End Game

CHAPTER TWELVE

At one level, Jonathan thought that Venice had the hardest job of all of them. While she didn’t get shot at — well, except for that one time — she had the burden of waiting and listening until someone chimed in with a sitrep. Jonathan didn’t think he’d be able to do it.

It was nearly four in the afternoon now, and the sun hung high and hot over the gently rolling terrain.

“According to Venice’s satellite downloads, this isn’t going to be an easy house to find,” Jonathan said. He knew they were close, but the unrelenting woods were loath to give up driveways. “What’s that up there?” A medical caduceus had been nailed to an otherwise unremarkable tree.

“I see a cross and tangled snakes,” Boxers said. “Doctor shit.”

They turned into the drive, through the heavy woods to another turn at another caduceus, and up to the front of the house. A nice place, bigger than he was expecting, but nothing remarkable in its two-story design.

“Ready for things to get interesting?” Big Guy asked.

“Soon enough,” Jonathan said. “Go to Vox.” From this point on, everything they said would be live on the radio, without having to push a transmit button. “Mother Hen, Scorpion,” he said.

Ten seconds passed. “Go ahead, Scorpion,” Venice said. “I’m here. Nice to hear from you. It’s been a while.”

“Big Guy and I are home now,” Jonathan said, knowing that she’d understand them to be at the target house. “How are your eyes?”

“Still blind,” she answered.

Jonathan had been hoping for satellite support from SkysEye, a satellite imagery service established by his now fabulously wealthy former Unit compatriot named Lee Burns. Built with private funds under the auspices of assisting in petroleum exploration, the SkysEye network had proven to be extraordinarily helpful to Jonathan over the course of his freelance years — well worth the staggering price tag — providing nearly military-quality imagery of fine details from a couple hundred miles in the sky.

Given their past relationship, and the nature of the missions upon which Jonathan embarked, Lee Burns typically moved heaven and earth to accommodate his needs. Sometimes, though, the timing just didn’t work out. Lee had a business to run, after all, and Jonathan imagined that sometimes it would be hard to tell the representatives of Mega-rich Oil Company that their multimillion-dollar contract would have to wait while the system was repurposed to support an illegal operation.

“Big Guy and I are both on VOX,” Jonathan said. “The security plan is hot now.” The security plan mandated situation reports — sitreps — every seven minutes, or more frequently if the situation warranted. Translated, that meant that the risks of getting hurt had just multiplied.

“Speak up, Big Guy,” Venice said.

“Right here,” Boxers replied, thus completing the radio check.

“I’ll take the front,” Jonathan said, “and you take the back. When we’re both in position, I’ll knock. If someone answers, we’ll play it by ear. If they don’t, we’ll crash the door.”

As an afterthought, Jonathan added, “Mother Hen, before we make a mess here, you are one hundred percent sure that this is the house where the car is registered, right?”

“One thousand percent,” Venice replied.

Jonathan looked to Boxers, and Big Guy nodded. “All right, then. Report when you’re in place.”

As Boxers disappeared toward the black side of the building, Jonathan headed toward the white side. Jonathan estimated the age of the place at around thirty years — old enough to need new fascia board but not so old for the need to be urgent. Having traveled the world several times over, mostly focused on the dirty bits that normal people tried to avoid, he’d seen all different terrains, from the vertical to the flat. It occurred to him as he looked back the way they’d come that this place was just boring.

Jonathan hated approaching a building that he only suspected concealed a bad guy. If he knew for a fact that an enemy was in place, he could approach with guns blazing. When less than certain, the mere presence of a firearm could turn a benign situation violent, converting otherwise good guys into bad when they reacted with legitimate fear at the sight of the weapons.

Jonathan walked warily down the weed-infested brick sidewalk with his Colt holstered and concealed by his denim jacket. If needed, he could draw the weapon and have shots downrange in two seconds, but that brought him little comfort. Not many gunfights lasted as long as two seconds.

As he closed the last few feet to the front door, he stopped short as his attention was drawn to the doorjamb. The wood near the dead bolt was splintered, hunks of wood avulsed from the rabbet. The effect was to leave a giant scar of raw, unpainted wood.

