Blindside (32 page)

‘You did good,’ Moore told her. ‘You and Kenny. Busted this thing open.’

Warren nodded.

‘Thanks,’ Irvine managed to say, hearing the tremor in her own voice.

She didn’t trust herself to hold it together and speak at the same time so she said nothing else.

A member of Warren’s team came over to speak to him. He walked away with the man for a moment then turned back to Irvine and Moore.

‘Word from the hospital is Kenny will be fine,’ he said.

One of these days, Irvine thought, no one around me will get shot or killed.

19

Logan looked right along the block of Market Street as they crossed the intersection with Sixteenth Street heading north. He saw the lights on in the diner at the far corner of the block. The buildings across the street were dark. A homeless man lay in a doorway two buildings along from the diner. Everything looked normal.

‘They must be in the diner now,’ he said to Cahill. ‘The FBI, I mean.’

‘Yeah. Which means they’ll be across the street also. Probably put blackout coverings up at the windows so that they can have lights on inside without anyone outside being able to notice.’

They reached the sidewalk on the other side of the intersection and kept on walking.

‘How will they know what’s going on outside?’

‘Radio communications will be open all the time. Plus they’ll probably have cameras set up to give them a view of the street and the interior of the diner. Technology’s good for that stuff. It’ll be small and unobtrusive.’

‘Can’t see it unless you know what you’re looking for.’

Cahill nodded.

They passed the bus station, crossed the road at the intersection with Blake and turned right on to Wazee Street. The street was parallel to Market, two blocks north. There was another diner there open for the breakfast trade.

Cahill stopped outside the diner and checked his watch. Saw that it was seven in the morning.

‘Let’s grab something here. Those biscuits didn’t do it for me. I need a muffin.’

Logan followed him inside. The place was basic, but they didn’t need anything beyond a hot drink and a muffin. They ordered and ate in silence, Logan wondering how he was going to keep the muffin in his stomach.

‘Did you see the two guys pass by at the end of the street?’ Cooper Grange asked Randall Webb.

Grange pointed at one of the four monitor screens set up in the second-floor apartment across from the target diner. Webb nodded.

‘They kept on walking?’ he asked.

‘Yes. But you want them checked out?’

Grange turned to look at the two agents standing behind him – men in their mid-thirties with ballistic vests on under FBI windcheaters. Webb had decided that he wanted more personnel after all. There were four of them in the apartment, Ruiz and Martinez in their car and three more agents in the diner. Plus the city cops, Hunter and Collins.

Eleven should be enough
.

‘No. Leave it for now. But if you see them again, get someone on it.’

Grange leaned forward and tapped the screen of a different monitor.

‘What about him?’

Webb looked at the same screen. Saw the homeless man lying bundled in a doorway.

‘How long has he been there?’

Grange looked again at the agents behind them and raised his eyebrows. They looked at each other.

‘Since before we got here,’ the shorter of the two men said.

The other man nodded to confirm.

‘Go roust him,’ Webb said. ‘Move him on, but don’t create a fuss. If he gets too rowdy leave him be.’

The shorter man left the room. The three remaining men watched as he appeared on the screen in front of them. He went to the homeless man and crouched beside him, shaking his shoulder.

Webb glanced at a monitor to his left and saw Matt Horn enter the frame of the picture.

‘Horn’s here,’ he said.

Grange looked at the same screen and then at his watch.

‘He’s early.’

They watched as Horn went inside the diner.

When they looked back at the other screen they saw the agent back away from the homeless man, turn and begin to walk back to their building. He looked up at the camera and shook his head.

They waited in silence until he was back in the room.

‘Well?’ Grange asked the agent.

‘He’s out of it. Stinks of booze and piss. He’s not going anywhere any time soon.’

Webb looked at the still form of the man on the screen. Decided he could live with his presence.

‘How long now?’ he asked, not looking up from the monitors.

‘A half-hour,’ Grange said.

The two men they had seen earlier appeared again on one of the monitors – the one that was showing the front of the diner.

