Dan O'Shea - Penance

He had Cunningham on ice, drugged up and ready to play patsy just as soon as Weaver had a dead Fisher to swap him out for. With Clarke’s clout backing him up, he had a whole passel of counterintel gurus ginning up a back story. Paravola and his cronies had hacked into the right databases and planted the right seeds. Skeff Young was laying some breadcrumbs in front of some FBI contacts. The feebs in DC would feed that shit back to the taskforce guys in Chicago, the taskforce guys would leak it, and that would chase the press right into the net of bullshit that Paravola and company were laying out for them. Which would make the whole story their idea. Cunningham would be all teed up.

All Weaver needed was Fisher off the board and a dead Cunningham lying next to Fisher’s rifle. And he was twenty-four hours from pulling that off.

Lynch, Chen, and Ferguson were in the basement of Lynch’s mother’s house, their new base of operations. Not enough room at Lynch’s place. Also, Ferguson didn’t like the idea of being four floors up. Pointed out that, if Weaver ran them down, they’d want more than one way out.

Lynch had passed Wang’s card to Ferguson, and he and Chen had disappeared for a few hours. Now Chen was unpacking their toys. It looked to Lynch like she might be smiling.

“Four MP5s — two vanilla, two suppressed, all with folding stocks and laser sights,” Chen said.

“You’ll love these,” said Ferguson, tossing one of the submachine guns to Lynch. “Light, relatively concealable, great cyclic rate of fire, magazines swap easy. Really nice room broom.”

“Gee, you shouldn’t have,” said Lynch.

“For Ferguson, we have Parker Hale Model 85. 12x Leupold scope, reportedly tricked out in all those special ways you like by an ex-SAS master armorer,” said Chen.

Ferguson snatched the rifle off the table and worked the bolt. “Ah, come to papa, baby.”

Chen digging back into her toy chest. “Several Glocks for you gentlemen. A nice, efficient.32 for me. Sufficient ammunition for all. Flash bangs, night vision goggles, NOMEX suits, web gear, comm units, a couple of Claymores-”

“Claymores?” said Lynch. “You mean antipersonnel mines?”

“Front toward enemy,” said Ferguson. “A nice-shaped wad of C4, a few hundred ball bearings. Pop the trigger and you can even up some bad odds in a big hurry.”

“And we are going to use those where exactly?”

“Better to have them and not need them than need them and not have them,” said Ferguson.

“By which logic we should have a fighter jet and an A-bomb.”

“I am rated on the F-16,” said Chen. “But I don’t think even your Mr Wang has one of those in inventory.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” said Lynch, thinking to himself that he really needed a way to pull the plug on this which didn’t end up with everybody dead.

Weaver had seven shooters left after the Palmer House debacle, still should be enough. Had some new tech, too, that was going to help.

With Clarke backing his play, Weaver was able to shake a couple of radar-assisted anti-sniper units out of the DoD, new prototypes, next generation stuff a couple notches up the technical ladder from the Boomerang acoustic system the troops were using now, the one that triangulated sound waves to ID the point of origin for sniper fire. Boomerangs weren’t going to help much with Fisher. He was a tricky bastard. That back-from-the-window shit he’d been using muddied up the sound, and that would cause some trouble with an acoustic unit, that and he’d used a suppressor downstate. Boomerangs would only give him a general direction.

The new system added 3D laser radar to the mix — actually picked up the flight of the bullet, traced it back to the point of origin. With these puppies, as soon as Fisher took his shot, Weaver’s boys could put enough firepower on target to puree the son of a bitch. Scoop up Fisher, drop the black guy’s corpse in his place. The only problem was the units were new, prototypes on their way to Afghanistan for field-testing. He only had two to play with, so he had to make sure he had them in the right locations.

That solved one problem. The other problem was this. They were out of time. This thing had to go down tomorrow. Suppose this Manning chick’s been behaving herself, doesn’t feel the need to go to confession? Wouldn’t matter to Fisher. Fisher would wait. Weaver couldn’t. As of thirty minutes ago, though, Weaver was pretty sure he had that problem licked, too.

He flipped open the dossier from Langley, one of their few female paramilitary types, some hard-ass named Pat Brown. Manning was thirty-two, Brown was thirty-three. Manning was five-six, one hundred and twenty-two pounds. Brown was the same height, six pounds heavier, but it was all muscle, so she actually looked a shade smaller. Manning was kind of a dirty blonde, Brown’s hair was almost black, but they could fix that. But the face was the real home run. Not identical twin material, but close, and the bone structure was perfect. Give the hair-and-makeup guys an hour, no way you’d be able to tell them apart, not through a 12x scope, not at seven hundred meters.

So he’d have a team grab Manning tonight. This Manning, though, she was one of the lectors at the parish. Good chance Fisher’s done his recon, knew her voice. So they’d get Manning to record a confession. Snyder’d done background, had all the lingo for that down. Take the priest down in the morning, swap one of their guys in, have him do confessions. Have to get him a script. Have Brown lip-synch her way through whatever they get out of Manning for Fisher’s camera. Plus, a fake priest would give Weaver a back-up gun in the church, just in case.

Everything was falling into place. Even God was on his side. Weather was turning. Temperatures in the low forties tomorrow, pretty good wind coming in off the lake. So he could stuff Brown in one of Manning’s coats, put a hat on her, scarf, pretty much eliminate the possibility of anything that would tip off Fisher, queer the ID. With the coat on, Brown could even wear a vest. Not that a vest was likely to stop a rifle round, but the story Weaver had fed Brown was that they had Fisher’s hide scoped. Just need her to show herself so he’d step up to the window and they could take their shot. Who knows? Might work out that way. She might come out of this alive.

If it didn’t? Well, it’s not like Brown would be coming back at him over it.

Lynch left the house to pick up some pizza, flicked on the radio to WBBM to get the news just as a reporter started recapping a church sniper taskforce news conference.

“A taskforce spokesperson revealed today that an arrest is imminent in the Confessional Killings. Members of the taskforce have developed evidence linking the shootings of Helen Marslovak and Thomas Riordan to the police shootings of four black activists in 1971. The activists were part of a group called the AMN Commando, an offshoot of the Chicago Black Panthers that was formed after Black Panther leader Fred Hampton was killed in a police raid. Marslovak and Riordan are both related to persons tied to that raid. The taskforce believes that the current shootings are in revenge for the raid and is close to naming a suspect.”

They were teeing someone up to take the fall, which must mean they were ready to make their move. It was all going down tomorrow.

Lynch’s cell phone rang. Caller ID said Starshak.

“Hey, Captain.”

“Lynch, you heard from Cunningham at all?”

“Not since the wake.”

“Something stinks. Couple of feebs from the taskforce were just in my office, had some OPS puke with them. They tell me they need to talk to him. They tell me he’s gone missing. And when I start asking questions, they pretty much tell me to go fuck myself. Then I hear this news conference crap. I think they’re looking to pin the church shootings on him.”