Max Collins - Executive Order

“Can you read houses,” she asked, “or just people?”

Reeder said, “Good-size, two stories, two-car garage, no cars parked out front. Shades on all the windows, no people, no morning movement. Other houses, cars are backing out of garages, curtains being opened, people stirring. Either it’s vacant... or it’s exactly what Morris said it was: a safe house with a new tenant.”

One cul-de-sac later, she turned up Honey Tree Court. She pulled to the curb and parked. “What’s the play?”

“If it’s a safe house — there’s going to be a shift change in keepers, right?”

“Right.”

“That’s when we hit them.”

She blinked at him. “When there are twice as many bad guys on site?”

Reeder didn’t blink at all. “That’s a negative way to talk about employees of our federal government.”

“My bad.”

“Shift change, they’ll be least expecting trouble.”

“Trouble being the two of us. Just how the hell are we going to keep an eye on the house till the next shift? We’re just a little obvious, strangers sitting in a car.”

He pointed to the woods that separated the backs of houses on this street from those on Jennings Circle. “We go native and try to find an angle where we can see the front.”

“How many you figure, six? Maybe eight?”

“Not more than six. More than that in a suburban home, all adults, probably all or mostly male, would get the neighbors suspicious again.”

They got out of the car, walked up the block, making an odder couple than even she and Kevin did, Rogers in a business suit and Reeder in jeans and Nats windbreaker. Not an average-looking suburban couple out for their morning walk. Not hardly.

Three houses up, they cut between two and ducked into the woods. If some helpful neighbor spotted them and called 911, she and Reeder would have to flash their credentials and hope for the best. Unfortunately, the best was likely a SWAT team that might further endanger Nichols.

Or had Lawrence sent them chasing their tails to buy time? This might be a vacant house, as Reeder said. Worse, could Lawrence be leading them into an ambush? Through this strip of suburban woods, they moved like animals dodging civilization, trying to stay low, the sun glinting off leaves and dappling them with shadow and light. Finally they found a vantage point behind the house next door providing a partial view of the presumed safe house’s front yard.

Reeder said, “I’m going to the far side of the place, and see if I can get a look at the driveway.”

She nodded.

He said, “Keep your cell handy — text you when I see an opening. I’ll just type GO, okay?”

“By the way... have you given any thought to all the things that could go wrong with this?”

He shrugged. “Vacant house, ambush, maybe Lawrence is sending us next door, to alert those in the real place? Or this is the right house and, being slightly outnumbered, we get very dead? Those kind of things?”

“We have another option.”

“Which is?”

She held his eyes. “Call Fisk. Bring the Bureau in.”

“But Lawrence says the Alliance is everywhere, and that could include the Bureau, like you said. Not necessarily Fisk herself, but just a team member on the response unit, and we’re screwed. No, Patti, this is us. Strictly us.”

She let out air. “Sweet-talker.”

That got the world’s tiniest grin out of Reeder, before he crept away through the underbrush, skirting trees. There was something military about it, and Rogers suddenly flashed on the nature of their self-appointed mission.

If this was indeed the right house, the guards inside were not necessarily Alliance, but might simply be agents, like herself, like her team, agents who likely thought they were doing their job, nothing more, nothing less.

But her job right now was getting Nichols out of harm’s way.

She unholstered her pistol, checked it, re-holstered it, then settled in on her haunches to wait, staying alert. The sun kept climbing, and her legs were tight, near cramping, and all the ways that this could go south kept careening feverishly through her mind.

Occasionally, she duckwalked through brush and got behind a tree to rise and stretch, eyes never leaving the house. Then she would reposition herself and crouch again, careful not to attract attention. She checked the time now and again, and — endless minutes turning into mind-numbing hours — she wondered if they really were staking out a vacant house. She hadn’t seen so much as a hint of movement beyond a window and it was nearing noon.

She was about to text Reeder that maybe Morris had played them and they should abort when something moved past the half-open blinds on the second floor. She perked, her discomfort and boredom gone. Moments later, a hand separated blinds and a big slice of male face appeared, eyes slowly scanning the woods.

Then the blinds snapped shut.

Was that where Nichols was being held? An upstairs bedroom?

She texted Reeder: *2nd-floor window*

Reeder’s response was one letter: *K*

Texting shorthand learned from his daughter, Amy, no doubt. Rogers twitched a smile, then focused on the house so intently she might have been trying to hypnotize it.

Then the phone in her hand vibrated and when she looked at the screen, she saw:

*GO*

She rose like something that had grown very fast, the phone dropped in a pocket, her pistol coming out and up. Two houses down, Reeder came out of the woods just as she did. Simultaneously they crossed the joined backyards and took posts at opposite corners at the rear of the target house.

When Reeder disappeared up the far side of the house, she went up her side, stopping at the front corner, making sure she was low enough to keep well under the living room windows. She peeked around the corner — on the other side of the house...

... a nondescript tones-of-gray Ford, an obvious government car, was just pulling into the driveway. Reeder remained out of sight. That wouldn’t change until whoever was in the car parked it and got out.

Then she heard the garage door going up. Damn! She was at the wrong side of the house and if she couldn’t make it across the front yard, and time it right, the door would close and the new shift of captors was in.

Or worse — Reeder might wind up in that garage alone with however many armed agents were in the Ford.

As soon as the passenger side door passed her position — only two of them, driver, rider — Rogers took off quick and low, bisecting the front yard; as she passed the front door, it stayed shut. At the same time, Reeder came around the garage side of the house, low but not as fast. He didn’t have the nine mil in hand — instead, it was that extendable baton of his, looking like he was running a relay and about to pass it off. He pointed inside with the unextended weapon, hesitating as the Ford rolled inside.

The garage door motor indicated the vehicle and its inhabitants were about to be shut inside, and she hurtled under before the drawbridge came completely down. The front doors of the Ford opened, snick, snick , and an agent in a dark suit got out on either side.

Was the house soundproofed enough that those within wouldn’t be alerted to the arrival of their relief team?

“Turn around slow, gentlemen,” Reeder said, positioned behind the driver toward the left rear of the Ford. Rogers was behind the passenger, at the vehicle’s right rear, and both she and Reeder were training guns on the men, although Joe had his nine mil in his left hand and the baton in his right.

The two agents turned, nice and slow, hands shoulder high. No stupid moves. Not from this pair. Smart moves, though...?