Cut Out (15 page)

Riley glanced across at Hammer, who returned his look. Lisa sat up straight on the couch where she had thrown herself. Riley flipped open his address book and punched in Giannini’s home number—no answer. He quickly dialed her work number—she wasn’t in and they didn’t know when she would be. Finally he dialed the number for her portable. It rang and rang, with no answer. Riley slowly put down the receiver. His brain was working furiously, considering the entire situation. His emotions were swirling, but he tried to shut down that side of himself.

He made his decision. “Hammer, you and Lisa get out of here. Wherever you go tonight, I don’t want to know. I’ll meet you tomorrow between thirteen hundred and fourteen hundred out at the airfield at Camp Mackall. I’ll drive on the dirt road along the east side of the airstrip. You make the contact if all is secure. If my lights are off, that means I’m doing it under duress, so don’t make the contact. Clear?”

Hammer unzipped his jacket and checked his revolver. “Roger that, Chief. Thirteen hundred to fourteen hundred, east side of airstrip. Safe sign is lights on. Contact at my discretion.”

“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Lisa demanded, confusion plain on her face.

Riley pointed at the answering machine. “Something happened to Donna Giannini. She tried calling here almost three hours ago and someone interrupted her.” Riley didn’t add his fears about what form that interruption took. He also didn’t remind Lisa that Donna had been on her way to Lisa’s brother’s house. “Whoever it was tried my number right away, which means they know who I am. I can’t get hold of Donna at work or at home and she’s not answering her portable phone. She’s the only one who knows you’re with me. Add in the fact that someone was watching our meeting site, and I think we might be in deep shit.”

“But she’s in Chicago,” Lisa protested. “It’s only been a little while since her call.”

“The bad guys have phones, too,” Hammer reminded Lisa. “As the commercial says, they let their fingers do the walking. We need to get out of here. Once they realize we didn’t make the personal meeting, they’ll be coming here next.”

“But—”

“Listen, Lisa,” Riley interrupted her gently. “Donna was the cut-out—the only person who knew both sides. Now we have to assume she’s been compromised, which means I’ve been compromised. So I’m making myself the cut-out. The only way I can contact you once you leave here is during that one-hour block of time tomorrow, and even then you have the option of not meeting me if you think I’ve been compromised. Hammer knows what he’s doing. Trust him.”

“But why don’t you just come with us?” Lisa asked.

Riley shook his head. “I can’t disappear right away. I have to get permission to take time off. Plus, there’s some other things I need to do.”

“What about my brother? I thought Donna was heading over to his place. Is he all right?”

“She didn’t make it there. He’s probably fine,” Riley said, ushering her toward the door, not wanting to get into that. Hammer had cracked the open door and was peering out. “Now get going. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Lisa was too dazed to offer any more protest. She followed Hammer’s lead. Riley stood in the doorway and watched as the two drove off in Hammer’s pickup truck. He looked up and down the street—all appeared normal. Back inside, Riley went up to his bedroom and pulled his footlocker out of the closet. He opened the combination lock, flipped up the lid, and pulled out the top tray. Nestled in the bottom, wrapped in oilcloth, were various weapons that he had accumulated over the years. Riley wasn’t a knife or gun collector—he saw no beauty or art to weapons; they were simply tools that he needed in his occupation.

Riley pulled out the weapons, one by one, and checked their functioning. He already had the .22 High Standard in his left shoulder holster and the 9mm Beretta in the right. He lifted out a Heckler & Koch model 94—a 9mm short-barreled submachine gun available for the civilian market in the semiautomatic mode only. He moved over to his dresser, pulled open the bottom drawer, and reached underneath, feeling with his hand until he touched the small piece of metal taped there. He broke down the H & K 94 and replaced the sear pin that had come with the gun with the one he’d hidden under his drawer. The new sear made the weapon illegal, transforming it into a submachine gun capable of automatic and three-round burst fire.

Riley slapped a thirty-round magazine in the well and chambered a round, leaving it on safe. Next he pulled out a double-edged commando knife and slipped the sheath inside his pants in the small of his back—the one place most people fail to look when doing a body search.

A short, razor-sharp, three-inch dagger went on the inside of his left boot. Riley removed his A-7-A belt and checked to make sure the wire garrote was still in place on the inside of the web material, the metal loops on either end secured in specially sewn pockets, keeping it stretched tight.

Then he dragged a chair back to the closet. Pushing clothes aside, he stood on the chair and felt along the top of the inside lip above the door. He peeled back some heavy tape and removed a money belt, then got down and strapped on the money belt inside his shirt.

Satisfied, Riley went back downstairs. He had lied to Lisa; to be more accurate, he had concealed the entire truth from her. True, he couldn’t just leave town without clearing it with his unit. And it was true that the best way to find out what was going on would be to stand fast and confront these people. But the real reason he was staying was reflected in the cold set of his eyes and the efficient way he had prepared his weapons. Underneath all that rational thought, holding him in place like a hard emotional tide, was the echo of Giannini’s voice being cut off and something hitting the ground. Whoever these people were, they had hurt, possibly killed, his friend. Riley turned off all the lights and settled down on the floor next to his couch—sub in his lap—to wait.

He tried to focus his mind, but his thoughts kept turning back to Donna. A year ago, Riley had been at a dead end. He had nothing to look forward to, no one he cared about. He felt he had committed himself to the army at age seventeen and gotten screwed in return. Donna Giannini had given him back his life—in more than a literal way. She had entered his world uninvited, in the midst of terror and death, a light that had given him hope for the future. A woman named Kate Westland had touched him in the same way several years before down in Colombia, but he’d let her slip away. He thought he’d become smarter and more aware by the time he met Donna, but apparently not. Once again, he hadn’t acted on his feelings.

