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Duser noticed the concern in the Professor’s voice. “Don’t worry. It’s late. I’m sure he had to drive farther than we thought.”
“Is he carrying a phone?”
“Yes.”
“Well, call him on it.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.”
“How’s the girl?”
“She’s fine. She’s upstairs asleep.” A pair of headlights cut through the front windows. “Hold on a second. I think Polk is back.”
RAPP AND COLEMAN watched through the bushes as the car came down the driveway. It stopped in front of the other sedan, front bumper to front bumper. As soon as the headlights were doused, Rapp and Coleman moved. They stayed in a crouch and picked their way through the narrow path, stopping just short of Rapp’s side yard. Each dropping to a knee, they watched their Trojan horse grab the tray of coffee and bag of sandwiches and walk between the two sedans. A voice from the porch asked, “Where the hell have you been?”
“I got hung up. They had to brew a fresh pot of coffee.”
Dumond’s voice came over their headsets. “We have one person on the front porch. Make that two. Another guy just came out.”
Rapp whispered into his mike, “Let me know the second they start to enter the house.”
“They’re going in right now.”
Rapp and Coleman dropped to their bellies and crawled across the grass, keeping the sedan that was closest to the garage between them and the front porch. They stopped near the trunk of the car and waited. They could now hear the audio from inside the house. “Where’s the girl?”
“Upstairs asleep. What the fuck took you so long?”
Dumond’s voice came over the line. “We have two guys inside. One’s standing near our man in the kitchen. His gun is holstered, but he’s holding something in his hand. The second man is at the kitchen table.”
Rapp whispered, “Hackett, are you ready?”
“Roger.”
“Wait for my word.” Rapp looked at Coleman and nodded. Coleman gave him a thumbs up. Rapp sprang from behind the car and began sprinting across the driveway toward the front porch. The man was standing with his back toward the door facing the street. Rapp was coming at him from the man’s right side. He had his Beretta in his left hand and leveled it at the man’s head. The entire scene unfolded in slow motion for Rapp. As the man started to move, Rapp said, “Take him.”
The man sensed movement and started to turn toward Rapp. He had a machine pistol slung over his shoulder with one hand on the grip. He started to reach for the weapon with his other hand as his eyes made contact with Rapp. Rapp fired his weapon twice. Two bullets spat from the end of the silencer. The first bullet struck the sentry in the right eye and tore through his head. The second one hit him in the cheekbone an inch bellow the first shot. The sentry’s body was propelled backward, sending him over the railing and into a bush.
“Tango one down.” Rapp reached the porch just seconds later and put his hand on the doorknob. Coleman was there a step behind him. Over their headsets, Hackett’s voice said, “Tango two down.”
Rapp looked up to see Stroble coming across the lawn, and then he heard from inside the house, “What in the hell was that?” Rapp knew the noise they had just heard was the body of their comrade falling outside on the wood deck. Into his lip mike, he said, “Marcus, tell Dave to get down.” He didn’t do it out of concern for the man’s life. It was a matter of practicality. He wanted him out of his field of fire. Rapp twisted the knob and shoved the front door. He was in the house, moving to his left toward the kitchen, his gun extended. There would be no shouts or warnings. Rapp wasn’t a cop, he was a trained assassin. As he entered the kitchen, Dumond was saying something over the radio, but Rapp didn’t register it. All of his senses were focused on a man holding a cell phone in one hand and drawing his gun with the other.
Jeff Duser heard the noise outside and instinctively reached for his gun. A second later, he thought he heard the front door opening. He turned to look and grabbed for his Glock. As he was pulling the weapon from its holster, a dark-featured man came around the corner with a gun in his hand. Duser freed his weapon from the holster and frantically tried to bring it to bear on the stranger. As he did so, he muttered, “Who the fuck are you?”
Rapp fired once and kept moving. The bullet hit exactly where he intended it to—dead center, right between the man’s eyebrows. As he crossed the kitchen, he kept his gun aimed at the second man, who was standing by the back door. The guy made no effort to reach for his weapon as Rapp closed on him. He slowly brought his hands up. Rapp brought a finger to his lips and gestured with his gun for him to lie down on the floor. Rapp turned to Coleman and said, “Take care of him. I’m going upstairs.”
PETER CAMERON WAS sitting in the living room of his Georgetown apartment, eyes wide, clutching his digital phone to his ear. Something was wrong. He had been talking to Duser. Everything seemed fine, and then there were Duser’s first words of alarm, followed just a few seconds later by Duser saying, “Who the fuck are you?” Then came the loud crash that Cameron guessed was the phone on the other end dropping to the floor. Cameron squeezed his phone tightly as he strained to listen to what was going on.
There was some background noise, and then came an unmistakable voice. Upon hearing Rapp speak, Cameron became so unsettled he almost threw the phone across the room.
In a hushed and panicked voice, Cameron asked, “Jeff, are you there? For Christ’s sake, answer me.” Cameron listened for a while. He heard some other voices now, voices he didn’t recognize, and then some breathing. “Jeff, is that you? Answer me, dammit.” A moment after that, the line went dead.
Cameron stood and began frantically pacing his apartment. He scrambled to piece together what had just happened. How had it happened? How in the hell had Rapp figured out what was going on? Was it just luck? Did he just happen to go by his house to fetch something, or was he on to him? He couldn’t begin to think of what he would tell Clark. Was there any way Rapp could learn his real identity from Duser? Cameron felt confident there wasn’t, but then again, he had felt he had the upper hand against Rapp every step of the way, and the man kept proving him wrong. Cameron remembered the feeling of true fear he had had in the woods in Germany when he had attempted to follow Rapp. Cameron suddenly felt very unsafe in his apartment.
It might be time to lie low for a while, he thought. Cameron had a prearranged plan for this. He went into his bedroom and grabbed a suitcase from his closet. He tossed it onto the bed and started to fill it with essentials. His heart almost leaped from his chest when he heard his phone ring. Cameron raced from the bedroom and grabbed his mobile phone from the coffee table. He checked the readout before answering. It was Duser.
Cameron pushed the send button and said, “What in the hell happened?”
There was no reply for several seconds, and then, “I’m going to give you one more chance to live. Tell me who you work for right now, or I will hunt your fat, bearded ass down, and I will make sure you suffer a very slow and painful death. And don’t think for a minute that you can run from me. Wherever you go, I will find you.”