20

A woman FBI agent moved to the door of the diner as Cahill pushed it open and stepped inside.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said, holding up a hand. ‘We’re having a problem with the electrics today so—’

Cahill ignored her and walked into the main part of the diner. It was compact, with a dividing wall at the front between the welcome area and the actual diner. The wall extended halfway across the width of the building.

Logan followed Cahill as he stepped around the wall. The woman looked at them and over at the male agent standing behind the cash register just inside the door.

The tables were arranged in four rows between side walls featuring exposed brickwork. The back wall was painted white and had a set of double doors leading to the kitchen.

Jake Hunter was at a table by the left-hand wall. His partner, Danny Collins, was seated in the middle of the third row along from the wall and Matt Horn was at the table nearest the front on the opposite wall. He was hidden from anyone coming in the door behind the dividing wall. All three men looked up when they heard the agent talking to Cahill. Or trying to talk to him.

Logan heard a quiet commotion behind him as he came around the dividing wall. The double doors at the back opened and another woman
agent looked out at them. Cahill nodded at her and went to a table two up from Hunter against the same wall. He nodded at Hunter as he passed by. Hunter returned the nod and went back to reading, or pretending to read, the newspaper in front of him.

Horn watched them, expressionless.

Collins shook his head and sipped from a cup of black coffee.

Cahill sat in the chair nearest the front, turned the chair sideways so that he could see the entrance. Logan sat with his back to the rear wall.

The male agent at the cash register walked to the gap in the dividing wall and stared at Cahill.

‘Can we get some coffee?’ Cahill asked loudly.

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Grange shouted after watching them on the monitor. ‘I told you he was trouble.’

He turned to face Webb, his lip curling up into what was almost a snarl. Webb thought that it was the most angry he had ever seen Grange.

‘He timed it well,’ Webb said impassively.

‘What?’

‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s too late.’

Grange looked like he was ready to explode. Webb held up his hands. ‘Tell them over there,’ Webb said, pointing at the diner on the screen. ‘To be cool.’

Grange boiled. Then he got on the radio and told them to be cool.

Logan saw the agents at the front move back to the cash register. Heard them talking quietly and then the woman in the kitchen came out with coffee and filled their cups. She even smiled.

Logan noticed for the first time how rigid Horn’s body language was. Everyone else was doing a passable job at looking relaxed.

Outside on Seventeenth Street Agent Ruiz watched from the driver’s seat of his car as a pick-up truck pulled up and stopped on the block north of the intersection with Market. He and Martinez were on the block of Seventeenth Street immediately to the south of the intersection. The pick-up was no more than fifty yards from them.

Ruiz nudged Martinez who was dozing beside him. He jutted his chin to point at the pick-up. They could make out four people in the cab, but not much else. No one made a move to get out of the truck.

‘What do you think?’ Martinez said.

‘Get on the radio.’

Ruiz reached inside his jacket and unsnapped the catch on his shoulder holster.

‘We got a vehicle on Seventeenth,’ Martinez said into his radio. ‘Pick-up truck. Four occupants. Copy?’

Hiss

‘Copy that,’ Webb’s voice sounded. ‘What are they doing?’

Martinez paused. Still no movement in the truck. ‘Nothing, sir.’

‘Keep watching. Let me know the second anything changes.’

‘Copy that, sir.’

Martinez followed the lead of his partner and unsnapped the catch of his holster. They exchanged a glance. Neither of them had ever discharged their weapon on active duty.

A sedan passed by their car heading north with two occupants. It slowed as it passed the truck, then sped up and turned left on to Blake.

Martinez spoke into the radio again.

‘Got another one. A sedan. Passed us and turned on to Blake behind you. Copy?’

Hiss

‘Follow the sedan.’

Ruiz started the car, checked for traffic and pulled out. Martinez looked into the interior of the truck as they passed by.

‘Four men,’ he told Ruiz as they turned on to Blake. ‘Didn’t look at us.’

