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“OK,” Turner said. “As it happens I’m headed to the Pentagon right now. Follow my car and we’ll talk in my office.”
“Ma’am, that could take twenty minutes. We need a decision right now.”
“You haven’t explained the problem yet.”
“I need to come in and show you some video.”
Turner paused another beat.
“OK,” she said. “Wait for the click and come on in.”
Chapter 23
Turner touched the screen icon for the front door and selected a drop-down menu. She hit unlock after five second delay and moved out toward the hallway. She angled herself against the frame of the kitchen door, center mass concealed, one eye exposed, one arm exposed. She raised her pistol and aimed it head-height at the door.
The lock clicked.
The door opened.
The guy stepped in.
Turner said, “Drop your weapon or I’ll shoot you in the face.”
The guy’s right arm was down by his side, angled back, holding something long behind his leg.
He said, “Whoa, ma’am, please take it easy. I don’t have a weapon.”
“I was made CO of G-99 Section. Do you think that happened by accident?”
No response.
“I’ll count to two,” Turner said. “One.”
The guy dropped his weapon. Not a pistol. It was a submachine gun. A Heckler and Koch MP5, fat and short and wicked, with an integrated suppressor. Eight hundred silent rounds a minute.
She said, “Kick it over here.”
He scooted it over the hardwood. It spun a single lazy rotation and came to rest more than halfway between them. Good enough, she thought.
The guy said, “Ma’am, I really am DIA. You saw my ID. We have things to discuss.”
“Like my problem in Summertown?”
“Exactly.”
“No one in the government knows I have a problem in Summertown. The Chief of Staff himself doesn’t know. It’s categorically impossible that DIA could know. Only the bad guys know about Summertown. You gave yourself away.”
No response.
She said, “Now turn around and get on your knees.”
He didn’t move.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to shoot you in the back. I don’t want blood on my landlord’s shiny new floor. I would lose my security deposit.”
The guy turned around and knelt, facing away. Turner stepped out of the kitchen and scooped up the MP5. A special forces weapon, for fighting house to house without waking up the neighborhood. Before busting into some fugitive’s bedroom and putting three rounds in his head. An assassin’s weapon.
She said, “Get up now.”
