Reckless (42 page)

Favoring his leg, O’Toole started to climb the bridge. He made it up to the crossing platform as Hauck, ducking out from behind the train, reached the stairs. He started to go up himself, heart pounding, not knowing if O’Toole might suddenly appear above him and fire down at him or lie in wait at the top of the platform.

He glanced back toward the station. Where the hell were the police?

In the distance, sirens began to wail. Halfway up the metal steps Hauck spotted flashing lights arriving at the station. He sent off three shots into the air to draw their attention. In the heat of it he no longer knew how many he had used. O’Toole was heading to the other side of the tracks. There wasn’t time to wait for anyone to respond. Hauck hugged the railing, gun drawn, and started up the stairs.

O’Toole would have seen the same thing. Hauck searched for him through the trestles. No sight. Which didn’t give him the best of feelings. As he cautiously made his way up to the platform, he positioned himself behind a metal stanchion. Three muffled shots came back at him, all clanging loudly off the iron rails. Hauck pinned himself against them.

The last shot felt like a flame against Hauck’s gun hand.

The Sig flew out of his grasp.

It fell over the side of the railing onto the tracks.
He was unarmed
.

He now had about a second to make a decision, a decision that might mean his life: whether to jump and run for it. O’Toole was a trained shot, an ex-Ranger. It would leave Hauck in the open, even if he managed to make it to the gun. Or to stay. He heard a train’s horn blare loudly in the distance. His eyes fixed on the gun on the tracks. He realized he had nowhere to go.

“Step out,” O’Toole said to him.

Hauck remained glued against the stanchion. He caught a glimpse of the police back at the station starting to come his way.

“Step out here,
now,
” he heard O’Toole say.

Hauck’s only hope now seemed to be to stall for time.

Warily, he stepped up the last step to the platform and came out from behind the post.

O’Toole was standing there, teeth clenched, the damning tattoo peeking out from his jacket collar. Hauck had to hold himself back from charging at him like a bull and hurling both of them off the bridge.

“The police are here,” Hauck said. “You’re done. We know who it is you work for. Strike yourself a deal. Turn yourself in as a witness.” He looked into the man’s desperate, raw-boned face, glancing toward the station. “There’s no gain in killing me.”

“Other than that’s what I was sent to do.” The man’s dark eyes carried a resignation Hauck had seen before. It was the narrowing realization that there was nothing left to lose. “And I don’t let down.”

To the north, Hauck heard the train horn again, this time getting closer. His gaze turned and he saw the first reflected light of an advancing train.

A gust kicked up and O’Toole’s army cap blew off his head. He reached after it, but it fell beyond his grasp and went over the side. He smiled, sort of a futile, hopeless acknowledgment, and looked back at Hauck. “You know, I didn’t set out for it to be like this.”

“No one does.”

The police were still a long way off on the other side of the tracks. O’Toole took a step back on the platform, his only chance.

He said, “I served my country.” His gun was trained on Hauck’s chest. “But you probably know that, don’t you? I was a goddamn kid out of Oklahoma and they taught me how to use a gun and a knife. And I did it well. I don’t back down.”

Hauck met his eyes with equal intensity. “Nor do I.”

“Why?”
O’Toole winced from the wound in his leg. “What’s
your
stake in this anyway? You’re not even a cop anymore. The girl I know—but you, why do you even fucking care?”

“You killed someone…”

“I killed a lot of people.” O’Toole chortled.

A siren blared from the parking lot as cop cars streamed in. Now O’Toole’s only way out was to go through Hauck to the woods. “Sorry, man.” He pointed the weapon at his chest. Hauck stiffened. “You’re just one more.”

He never heard a shot.

All he saw was O’Toole’s legs begin to buckle and reach for his back.

The first shot slammed in between his shoulder blades, straightening him. The second hit him in the thigh, making him stagger backward. His foot caught only air and he slipped through an opening in the railing, lunged to right himself, his hand grasping the platform just as he was about to fall over the edge.

O’Toole’s gun toppled over the side.

Hauck looked down. He saw Naomi, on the tracks, her arms still steady and extended, her gun raised.

He reached down for O’Toole.

“Lift me up,” the man said. He was about to fall and was clinging to the railing.

