Greg Rucka - Patriot acts

"Watch his hands," Alena told them.

They watched.

Alena cued the next clip, this time with Earle at a podium in front of a cluster of reporters.

"Again."

They watched again.

She cued and played the next three, and at the last said, "It's compulsive behavior, and entirely subconscious. He approaches the podium in each instance, he adjusts the microphone, and then he plants his hands on either side, as if to support himself. In every video where a podium has been present, Jason Earle does the same thing. Adjust and plant."

"We get him at a speaking engagement," I said. "We find the right venue, something where he's speaking after dinner, say, then we apply the stannous acetate to the podium just prior to his taking the stage. We dose the ridges on either side, where he plants his hands."

"He'll be introduced." Panno shook his head. "C'mon, Kodiak. He's the featured speaker, someone will stand there to introduce him first. What happens if whoever is doing the introducing puts his or her hands on those sides?"

"The way we'll fix the dose, it'll require contact with both hands," I said. "Ideally, we get him at a smaller function, something more intimate, where the introduction will be brief by necessity. If whoever does the introducing touches only one side, we should be okay. It's the combination of doses that'll do it."

Trent stared at the monitor on the laptop for several seconds.

"How long will it take?" he asked.

"Fifteen minutes, maybe longer," Alena said. "He will be well into his lecture when he goes into arrest."

"Will it hurt him?"

"It is a heart attack, Mr. Trent. You have suffered several yourself. What do you think?"

"I think it'll hurt like hell."

"That is what I think, as well."

"Good," Elliot Trent said, pleased. "When do you do it?"

I closed the laptop.

"We don't," I said. "There's no opportunity. You saw the schedule. He's not speaking in public, and as far as we can tell, he won't speak in public ever again if he thinks there's even a remote chance that Alena or I will try to hit him. We've seen four versions of his schedule, and they're all the same. Either he knows he's being targeted, or he suspects he is, but whichever the case, he's going out of his way to deny us any opportunity to hit him."

Trent didn't like that, shaking his head. "No. Dammit, no, not good enough. He doesn't live in the damn White House. You can take him at his home."

"According to your friend John, there, his home is now protected by the boys from Gorman-North," I said. "If you want us to hit the house with RPGs and automatic weapons, then maybe-maybe-we can make it happen. But not without collateral damage. And not without making it look like exactly what it will be, which is a goddamn hit."

"It's not an option," Panno said. "Needs to be clean."

"Then why did you show this to us?" Trent demanded, gesturing at the laptop. "You tell us what you need to do it, you tell us how you'll do it, and then you say you can't do it? What the hell is the point of that, Kodiak?"

"To show you it's possible-"

"You just said-"

"-just not possible at the present time."

Trent started to retort, then stopped himself.

"Do you understand what I'm telling you, Elliot?" I asked. "I'm telling you that we can get you what you want. We can kill the man responsible for Natalie's murder. I'm telling you that we can do it, and we can even get away with it. But not unless the situation changes. Not unless Jason Earle believes-absolutely, positively, and without question believes-that it's safe to emerge from his bunker. He has to believe that the threat Alena and I pose to him is gone. One way or another."

Trent's mouth worked, as if he were tasting each of the things he wanted to say before swallowing them instead of sharing them. Then he found something that didn't taste quite so bad.

"It's you and Drama he's afraid of," he said. "Natalie died because he was coming after you. He's afraid of you because he thinks you're threatening him."

"Yes," I said.

"And all of this bullshit he's pulled, it's for the same reason. Because he's afraid of the two of you."

"Yes."

"The son of a bitch is wrong. He should be afraid of me."

"That's what we were thinking," Alena said.

Trent closed his eyes, dropping into dark thoughts, and I was right there with him. Beside him, Panno was frowning, suspicious, as if sensing that suddenly Trent, Alena, and I were having an entirely different conversation from the one he'd been privy to.

"Then I'll kill him myself," Trent said, opening his eyes. "You two just tell me how."

"The same way your daughter would have done it, Mr. Trent," Alena told him. "With a rifle."

I woke early the next morning and found Trent already gone, and that Panno had presumably gone with him. There was no note, there was no message, but the two pictures that had formed the shrine to his family were missing. In the room Panno had been living out of on the ground floor I discovered a weapons bag tucked beneath the bed. Inside the bag were two pistols, both semiautos, a Colt and a Smith amp; Wesson. The Smith had been fitted to take a suppressor, and I wasn't surprised to find one waiting for me in the side pocket of the bag. I left them where they were and went out onto the front porch to do my yoga in the morning mist.

Alena joined me about fifteen minutes later, and since we were suddenly without baby-sitting, we decided to go for a run on the beach. We were back at the house ninety minutes later, and I made breakfast while Alena showered. We ate at the table, surrounded by our research and our notes.

"You want me to do it?" Alena asked me while we were doing the washing-up.

"No," I told her, and went to take my shower. The next morning Panno came back, driving a green Acura I'd never seen before. Alena and I were waiting for him at the door. He came onto the porch like he was preparing to slug me.

"Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel," Panno said. "Inner Harbor. Room fourteen-oh-four."

I held out my hand, and he dropped the car keys into my palm.

"You are a cold-blooded son of a bitch," he said.

"We both know someone colder," I told him.

Then I got in the green Acura and drove to Baltimore. I parked a couple blocks away from the hotel, then walked the rest of the distance. It didn't quite feel like spring yet in Maryland, and the wind off the water was cruel, and it made me wish I'd brought a watch cap or some other sort of cover for my naked scalp. I had the Smith tucked into my pants and the suppressor in my left pocket, and the metal of each conducted the cold. It was early evening, already dark, and there were plenty of people about, and I had to wait for a group of conventioneers to exit the lobby before I could make my way into the hotel.

It took a couple of seconds to find the elevator, and two minutes of waiting before a car came to carry me to the fourteenth floor. I rode up with three others, a very carefully prepared blonde in her mid-thirties and her two J. Crew-appointed children, the eldest of them perhaps ten years old. He accidentally stepped on his mother's foot as they followed me into the car.

"Dammit," she snarled at him. "It wouldn't kill you to apologize."

The boy looked at her with the same contempt she was directing his way, then backed against the wall of the car for a slouch. Without any sincerity whatsoever, he said, "Sorry."

Mom sniffed, and then the car came to a halt on the fourteenth floor, and as I was exiting I said to the mother, "You treat him like a monster, he'll become a monster."

I lost her response behind the closing doors. Trent let me into the room without a word, turning away as soon as I stepped inside, and I took the opportunity to pull the Do Not Disturb sign from where it was hanging on the knob and place it on the outside handle. Then I closed the door and followed after him, found him standing at the desk, pouring from a bottle of Maker's Mark. He added ice to the drink, using his fingers instead of the provided tongs, then offered the glass to me.