It was time to draw down. As he reached for the .45, his earbud popped. “Scorpion, Big Guy,” Boxers said. “I’ve got signs of forced entry back here.”

Just like that, everything changed. “Me, too. Are you prepared to crash the door?” Jonathan asked over the air.

“Oh, yeah.” It was like asking a kid if he was ready for Christmas.

“On my count,” Jonathan said. He gripped the Colt with both hands, thumbed the safety off, and poised it close to his chest, the grip an inch from his breastbone.

“Three… two… one.”

They needed a new car. The Mercedes was still drivable but it had been shot to shit — not suitable for being seen in public.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Jolaine said.

“You killed those people,” Graham said. His eyes were huge. His hands trembled.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Jolaine said. “But we’ve—”

“Don’t apologize.” He seemed appalled that she would even think such a thing. “You were friggin’ amazing. I mean, Christ, they were going to kill us, and you just mowed them down.”

Jolaine appreciated the enthusiasm, despite knowing that after the adrenaline wore off, Graham would suffer from the reality of those images.

Grateful that the streets were relatively empty, but fully aware that she and Graham were far from invisible, she whipped the Mercedes into an alley between two buildings that looked underutilized, if not abandoned. The windows had been soaped, and grass grew through cracks in the pavement. It was exactly the kind of industrial neighborhood that one would expect to be served by the Hummingbird Motel. She created her own parking space next to a bulging Dumpster.

“We need to get out,” she said. “This car is too obvious.” As she spoke, she opened the door. “We need to walk.”

“To where?”

“Anywhere but here.” She placed the empty Glock back into its holster and covered it with her shirt. “This vehicle is a magnet for cops. We need to buy some time.”

Graham pushed his door open as well and stood. “Time to do what?”

“To live a little longer,” she said.

“What about the rifle?”

“Leave it. We can’t go walking around town with a rifle.”

“But your pistol is out of bullets.”

Jolaine made a circulating motion with her arm, encouraging Graham to move faster. “Maybe we can find some more. Meanwhile, we’ve got to get away from here.”

He joined her, looking over this shoulder, back at the car. In the distance, the sirens continued. “Shouldn’t we wipe it down for fingerprints?”

“It won’t matter,” Jolaine said. “Our fingerprints are all over everything — the car, the rifle, the motel room. When they find it, they’ll know that the car belonged to the people who rented the room. What we hope they won’t know is who we really are.”

They walked behind a long line of industrial low-rises. The only business that seemed busy was an auto mechanic shop whose employees seemed to avoid eye contact. Jolaine wondered how many of them would scatter if the police came by. The whir of impact wrenches and the pounding of hammers on metal drowned out the sound of sirens. Jolaine considered that a good thing.

“Where are we going?” Graham asked. He kept throwing nervous looks over his shoulder, and in general acting jumpy as hell.

“I need you to walk as if nothing is wrong. The more nervous you look, the more attention you’ll draw to yourself. To us.”

“That’s kind of hard when you know people are trying to kill you.”

“Graham, everything is going to be kind of hard until this is settled. You need to trust me.”

“I do trust you,” he said. Then, with a wry chuckle: “Not that I have a whole lot of choice.”

The alley behind the low rises dead-ended at a street without a sign. Jolaine estimated that it ran roughly north-south. She turned right to head north, away from the main drag. Ahead, there was a patch of woods that would provide additional cover. She headed that way.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Graham asked.

“Toward the woods. We’ll be less readily seen there.”

“Is that really a good idea? I mean, I’m not saying I won’t go, but aren’t they going to dispatch dogs or something pretty soon? If we’re just hanging in the woods we’ll get caught right away.”

He had a very good point, Jolaine thought. She stopped and turned, colliding with Graham.

“Whoa,” he said. “What are you doing now?”

“You’re right,” she said. “We need a car. Come this way.” She started back toward the main drag.

Graham trotted to catch up. “And where are we going to get a car?”

