Stick sat at his desk and Ruby sat on the couch, but Gannon kept pacing.
It was blazingly bright and steamy hot in the old government building office, and as he paced, Gannon began to sweat. He wiped at his brow, wondering if he should take his coat off. But he didn’t take it off. He didn’t know what the hell to do.
As he paced, the police radio in the corner behind Stick’s desk gave out a manic triple beep.
“Crowd control issue at location,” cried a fired-up cop at the scene.
“Clear the air,” said the female Hispanic dispatcher. “Sector units on the way.”
There was a radio break and another cop said, “Where are those buses? We got likelies, four of ’em.”
Gannon could still smell the cordite on his hands as he bit at a fingernail.
“En route, en route,” said the dispatcher. “Less than a block. To clarify, are the shooting victims police? Over.”
There was a beep followed by a screech of feedback.
“We’re waiting on that, Central,” said the cop.
Boy, are we ever, Gannon thought, wiping at his sweating face with his hand.
“They’re feds,” Stick said grimly as he got off his cell phone. “My guy on scene just pulled their IDs.”
Gannon finally sat down on Stick’s couch beside Ruby. He bent over and cupped his hands over his face for a moment then sat back, folding his arms.
“FBI?” Gannon said.
“Two were Department of Energy. One was DEA and one was ATF,” Stick said with a hushed tone of awe.
Just as he said this, Gannon glanced over at Ruby on the couch as she started to double over with a greenish look on her face.
He lunged and grabbed Stick’s wastepaper basket and whisked it under her just as she began to retch. He knelt down beside her, deftly keeping her hair out of the stream of it.
Can you blame her? Gannon thought, shaking his head.
He was feeling pretty damn sick about the situation himself.
“What the hell, Mick? Feds? Four feds? Four dead feds?” Stick said, folding his arms nervously.
“No,” Gannon said, turning toward him. “Aren’t you listening? They’re not feds. Or they’re dirty feds. Hell, screw it. I don’t give a shit who they work for. These folks, whoever they are, just blew a reporter’s fricking head off, an innocent American citizen’s head off, back at that hotel.
“They shot the room to pieces, man. It was a miracle we got out. Then they drew down on me on the street not five minutes ago, Stick. No ‘freeze.’ No ‘you’re under arrest.’ Just up comes an Escalade and out pops an assassin with a machine gun. I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s a lot of machine guns for one evening!”
Stick stared at him.
“You need to pick up on the theme here!” Gannon said. “These guys are trying to kill us.”
“Four dead feds,” Stick said quietly, shaking his head.
Gannon looked at him, looked through him, pacing now, trying to think.
How in the hell did they find us so fast? he wondered.
It was impossible. Pure dumb luck. Or had they tracked them on the subway somehow? That must have been it.
They can do that now? he thought. Surveillance and artificial intelligence is that good now? To track someone in real time through Manhattan?
Think about that later, Gannon thought. Now matters. What does it mean for us now?
He stopped pacing, his hands coming together as he closed his eyes.
It meant they knew they were in here.
He thought about Wheldon. The reporter’s brains staining the bad carpet.
He turned and looked at the pebbled-glass office door.
They would come in, he knew.
It didn’t matter that it was a precinct. All normal rules had been cast aside. The gates of hell had been unhinged over this.
They would actually come in.
A fire team was what? Four? There would be two of them. Eight!
He let out a breath.
Eight professionals. Eight elites with a whirlybird. Four would come from the top, four from the bottom. And they’d be in between, stuck in the middle to play the shit part in the shit sandwich.
He thought about the back way out, windows, but they could already be on them.
Then he hit on it. Pacing toward the door, he saw it across the bull pen, leaning up in a corner.
Plan C, he thought.
“Okay, listen up. I know what to do,” Gannon said, throwing open the door.