The front lights of the oncoming train were approaching fast.

Hauck wrapped his hands around the man’s wrists and pulled against his weight.

“Come on,” O’Toole urged him. Hauck gazed into the struggling man’s eyes.

And then he stopped.

O’Toole just seemed to hang like a sack of wheat, trying to climb Hauck’s arm. His gaze flashed to the advancing train and he said, “I can bring people down. I know things you would want to know.”

“I already know what you know,” Hauck said. “You asked me why. And I said you killed someone…” He felt the rumble of the oncoming train. O’Toole’s face started to grow panicked, and he grasped Hauck’s arm more forcefully.

“I told you I killed a lot of people…”

“I heard you”—Hauck looked in his eyes—“but I only care about one.”

He dangled O’Toole over the tracks as the trestles started to rattle. “You shot her in the closet, with her daughter, back in Connecticut…”

“I was paid to do that. To make it look like a break-in.”

“Her name was April, you sonovabitch. And this is a promise I made to her.”

O’Toole’s face froze. His gaze shot to the train that was almost upon him. A sheen of understanding lit his eyes.

Hauck let him go.

He fell, a dead weight, bouncing onto the lead car of the train. There was a thud and the body simply fell off to the side and disappeared, dragged under the wheels as the Metroliner rumbled by.

Hauck watched, the bridge trestles shaking, and bowed his head. He didn’t feel anger or satisfaction, just resolution.
It was a promise I made to her.
He heard the massive train’s brakes hiss and watched it come to an abbreviated stop.

When he looked up again, Naomi was staring at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Hauck stood with her off to the side while the EMTs lifted O’Toole’s body. He pressed a damp cloth against the burn on his own arm. Naomi had her shoulder immobilized under her jacket in a makeshift splint, but she’d declined any further treatment. “I couldn’t hold him,” he said. “He slipped out of my grasp…”

“We could have used his testimony,” Naomi said.

Hauck shrugged. “We don’t need it.”

“What was it he said to you up there?”

“That it wasn’t always like this. That he served his country.” Hauck picked up O’Toole’s hat, from the 101st Airborne, from the track. “He asked why I was here. What was in all this for me.”

“And what did you answer?” Naomi asked. She looked up at him in the same direct way she had after O’Toole had slipped to the tracks.

“That I was in it for a friend,” Hauck said. He eyed her wound. “You ought to get that shoulder looked at. Take it from a pro.”

She shrugged. “The bullet’s gone clean through. Makes me seem tougher. Anyway, the day’s not over. We still have some work left to do.”

“Yeah, I guess we do.” He grinned. “Any chance we can go the rest of the way by car?”

Naomi smiled, looking at him, and started to head back along the tracks in the direction of the station.

“Hey,” Hauck called after her, “one more thing…”

Naomi turned, a hand over her eyes, squinting against the sun.

“I have a daughter.” He tossed O’Toole’s hat back on the tracks and caught up to her. “I bet right now she’d like to put her arms around you and thank you for a helluva shot. As would I.”

Naomi smiled. She turned and headed back along the tracks. “Told you I knew how to use this thing.”

CHAPTER NINETY

O
nly moments before, Thomas Keaton had stood behind the president on the White House lawn, outlining the details of the administration’s aggressive plan to brace the deteriorating economy.

His government car had just dropped him off at the guarded gate off Fifteenth Street behind the Treasury building, and he hurried through the marble three-story lobby where Alexander Hamilton, Salmon Chase, and Henry Morgenthau had all walked, followed by Mitch Hastings, his chief counsel, a group of House members expecting him upstairs.

Naomi stepped up. “Secretary Keaton…”

The Treasury head appeared caught by surprise. His gaze flashed to her arm, loosely hanging in a sling under her suit jacket. She stood, looking up at him, with a quiet but resolute stare that seemed to disarm him. “
Agent Blum…
I heard you were…”

“Heard I was
what,
sir,
detained
?”

“I heard you were
injured,
” he said, showing surprise. “But I’m relieved to see you’re okay. Come, walk me up to my office. I’ve just come from the president. I was told about Hassani. Dismal news…I’d like to hear your report.”

“This is Ty Hauck,” Naomi said. “I think you know his name.”