She led the way to her answer. The easiest cars to steal — to hotwire and drive away — were of an older vintage, the older the better. It was damn near impossible to hotwire anything made in the past ten years or so — certainly that was beyond Jolaine’s limited ability. As luck would have it (it was about time for some good luck for a change), the ideal candidate sat parked along the curb outside a low-rent apartment building. It was an old Honda Civic that appeared to have the original paint job, which was to say very little paint at all. Call it red. Maybe brown.

As she approached, Jolaine drew her Leatherman tool from its pouch on her belt and opened it up. In a second stroke of good luck, the driver’s door opened when she lifted the handle. That was often the case, she’d been told, when people parked their cars in poorer, crime-ridden areas. It was better to leave the car unlocked and let thieves find out for themselves that there was nothing worth stealing, than to make them break a window to discover the same result.

Once inside, she wondered if the owner actually hoped that someone would steal these wheels. The gray cloth seats were worn nearly transparent in the spots where they weren’t torn, and the headliner drooped like old cobwebs from the ceiling.

Graham climbed in the opposite door. “Do we really have to be in this much of a hurry?”

She ignored him. She folded out the flat-head screwdriver, jammed it into the keyway, and twisted. The engine jumped to life. That done, she stuck the blade into the gap between the steering wheel and the steering column to find the tab that would release the steering wheel lock. That was always the toughest part of this operation. It took a good twenty seconds, but when she found it, she pressed down and the wheel was free.

“There,” she said, more to herself than to Graham.

He gaped. “How do you know this shit?”

“I used to hang around with tough people,” she said. In reality, she used to hang around with a former SEAL named Darrell, whose youth had introduced him to all levels of thievery. She’d held him in her arms until he bled out and died in some rocky village near J-Bad in Afghanistan whose name she’d forgotten.

She pulled the transmission into drive, and they were on their way. She still didn’t know where they were heading, but north seemed right, so she swung a U-turn and headed wherever the road would take them. Canada, maybe, if she could figure out a way to get them some passports.

“Who were those people?” Graham asked. “And why were they shooting at us?”

“You tell me,” Jolaine said. She made sure her tone was leaden, devoid of humor.

In her peripheral vision, she saw Graham’s head whip around. “What?”

“You heard me,” she said. “You tell me why people are trying to kill us.”

“How am I supposed to know?”

She cast him a glance, then returned her eyes to the road as she navigated out into the country. Buildings were already becoming sparser. “How do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “What the hell is wrong with you? How did you become my enemy all of a sudden?”

“The last thing I am is your enemy,” Jolaine said. “Tell me about the phone call you made this morning.”

“I already told you about that.”

“I have it on good authority that you left out some good parts,” Jolaine countered. “What did you say?”

“I talked to a creepy guy and I hung up on him.”

“But why?”

“I talked to him because my mom asked me to. I hung up on him because he was creepy. What aren’t you understanding?”

Jolaine settled herself. Getting frustrated or getting angry would only be counterproductive. “Please try not to be obtuse,” she said. “You talked with the creepy guy, you said something, and then all of a sudden the world is trying to shoot us. Last night, they were shooting at your parents. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that your mother filled your head with some secret thing and a phone number, and now our lives are in jeopardy.” She paused and glared through his head. “What do you have, Graham? What justifies all of this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. You know I’m risking my life for you, right? I could drop you off on the side of the road and let you fend for yourself. No one wants to hurt me because of what I know. They only want to hurt me because of my association with you.” It felt good to utter the truth, even though she took no pleasure in hurting him.

“Let me off, then,” he said. She’d triggered his defiant streak, always a mistake.

“That’s not the point, Graham, and it’s not going to happen. You know that. My job is to protect you. And yes, it’s to protect me, too. But you owe me what you know.”

“I promised my mom not to tell anybody but the guy on the phone.”

“And how’s that working for you?”

“I wasn’t supposed to tell him over the phone. It could only be in person.”

Jolaine slapped the steering wheel. “Goddammit, Graham, whatever she told you is the reason we’re running for our lives.”

