Max Collins - Executive Order

She was near enough now to get something of a bead on him — an average-sized guy, black hair cut very close, an African American. He had the rifle in one hand, like a soldier charging up a hill. Then he came to a quick stop behind an older model Dodge and swung toward her, the rifle in two hands now, and pointing.

She threw herself to the pavement. The roar of a motor behind her brought her head up — Hardesy, in their vehicle, was closing fast on the Dodge! He was three car lengths away...

... when the shooter put one in the Ford’s radiator.

She got to her knees and raised her Glock as the shooter worked to rack another cartridge, then the shooter again took aim at the Ford, which swerved and slowed, steam pouring from the hole in its grill.

The guy in navy blue was in her sights when he pulled the trigger at the same time she did, not aiming at her, rather at the oncoming vehicle. The sniper dropped out of sight — she’d got him! — but then he scrambled up into the Dodge. Then her eyes went to the spiderweb hole in the Ford’s windshield.

The car rolled ever slower to bump up and over a curb, finally stopping.

“Hardesy!”

No answer.

Instinct kicked in and she sprinted toward their car, resting now in an apartment building yard on Temple Lane, headlights lancing through the night. In one final taunt, the Dodge gunned out of the parking lot.

Apparently she hadn’t hit the shooter, after all.

Hardesy was already climbing out, looking a little shaken and a lot pissed off.

“Son of a bitch shot the Ford!” he roared.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Hell no, I’m not all right! Suspect is dead, shooter’s in the wind, and the son of a bitch killed our car! Saving grace is, it’s the taxpayers’ money.”

She let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said somewhat breathlessly.

He grinned at her. “See how much better we’re getting along these days?”

Then he called in a BOLO (Be On the Look Out) on the Dodge while she walked over to where the vehicle had been parked. She clicked on her small mag flashlight and pointed it down: two rifle cartridges lay on the pavement next to a quarter-sized drop of blood. So while she hadn’t killed the shooter, she had hit him.

“Good,” she said to herself.

Hardesy came over. “BOLO is up. He keeps that car, we’ll get him.”

She pointed at the blood on the ground.

“So you hit him! Atta girl. Meaning no sexist disrespect.”

“None taken. The best part is, we have his DNA.”

He nodded. “I’ll get the word out to hospitals to look out for anyone seeking treatment for a gunshot wound.”

“And I’ll call in the evidence team... and talk to Miggie. Nobody knew we were coming here today but him. And I trust Miggie.”

Hardesy was frowning. “Me, too. Obviously someone else set us up. But who, and how?”

“Miggie ran Evans in the computer. Somebody must be doing some electronic eavesdropping.”

“Shit. That happened once before, if I remember.”

“You remember correct. There are some people in our government who would appear not to be trustworthy.”

“You mean, besides Congress?”

They both smiled at that, but not for long.

“Somebody,” she said, “is trying to keep us from investigating Secretary Yellich’s death.”

Hardesy was shaking his head hard enough to clear cobwebs. “What the hell has Reeder got us into?”

Even if she could have told him about the presidential mission, Rogers didn’t have an answer.

“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”

Melanie Graham, the ex-Mrs. Joe Reeder, glared at the man she’d divorced, who still loved her.

“Jesus, Joe,” she said, “when is enough going to be enough ?”

He guessed that was a rhetorical question.

Slender, she was wearing her brown hair very short these days, a change he regretted but hadn’t commented on. Her brown eyes burned into him and her teeth were bared, her upper lip curled back.

Okay, so she was pissed at him — at least she still cared.

“You’re a very successful businessman,” she said, biting off words, “and you’re not a kid, and yet you insist on getting yourself involved in these dangerous fixes and then everybody in your life has to uproot themselves for God knows how long until you sort the crap out and try not to get yourself killed .”

She didn’t get raving mad like this very often, but when she did, Reeder knew there was nothing he could say. He tried anyway: “I’m on a mission for the President—”

“The President! The President! How many years, how many damn decades, did I have to hear about one president or another whose life was more important than ours! Goddamnit, Joe, I’m still tied to you! We might as well still be married!”

He wouldn’t have minded that — normally.

She raved on: “How am I supposed to explain this to Donald? That we’re to pick up and pack up and go running somewhere and hide?”

The reference was to her current husband, Donald Graham, a lobbyist. Reeder was standing in what had been Graham’s house and was now Melanie’s as well. The framed landscapes that were scattered around the room, the floral sofa, the antique table lamps, were all touches his ex-wife had brought to what had been Graham’s male domain.

Firm but without anger, Reeder said, “We don’t have the luxury of this argument right now. I said this was serious.”

“It’s always serious!”

“Not this serious. Just hours ago, they killed Len Chamberlain right in front of me.”

About to speak, she froze, her mouth half-open as she processed that. Then: “Not Len ... he was... CIA wasn’t he?”

“He was. Just a desk jockey these days, but he was doing me a favor. We were about to meet outside the main entrance to ANC when he got taken down by a hit-and-run. Do I have to say it was no accident?”

“Oh, Joe... oh my God, Joe...” Her eyes softened as her voice trailed off, the back of her hand at her cheek in a loose fist.

“Here’s the bad part.”

“The bad part?”

“Len and I talked only once on the phone, with no direct mention of where we were meeting. The only way someone could have known where we’d be was if they are tapping my phone, and know my habits.”

“That... that could have been you ,” she said, her voice small. She took a tiny step toward him and he caught a whiff of her favorite perfume, Magie Noire. His favorite, too.

He put his hands on her shoulders, gentle though strong. “But it wasn’t me. In fact, they made no effort to get me, and I was right there for the taking. Len shouldn’t have been a threat to anyone these days, just playing out his string in Langley, waiting for retirement.”

Her eyes were narrow now in tightened sockets. “Why not go after you, if they had you in their sights?”

He dropped his hands from her shoulders. “I don’t really know. Possibly they’d already decided on Len, and knew that a hit-and-run death might be written off, whereas taking me down, too, would make it murder.”

She stared past him. “And now you’re on the run, keeping a low profile, which means...”

“Whoever-this-is might come after my family, whether for leverage or to make me mad enough to come at them straight on, which they’d be confident they could handle.”