he got his teeth locked onto Jake’s arm, he just wouldn’t let go. The pain was exquisite, shooting lightning bolts into Jake’s fingertips. As he lost the feeling in his hand, his grip started to slip.

The instant he heard Irene’s command to get down, he just let his legs fold, collapsing onto the floor and leaving Frankel suddenly exposed.

Irene saw Jake drop and knew she had her shot. “Don’t move, goddammit!” she yelled, and in that instant, the world exploded in gunfire, as Paul blasted the door lock from the outside. Irene whirled instinctively at the sound, breaking her aim on Frankel, then instantly realized her mistake. She dropped to one knee and tried to bring her weapon back around on target, but she was too late.

The first bullet hit her high on her right arm, knocking the air out of her lungs and sending her pistol airborne. The second shot, fired less than a second later, caught her just above her left ear, but she never felt a thing.

Paul looked away as he fired, shielding his eyes from the flying bits of splintered wood and steel. Five slugs pulverized the doorjamb, where the dead bolt joined the keeper, and with a single powerful kick, he sent the solid-core door exploding inward.

All he saw were muzzle flashes as a man in a suit threw an arsenal of lead at him. Paul dropped to the concrete and scrambled for cover as a plate-glass window on the opposite side of Connecticut Avenue shattered and collapsed into itself.

He randomly returned fire, scrambling to find shelter behind the brick wall of the town house. He never aimed a shot; to expose himself would have been suicide. Instead, he exposed only his hand and his weapon as he fired over and over, hoping that the random spray of bullets would keep the shooter at bay.

He felt the slide lock open as the last round exited his weapon, and the instant he withdrew his gun to reload, the brick facade began to pulsate behind his back. The gunman had found his aim, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate the masonry shield. Just as he’d been trained through endless hours at the FBI range, he dropped the spent magazine out of his weapon as he fished for a spare from his belt and slapped it in place. The slide jammed the next round home, and he was ready to go again. Total elapsed time: less than five seconds.

Out on the street, the panic had just begun. He heard the heavy impact of colliding vehicles behind him, but he ignored it. As rush-hour commuters dashed for cover, he swung his arm back into harm’s way and started pulling the trigger.

Jake never saw Irene fall. He just saw the pistol on the floor, amid a wild, unfocused cacophony of gunfire, and he scrambled for it. He lost track of the number of shots Frankel had fired, but each trigger pull seemed to drive an ice pick into Jake’s eardrums. It wasn’t until he cleared the archway into the center hall that he heard the return fire coming from the front door. Just random gunplay, really. A hand extended through the open door, spraying bullets through the center of the house as fast as its owner could pull the trigger.

Who the hell is that?

That explained why Frankel hadn’t turned back to fire at Jake. He had a far more threatening target to eliminate. Pressing himself as flat against the floor as possible, Jake made his final lunge for Irene’s weapon. He brought it around just as Frankel stole a spare magazine from Eddie Bartholomew’s corpse and jammed it home.

“Don’t do it, Frankel,” Jake shrieked, but he couldn’t even hear himself.

Frankel didn’t hesitate in bringing his weapon to bear.

Neither did Jake. He felt the big S amp;W buck in his hand before he realized he’d pulled the trigger. Frankel hesitated but didn’t fall. Jake’s gun bucked again. And again. And one by one, each round found its mark. Belly. Belly. Right arm. Chest. The chest shot dropped him. Frankel sagged to his knees, his face a mask of terror. He knew he was dead, and he knew who’d killed him.

A final shot, this one coming from the cowboy behind the door, ripped Frankel’s lower jaw clean off his body. The impact spun him a quarter-turn, then dropped him like a tree onto the carpet.

“Freeze, goddammit!” The gun at the door had a voice now, and Jake knew instantly, just from the tone, that it belonged to yet another FBI agent.

Jake froze, just as he was instructed, as the man at the door scampered quickly up the hallway and jammed Jake face-first onto the fioor, kicking the pistol free from his hand.

“Jesus Christ, what did you do?” the man panted.

“For one thing,” Senator Albricht said, rising from behind his table shield, “he saved my life from that madman on the floor.”

Paul looked confused. In all the noise and the flying wood and glass, he’d never gotten a good look at the man who’d been shooting at him. When he did look, recognition was instant. “Oh, my God,” he whispered.

“He shot your partner,” Jake said. “She needs an ambulance.” He struggled under the agent’s weight to find a spot to rest his face that wouldn’t hurt so much.

Paul looked even more stunned as he fully recognized the cast of characters in the room. “Jake Donovan!” he said.

“Help your friend,” Jake said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Clearly, that’s what Paul wanted to do, but first, he had a prisoner to take care of. As he reached for his handcuffs, Senator Clayton Albricht placed a hand gently on his shoulder. “Please don’t do that,” he said gently. “It really isn’t necessary.”