Chapter Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Eight
Two minutes earlier Zack Hightower unlocked the GMC Savana in the parking garage, climbed into the back, and took a quick inventory of the bags and cases stacked there.
Arnold had brought most of the equipment up to the hotel suite, but here in a cluster of padlocked boxes, Hightower knew he’d find what he was looking for.
He pulled one Pelican case free from a stack, knocking the others over, and jammed a key into the lock.
Zack grabbed one of the guns, checked to make sure there was a round in the chamber and the magazine was full, and then he put it to the side while he dressed in the ICE uniform. Once this was done, he put the pistol into the holster on his duty belt, then climbed up behind the wheel.
The van was frigid, but he didn’t turn over the engine. Instead, he just spoke into his earpiece.
“Night Train is in position.”
His left leg was stiff; he’d done more today physically tailing Ortega and hustling down here to get in the van than he’d done since he’d been shot. It wasn’t a sharp pain he was feeling; it was more like a body that needed to get used to work again, so he didn’t worry about it.
He did, however, worry a little about Hanley, and a little about the gun on his hip.
Hanley hadn’t wanted him armed in D.C. Both Travers and Court would be carrying micro compact pistols on their persons; in Court’s case it was a Glock 43, in Chris’s case a P365-XL, but until Zack returned to operational status, he wasn’t allowed to have a gun.
His trusty Staccato P4 was back at his apartment in Boulder, and since he didn’t know what the fuck was going on tonight here around the home of Irene Ortega, he’d simply helped himself to one of the G19 pistols the assets had on hand in case they needed to dress themselves to look like ICE agents.
Zack’s first choice would not have been the Glock 19, but it was uber reliable, and it was also the new duty gun of ICE, so it did fit his outfit.
He smiled a little to himself now, realizing this had been Court’s plan all along.
Court had known there were guns in the van, and he knew that Hightower knew.
By ordering him to haul ass down here to serve as some sort of potential wheel man, Court hadn’t been demoting him, he was surreptitiously telling him to go arm himself and get ready.
Court had put Zack in the operation that Hanley had excluded him from.
Now he just sat here in the low light, focusing on any voices in his headset, listening for action or inaction, whatever the case might be.
—
Spiral went directly past the elevators to the stairs, and he began climbing.
He’d gone less than one floor when a call came through his earpiece.
“Uhh…Spiral, this is Three on the east side. I have one male subject entering the Carriage House loading dock off New Hampshire. He disappeared inside. He wasn’t wearing a hotel uniform, but he looked like he did have a tool belt on. ”
“Did he have a coat on?” Spiral asked as he kept climbing.
“Affirmative.”
“Might have had a uniform on under it. Where did he come from?”
There was a pause. “Unknown. Didn’t see him before he entered the property.”
Shit, Spiral thought. Some support.
“You see any new vehicles on the streets?”
“Negative. Just the one man. A lady with a dog returned to the Carriage House just before this.”
Spiral discounted both the lone man with the tool belt and the woman with a dog as any sort of threat. He was more worried about SWAT teams, government cars, massive surveillance operations. If there was a threat to him, it wasn’t going to present itself as a lone wolf.
He continued past the third-floor landing, still heading up to the eighth floor. The coke coursing through him now felt good; it made him sharper, stronger, more aggressive.
This job was going to go down quickly and cleanly, he could feel it in his bones.
—
Court had spent some of the day in and around the Carriage House Condominium building, plus he’d studied blueprints of the other buildings composing the entire block: a couple of restaurants and the massive Ritz-Carlton hotel.
He knew his way around the area: the parking garages, the stairwells, the back employee-only entrances.
As he walked through the darkness of the covered tunnel-like area, he climbed a stairwell entrance to the loading dock of the Ritz, the building connected to the Carriage House.
He had taken a look at the lock to the door there earlier in the day and determined he’d need about thirty seconds to pick it if he wanted access to the hotel next to the condo building.
He could even take a back staircase in the Ritz that could put him near a hotel suite with a balcony right next door to Irene’s condo.
But he did not move for now. He just positioned himself in a dark corner in the loading area tunnel, out of the dull lights here and there in the cavernous space, and just behind a steel support beam. He watched the Ford Expedition across the street, and he called Travers.
