Jeffery Deaver - Edge

The girl said suddenly, “You’re going to get arrested. All of you. Or shot.” Amanda Kessler was not, unlike the others, whispering. Her voice was strident.

The man with the coffee glanced at her but said nothing.

Neither did anybody else.

“My father’s a policeman.”

“We know,” came another voice.

But Loving shushed him. “Chat’s inefficient. Be quiet.”

I glanced at Pogue. From his pocket he withdrew earplugs. I was familiar with them. They block out the high decibels and pitch of gunfire but allow human voices through. He handed a pair to me. I shoved them in. I took a deep breath and let fly the piece of glass, which landed with a tink in the far corner of the room.

The hostile in view set down the coffee and drew his pistol. “Fuck was that?”

Two others appeared from below the balcony, one with a dark automatic in his hand, moving forward slowly.

That was three. We needed the fourth to make our plan work. Where was Loving?

Come on …

From directly underneath us, the lifter calmly ordered, “Call out front.”

As the three men in front of us looked around, one lifted a radio. “Jamie, what’s up? Is he here yet? We heard something inside.”

Receiving no response, he looked back uncertainly.

I let fly another bit of glass and it skidded across the floor.

Both of the armed men below us lifted their weapons.

“Shut the radio off,” Loving commanded.

And stepped into view.

We now had all four targets in front of us, bracketing Amanda. Loving and the man with the radio were to the right of her and the two armed captors on the left.

Pogue pointed to the two with the weapons and drew his finger over his throat, then to himself.

He was, after all, a professional killer and I was, in effect, the opposite. I prepared to shoot into the shoulder of the man on the right and Henry Loving.

I aimed. Pogue held up three fingers of his left hand and began counting down.

I trained my sights on Loving. The image in my mind was Abe Fallow.

Two…

It was then that Amanda gave a gasp and jerked back. “Oh, shit.” She screamed, “No!” She was staring down. The men crouched and separated and we momentarily lost our targets. One stepped back, just out of view.

Pogue and I froze.

The girl said, “A rat. There’s a rat under the chair! Get it away!”

“A-”

The captor nearest her muttered, “Fuck, scared the shit out of me.” He stood and stepped forward, close to Amanda, looking under the chair.

Pogue and I started to aim once more.

Which was when the girl’s bound hands lifted the bear purse to her mouth. She unzipped it with her teeth and manage to pull out a small black canister. She aimed awkwardly but fired a stream of orange pepper spray directly into the startled face of her captor. From two feet away it shot straight into his eyes. He screamed and dropped his gun, which Amanda dove for. The man beside him swung his gun toward her.

Loving shouted, “No!”

Pogue and I simultaneously shot the man who was about to fire at Amanda.

Henry Loving knew instantly what had happened and, as we turned our guns toward him and the others, he swept his arm into the lamps, which shattered on the floor, plunging the room into darkness. The only illumination now was the ruddy glow from the three exit signs.

Pogue and I stared down into the murky scene, where I had a vague image of Amanda scrabbling away from the men into the obstacle course of the room.

Then, beneath me, I heard the whispers of the three remaining captors as they planned their strategy.

NOW IT DIDN’T matter if there was a mole in Freddy’s office or not, since Loving knew about our presence. So I hit SEND, transmitting the text I’d prepared earlier. It gave Freddy a brief explanation and an urgent request for backup. I told him too that the primary was en route, so to set up roadblocks around the facility.

Amanda’s heroics had guaranteed that we now needed all the help we could get.

Eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, we made our way down the stairway to the floor of the control room. I saw a dim form but whether it was a shadow or a silhouette, I didn’t know. I aimed but was well aware it might be Amanda and waited for a clear image.

I never got one. He, or she, disappeared.

I heard hard breathing and faint groans from the man Amanda had sprayed. “Fuck, that hurts… Okay, okay. I can see. I’ve got my weapon. Who the fuck’s here?”

From somewhere, not that far away, Loving hissed for their silence.

Where was Amanda?

A moment later I heard more whispering.

Loving was playing a Bayesian game now, one modeled on imperfect information. He wouldn’t know whom he was up against. How many we were, who we were, what our agenda was. But he’d be making instantaneous adjustments in assessing the probability of what his enemy would do.

He’d think there might be just one adversary here-he wouldn’t have heard the second shot, from Pogue’s silenced weapon. He knew that the attacker had eliminated the guard out front. He knew that the opponent was willing to fire without surrender demands. Another bit of information was that to distract them we’d flung glass into the corner of the control room, meaning this was a very limited operation, with no SWAT backup. Had the Bureau’s hostage rescue team been on hand, this place would have been lit up like Times Square.

Loving would be thinking he and his men outnumbered the opponents and that they still had some time. Enough to find the girl and escape.

A piercing scream filled the black space. Amanda. She was near me. I could hear the sounds of a struggle. Then a loud clank and a man shouted in pain, “Need some help. She got me with that fucking spray shit. I’m in the northwest corner-”

“Quiet,” Loving shouted, as Pogue and I separated instinctively and moved fast in that direction. I fired covering shots high.

The shadowy figure by the door lifted his gun and fired a round in my general direction. Pogue returned fire, a burst of three, and sent the man to the floor, though he wasn’t hit-not badly at least-since he continued to fire.

I tallied one dead, one or two hit by pepper spray.

“Fuck, she got away,” another voice called.

“We’re federal agents,” I called, “we’ve got teams outside too.”

Pogue shouted, “We know there are three of you. I want all three with hands up standing in the light of the exit door. Do it now. Or we will engage you.”

Then Henry Loving spoke again: “Corte, you’re running a rogue operation. We won’t kill the girl. We just need some information. Back out.”

“Fuck you,” Amanda cried.

“Amanda!” I called. “Get on the floor. Lie down, wherever you are. Stay down, be quiet.”

This was greeted with several more shots in my direction.

“Stop the firing,” Loving said adamantly.

“Where are you?” Amanda cried.

“Just get on the floor. There are-”

A huge crack of explosion and I was rolling backward, blinded.

A flash-bang grenade.

Underestimated them, I thought. Even the earplugs didn’t save my hearing this time. Pogue too hadn’t expected the grenade and had been slammed into the desk hard. Still, he struggled to his knees again and looked for a target, though the flash had been so bright our vision was fuzzy.

We both scrabbled away from the place where one of the kidnappers had lobbed the nonlethal stun grenade. I was desperate to find Amanda but didn’t dare call again for fear of giving away my position; I could tell from their shadows they were moving in, flanking us.

It was then that I heard a noise behind me and spun around, as the attacker, only a few feet away, lunged forward, slamming me to the floor.