By the time Miguel caught up with us, Carmen had Fitzroy’s guard hogtied. We dragged him behind the neighbor’s hedge. I pounded my knee into his chest while she stuck her Glock up his nose. He held out for three seconds, then coughed up the tactical info we needed. Only one inside guard, and Mark never carried a gun. When we had what we needed, she darted him out of his misery.
We took our standard positions. Miguel covered my front door approach and Carmen covered the back.
The front door had two locks. Taking them apart would be too noisy. So I rang the doorbell.
The man who answered it had a balaclava in one hand that he’d just taken off, judging by his hair. One of my darts still dangled from it. His surprised reaction didn’t include an exclamation because Miguel, ten yards behind me, put a dart in his eye. The man keeled over.
A yard deeper in the foyer stood Mark Fitzroy—looking like he’d just peed his pants.
“Have you prepared for the Second Coming of Christ?” I asked.
Mark turned to run. I jumped over his man’s body and tackled him in the living room. Miguel was right behind me and shoved his muzzle in Mark’s face. The three of us stayed motionless while Carmen came in the back door and cleared the kitchen. She moved on to clear the other rooms, calling them out as she went. I stood in front of Mark without saying a word until I heard the final all-clear from Carmen.
“Why did your man shoot the Secretary?” I asked.
He shook his head, then let it sag to his chest.
I stuck my finger under his chin and brought his head up. “I don’t think you understand just how pissed off I am. Patterson’s going to kill your ex-girlfriend. I’m trying to save her, but you took out the guy who could’ve named the head honcho in this deal. I’m running out of time.” Punching him wouldn’t solve anything, so I waited for him to look up at me.
Screw it. I pounded him with a right cross.
Carmen and Miguel formed an intimidating triangle with Mark at the center. Mark fell over like a loser giving up the fight. I dragged him to his feet. He glanced at me, then away.
He said, “The cops will be here any minute.”
“I have nothing to hide,” I said. “Your guy tried to kill the Secretary and I apprehended him. The cops are going to thank me. You and your attorneys can work your way through the slow wheels of justice later. But what I need to know—right now—is who you’re working for.”
“I’m not working for—”
Miguel slammed his rifle butt into the man’s ribs.
“Every minute you lie to me Ms. Sabel comes closer to dying,” I said. “Breaking a few ribs won’t bother me in the least.”
He glanced up again and made eye contact. He tried to stare me down but lost his nerve.
Several car doors closed outside.
We froze. Cops would come in with flashing lights, FBI would announce themselves; neither of those things was happening. That meant we had hostiles in the driveway. I reached in Mark’s shirt pocket, pulled out his phone showing a live connection to ‘Grampa’ Fitzroy. Carmen and Miguel gave me a disappointed look that I deserved. But they’re pros, the rebuke lasted a split second. With a glance and a nod at each other, we communicated our exit strategy.
Miguel zipped plasticuffs around Mark’s ankles and tossed the guy over his shoulder. Carmen stood to the right of the front door and waited for my signal.
I yanked the door open and jumped behind it. From the front lawn, three weapons fired into the empty space where I’d stood a second earlier. Carmen reached her M4 around the doorframe and fired half her dart-magazine blindly into the street. I bolted into the dark with Miguel hot on our heels. Miguel fired three round bursts to the right, I fired to the left. Carmen ripped off a couple more as she brought up the rear.
Mark’s head bounced off the C-pillar when Miguel tossed him in the back. I fired a few more bursts to keep the new arrivals pinned down as Carmen started the Passat. I still had one foot on the ground when she peeled out. The killers ran to their cars and came after us.
“Ready to talk, Mark?” I asked as we slid around the first turn. “Your guys don’t stand a chance against us.”
Sirens screamed a few blocks away. That was good news. The police would be our salvation if we could get back to them before Mark’s people put rounds through our skulls. Carmen tried to find a route back to Mark’s crib while driving too fast to check the map.
Mark turned to the side window. Miguel grabbed him and pounded his forehead into the seat in front of him. “Who do you work for?”
Washington’s streets were laid out on a grid, but none of the suburbs were. Four right-hand turns in Tysons Corner was more likely to take you to West Virginia than around the block. Carmen swerved into, and back out of, a cul-de-sac, looking for a good route. Behind us, the killers’ headlights gained ground. Carmen found a cross-over to get us halfway back and turned the corner on two wheels.
The first car chasing us blew the turn, but the second came around and picked up speed. A man leaned out the window.
“Down!” I yelled.
Our front and back windows exploded. Carmen’s headrest spewed chunks of foam.
Miguel switched magazines to real bullets and popped back up. He fired three shots that hit their radiator and both headlights. They swerved into a parked car.
“What do you think of that, Mark?” I said over the wind-noise howling around us. “Your men are trying to kill you.”
He looked at me with pathetic eyes. Then it dawned on me.
“Those guys don’t work for you, do they?” I said. “Your grandfather has you running this operation—but he just ordered you killed when his men told him we were taking you to the cops. Wow. That’s gotta be awkward.”
“Hunter’s Chief of Staff,” Mark said.
I’m not the brightest guy in the world, it took me three seconds to process that one. “The President’s Chief of Staff, Ron Bose, is behind all this? Does the President know?”
“I have no idea. All I know is, when Ron Bose calls, I send the guys out. No questions.”
“They were going to kill the Secretary of State?”
“He was supposed to kill you both, make it look like a murder-suicide.”
Miguel looked at me. “I don’t get it. Why take such risks for a chief of staff?”
“Old Man Fitzroy’s looking past Colorado,” Carmen said. She glanced at Miguel in the mirror. “He wants the national franchise when the Feds legalize marijuana. Having the President in his pocket would land him some kind of sweet deal.”
Mark dropped down as another set of headlights closed in on us. It was the car that had missed the first turn. They found us and opened fire. Back in the warzone, I never cared about stray bullets. Back home was different. Civilians slept in the houses lining the streets. I couldn’t let a stray bullet from one of these assholes hurt an American. It was time to stop these clowns. I switched to a magazine of bullets, rose up and fired back, aiming for tires. We swept around a curve before I could hit anything significant. They came around the corner and opened up with weapons on full auto.
Real life is different from what you see on TV. When a bullet leaves the barrel of a gun, it’s traveling at supersonic velocity. It will penetrate sheet metal and glass without much deflection from the original course. When Mark ducked, one of the bullets went right through the trunk, through the seatback, through the stuffing, and into his skull.
“Hey,” Miguel said. “He’s still breathing. Where’s the nearest Emergency Room?”