“You don’t know that. Mom told me that the only way to escape alive was to follow the protocol.”

“What protocol?”

“I don’t know!” he shouted. “Okay? I don’t know what any of this is about.”

“But you do know something,” Jolaine insisted. “The man on the ground outside his car—”

He shouted, “3155AX475598CVRLLPAHQ449833 D0Z.”

Jolaine reared back in her seat. “What?”

“You asked me and I just told you,” Graham said. “That’s what’s on the piece of paper. That’s what Mom told me. Do you want to know the phone number, too?”

No, she didn’t. What kind of code—

“It’s completely random,” Graham said. “I don’t see any pattern, the repeats are insignificant. There’s no dictionary code that I can find, and while I was alone in the motel, I tried to find some kind of Bible code, but couldn’t. Did you know they have a free Bible in the nightstand?”

Jolaine wasn’t interested in nibbling at the Gideon bait. “Say the code again,” she said.

“Why? Would you know if I missed something?”

There was the petulance that she’d come to know so well over the years. But he also raised a good point. “You mean, you really can remember all of that.”

He repeated the code. “Ask me in three hours or five days, and it’ll still be the same.”

“How?”

“The shrinks at school say it’s my gift.” The way he leaned on that word told her that he considered it to be anything but. “I just remember every friggin’ thing. Numbers are easiest and names are hardest.”

Jolaine processed all of that. At least, she tried to process it. “So, it’s numbers and letters,” she said. “What do they mean?”

“I don’t know!” His voice squeaked with frustration. “And I swear to God I’m telling the truth. I asked her, and she told me not to worry about it. She said I didn’t need to know what it meant. I only needed to remember it. So, now I’ve got this shit in my head, and a protocol to follow — whatever that means — and people are trying to kill me. Are we having fun yet?”

Something about his delivery made her believe him. He seemed genuinely bewildered by it all.

“What did the wounded guy say to you?” Graham asked.

Jolaine sensed the turnaround was an honesty check, and she wondered if the boy had done it on purpose.

“He said if you follow the protocol, all of this will end.”

Graham shrank in his seat. “So, I should have just talked with him. But you told me—”

“Don’t draw the wrong conclusion,” Jolaine said. “I’m not sure you did the wrong thing, and I’m really not sure that sharing that code — whatever it means — would do anything to take us off whatever hit lists we’re on.”

“What are you saying?”

Jolaine sighed again as she weighed the propriety of going where this conversation was leading them. Screw it. In for a dime…

“I don’t want you to panic about what I’m going to say—”

“Oh, crap.”

“—or even overly stress. But think about it. Those numbers and letters — that code — are what the people attacking us want. If it’s worth killing for, then it’s worth killing to protect after it’s revealed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Think,” she said. “You possess a code that people really want to have. That’s motivation to keep you alive. But once you reveal the code to the people who want it, that motivation goes away.” She pulled up at a stop sign, came to a full halt, and then moved on. Little towns were famous for speed traps and overzealous cops.

Graham shook his head. “No, that can’t be right. Those people in the parking lot a few minutes ago weren’t trying to save me. They were trying to kill me.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” Jolaine said. “I think they may have been there to kidnap you. I think we surprised them by shooting back. In fact, I’m convinced of it.”

“So, what does that mean?” Graham asked. “To us, that is.”

Jolaine considered the question. “It means that we can’t trust anyone about anything.” She wasn’t sure that she could connect the dots verbally, but she gave it a try. “Whatever the code does — I assume it unlocks something secret and important, else why have a code in the first place? — it makes sense to me that it was as important to your parents to have it as it was for the shooters to guarantee that they didn’t get it.”

“Or maybe the shooters wanted it for themselves,” Graham offered.

That was good. He was on the same page as she. “Extrapolating out, then,” Jolaine continued, “whichever side wins in the struggle, the other side is going to want to destroy the code.”

Graham leaned his head back into the headrest and closed his eyes. “And the code lives in my head,” he said. He lolled his head over to look at Jolaine. “This is really, really bad, isn’t it?”