Otto’s pistol was a standard U.S. military–issue 9-mm Beretta 92F that McGarvey had taught him how to use years ago. He checked the magazine and then made sure a round was in the chamber.
He left his darlings running but added a self-destruct code that would wipe everything out should anyone try to tamper. Rather than take the SIM card out of his phone, he left the phone on his desk. Somebody wanting to find him would think he was still in his office.
He checked the monitors in the corridor outside his office to the elevator, the elevator itself, and finally the parking garage.
No one was coming or going. Security was still extremely tight; Blankenship had placed the entire campus on all but a full-scale lockdown. Everyone’s comings or goings would be noticed and recorded.
He hesitated at the door. The trouble was he’d never been a field officer. He was a certifiable geek whose best friend in all the world was a gun-toting operator, a man who figured out things and killed people. The thing in Otto’s mind was that Mac was a hell of a lot more than just a shooter; he was understanding.
Stupid, actually, to define a friend with only one word. Mac was kind. He was gentle when he needed to be gentle—his wife and daughter had been just about his entire life, and when they had been assassinated, he’d grieved, but he hadn’t gone off the deep end, as so many men would have done.
He lifted people up, he helped those needing help, he told the truth no matter whose toes he stepped on doing it, and Otto had never known anyone who’d had more love for country than Mac.
People good or bad, countries good or bad—he understood and helped where it was needed. Like now.
Keeping the pistol at his side, the muzzle pointed away from his leg like Mac had taught him, he slipped out into the empty corridor and hurried down to the elevator. The car was on the basement level, and it took a seeming eternity for it to come up to three.
Otto stepped aside, out of the line of possible fire—again something Mac had taught him—as the door opened. But the car was empty.
His hand was shaking a little as he hit the P1 button.
It seemed to take another eternity for the door to close and the car to start down, and another eternity before it reached the executive parking level 1.
He flattened himself against the wall of the car and raised the pistol.
His Mercedes was parked three rows to the left, nose out from the wall.
The garage was mostly empty of cars. Nothing moved. There were no sounds.
Ducking out of the elevator, Otto swung the pistol left to right as he sprinted to his car. He switched gun hands so he could dig his car keys out of his pocket and jump in behind the wheel.
Mac had told him something else about situations like these. Something important, but his heart was beginning to race and he could think of nothing except getting the hell out and into the open air. The underground parking ramp had become claustrophobic.
As he reached the exit, the security scanner read the bar code on his windshield and raised the gate at the same moment he realized not only about how Mac’s wife and daughter had been assassinated with a car bomb but how Fabry had been killed by someone hiding in the backseat of his car.
He skidded to a halt, snatched the pistol from the passenger seat, jumped out of the car, and stepped back.
But if it had been a car bomb, it would have exploded the instant he’d switched on the ignition. And so far as he could tell, no one was in the backseat.
He moved back to the car and, holding his pistol at the ready, yanked open the rear door. For just an instant he didn’t know what he was seeing except for shadows cast by the streetlamp, until he realized it was his own shadow cast into the rear of the car, and he lowered the pistol at the same moment he released a pent-up breath.
The couple of times he’d been in a firefight, Mac had been at his side. And at home he would have the electronic security of the place, as well as Louise at his side. He only thanked his lucky stars they had sent Audie down to the Farm, where she would be safe.
* * *
Otto breezed through the checkpoint at the main gate, and on the long drive back to McLean, where he and Louise had moved a few days ago, he kept looking in his rearview mirror. There was other traffic on the road, none of it apparently following him. Nevertheless, he passed his normal exit off the Parkway and got off instead at Kirby Road, then took Old Dominion the back way to their main safe house.
He drove through town almost to where the road reached the Beltway, before he turned around and went home, reasonably sure no one had followed him.
Louise was at the kitchen door when Otto came into the garage. As soon as he got out of the car and she could see his face, she hit the button to close the service door. She was holding a compact Glock pistol.
“No one followed me,” he told her.
“How would you know?” she asked sharply.
“Mac taught me what to do.”
As soon as the door was closed, she pulled him inside the house with her free hand and threw her arms around his neck. “Christ, I was worried sick about you.”
“I know,” Otto said. After a moment he reached back, took the pistol out of her hand, and laid it on the kitchen counter. “I’d rather not get shot by my own wife.”
“Oh,” she said, flustered. “I tried to call you, but your phone just rang. So I called Mac, and he said he told you to get the hell out of there. Did you take a gun?”
“It’s on the passenger seat.”
“No trouble getting out?” she asked, searching his eyes.
“It was spooky, but no,” Otto said. “We have to button up this place right now.”
“I took care of it as soon as I talked to Mac. When I picked you up on the east camera, I opened the center front portal to let you in. It’s closed again. We’re good here.”
“For now,” Otto said. He went back to the car and got the Beretta.
Louise had made coffee, and she poured him a cup and got a package of Twinkies from the cabinet. “I couldn’t bring myself to buy whipping cream, but I thought you might need a lift.”
“Shit,” he said, and sat down at the counter. “I already had some at work.”
“About what I figured, but none here,” Louise said. “Mac didn’t tell me everything that’s going on, except that the killer wasn’t George but he was probably still on campus. He wants us to stay put until he and Pete get here.”
“And Alex,” Otto said. “He’s going to use her, and me, as bait.”
“Peachy,” Louise said without humor. It was an expression she’d picked up from Mac’s wife, Katy. “So, who’s the killer? What’s your best guess?”
“Could be anyone from Walt Page or Fred Atwell all the way down to Marty Bambridge or someone on his staff, or Len Lawrence and his staff.” Lawrence was the deputy director of intelligence.
“You’re not serious?”
“I am,” Otto said. Louise had poured a cup of coffee for herself, and Otto handed her one of the Twinkies, which she tried.
“Jesus, this shit tastes like fuel oil.”
He laughed. “And all the time you thought I liked them.”
Her pent-up tension suddenly released, and she laughed so hard, tears streamed from her eyes. She drank some coffee. “I bought another package.”
“They do sorta taste artificial.”
Louise put down her cup, suddenly stricken as if the worst news of her life had just come into her head. Otto got it immediately.
Her cell phone was on the counter. He phoned the duty officer at the Farm. “How’s everything down there this morning?”
“Mr. Rencke, just fine. Something I can do for you?”
“Just got back home, and we were missing our daughter.”
“She’ll probably sleep till nine or ten. Had a busy day out on the water. We were doing exfiltration drills, and Audie was on the observer boat. Time to bring her home?”
“Soon,” Otto said.
“She misses you guys like the devil, but we’re going to be sad to give her up.”