Ruiz nodded, his jaw clenched tight shut. He knew it wasn’t good when four men in this situation didn’t look at a car passing by. It would have been natural for at least one of them to glance their way.

The sedan was at the far end of Blake Street, at the intersection with Sixteenth Street. Its brake lights burned red. It turned left going south on to Sixteenth, towards the intersection at Market.

Doubling back
.

Ruiz followed the car and stopped at the intersection where the sedan had been. He and Martinez looked left, saw the sedan stop short of the next intersection. The one at Market Street.

They had now covered both ends of the block where the diner was: the truck at the far end and the sedan at this end.

Not good
.

Martinez looked anxiously at Ruiz.

‘Tell them,’ Ruiz said urgently.

21

‘They have the street flanked.’ Ruiz’s voice sounded in the room.

Webb looked at the monitor with the diner displayed on the screen. There was no movement there. He didn’t notice, on one of the other monitors, the homeless man roll over, stand up and walk down the short flight of stairs on to the sidewalk. His legs looked steady enough for a man reeking of booze.

Webb looked at Grange.

Grange turned to the two agents behind him.

‘Let’s go,’ he told them, moving towards the door of the room.

‘Get them out of that truck,’ Webb told him. ‘Ruiz and Martinez can cover the sedan.’

Grange nodded.

The three men left Webb alone in the room. He turned and saw the homeless man standing outside the diner. The man was looking at something in his hand, appeared to be prodding a finger at it. Webb leaned in to have a closer look, but the definition on the picture was too grainy close up to make much of it.

The driver of the pick-up looked at his vibrating phone. Saw that it was Raines calling. He didn’t answer the phone, turned to the two men in the
rear of the cab and nodded. The two men opened their doors and got out, walking round to the bed of the truck. One of them pulled at the canvas cover, exposing the weapons underneath.

The other man reached under the cover and grabbed two of the handguns, slipping them into the rear waistband of his jeans. After that, he picked up the rifles and moved to get back in the truck. The man holding the canvas cover reached in and took the other two handguns.

Back in the truck, each of the four men took a handgun, checked that the magazine was full and that the slide mechanisms were working. The two men in the rear of the cab sat with the rifles across their laps.

Grange came out of the building on to the street and saw the homeless man open the door of the diner across the road. He stopped briefly, watching the man. The two agents came out behind him and Grange forgot about the homeless man.

They walked briskly to the corner of the building at the end of the street and stopped. Grange took his gun from its holster and gripped it with both hands, bringing the gun up until it was just under his chin. The two men copied him. Grange turned to them.

‘We go out together,’ he said. ‘You guys move to cover the sides of the truck and I’ll cover the front. Any movement you don’t like, anything you see you don’t like, you shoot.’

The men nodded.

‘On three.’

Grange held a hand up with three fingers extended. He started to count down silently from three.

Webb’s voice sounded in Ruiz’s car. They were stationary at the intersection, watching the men in the sedan.

‘Get the men in that sedan out and secured. Grange is covering the truck.’

‘Copy,’ Ruiz said, opening his door and stepping out on to the street.

Martinez got out after him on the other side of the car. They drew their weapons and started towards the sedan.

The driver of the sedan was looking at his phone as it glowed in the car. The driver of the pick-up truck was calling. That meant it was time.

‘Get the guns out of the trunk,’ he told his passenger.

The passenger nodded and opened his door. The driver reached around to the floor behind his seat and picked up a handgun.

He looked in his rearview mirror and saw the two FBI agents approaching at a fast walk, their guns raised. He reached over to grab his passenger, but the man had stepped out of the car.

He heard them shouting.

‘Freeze. FBI.’

22

Grange moved quickly to stand directly in front of the truck, maybe eight feet from the front grille. He raised his weapon and pointed at the driver’s head through the windscreen.

The two agents with him ran to their positions on either side of the truck, level with the front doors. They trained their guns on the men in the rear seats.

No one in the truck moved.