Barry Eisler - Inside out

"Actually, no, there were a dozen things. The way they stopped. The way they approached. The way they used your name. And why wouldn't anyone have had the sense to tell us they were coming? You don't send in a B-team like that without a heads-up to the A. It's guaranteed to cause friendly fire."

"They knew me!"

He glanced at her. "Did you know them?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Then they didn't know you. They knew your name. I'm sure they had a photograph. The rest was artifice to help them get close."

"But how could you really know-"

"Look, I don't tell you how to dust for fingerprints, okay? So don't tell me how a couple operators get close to their targets before drilling them with head shots. If you'd waited a second longer for the proof you want, you'd be dead now."

"Then who were they?"

Ben shook his head. "I don't know. I'm starting to think they could be anyone. That's the problem with those damned tapes."

He thought. Could Hort have set him up? He still didn't trust him, not after Obsidian. But why would he? Hort was getting overruled back in Washington, and Ben was his only set of eyes and ears on the ground. What possible gain would there be for Hort?

Besides, if it had been Hort, why would that guy have used Paula's name and not Ben's? It was Ben they needed to lull more than Paula. He was the greater tactical threat. If Hort had sent them, he would have told them as much.

And it was more than that. So soon after the emotional whipsaw of Obsidian and Manila, Ben didn't want to believe it could have been Hort. Some things, he decided, just had to be determined by your gut. And his gut told him it wasn't Hort.

Which didn't answer the question of who it had been. Backup for the snatch teams? What would have been the point? And why would they have asked for Paula? CIA? FBI? He just didn't know.

About the only thing going well for them at the moment-beyond the welcome fact that they were still alive-was that it was getting dark and starting to rain. The cars on the highway were becoming indistinct, their headlights on, their wipers pumping. Still, a van was far from impossible to spot. Fourteen people shot to death in a quiet San Jose suburb, probably a dozen witnesses describing the vehicle leaving the scene, possibly noting that a white man and black woman had been inside it. An unusual combination, one the staff at the InterContinental might remember, even if they couldn't describe the faces of the man or woman in question. He knew he'd been careful about keeping his head down in the lobby and elevator of the hotel, where the cameras were. He hoped Paula had been, too.

He pulled off the highway into a strip mall full of cantinas and bodegas. "Where are we going?" Paula said.

"We need a vehicle change. Police will be looking for this van. I don't want to be driving it when they find it."

"I am the police," Paula said, shaking her head as though in disbelief.

"Not here, you're not. Not now."

He drove down the parking lot until he saw what he was looking for-an early nineties Ford Taurus. He pulled up next to it and stopped.

"Take the wheel," he said. "I'm going to hot-wire that Taurus, and you need to follow me when I've got it going. We don't want to leave the van right here for the police to find when they get a stolen-vehicle report. We'll leave it a couple miles away and then drive the Taurus."

Paula nodded meekly, and he wondered whether she was going into shock.

"You okay?"

She nodded again.

"You going to be sick? That's normal. It's okay." She shook her head. "I'm okay. I'm just… I've just never…"

"I know. We're going to get you someplace quiet. You can clean up. And we'll talk. Okay?"

She nodded again.

"Just follow me now. It won't be long."

He got out and was happy to find the car unlocked. Not exactly a model chop shops were salivating over. He could have broken a window easily enough, but someone driving with a window down in the rain is sufficiently abnormal to draw law enforcement attention. Unbroken was better.

He got in the car, closed the door behind him, slid the seat back as far as it went, and took out his tools: the SureFire mini-light; a key ring from which a number of handy items dangled, including two screwdriver bits, flat point and Phillips head; a Benchmade 9051SBK folding knife; a short strip of duct tape from around the mini-light. An old drill sergeant had once told him a soldier with thousand-mile-an-hour tape and a few other small items was a wonder to behold, and Ben had since found it to be true.

He got down under the steering wheel, holding the duct-tape-wrapped SureFire between his teeth, and used the Phillips head screwdriver to remove the steering wheel access cover. He found the primary power supply wire and the electrical circuit wire, used the Benchmade to strip about an inch of insulation off each, and twisted them together. He stripped a half inch of insulation off the ignition wire and touched it to the wires he'd connected a moment before. The engine kicked over. He pumped the gas pedal with his hand and the engine caught. He wrapped the duct tape around the connected primary power and electrical circuit wires, put his tools back in his pockets, sat up, and nodded to Paula. He turned on the headlights and pulled out, watching Paula follow in the rearview mirror.

This time he drove southeast, in case anyone had reported a green van fleeing west on the highway from the crime scene. Ten minutes later, he spotted another shopping mall from the road and pulled off the highway. Paula pulled in next to him. He left the engine running, got out, and opened the driver side of the van.

"We need to wipe it down," he said. "We might not get everything, but it's better than nothing."

There was a canister of bleach wipes in back intended for this very purpose. They spent a few minutes going over everything they'd touched. When they were done, they got out. They left everything unlocked, the driver-side door open, and the keys in the ignition. With luck, someone would steal it, contaminate it, and drive it far away.

"It's okay," Paula said, walking around to the driver side of the Taurus. "I can drive."

"I know you can. But you wouldn't be human if you weren't shaken up by what just happened, okay? And it's also human not to realize it until later."

"You're not shaken up?"

"I've seen this kind of thing before. You haven't. Come on, I'm not trying to give you a hard time. You can drive tomorrow if you want. Let me take over for now."

She looked at him as though trying to gauge his intent, then nodded and went around to the other side. They pulled away and Ben took out his phone.

Hort picked up on the first ring. "What happened?"

"Larison killed them. Showed up on a motorcycle and dropped all seven in front of the condo. They put a tranquilizer round in his neck, it didn't do shit. What is the guy, a vampire?"

"A tranquilizer… goddamn, he must have dosed himself with an antagonist. Damn."

"Plus five more in front of the office."

"I told them. I told them."

Ben heard only anger in Hort's voice. Nothing that indicated he'd known about the two guys in the brown sedan.

"I had the shot," Ben said. "I could have taken him out. Not in time to save anyone, but still."

"Your orders were only to observe. Technically, you weren't even supposed to be there."

"I did. I'm just… saying."

"I understand how you feel. But if you'd dropped him, the dead-man trigger would probably have published the tapes already. You did the right thing."

"I tried to get to the second team. I couldn't reach them in time."

"I'm sorry, son."

"There's something else. As we were pulling away from the office, a car pulled up. Brown sedan, I didn't get the make, not that it would matter. Two guys got out. Caucasian. American, from the accents. They knew Lanier's name. It was a hit."