The Assassin (16 page)

“Yes, of course,” the driver muttered. He glanced down at the dash, where his name was prominently displayed, along with his license number. “I’m sorry. You had a question…?”

“When does your shift end?”

“It just began.” The driver swept a filthy sleeve over his damp face. “I have until six in the morning.”

He made it sound like a death sentence, an interminably long period of time. Vanderveen leaned forward, close enough to inhale the man’s rank odor. “Undoubtedly, there are things you’d rather be doing,” he murmured. “There are several good bars just north of the Pont Neuf. I’m sure you know them well.”

The driver hesitated, unsure of where this was going, unwilling to disagree. There was something about this passenger that frightened him more than the thought of another ten hours without a drink. The man’s observations were blatantly offensive; he knew he should say something to that effect, but he couldn’t quite summon up the courage to object.

“Grenet, I have a proposition for you.”

In the CP on Duke Street in Alexandria, the tension was mounting slowly but steadily. Most of the junior agents had been sent outside to keep the radio chatter audible, but dozens of tense conversations still clouded the air. As an outsider whose presence was barely tolerated, Ryan Kealey had been pushed to the back of the group, along with Jonathan Harper. Although he was clearly removed from the proceedings, Kealey didn’t mind in the least; he was fairly sure he wanted no part of what was about to happen.

From where he was standing, his view was limited to the shiny bald dome of Dennis Quinn, the D.C. SWAT commander. At this point, the man’s job was all but finished; once the teams crossed “phase line yellow,” the last point of cover and concealment, all commands from that point on would be relayed by the assault team leaders, the ranking men on the ground.

“Control, this is Alpha One. We’re in position, requesting permission to advance, over.”

All noise in the CP abruptly ceased. Quinn keyed his radio and said, “Alpha One, this is Control. I copy you five by five… Bravo One, what’s your status?”

A brief hiss of static, then, “Control, this is Bravo One. We’re ready to roll, over.”

“Roger that. Standby.”

Quinn ran an uncertain hand over his glistening scalp, then turned and scanned the crowd. “Schettini, where do we stand?”

The young woman broke off from her cell. “The techs are on channel nine, sir. Wilson’s running the show. He’s waiting to hear from you.”

Quinn punched in the appropriate frequency and repeated the question.

The disembodied voice came back right away, reedy and high. “We’re good to go, sir. Power is off the board.”

The SWAT commander confirmed the report, then switched channels once more. “Team leaders, this is Control. You are clear to advance.”

Kealey suddenly pictured ragged sections of chain-link fence being torn aside, the assaulters moving fast through the narrow gaps. As if reading his mind, the first of several black-clad men appeared on the first monitor, which provided a view of the west side of the warehouse.

“There they are,” someone murmured. Moments later, the second team appeared on the third screen, five men spaced in even intervals, cutting a straight path toward the target building.

The office was unusually large in comparison to the overall size of the building, enclosed by four-foot cement walls, which were topped by panes of glass. The exposed concrete of the west wall was lined by a pair of cheap wooden foldout tables, which bowed under the weight of six monitors and a computer tower. Pausing in the open doorway, Mason cursed under his breath as he studied the makeshift desks, which were strewn with heaps of paperwork and fast-food debris. The search for the keys could take some time, he knew. The office doubled as his living space and was littered with his personal effects. He’d purchased the building three months earlier through an Illinois-based holding company, which in turn was owned and managed by a half-dozen fictitious individuals.

Mason spent most of his waking hours inside the warehouse. It was one of the few places he felt comfortable, as he had no reason to doubt its security. Very few of his clients had the time or desire to track down his base of operations, and he had little cause to distrust them; after all, he was doing more for them than they could ever do in return.

Pushing a stack of paperwork off the desk, Mason began his search, then stopped when the overhead lights went off. He instantly looked up at the bank of monitors and froze in disbelief.

