Merit Badge Murder (16 page)

"I'm aware of that, Merry," he said slowly, "but it's still classified. Which means I can't tell you. Which means you should stop asking."

I thought about what we still needed to do and about the uninvited guests who would soon be knocking at the door or smashing in the windows.

"I will…for now. But you can't stop me from thinking about it. And I will bring this up later." I knew I had a valid question. And I knew he was evading. But maybe this wasn't the right time. I wasn't going to give up though.

Riley smiled and nodded. He was probably trying to figure out how he could blow me off later. Good luck with that, I thought.

"I brought lunch." From his duffle bag he produced a large, plastic bucket with a lid and two, long loaves of bread wrapped in foil. I knew what it was before I smelled it.

"Oh thank God," I said as I took the food and unwrapped it. Tortellini in red meat sauce and garlic bread. "I must be a good influence on you. You're starting to eat like a normal person."

He smirked. "My eating habits are not up for debate. Accept your victory gracefully, or it's tofu and veggies from here on out."

I held up my hands in surrender. "You got it. No complaints from me."

I pulled out plates and forks, sliced the bread, and served the pasta. Riley and I sat side by side at the breakfast bar.

"Oh…" I moaned. "This is sooooo good." I took another bite of tortellini and moaned again.

Riley looked at me, one eyebrow arched. "You really enjoy your food, don't you?"

I nodded. "Of course. It's one of the great pleasures in life that you get to do three times a day. Well, I can see how you don't enjoy your food, what with your weird health habits and all."

He frowned. "Hey! I'm not that bad."

"Oh really? Are you saying you don't savor carrot sticks and low-fat salad dressing?"

"No. Not really." He looked at the Italian feast on his plate. "You may be onto something there. But remember, I'm from California. I grew up eating like that."

"And I grew up here, eating meat with potatoes almost every night."

"That's a bit revolting," Riley said, biting his lower lip. He looked adorable doing that.

"Don't judge," I said as I got up to put the leftovers away. "You haven't been shying away from food here."

"I'm not totally reformed. Yet." He smiled and got up, went over to the sink, and started washing the dishes.

"What are you doing?" I asked, trying to keep my eyeballs from popping out of my head. Over the years, I'd imagined Riley doing many things, but this wasn't one of them.

"The dishes. I
can
do dishes, Wrath. Most people can."

"You are welcome to do them anytime," I said.

We finished cleaning up. I put a plate for Lana in the oven, and we went to the couch.

"I owe you an apology," I started

He frowned. "What for?"

"Lana. You were right about her being the target. I still have some doubts and questions, but they very obviously went after her."

Riley nodded. "I talked to Langley this morning about the whole thing. They alerted the Feds to the appearance of the FSB. I don't like your house being Ground Zero."

"Nothing we can do about that." I looked around my living room and thought that it might be in ruins before the night is out. I mean, maybe we could get lucky and they'd move on, but after seeing Lana dangling from that tree, I kind of doubted it.

"Is there any other place we could lure them to?" Riley asked.

I perked up. "That's a good idea. We walk out in broad daylight with Lana and a suitcase and maybe they'll follow us."

"Okay, so where? This is your turf, Wrath. I don't know my way around like you do."

I thought about this. Taking the fight elsewhere would mean innocent people wouldn't get hurt. It also meant we might be able to keep Rex and the police out of it. But would they fall for it? Would they take the bait?

And then I had it. I knew exactly where to go.

Riley looked at me, amused. "You have an idea."

I nodded. "I have an idea."

About half a mile out of town was an elementary school. It had been there since the 1930's (nothing screams Depression Era Architecture like a big, brick block.) and was slated to be demolished at the end of the summer. Normally it wouldn't be very convenient to have a school on the outskirts of town, but eighty years ago, a farmer gave some of his land to the city, and the city jumped on the freebie to replace a crumbling school in the center of town.

