Dan O'Shea - Penance

Everybody nodded.

“So study the damn map. Get every location down cold.”

More nods.

“Now,” Ferguson said, “timing. How long is it going to take you to spot those radar units, Jenks?”

“Once they turn them on, less than a minute.”

“They likely to have them on ahead of time? Give us a chance to get sighted in early?”

Jenks shook his head. “These are prototypes. Run off a battery. And one of the bugs we’re trying to work out is the system has a tendency to lock up if you leave it running too long. They got the same intel we do. You gotta figure they’ll have eyes in the church. I figure they’ll spool em up once Manning gets in the confessional.”

“Should give you enough time,” Ferguson said. “So, once Fisher takes his shot, first thing we do is take out the radar units. You sure they gotta be outside?”

“Have to be. Just be sure to hit the damn thing. We’re gonna bump up the processor in the production models to get better speed, but right now, you got like half a second after you shoot before it spits out your location. If we take a shot at these and miss, all we’ll be doing is painting a big bull’s eye on our asses.”

“You hit yours, I’ll hit mine,” Ferguson said. “Figure there’s gonna be at least one shooter with each of the units, so we take them next. Your acoustic unit’s gonna give us a fix on Fisher?”

“Gonna get us real close. It will spit out a solution to my handheld.”

Ferguson stopped a minute, thinking. “Weaver’s gonna have an entry team ready to roll on Fisher’s location. Van, panel truck, something like that. They’ll have to pack Cunningham in — you figure one of our body boxes, Chen?”

“Most likely,” said Chen.

“Body box?” asked Lynch.

“Covert restraint device,” said Chen. “It looks like a standard shipping container. Inside, it has restraint attachments and a short-term oxygen supply. It’s soundproof.”

“Chen’ll know what to look for. They’ll have to have it on a dolly, so that’s one guy with his hands busy. Figure two, maybe three more. Flag’s up at this point. Whatever they do to Fisher after he fires, it’s not going to be quiet. They’ll be going in fast and hard.”

“You and Jenks take the stationary positions. Take out the radar units, take out Fisher if Weaver’s people don’t. Lynch and I will stay mobile. When they move with Cunningham, we’ll deal with them,” said Chen.

The group was silent for a minute. “Best we can do,” said Ferguson. “Gonna be a close thing.”

Everybody was in bed, Lynch in his old room. Same room he’d been in when he heard his mother screaming at the news of his father’s death. These shooters Weaver’d had trucked in that Ferguson kept talking about taking out. How much did they actually know? Probably thought this was a legit deal. Probably thought they were on the right side. At least some of them. And what about Manning? Just let her walk into a bullet? Fisher remembered his mother’s scream, the sound of it, like her soul ripping. Wondered what kids would be listening to what mothers tomorrow, learning that someone was never coming home? Been wondering that the last couple of days, asking himself how to stop it.

Lynch picked up his cell, called Wang.

“Pacific Rim Services,” answered a flat, accentless voice.

“I need to talk to Paddy Wang.”

“I’m afraid you must have the wrong number, sir.”

“No, I don’t. Get Wang. Tell him it’s the private face of power.”

Some dead air on the other end, then Wang.

“Young Lynch,” he said. “Calling about tomorrow, no doubt.”

Forty-five minutes later, Lynch was standing in the same office on the fifth floor of City Hall where Hastings Clarke had stood thirty-seven years earlier. And David Hurley III was looking out the same window his grandfather had.

“Grandpa hated that statue,” said Hurley.

“The Picasso?” Lynch said.

“Yeah. Called it the flying monkey, and a few other things. But my dad loved it, so I’m told.”

“Had to be hard not knowing him.”

“Let’s cut the shit, Lynch. My dad was a faggot. Only reason I’m even alive was he needed a beard and he could act straight enough to get her pregnant. And your dad found out. Now they’re both dead and here we are, better than forty years down the road, still trying to clean up the mess.”

“So let’s do that.”

“What I hear, it is all cleaned up, or close to it. What I hear, I don’t gotta worry. I got friends. What I hear, you’ve been losing yours.”

“You know what your friends are doing?”

“Don’t wanna know.”

“Sure you do. That’s why you’re talking to me, that and when Paddy Wang talks, your lips move. Your friends kidnapped a cop and are going to kill him and frame him for murder. Your friends are planning to sacrifice an innocent woman tomorrow just to help clean up your mess. Your friends think they’re the smartest guys in the room, that this is all gonna break your way. But here I am, twelve hours before game time, and I’m telling you isn’t. Your friends are going to be dead or up to their eyeballs in indictments by the end of the week. All this shit from 1971, it’s coming out. You can’t stop it. Your press guy is already getting the calls, and you’re sitting up here with your head up your ass. Your buddy the president is a dead man walking. I know it. More importantly, Wang knows it. Hell, Clarke probably even knows it. We are less than twenty-four hours from the biggest political scandal in this country’s history. You can be on one side of it or the other. We both know what you are, Hurley. You’re a cowardly piece of chicken shit like your grandfather. You’re always going to be that. But right now, you’ve got a chance to decide what you’re gonna look like, and that’s what you really care about.”

Hurley stood with his back to Lynch still looking out the window. Lynch expected a reaction, he got nothing.

“And what do you care about, Lynch?” Hurley asked.

“I care about ending this without being an accessory to murder.”

Still Hurley didn’t move. For a long time he didn’t speak.

Weaver sat at the table in the breakfast nook at the back of Manning’s first-floor condo with the three guys he’d picked for the entry team. Out the window, he could see the white cargo van. Cunningham was locked in the body box in the back, ready to go. Weaver didn’t know how far he could trust the shooters he’d shaken out of the president. He had the Israelis, a bunch of CIA paras, couple of contract guys. When they got their radar read, they’d shoot up Fisher’s hide. That’d feel like a straight-up job to most of these guys. But they had no idea how far out in the breeze the president had hung their asses, and Weaver did. If things got hinky, they’d have to blast their way out — and that would mean shooting cops, civilians, whoever got in the way. And the loaners, they weren’t going to play for those stakes.

But the entry team was his — long-time InterGov, and all of them with more than enough blood on their hands to know where they stood if things went south. When Fisher took his shot, Weaver was going with the entry team, to be with them personally to handle the dirty work with Cunningham. Besides, he wanted to see that fucking Fisher dead himself. So he was keeping these boys with him. If things got dirty, these boys would get dirty with it.

It had gone harder than they figured, getting the confession out of Manning, but they had it. He hadn’t iced her yet, had her drugged up, on the bed in the room toward the front. Too late to dispose of her now and still have time to clean up the mess. They’d pack her out after, take care of it then. If it came to it, they could use her as a hostage.