“Teddy? Report status?”
“I’m twenty-five yards from the Audi. I’m at their six o’clock, they don’t see me. I think I tally two pax in this vic, but I’ll have to get closer to be sure.”
Hanley’s disembodied voice came over both men’s earpieces—“Hold position, all call signs”—and Court and Travers both acknowledged.
Court kept himself hidden in the dark, his eyes back out towards the street and the SUV parked there.
—
Seven miles to the northeast, a forty-seven-year-old Northern Irishman stood over a thirty-three-year-old American, watching dispassionately as the man on the pavement took his last agonizing breath.
Campbell Coyle was in Hyattsville, Maryland; the victim had come out of a brewpub at eleven p.m., ordered an Uber on his phone, and then lit a cigarette as he waited there on the sidewalk.
The dossier on the iPad that Mike had given Coyle earlier in the evening said his target here in Maryland had military experience but no relevant tradecraft experience, and he worked for the National Security Agency.
Other than that, Coyle had no idea why his employer wanted the man dead, and he absolutely did not care.
Coyle had stepped up behind the man as he waited alone outside the bar, a mask pulled down over his face, and then he dragged a four-inch knife across the victim’s throat from behind.
The target fell, blood gurgling out of him as he struggled to breathe, and Coyle stood there for ten seconds, making sure the wound was absolutely fatal, taking neither pleasure nor pain from the act.
This man—his name was Miles Jorgensen—was a means to an end.
Coyle wasn’t in the United States for him, but killing him would get him closer to what he was here for.
Coyle pulled out his phone as he sheathed his knife; he looked up and down the street and saw no one else around. He took a photo, then turned, slipped the phone back into his pocket, and walked off through the frozen night.
A few moments later Campbell Coyle found himself on Gallatin Street, heading towards a dark blue Jeep Cherokee that idled there in the dark.
He climbed into the backseat and sat down next to Nolan Walsh and just behind Jack Donnelly, who sat behind the wheel.
Alfie Donnelly rode shotgun; he held a Glock pistol down between his knees, his eyes scanning left and right.
“Wind yer neck in, mate,” Coyle said. “Jackie, drive. Calm and cool. Everything’s just grand.”
The big vehicle began to move, and Coyle pulled out his phone. He sent a Signal text directly to Mike.
Hyattsville job sorted. Standing by for requested information.
With the text he sent the photo of the body; the Cherokee drove through a residential neighborhood, and Jack Donnelly kept within the speed limits.
Behind them, a Volkswagen Passat remained parked a moment, while the two other men from the Boston-based crime group made sure no one was following Coyle away from the scene.
A minute later, the Northern Irishman received a message on Signal.
4008 Meeting House Road, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Home address of M. Hanley. Lives alone. No employer info at this time.
Seconds later, a new text arrived, telling Coyle he needed to get to Baltimore to execute his second operation, killing a man who worked for the NSA. After that was a job in Chicago that needed to happen in quick succession, lest the intended targets go to ground.
They pulled into a parking lot just before a highway ramp; the Passat with Barry and Gavin Walsh pulled in behind them, having hung back a few blocks along the route to watch for followers.
All five Kearney men waited while Coyle looked at a map on his phone, and no one disturbed him.
Coyle had made it clear to all five loaned to him for this operation that he didn’t want friends, he wanted employees, and to the Walsh and Donnelly brothers’ credit, they kept their mouths shut for the most part.
Coyle climbed out of the back of the Cherokee and the five men stepped up to him. “All’s of you. Take the Jeep, start heading to Baltimore. I’ll send more information when I have it.”
“You’re not coming with us?” young Nolan asked.
Coyle shook his head. “I’m going to Virginia Beach.”
The Boston men looked at one another. “New target there?” Gavin asked.
“New target there, aye. You lot might have to sort out the one in Baltimore.”
Alfie Donnelly said, “If it’s as easy as this one, we’ll have it done by dawn.”
Coyle said, “You’ll manage, I’m sure. Know how to fashion a car bomb?”
Alfie shook his head.
Coyle just shrugged. “It’s dead easy. Call me when you’re on the road, I’ll talk you through it.”