Kids attended there up until this past May, while they built a new school, ironically, on the land where the original school had been. As far as I knew, the school would be completely empty. And being outside of town—a skirmish there wouldn't attract undue attention. At least, not for a little while. Also, there'd be no innocent civilians to get in the way or to grab as human shields, and a hottie detective didn't live across the street.

Riley liked the plan. We decided to go about six p.m. That would give us a little time to prepare for them.

"And you know the building well?" Riley asked.

"I should. I went there from kindergarten to sixth grade." And I had. The only real differences might be educational décor, but the building would be the same essentially. I drew out a diagram for Riley.

"It's a big square," I said as I pointed to what actually looked like a trapezoid with wavy lines, because I can't draw worth a damn. "Classrooms are lined up along the outer walls, leaving one, square hallway that loops around a gym that sits right in the center of the building."

"How many ways into the gym?" Riley asked.

"Three," I indicated by drawing lines to indicate doorways. "One on each side opposite each other and one at the back where the kitchen is." Memories of pigs in a blanket and Tater Tots filled my head and reminded me that I was hungry. We needed to eat before we went to our shootout.

"Is the school only one story?" Riley looked a little concerned.

I shook my head with a smile. "No. It looks like it is only one story from the outside. But there's a basement, where the boiler is, and a hidden attic over the office. You can't see it from the outside. You wouldn't know it's even there until you're in the office, and only if you happen to open the principal's closet to see a trapdoor in the ceiling. It hasn't been used in years. That's where I think we should stash Lana."

"Not bad." Riley looked at the drawing. "Are there adjoining doors between classrooms?"

I nodded. "Yes. It's obvious, but it's still an advantage, for a few seconds really." Anyone could come barging through the hallway door into a classroom, but it would take a second for them to register that you'd gone out the adjoining door to the next room. When headed for a standoff with an unknown number of bad guys, every second would be an advantage, and you take what you can get in this line of work.

"We'll have to either get past the cop out front or give him a plausible story as to why we're leaving," I said.

"Since we want the FSB to see us leaving, we'll have to give the policeman an excuse. Otherwise he'll call it in, and then we'll have locals following us to a showdown they're not equipped for."

"I don't know," I said slowly. "Maybe we should rethink that. After all, their mission is to protect the public. Maybe we should involve them or the Feds."

Riley shook his head. "Absolutely not. The Agency doesn't want anyone else involved."

That kind of pissed me off. "But why? It doesn't make sense. Why just have two people take on who knows how many FSB? It's suicide."

"I think it's probably two or three FSB at most." Riley gave me his mind-control smile. I recognized it from when we worked together. That smile could get almost anything and had loosened the underwear of many an unsuspecting woman. "Do we really want to start an international incident between two governments?" he added.

I narrowed my eyes at him. This
was
how the CIA operated. Keep it simple, and keep it quiet. A full-scale high-noon shootout between a U.S. agency that wasn't supposed to operate on American soil and our former number one villain would make headlines the world over and cause endless government investigations. I'd already been involved in one such investigation, and Riley knew I didn't want to go through that again.

"We'd better get all of them, then. There's no margin for error if that's how we're going to play it out," I said.

Riley nodded. And that was the end of that.

We woke Lana up, and I made dinner (Sadly, I didn't have pigs in a blanket or Tater Tots.) while she showered and got dressed. We briefed her while we ate.

"But why hide me away?" she protested. "I'm an agent, like you. I can fight."

Riley shook his head. "No. You're the target, and I don't want to give them easy access. It's out of the question."

"Riley's right," I said. "If they found you, they'd shoot you and leave. I'd personally rather catch one of those bastards or take them out entirely."

"What about weapons?" Lana asked. "Only Riley has a gun."

She had me there. I didn't want to get too close to these guys when they'd have guns and I didn't. I looked at Riley meaningfully.

"Let me make a couple of calls," he said grudgingly. Apparently, he
did
have access to guns but didn't want to lose any favors just because
my
life was on the line. I wanted to punch him, but I didn't. Instead, I kicked him out the kitchen door to the garage with what I hoped was a
you'd better get more guns, or I'm taking yours
look.

