Barry Eisler - The Detachment

“Four guys. They must have been Horton’s. Somehow they followed us, or anticipated us. They came up short. I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it.”

He didn’t say anything. He just looked over at the van. At his nieces.

“Sounds like your sister’s pretty smart,” I said. “She told me she borrowed the plates on the van from some random car in a suburban neighborhood. There must be tens of thousands of vans like hers in the D.C. area. She’s safe. No one can track her.”

He wiped the sweat off his forehead and ran his fingers back through his hair. “Jesus. I didn’t…Jesus.”

He went to the van and slid the side door closed, then got into the passenger seat. I walked over and he rolled the window down.

“Thanks,” I said. “To both of you.”

Yuki looked at me and I could have sworn she was almost smiling.

“I don’t want to know,” she said, shaking her head. Then she pointed at Kanezaki and said, “We’re even, Mister State Department.”

He nodded grimly. “You could say that.”

I wondered what the hell he’d done for her. Whatever it was, he’d called in his marker, and she’d paid it off.

Hopefully not at higher interest than she’d been expecting.

We stayed off the interstates on our way out of Maryland, heading northwest and crossing the Potomac at the Point of Rocks Bridge, far from the Beltway and Route 95, Dox driving while I rode shotgun. The sun was getting low in the sky, but there was still plenty of daylight left. I wanted it to get dark. I kept half-expecting a phalanx of police cars to swing into position behind us, lights on and sirens screaming. It didn’t make sense, of course, but then neither did those four guys at the Hilton. The only thing I was sure of was that the farther we got from the city, the better I’d feel.

We kept the radio on to see if there was any news about the hotel shooting. There was plenty, but it was confused and incomplete. Witnesses claiming to have heard gunshots; police cordoning off the hotel; the cops saying little other than that they were investigating a possible shooting. It might have been routine; it might have been Horton behind the scenes, leaning on the locals in the name of “national security,” and concealing the identities, and affiliations, of the dead men.

We talked about what had happened at the hotel, about what could have been the flaw in our security. If we couldn’t identify it, we had to assume it was still a problem, and the feeling of some hidden vulnerability that could undermine us at any time was maddening.

“You’re sure you weren’t followed,” I said as we drove.

“Hell, yes,” Dox said. “We did a solid detection run from the airport. Multiple cab changes, a subway ride, you know the drill. No one could have been on us without our knowing.”

I fought the urge to remind him that he shouldn’t have been using the airport itself. But I recognized the impulse as driven by an urge to lash out, not by anything possibly productive. Besides, even if they should have steered clear of the airport to start with, if they weren’t followed, they weren’t followed.

“You said you went to a gun show,” I said. “What about that?”

“We did a run after that, too. One hundred percent clean.”

“What about-”

“The hotel, right? Made the reservation from a gas station payphone in Merrifield, Virginia. After I was already for damn sure we were clean.”

“All right, what about-”

“Our cell phones were off the whole time. Larison double checked us. That boy’s as paranoid as you.”

I considered. “You think he or Treven could have tipped Horton off?”

“Hard to say. Maybe the hotel shooters were supposed to drop just us, not the two of them. If so, though, somebody didn’t get the memo, ’cause Larison and Treven shot the shit out of all four of them. You saw it, too.”

I nodded, frustrated and angry. Being tracked when you think you’re untrackable is one of the worst, most vulnerable feelings there are.

“Know what I think?” Dox said.

“Tell me.”

“I think we’re entering an age where freelancers like you and me are going to have to consider the attractions of retirement. I mean, there are just too many ways the opposition can get a handle on us now. Video cameras everywhere, surveillance drones being deployed over American cities, the NSA spying domestically, the government and all the Internet and telecom companies working together, satellites and supercomputers crunching all that data…I just think we’re in a world now where, if the man wants to find you, you’re going to get found. Which means you either work for the man, or you don’t work at all.”

I didn’t answer. Maybe he was right. Maybe things had reached a point where there was no room for men like us anymore. Maybe we’d become vestiges, anachronisms, cogs on one last circuit within a machine that no longer had any use for us, a machine that was preparing to snap us off and spit us out so it could grind along even more senselessly and relentlessly than it ever had before.

Outside Culpeper, as it was finally beginning to get dark, we pulled over at a gas station to fuel up and use the bathroom. Treven and Larison were soaked with sweat but they volunteered to spend a little more time in back because they were already used to it. I briefed them about the radio reports, but there wasn’t much to tell. There was a brief discussion about who should pick up provisions. Treven had green eyes, Larison had that danger aura, and I was Asian. And Treven and Larison both looked like they’d just emerged from a steam room. That left Dox as the least noticeable, and least memorable, of the four of us. He bought a road atlas, a lot of bottled water, and some granola bars, and we headed back out into the slowly cooling night.

We kept moving south, the radio nothing but anodyne local news and traffic reports. Then the announcer’s voice became suddenly alive and urgent.

“We have a developing situation,” he said. “Reports of an attack on the White House. A suicide bombing.”

“Jesus Christ almighty,” Dox said, reaching for the volume.

The announcer said, “Police and paramedics are arriving at the scene. We have reports of horrific injuries. As far as we know, no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. It’s not clear whether the president is even in the White House at this time.”

“What the hell are they talking about?” I said. “That place is a fortress. A suicide bombing? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe another airplane?”

“They would have said as much.”

He glanced at me, his face grim, then back to the road. “Whatever it is, it looks like we cleared the way for it. Damn. Goddamn. Should we stop and let Larison and Treven know?”

“No, keep driving. This was supposed to happen while we were in the city, you get that? It’s sealed off now. I’ll bet they’ve got National Guard units stopping traffic on the Beltway, everything. I want to put as much distance as possible between us and whatever’s going on back in Washington.”

I told myself it wasn’t our fault. But Dox’s words kept echoing in my mind.

Whatever it is, it looks like we cleared the way for it.

We drove on, listening. There was nothing new, mostly repeats of what had already been said, in tones alternating between hysteria and ecstasy. Gradually, a little clarity emerged. It wasn’t an attack on the White House itself, but on one of the guard posts outside. Still, it was a huge explosion. There were scores of civilian casualties, and a section of the iron-barred fence that protected the property had been destroyed. Apparently the president was all right. He was in the White House, and was going to address the nation at nine o’clock.