From against the wall, Hauck, his sport jacket ripped at the arm, came up to them. He stared into the shifting eyes of the white-haired government man who had come from years on Wall Street, where he had had a distinguished and lucrative career.

“Mr. Hauck.” Thomas Keaton extended his hand. “It’s great to finally meet you. You know Mitch Hastings. I’ve heard we owe you quite a debt of gratitude for what you’ve already done on this matter.” Hauck took his hand and stared into his eyes. The man seemed to flinch. “Walk with me. I’d like to hear what you both have to say.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Naomi said to him. “I was hoping we might spare you that and have that conversation here.”

The ruddy-complexioned, dark-suited Treasury man looked perplexed.
“Spare me?”
He glanced at Hastings.

“I’m afraid the secretary has an important meeting scheduled. There are House members who have carved out time from their schedules waiting for him there—”

“Which is why,” Naomi said, cutting him off, “it might be better if you heard what we had to say down here.”

An intransigence dug its way into Keaton’s jaw. Clearly, he wasn’t keen on being dictated to by an investigator. And one from his own staff.
“Alright…”
He stepped over to an isolated spot in the corner as people rushed by. “I’m listening, Agent Blum. Go on.”

Naomi cleared her throat. “You said you heard that Mr. Hassani was killed? Before we were able to pick him up.”

“I did. As I said,
tragic.
I also heard there was a lead on his killer.”

“There is a lead,” Naomi said. “But I don’t know if it would trouble you or not to know he’s dead too.”

“Trouble me…”
The treasury secretary narrowed his eyes sharply, the steely gaze of rank bearing down on her.

“It always bothered me,” Naomi said, “how Hassani always seemed to have a step on us. When it came to apprehending Thibault in Serbia. What we had learned about his past, things no one else could know. What happened in London…I shared my feeling that there was no one I felt I could trust. I came to you directly with what I knew.” She stared solidly into her boss’s eyes. “You must’ve thought I was one helluva fool, Mr. Secretary. And maybe I was.”

“Agent Blum…” Keaton was growing impatient. “I’m not sure where you’re going with all this, but I remind you, despite all your good efforts, the arc of where your career is headed is still very much in play here.”

“
My
career…” Naomi nodded thoughtfully. “My career isn’t where I would be thinking right now, sir. I was thinking more of yours. Al-Bashir told us it was so much larger than terrorism—larger than anything I could imagine. And it took me a while to put it all together. To even have the will to think it…”

“I’m very interested to hear where your mind is going,” Keaton said with a glance at Hastings, his dismissive tone beating down on her.

She said, “The past two presidential administrations have stripped most regulatory control out of the system. Am I right? Banks acting as investment houses, dealing in complex financial products even an MBA wouldn’t understand. Leveraged with debt at forty to one. The rating agencies all looking the other way…We had the whole teetering house of cards, the worldwide economy, all holding together just as long as the system continued to grow. As long as one last house could be sold, one last mortgage approved, right?”

The secretary looked at her.

“And then it didn’t,” Naomi said.

“I’m not sure I need the lesson in current events, Agent Blum.” Keaton glanced at his watch. “Mitch, maybe you could—”

“Stay,”
Naomi said, looking at Hastings. “I think you’ll find this interesting too. Suddenly China stopped rushing in to buy up our debt. Russia issued half a trillion dollars of notes built on future petro-rubles and the price of oil halved. The housing market dropped off a cliff. All you had to do was take a step back and see it—a train wreck about to take place. The real question wasn’t whether you could prevent it. It was
who,
in the end, would be saved? Separating the winners from the losers. Sort of a Darwinian thing, no? Except it wasn’t. You just rigged the deck.

“You put together the largest trove of stopgap funding the world had ever seen—almost a trillion dollars—and sold it as a bailout. A giant injection of liquidity to keep the economy in gear. When all it did was prop up the banks. Some were rescued; some were left to be swallowed up by the tsunami. Who decided? The ones that made the wrong bet—Wertheimer, Beeston, Lehman—they’re gone. While others got the brass ring. All you had to do was tip the balance just a little bit, if you could see it from high enough. To be one of the winners. Am I making any sense, sir?”