"And the policeman out front?" Lana bit her lip. "What do we say to him?"

I thought about that for a moment. He wasn't going to buy just any line we gave him. And he might call Rex.

Riley came back in. "There'll be a black bag drop at the school by six."

I glared at him. "Really? You were going to make me use this?" I held up the nail gun and toyed with aiming it at his balls.

He smiled. "I just wanted to see if you could."

We didn't have time for this. "Give me your secret phone."

Riley's eyebrows rose. "I don't have a secret phone."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "Yes you do. You always have an untraceable blank cell phone." I aimed the nail gun at his groin. "And you have two seconds to give it to me before I shoot you."

"Fine." Riley sighed and reached into his bag and pulled out the phone. "What are you going to do with it?"

I held up my hand to tell him and Lana to shut up. Then I dialed.

A bored dispatcher answered. It's a small community with very little happening. I was counting on her not being busy.

I adopted a Southern accent. "Help! I'm at the grocery store on Main! There are two armed men here, and they're holding a bunch of people hostage!" I hung up and then went to the window.

It only took a few seconds before the black and white out front turned on its siren and roared off. There weren't that many police officers in this town. And for a holdup at a grocery store with hostages—well, they'd need every one of them. Excellent.

Riley and Lana applauded. (I deserved it, of course.) Then we got our stuff together and left the house.

Lana limped and moaned with great exaggeration all the way to the car. Loudly. Riley and I took our time throwing the bag in the back and getting into the car. As we pulled out in Riley's SUV, Lana crouched down on the back seat so whoever followed us wouldn't shoot her on the way there.

We got a few blocks before I spotted the tail. It was one huge guy in sunglasses, a black muscle shirt with a huge gold chain around his neck. He was crammed into a black Volkswagen Beetle. Rental cars are slim pickings in these parts.

"That him?" I asked.

Riley glanced in the rearview mirror and burst out laughing. "Yeah. That's him. I wish I could take a picture of him squeezed into that tiny car. It would be worth circulating to Interpol."

"It's only one. That's good," I said. And it was. It meant he had to go back and get the other guys. That bought us a little time.

I gave Riley directions to the outskirts of town, and he drove slowly, even taking a few unnecessary left turns just to confirm we had a shadow. The muscle-head in the Volkswagen never strayed from his position.

"They used to be better at that," I said, looking in the side mirror. "But I guess things change."

Riley answered, never taking his eyes off the road. "The end of the Cold War changed all that. Now they barely train them."

"Well," I said, "that's good for us."

We arrived at the school. There were several tractors around it, like they were thinking about working on the school but hadn't really gotten around to it just yet. Riley drove the perimeter to see if there were any construction workers, but we didn't see any. He parked the car in the back lot, and after putting on black latex gloves, we helped Lana get out. The black Beetle slowed to a stop and then roared off.

"Subtle," I murmured as I picked the padlock that held the chains to the door. Padlocks. I mean really. If you want to keep people out, you have to do better than padlocks. They're so easy to pick it's ridiculous. But then, the construction crew could never have foreseen a gunfight between CIA and FSB on the premises.

The lock and chains fell to the ground, and we entered the old school through a door that creaked loudly. Riley did a light jog around the hallway loop to get a lay of the land and to make sure there wasn't anyone inside. I must admit—he looked just as good jogging away from me as he did minutes later jogging up to me.

"All clear." He was holding a black satchel as he joined us. "Here are the guns."

Lana got a Browning High Power nine millimeter with two magazines. I got a Colt Gold Cup .45 with one extra mag. I stuffed it into the back of my shorts and led the two to the office.

Herbert Hoover Elementary looked like the kids had just left hours ago. There were trophies in the display case, children's artwork on the walls, and a huge composite photo of all the students and teachers. It seemed a little sad to wreck it all, but then, why did they leave this stuff?