CHAPTER 88
Rowan Anderson’s apartment
Washington, DC
Rowan Anderson parked Elise Courville’s Peugeot in the handicapped spot in the lot at her apartment building. Between the diplomatic plates and her USSS credentialed parking pass on the dashboard, no eager-beaver DC cop was going to mess with her tonight.
She was almost sucked into a delightful fantasy of her future life in Morocco—enjoying her money under an assumed name as well as the non-extradition status offered to expats in the kingdom—when she saw the mark.
One wavy red line between the M and the L on the west side of the mailbox was the signal that he’d called a meeting.
Wearing a Glock on her hip loaded with seventeen Black Talon rounds would give her the confidence she needed to walk alone through DC’s Oak Hill Cemetery at that hour. She hid the explosives under her bed and put a fresh magazine in the Glock.
The protocol was simple. Make entry and move to the first marker.
Wait for exactly five minutes, then move to a second marker and wait for the same amount of time.
These two vantage points allowed him to ensure she was not followed.
After two minutes, she would move to a lone bench on the east side of the farthest gravesite and wait.
He would make his approach when he felt comfortable. Then he would kill her or he wouldn’t.
Anderson strained her eyes and ears for a sign of his presence. Her eyes never stopped scanning. She felt him before she heard him, sensed crosshairs or some infrared laser centered on her head.
“If your cover’s not blown by now, it will be soon,” he said in his lightly accented English.
“How do you know?” she whispered, thankful that he’d chosen to let her live. She could hear his security detail taking near-silent breaths.
“It is not your concern, Ms. Anderson. The mission has changed. Your new targets are in the folder, along with your exfiltration plan. Take care of this local business and I will get you to Paris on Saturday.”
She sucked in a deep breath as she contemplated his directions.
He stood abruptly and faced her. “You’ll have your chance to kill the president when I say so. But for now, we take care of loose ends. Don’t be a loose end, Ms. Anderson.”
She watched him casually walk away, feeling the invisible laser withdrawn from her head. She realized that she was still holding her breath.
Ming Yu made people do that.