The Hunted

56

The wind had picked up and was blasting everything and everyone in its path, slamming against the fifty U.S. flags flapping in the bright floodlights at the granite base of the Washington Monument.

DeSantos stood in darkness outside the ring of flags, surveying the general area. After the latest tour bus had pulled out of the parking lot five minutes ago, he had nodded to the park ranger, whose four-to-midnight shift was over.

A moment later, Archer completed his walk around the perimeter and nodded. “Clear.”

“Good, then all we’re missing is our host.”

Another blast of wind hit them head-on, and they turned their backs to shield their faces. “I wish he’d get here already. It’s fucking cold out here,” DeSantos said. “I don’t know why we couldn’t just meet in a car, or at my house or something.” He rubbed his gloved hands together.

“It’s Knox. You never know what the guy’s thinking. And we’re in his good graces. Imagine everyone else.”

“My toes are starting to go numb.” DeSantos stomped his feet. “Must be twenty-five below with the wind. I’m leaving in ten minutes if I can still walk.”

“Want some gum?” Archer asked, chomping away on his Juicy Fruit.

“No, I don’t want some gum. Gum ain’t gonna make my body warm.”

“The cold is all in your head, Hector. Just ignore it.”

“This isn’t more of that mind-body bullshit, is it?”

“As a matter of fact, it is. You can bring blood to your extremities—”

“I know how to get blood to one of my extremities. Does that count?”

Archer shook his head. “I can’t believe we asked you to be Presley’s godfather.”

“Hey, I warned you, bro. I y’am what I y’am.” DeSantos began to jump up and down. “So much for mind-body bullshit. I’m still freaking cold.”

“Then take your mind off it. Guess how many people visit the monument each year.”

“I don’t want to guess.”

“Just go with me on this, will you?”

DeSantos rubbernecked his head into the darkness, then checked his watch. “Fine. Eight hundred thousand.”

Archer looked at him, his eyebrows bunched together. “You’re so damn lucky, you know that?”

“What I don’t understand is why so many people are fascinated by a big stone dick sticking up from the ground.”

Archer glanced sideways at his partner, then shivered as another blast of air wormed around his pants.

“Don’t tell me you’re cold, too. It’s all in your head, Brian. Remember?”

Archer started moving his legs, dancing without music, and said, “Trish and I took a tour about four years ago. You wouldn’t believe how many granite blocks—”

“Gentlemen.”

Archer and DeSantos spun, their hands instinctively moving to their weapons.

Douglas Knox was standing in a black wool overcoat, his collar turned up above the level of his ears. “This is how my elite intelligence masters protect themselves?”

“Brian’s fault,” DeSantos said. “He was complaining about how cold he was. I was trying to distract him, take his mind off it.”

Archer threw DeSantos a nasty look, then turned to Knox. “You said it was urgent.”

The director nodded, then shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat. “Payne is going to be in Fredericksburg tomorrow night, five-thirty, Princess Anne Building. He’s set up a rendezvous with his wife.”

DeSantos was itching to ask how Knox had gotten hold of that information, but in the intelligence community, such details were unimportant. When a job was bearing down on you, what mattered was the here and now, and what lay ahead. The past was old news. If you knew and trusted your sources, how certain data came across your desk was generally of little importance.

“Does Payne know we’re going to be there?” Archer asked.

“As far as he’s concerned, he’s going there to meet his wife. We’re not part of the equation. If he senses we’re there, he’ll take off. We’re not his favorite people right now.”

“Obviously you don’t need us to be chaperones,” DeSantos said wryly.

“Scarponi is going to be there, too.”

A shrill gust kicked up a swirl of loose soil and slapped it against their coats. Archer shrugged it off and took a step closer to Knox, who was rubbing some grains of dirt from his eyes. “Are you sure?”

“The news leak on Payne’s amnesia,” Knox said. “I had it back-traced and found its source. Not the person, but the pathway. I planted a dummy message and sent it back along the same channels. I’m betting our mole forwards it on to Scarponi.”

“This the same mole who was feeding Scarponi six years ago, after his trial?”

“I’m sure of it,” Knox said.

“A bit risky, isn’t it?” Archer asked.

Knox squinted angrily, then hung his head and began to pace. After moving a handful of steps in each direction, he zeroed in on Archer’s face. DeSantos moved closer as well, and the three of them now formed a tight triad. If nothing else, their proximity generated heat.

“I intend to recapture Scarponi,” Knox said firmly. “I won’t — I can’t — tell the president he’s escaped. And I sure as hell can’t tell him that Payne also took leave of our company either, now, can I? The buck stops on my desk, gentlemen. So if I have a chance to capture both of them in one operation, I’m going to take that stone and kill the two birds.” He paused for a long second, then said, “To make this happen, I need your help.”

DeSantos looked at Archer and instantly knew what his partner was thinking: How much of what Knox was saying was the truth, and how much was bullshit, laid out for the purpose of using them to get Scarponi back for his group? In the split second that this all bounced around in his mind, he decided not to broach the topic, and he hoped that Archer would feel the same way. With all they had seen so far, he did not feel they could fully trust Knox. At least, not yet.

“I need one of you to hover on the perimeter, the other on the inside. Grab Scarponi and take him safely into custody.” Knox said it matter-of-factly, as if he were asking them to go shopping for groceries. “Once you have him in your vehicle, you will proceed to the safe house on Mission. And I don’t have to tell you to exercise extreme caution with him at all times.”

“What kind of backup will we have?” DeSantos asked, already knowing the answer.

“None. No one can know we’re expecting Scarponi to be there. All other available agents will be focused on identifying and safely securing Payne.” Knox pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Archer, who opened it. “A map of historic Fredericksburg. The X’s show where all my agents will be. You two are the Y’s. We can only guess where Scarponi will be, but I’ve denoted his possible locations with Z’s.”

“This is gonna be one hell of a fucked-up operation,” DeSantos said, shaking his head. The logistics of it all were fraught with problems, a fact he was sure Knox was aware of.

The director’s face hardened suddenly, and with barren trees swaying in the wind against the park’s streetlights, shadows cut angrily across his features. “No, this will not be a fucked-up operation, Hector. If it is, we lose Scarponi, maybe for good. No matter how much he wants Payne, at some point he may decide it’s not worth it. In which case we’ll never see his sorry ass again.” Knox pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and ignited the corner of the map Archer was holding. The paper began to burn, the flames flickering in the wind, reducing the map to carbon.

As the ashes floated away on the breeze, a blast of wind caught DeSantos’s wool coat and ruffled the bottom, sending tendrils of cold air up his back. They skipped across the gooseflesh that was covering his arms and legs, causing him to shiver.

DeSantos thought about what Knox was proposing and was uneasy. He had studied Scarponi’s file in depth. Like a dog trained to sniff ordnance, he felt he understood his adversary well. And he knew that Scarponi would never give up. Not until his target had successfully been neutralized. No, either Harper Payne or Anthony Scarponi was going to end up dead in Fredericksburg.

And it was becoming increasingly clear that if Knox had his way, the one carted away in the meat wagon was going to be Harper Payne.