The FBI techs had done their job as instructed. The power to the building had been cut, but what the technicians hadn’t known — what no one knew — was that Mason’s security system was run by a PoE (Power over Ethernet) connection. The eyes of the system consisted of twelve IP cameras, all of which monitored the exterior of the building. The cameras were connected by Ethernet cable to a twelve-port midspan, which was similar in function to a server. The midspan, in turn, was linked to a switch, which ran directly to the tower. The computer was set to automatically switch to a backup battery in the event of a power disruption. The battery wouldn’t last more than a few minutes, as it was supporting too many end terminals, but it did provide a crucial window during which time the system would stay online. As Mason stared at the screens with escalating panic, another team moved in from the east, making its way to the second steel door.

Swearing viciously, he turned and took a few quick steps to his foldout cot, where he pulled back the coarse woolen blanket to reveal a Dell laptop computer and a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle. A 30-round magazine was already in place, the first round chambered. After grabbing two spare, fully loaded magazines, Mason ran out of the office and back to the stairwell.

Benjamin Tate, the lead assaulter on the team moving in from the west, was a wiry eight-year veteran who’d spent half his career serving on SWAT teams in numerous cities, including Houston, Atlanta, and New York. During that time he had served dozens of high-risk arrest warrants, many of which had involved this same type of tactical entry. But that was the smallest part of his job; he was also a fraud investigator with an MBA from Cornell and a heavy caseload. As such, he’d been among the first to suggest that the HRT take over in Alexandria. When his request had been shot down, however, he’d left it at that; over the course of his career with the Bureau, Tate had learned that you could make the suggestion once, but then, regardless of the result, you did as you were told. Complaining just wasn’t an option.

Reaching his destination, he crouched and motioned for his breacher to move forward. The other man began prepping the door with strips of Primacord, then inserted the detonator and stepped away. Moving back to the MSD — minimum safe distance — Tate keyed his mic and said, “Bravo, this is Alpha One. We are ready to breach, over.”

“Copy that, Alpha One. You have the lead, over.”

“Roger that.” Tate signaled his men, two of whom stepped forward, flash-bangs loose in their free hands, pins out. “Entry in five, four—”

Ronnie Powell had guessed something was wrong as soon as the lights cut out on the first floor, but he
knew
when he heard more than saw Mason’s form on the stairwell, unsteady feet on rickety steps. The other man was barely visible in the weak light streaming through the high windows.

“What’s happening?” Powell asked. Then he saw the outline of the G36, and his stomach balled into a knot. “Feds?”

Mason nodded sharply, throat constricted, unable to speak as he crossed the last few feet.

“
Shit.
” Powell was already reaching for one of the unsecured cases. “Where are they?”

“Both doors.” Mason pointed and managed to choke out the necessary words. “Two teams, five or six men each. Heavily armed.” This last part was wholly unnecessary. Powell had seen firsthand on numerous occasions how such assaults were carried out. In his experience, the government always brought two things to a federal raid: overwhelming force and firepower.

Barnes, the youngest of the three and the only one who’d never served time, seemed to catch on too late, but when Powell popped the latches and came up with an olive green tube, his mouth went slack. Backing up, he held up his hands and said, “No, no, we gotta talk to them—”

Mason didn’t hesitate; if the man wasn’t going to contribute, he would only be in the way. Lifting the G36 to his shoulder, he fired a single round, catching Barnes in the base of the throat. The younger man stumbled back over one of the cases and hit the floor hard, his head bouncing on the cement with a wet, sickening crack.

Mason looked to the man left standing. Ronnie Powell had the gaunt, strained features of a man who’d started life with little and had gone downhill from there, the kind of career criminal who could describe — in intricate detail — the accommodations offered by at least five state penitentiaries. They’d once discussed what they would do in this kind of situation and had reached an agreement of sorts. Neither was prepared to finish out his days in a concrete box. “You ready?”

Powell lifted the fiberglass-wrapped tube to his right shoulder, his face tight with resignation and resolve. “Yeah.”

“All units, this is Bravo One.
Compromise
. I repeat,
compromise
. We have gunfire inside the building, over.”