After moving some bags and equipment between the vehicles, Coyle sat alone behind the wheel of the Passat and took a few seconds to get his head around the fact that he’d have to drive on the right side of the road, something he hadn’t done in years.
At eleven twenty p.m. the two vehicles headed off in different directions, leaving the distant sounds of police sirens behind.
—
Court Gentry watched the Ford Expedition idle across the street, maybe thirty yards away.
Still there was no movement around it, and he could make out no figures inside its tinted windows.
He hoped Travers could get a better look at the car he was checking out to give him more information, but in the end, it was not Chris Travers who came through with the crucial intelligence.
Over his earpiece he heard Jill’s voice; she was calm but nevertheless intense.
“This is Gumdrop. Subject who entered the Carriage House condominiums is sighted on the fourth floor at this time; he’s moving down the hallway, looks like he’s either heading to a unit here, or else to the stairs on the other side of the building.
Wait…” The pause was brief. “He’s pulled down his scarf, we’ve got his face now. ”
Hanley spoke from behind the binoculars on the tripod behind the balcony glass. “You running it?”
“Stand by. In the low light of that corridor it’s going to take a sec—” She stopped speaking suddenly, and when she spoke again, her voice had completely changed. “Oh…oh my gosh.”
“Tell me,” Hanley said calmly.
“Subject is…he is putting on a mask. A mask like the one from earlier today, but not the same mask.”
“Oh shit,” Hanley muttered as he looked over her shoulder.
“Still running his facial,” Jill said. “Wait. Okay, we got a hit. Identity is unknown, but his face is attached to contract killings in Europe. The Agency has code-named him. They’re calling him Deep Space.
” She added, “He’s an assassin. He’s currently sought for killing a German arms manufacturer last year, and he’s suspected of involvement in—”
Hanley said, “He was around when I was DDO. Did other jobs for the Russians. A thing in Rotterdam, another op in Iceland. We caught his face in our files, gave him a code name, but we don’t know shit about him.”
Court turned to the stairwell door to the Ritz-Carlton Residences behind him and began running for it. He interrupted Gumdrop. “We know he’s going for Irene. And we know he’ll get to her before I do!”
“What’s your plan?” Hanley demanded.
“I’m going to pick a lock, then get into the Ritz residences. I’ll have to take the stairs, get into a unit adjacent to her condo, get out to a balcony, and make my way over.”
“But…from the balcony? How do you do that?” Gumdrop asked.
“I’ll figure something out,” he said, his voice labored as he ran.
“How long is that going to take?” Hanley demanded.
“Five mikes, minimum.”
“You might have three.”
—
Hanley next spoke over the net to Travers. “Teddy, you reading?”
“Affirm.”
“You have a tag number on that Audi yet?”
“Got it.” Travers read the tag; Jill typed it into the farthest laptop on her left. “Running it.” Seconds later, she said, “It’s registered to a Gauntlet Group office in Maryland.”
“Of course it is.” Hanley sighed, then turned and looked away from the binos, back to Jill. “We need to buy Irene some time. Call her. Tell her to get somewhere safe, to hide, to…to whatever. Tell her help is on the way.”
“Yes, sir.” She grabbed her phone. “I can spoof any number. Make it look like it’s her work calling her.”
“Do that.” Hanley thought a moment. Said, “We have to slow Spiral down somehow.”
A new voice came over the team’s earpieces. It was Hightower. “I have an idea.”
Hanley started to protest. Hightower wasn’t officially operational, but he stopped himself because Hanley himself was fresh out of ideas.
Hightower said, “Teddy. Make contact with the driver of the Audi. Act like a cop or something, tell them to get out of the vehicle.”
“I don’t have my ICE uniform. It’s in your van.”
“You got a gun and you’ve got an attitude. Just do it. We need Deep Space to know that the people he has at ground level watching his back are getting jammed up. It might slow him down, or maybe even cause him to break off his attack.”
Zack Hightower then spoke to Court. “And Six?”
“Go for Six.”
“I’m heading for the Expedition, but you better be hauling ass. This plan of mine sucks, but it’s all I’ve got.”
“What are you gonna do, man?” Court asked.
Zack blew out a sigh, then said, “I’m about to do a full immigration check on what I expect to be a truckload of lily-white assholes.”
At the same time, Travers, Court, and Hanley all said, “What?”