Riley remembered an old saying he’d heard from Frank Kimble, his first team sergeant in Okinawa, who’d obviously stolen it from someone else: “To know and not to do is not to know.” Somehow, he’d assumed he and Donna had plenty of time. Only now, hearing that tape play on his answering machine, did he realize his loss and how little he really knew about the important things.

But there were things he did know, Riley thought. He ran his hand over the cold pressed steel of the weapon nestled in his lap. He knew death—was intimate with it. And death was what was coming; he could feel it. It was all he had left.

FORT BRAGG

30 OCTOBER, 10:00 p.m.

“The car’s leaving. Over.”

Master rubbed his forehead, wishing the headache that had been building for the past hour would go away. “No sign of the target? Over.”

“Negative. They never made contact. Over.”

“Shit,” Master muttered to himself. What had gone wrong? “Pull back before we get some nosy MP sticking his nose up our ass. Out.” He put the mike down on the console desk, picked up a pill, and popped it into his mouth, washing it down with water. The speed snapped through his veins, his skin tightening. He thumped his fist lightly against his lips as he thought.

The secure phone trilled, piercing his concentration. He had it to his ear before he even realized what he was doing. “Master.”

“We have some more information for you.”

CHICAGO

30 OCTOBER, 9:23 p.m. CENTRAL TIME

Giannini struggled to consciousness, a pounding on the left side of her head defeating that purpose until she realized that it was simply the beat of her heart, pumping blood through swollen flesh. As if realization of the pain was enough, she felt better. She was alive, which in her book made up for anything. She kept her eyes closed and her body motionless and waited for more than five minutes, ears tuned in, skin tuned in, trying to pull out of the air any sense of another presence close by. Nothing.

She cracked her eyelids and saw linoleum gleaming softly in the night light reflected through the windows. A little bit wider and the grip of her pistol appeared. She kept her breathing as relaxed as possible. Thirty seconds. Her right hand snaked out and grabbed the pistol and she rolled to the left, grunting with the pain that splintered through her skull. Her eyes weren’t focusing very well, but she could tell that the kitchen was clear. Too clear—Tom’s body was gone. Everything looked as if the maid had just been through.

Why had they left her? Giannini felt her stomach twist and flip, and she tensed her arm muscles, feeling the cold plastic of the gun’s grip in her right hand. She had to fight the spinning in her head.

She scuttled across the floor until she felt the cabinets against her back. Keeping the gun pointed toward the door leading into the room, she tried to think. Her portable phone was lying not far from where she grabbed the gun. She blinked—there was something flashing on the small screen. She reached out, grabbed the phone, and squinted down at the small white rectangle. “In use” was flashing. Just below, ten numbers were displayed. She grabbed the phone and pressed it to her ear: “Dave! Dave!” The hum of a disconnected line greeted her.

“Oh, shit,” she murmured, pressing the off button and then the power button. She rapidly redialed Dave’s home number.

FAYETTEVILLE

30 OCTOBER, 10:32 p.m. EASTERN TIME

The ring of the phone half startled Riley, his senses ready for any other sound. He looked at the offending device and considered whether to answer. The second ring echoed through the house. He waited through the third and the fourth.

The answering machine electronically picked up the receiver. “This is Dave Riley. I’m not able to come to the phone right now. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

“Dave, it’s Donna. They have your number. They know who you are! Are you there? Dave?”

Riley uncoiled from the floor and sprinted across the room. He put the sub down on the bar and grabbed the receiver, punching the answering machine’s off button at the same time. “Donna! It’s me.”

“Thank God!” The voice on the other end paused to catch her breath. “Jesus Christ, what a mess. Tom’s dead, Dave. I’m at his house. I came here to check on him and he was dead. They tortured him and must have gotten the information about me out of him. But I walked right into them. They didn’t even have to look for me. I was trying to call you when someone hit me—”

“I got your message,” Dave interrupted.

“What about...” Giannini’s voice paused. “Is it safe?”

“It’s safe,” Riley replied. “The meeting was compromised, but we split before anything went down.”

“Compromised?”

“Someone was watching who wasn’t supposed to be. Might have been the feds just being stupid, but after getting your earlier message, I thought it was the bad guys.”

“What do you think now?”

“Could be either. If it was the bad guys, they reacted quickly and followed us onto post, but it’s more likely it was the feds being stupid.”

“What about you?”

“I was waiting to hear from you,” Riley lied.

“You need to get out of there. They know who you are. They got the number off my portable. That’s ...” there was a pause, “God, that’s about five hours ago. Get out of there, Dave!”

“Everything’s all right, Donna,” Riley replied calmly. “Everything’s just fine here. How are you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Listen, you’ve got to—”

“No, you listen.” Riley kept his voice level. “You get out of that house and get to somewhere safe. I can take care of things on this end.”

Giannini’s voice was tentative. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”

“I’ll be out of here in a couple of minutes,” Riley temporized, his mind not at all on his own situation. “I’ll contact you through your portable number tomorrow.”

“All right. I’m not going to be able to report this without compromising everything, Dave. Anyway, the body’s gone and this place looks like it’s been cleaned up. I’d have to open up the whole can of worms to my people and I’m not sure that’s the best thing to do right now.”

“I agree,” Riley said. “Until we know who’s really behind all this and, more importantly, get our subject under cover, we need to lay low. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’ve got a sore head, but I’ll live.”

“Why didn’t they take you?” he asked.

“I’m a cop, Dave. That still makes some people hesitate. Plus, they got what they needed off my phone.” She changed the subject. “There are a few people I need to see on this end,” Giannini said. “Maybe I can get some answers.”