Tate immediately looked to his breacher, saw the other man grimace and nod quickly, then keyed his mic and said, “Roger, we’re going now—”

He was instantly cut off as the wall next to his men exploded outward, slinging concrete and the torn remains of four assaulters into the parking area, Tate included. The two surviving agents instinctively ran out to assist the fallen men and were promptly cut down by a hail of automatic fire.

In the CP, all eyes watched in disbelief as the bright flash appeared on the first monitor.

“What the hell was that?” Harrington shouted, inadvertently cutting off part of the next transmission.

“Bravo One! We have agents down! I repeat, we have—”

A second flash on the screen cut off the call, the blast engulfing most of the second team. Grainy black figures could be seen lying amidst the piles of rubble; the two members of Bravo left standing appeared to be running back toward the fence. The chaos seemed to bleed from the screens and into the room; everyone Kealey could see was moving and yelling. Despite the confusion, Dennis Quinn seemed remarkably composed as he tried to gain control of the situation, though he was having a hard time fighting his way through the frantic radio traffic.

“Snipers, Control. What do you got?”

The calls came back in rapid succession. “Control, Sierra One. No shot.”

“This is Sierra Two, no shot.”

“Sierra Three, no shot…”

A sudden movement caught Kealey’s eye, and he turned to see Samantha Crane pushing her way across the room. Harrington was yelling something after her, but she ignored him and kept running forward, stumbling once, then breaking free from the crowd. Flinging open the door, she banged her way down the iron stairs at a dangerous speed, Matt Foster close on her heels.

“Ryan, what are you—”

Kealey didn’t hear the rest as he pulled away from Harper and burst out of the building, hitting the street a moment later. Cars were screeching to a halt behind him on Columbia Street, which had not been closed to through traffic, as people jumped out of their vehicles to get a better look at the rising plume of smoke a block to the east. Turning left, Kealey saw Crane, 40 feet away and gaining ground, her hair streaming behind her in the westbound wind. She was sprinting toward the ongoing battle, Foster running a few feet behind. Screams behind him as shots rang out. Kealey moved after the agents, doing his best to close the distance.

What the hell is she doing?
The question kept pounding away at Kealey’s mind. None of it made sense, but one fact cut through the confusion: unless Mason had wired the doors in advance, he must have had access to some type of launcher, and Crane would be hard pressed to compete with the dinky 10mm clipped to her belt.

Of course, Kealey wasn’t faring any better himself in that department. He reached back under his coat, awkwardly because he was still running, and came up with his Beretta. Knowing what he was heading into, the weapon didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but it would have to do.

He kept running hard.

Inside the warehouse, Anthony Mason turned away from the ragged holes in the south wall, choking on the dust and smoke that the twin explosions had thrown into the air. He was completely focused, despite the small, intensely painful hole in his right thigh. Someone had gotten off a lucky shot, but that didn’t matter. He had done more damage than he would have thought possible, and it was all because the Bureau had jumped the gun before discovering what was stored inside the building: a total of 136 M136 man-portable launchers, four to a case.

Better known as the AT4, the shoulder-fired launcher had been readily adopted by the U.S. military in the mid-1980s, and for good reason: the weapon was light, easy to use, and devastatingly effective. The 84mm High Explosive (HE) round it fired was capable of penetrating 14 inches of armor or, as Mason had just discovered, more than 12 inches of reinforced cement. Although each launcher cost just $1,500 to produce, they could easily go for five times that amount on the international market. Although he had moved the AT4 before, this would have been his first sale of this particular weapon in more than two years. While he’d never complete the transaction, there was some satisfaction to be had in the fact that he’d been able to put the launchers to some good use.

Powell was already dead. He’d been standing too close to the south wall when he fired his launcher and was torn apart by the resulting shrapnel. Dropping his own empty tube to the ground, Mason touched the grip of the G36, which was still slung across his chest, then turned and started back up to the second floor, counting on the smoke and confusion to block the snipers’ line of sight. It was a reasonable assumption, as the front of the building was, in fact, partially obscured. When he reached the top of the stairwell, though, he was plainly visible through a south-facing window, and although he appeared for less than two seconds, that was all it took.