Дэвид Балдаччи - Walk the Wire

“What the hell?” began Jamison.

They dropped to the floor and slid backward as automatic gunfire started up again.

A few moments later Decker crawled forward and peered through the crack in the doors. He watched as two of the men in black were gunned down. Three more rushed from around the rear of the barn and took up position behind the destroyed Hummer.

They fired into the distance and received return fire.

Decker pointed his gun out the crack, took aim, and shot one of the men in the back. He fell to the dirt. The other men turned and fired at the barn.

Decker slammed the door shut, and he and Jamison took up cover behind a thick bale of rotted hay. Multiple rounds ripped through the wooden doors and into the straw.

There was more gunfire, another detonation. Screams, more gunfire, shouts. And then, the sound of a vehicle starting up.

Decker and Jamison crawled forward in time to see the second Hummer racing back down the road. Soon, it had disappeared into the darkness.

Jamison looked at Decker and said breathlessly, “What the hell just happened?”

Before Decker could answer, the phone Robie had given him buzzed. He answered it.

Will Robie said, “You can come down now.”

Robie and Reel were in the front seats and Jamison and Decker in the rear of Reel’s SUV as they drove back to London. When Jamison and Decker had come out of the barn, they had been met by the pair along with a number of dead bodies.

Robie had introduced Jessica Reel to them. She had said nothing, only nodding curtly in their direction.

“How’d you know where we were?” asked Jamison.

Before Robie could answer, Decker held up the phone. “This has a tracking device.”

Robie nodded. “We followed you to your destination. Then saw the Hummers on the return trip. It was a close call.”

“I wish you didn’t have to keep saving my life,” said Decker quite frankly. “It’s getting a little bit hairy.”

“I can see that.”

“What did you find out with Purdy’s mother?” asked Reel as she steered the SUV.

“Ben Purdy was last there around ten months ago. The Air Force has been by looking for him a few times. No one else. We took some things from his room. They may be clues.” He held up the printed pages.

Robie took them and looked the pages over. “A bunch of different military installations. What do you think he was looking for?”

“Facts about something that was important to him.”

“You think this has to do with Vector taking over London AFS?” said Robie.

“If you asked me that yesterday I would have said maybe. But I don’t think Purdy was aware it was going to become a prison.”

“We thought you might have figured that out,” said Robie.

“Purdy was transferred out before any of that happened. He was upset about the transfer, his mother said, but he didn’t know the details of what was coming in to replace him and the others. Vector apparently wasn’t on the scene yet, and without them around there weren’t going to be any prisoners sent there.”

Jamison said, “So it seems clear that the time bomb Purdy mentioned doesn’t involve the prison.”

“Little town for so many big things to be happening,” commented Reel.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” remarked Jamison.

Robie said, “The guys we took care of back there looked just like the ones who tried to ambush me the other night.”

“We figured you were involved in all that,” said Decker.

Robie glanced at Reel. “But for my partner here, they would have had to send someone else to take my place.”

Reel said, “We all do our part.”

Robie continued, “They’re clearly mercenaries. And there are a shitload of them out for hire. Anyone with enough money can have their pick of some very serious people.”

“But again, why London, North Dakota, for all the attention?” said Jamison.

“Time bomb,” said Decker as he glanced down at the printed pages Robie had handed back to him. “And apparently these folks want to make damn sure it goes off.”

The knock came on Decker’s door about an hour after they got back to London.

Considering what had happened to them, Decker answered the door with his Glock in hand.

It was Robie. “Got a minute?” he asked.

They sat in two chairs facing each other. Robie looked grim.

“I take it you have bad news,” said Decker.

“They got to Beverly Purdy. She’s dead.”

Decker sat back and slowly absorbed this not-so-surprising news. What else could they do? They had no idea what Ben had told his mother, or him and Jamison. It was surprising that they hadn’t killed her before. But then there was a simple answer to that.

“So when we went there we signed her death warrant?” said Decker. “They obviously followed us out there.”

“I doubt it would have mattered,” said Robie. “She was a loose end. They would have gotten to her at some point.”

Decker stood and looked out the window into the darkness. “I’m a cop, Robie. And right now I feel like I’m in the middle of a James Bond film. I have no experience with shit like this.”

Robie didn’t respond right away, but when he did it was in a calm, judicious tone.

“The world hasn’t gotten safer over time, Decker. It’s just gotten more complicated. Humans are still in control and humans do bad things all the time. We had the Cold War with nukes, and now we have hot spots all over with people slaughtering other people and dictators rising up again because democracy seems stalemated and nothing gets done and people get fed up. But a dictator doesn’t need supporters , he just needs followers . And the best way to make people follow, at least in the eyes of guys like that, is to give them no choice in the matter.”

Decker sat back down. “Thanks for the geopolitical education, but it still doesn’t get us where we need to go.”

“Jessica Reel and I are here to help you. Our strengths are in protection, and in removing people in the most efficient way possible.”

“I’ve seen your handiwork.”

“Your strength is figuring things out. So any ideas? You said the prison thing is not the big deal here. And for what it’s worth, our boss agrees with you.”

“Does he have any ideas?” asked Decker.

“Not that he’s shared. But from what I could gather, he has a strategy about the prison issue that’s he’s going to pull the trigger on. We’ll let him handle that piece. You focus on the time bomb.”

Decker eyed him skeptically. “You’re not authorized to operate in this country.”

“So the law says.”

“Well, you seem to be operating okay.”

Robie rose. “You should get some sleep.”

“What I should do is start to figure this out.”

Blue Man sat in a leather chair at a prestigious club within a stone’s throw of the Capitol Building. Silent men in starched livery walked around carrying trays with expensive whiskeys and bowls of cheap nuts. The walls were paneled with luxurious wallpaper, and on them were hung portraits of old, grave men in suits. The carpet underfoot had several inches of give. The furnishings were old but originally expensive. Newspapers rustled alongside murmurings of educated, cultured voices and clinks of ice cubes in cocktail glasses as both business and government leaders made decisions that would have massive impact on millions of people, all without their knowledge or consent.

If one did not know better, it could have been 1920 rather than a century later.

Blue Man’s gaze roamed the room. He nodded to those he liked and respected, and also to those he loathed and distrusted, but to whom some level of acknowledgment was required. It certainly said something that he had been in this business so long that the latter group far outnumbered the former.