“Jim Pace has gotten us another lead. From Spiral’s mobile phone, he found the names of four other people he planned on killing. The document had an order to delete it once he read it, but Spiral never did. We’re hoping the enemy, whoever sent him the document, doesn’t know thatweknow his intended victims.”
“Who are his intended victims?”
“One of them, next on his list, is a current Gauntlet employee. A business jet pilot named David Rudder.”
“Has Gumdrop located him?”
“Not physically. He supposedly lives in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, but cameras there don’t show his vehicle in the parking lot of his building. He works at a Gauntlet office nearby when he’s not flying, but the dossier Spiral was given says he hasn’t shown up to work in the past two days.”
“Maybe he knows what Gauntlet is up to, doesn’t like it, and that’s why he’s on the kill list.”
“That’s my assumption. He’s been pilot in command on a pair of flights from Europe into the U.S. over the past two weeks. We can assume that if he’s involved with this mess with Gauntlet, then he’s been utilized to helpbring foreign assets into the U.S. He stopped showing up to work suddenly, Gauntlet realized they had a dangerous situation on their hands, so they’re deleting him from the equation.”
“But if we can’t find him, what do we do?”
“We don’t know where he is, but we know where he’s going to be. He has a meeting tomorrow in Georgetown, eleven thirty a.m. That’s where Spiral was going to hit him.”
Court said, “He won’t show.”
“He might. His meeting is with Catherine King.”
Court was astonished. “The national security reporter for theWashington Post?”
“Washington Post? No, she got laid off from thePostlast summer. Where the hell have you been?”
“Russia, mostly.”
“Yeah, right. Touché. Anyway, she’s writing a book about U.S. national security. She’s got sources all over town. She even reached out to me, multiple times, but of course I never got back with her.
“Rudder is meeting with her tomorrow, in public. I’m thinking he’s passing her information about those flights. We need to assume the enemy will task someone else, and they’ll be there at that time.”
“Wait,” Court said. “You want to use Cathy King as bait?”
Hanley shook his head. “She’s not a target, Six. If she were, then she would be there on Spiral’s dossier, right along with Rudder. She’ll be fine. We’ll go there, we’ll wrap up all the Gauntlet men following Rudder, and we’ll kill whatever assassin they send.”
“Who iswe? Zack with his bum leg, Travers with a neck wound. You going to give Jill a rocket launcher?”
“You have a fair point. Zack will be there; he did one hell of a job in Washington Circle, even with the leg. It’s just you and Zack as armed assets.” He hesitated. Said, “Unless you think Anthem could be utilized to—”
“Out of the question,” Court said. “I just saw her. Trust me. Her heart would be in the fight, but she’s weak, slow still. Six months in a fucking work gulag will deplete even the strongest—”
Hanley said, “Say no more. We’ll give Anthem more time to recover.You and Zack will be the only shooters, but Jill will be your overwatch, accessing cameras in the area.”
Court thought a moment. “If they send a single asset, like they’ve done on the other hits we know about, then they will probably employ interdiction and isolation crews again. We know they did that in Washington Circle; Gauntlet has thousands of gunslingers, so it’s likely their MO for the other ops.”
Hanley said, “So we need to identify whoever shows up for the Rudder meeting with Catherine King. PreferablybeforeRudder gets there.” He made a note of it on his phone. “I’ll move Jill into the area as soon as we get to D.C. Put her in a rental house there in Georgetown nearby; she can access camera feeds in the restaurant, on the street. I’ll have Arnold put a micro drone in the air with a camera.”
Court said, “Not good enough. Catherine is a friend; if I’m going to expose her like that, I want to know who’s there, ready to do her harm.”
“We don’t have resources to blanket the whole neighborhood.”
The younger man looked up. “You told me Arnold could get me just about anything I want.”
“Yeah, I did. I don’t know how he does it, but whenever I need something, he just—”
“I need a tow truck,” Court blurted out.
“A tow truck? Like—”
