Max Collins - Executive Order

She obeyed, but building footfalls behind them said their new friend was running now.

“ Hey! ” he called again. Then, abandoning pretense, he yelled, “ Halt! Federal agent! ”

“Go!” Reeder said, and they went, running, with him just a step ahead.

“ Stop or I’ll fire! ”

Shoes pounding the sidewalk, the eyes of the homeless on them from the recessions of doorways, they hurtled along. Up ahead an unmarked white van had paused at the mouth of a parking lot — were they being herded toward their own capture?

Twelfth Street lay fifty yards ahead, and she didn’t know if they could even make it to the corner. Behind them, and the agent pursuing them, a car engine’s throaty purr built to a roar. Now a vehicle was in pursuit, too!

They reached the white van, Reeder running with a hand on the nine mil in his waistband while she fumbled with her hip holster to get at her own weapon.

But no one jumped out of the van.

Still twenty-five yards from Twelfth, the two fled the agent whose approaching footsteps were small punctuation marks in the throbbing of the car engine that still built and built...

That was when an uneven patch in the pavement sent her down, and she hit her right knee on the sidewalk, as if she’d stopped to pray, which might not have been a bad idea; then she pitched forward and her hands burned, skidding and skinned by the rough concrete.

Reeder went back for her, helping her up. As he did, their eyes met and for once she could read him as well as he could her: they were screwed .

As Reeder pulled her to her feet, Rogers finally saw the car that went with the engine roar: a dark green Dodge. No outrunning that.

But the vehicle veered, forcing the pursuing agent to dive out of the way, slamming him into the rear of the white van, his pistol flying and hitting the cement somewhere, bouncing clunkily away.

Then the car was squealing to a stop next to them, Reeder with the nine mil out now, Rogers too, when the passenger door flew open, and from the driver’s seat, Pete Woods leaned over, shouting, “Ride’s here!”

Reeder got the rear door for her, helped her limp in, then climbed in front, all in a blur.

Woods peeled away as Reeder’s rider’s side door slammed, the vehicle flying north on Twelfth.

The Homicide detective behind the wheel was in his early thirties, slender, collegiate-looking with steel-framed glasses that made the sharp green eyes seem even sharper. Reeder had caught him at home, as reflected by the dark brown sweatshirt and tan chinos.

“Did I just almost hit a fed?” Woods asked.

“You complaining or bragging?”

“Not sure yet. Care to tell me what you got me into, exactly? Those broad strokes you gave me are feeling a little too broad.”

“Get our asses out of here and we’ll see.”

They sped along, Woods working the side streets to put some distance between them and anyone in pursuit.

Reeder craned to give Rogers a concerned look. “Nasty spill you took.”

“Concrete chewed me up a little, spit me out some. At least I didn’t tear my slacks.”

“Good you have priorities.”

Woods asked, “Am I going anywhere in particular?”

“For right now,” Reeder said, the nine millimeter in his lap, “away from anybody trying to kill us.”

The young detective’s eyebrows lifted. “Well, at least I have a goal.”

Rogers got out her cell and punched in Ivanek’s number. It took four rings for him to answer, and she could picture him staring at UNKNOWN in the caller ID, wondering if it was safe to answer.

“Yeah,” his voice said.

“You need to get out of there. We’re compromised from within.”

“Fisk?”

“I’d like to think not. The rogue gov element grabbed Anne, but we got her back. Bohannon — executed. Mob-style.”

“Good God.”

“We’ve got less than a minute, Trevor, before they trace this call. Join us off the grid.”

“... where? When?”

“Washington Monument. Half an hour.”

“That’s an awfully wide open area.”

“Exactly,” she said, then clicked off.

Frowning, Woods glanced back; they were on a residential side street. He said, “Washington Monument — really?”

Reeder said, “It’s a good call. We’ll be out in the open, yes, but so will anybody coming at us. And something as public as that might discourage the bad guys from hitting us.”

“This,” Woods said, “might be a good time for you to tell me exactly what bad guys we’re talking about.”

In the half hour it took to get to the monument, Reeder gave the detective chapter and verse. The young cop reacted with squints and gaping glances, but never once interrupted or commented. He had been through the coup attempt last year and knew Reeder was to be believed.

While Reeder filled the detective in, Rogers kept an eye on her cell. Already there was a text from Kevin saying he was safe. Then Hardesy and Wade texted in, confirming they’d got away clean. They were nearing the Mall by the time Miggie reported in. He, Anne Nichols, and their newly bald charge were not yet at the cabin, but were well and safely on their way.

After Woods parked his Dodge up Independence Avenue, the trio walked toward the National Mall. The night was brisk but not quite cold, the foot traffic on the sidewalk sparse and touristy. Thanks to clever lighting, the obelisk that was the monument glowed against the darkness, beckoning them like a ghostly forefinger.

They took one of the gently circular walks radiating across the flat surrounding landscape to the city’s tallest structure. Encircled by flags that flapped lazily in the slight night breeze, so tall it hurt to crane your neck for a real look at it, the Washington Monument seemed to have nothing obviously to do with the Father of the Country but nonetheless stunned in its odd singular majesty.

Tourists gawked and milled respectfully, but none looked overtly like federal agents or for that matter undercover conspiracists. If either of those two groups knew enough to disguise themselves as sightseers, that meant this meeting place was known to the opposition and the Special Situations Task Force was done before it started. Only slightly out of place, she and Reeder and Woods lingered near the monument’s base, their eyes more on the walks around them than the building, as if they were waiting for someone. And of course they were.

Finally Ivanek, looking like a wandering undertaker in his black suit, moved down one of the sidewalks toward them. The skeletal profiler, eyes intense under that cliff of brow, approached Rogers and Reeder with a wary smile. Without having to be told, Woods headed off to watch the other side of the monument.

Ivanek grunted something that was almost a laugh. “I guess this is a fitting meeting spot at that.”

“Oh?” Rogers said, as somewhere in her mind she wondered if Trevor, the loner among the task force members, might have gone over to the other side.

Ivanek glanced up at the towering marble-and-granite structure. “This is Secret Society Central — what this thing and George Washington have in common is Freemasonry.”

“Let’s stroll,” Reeder said.

They walked slowly around the structure, pretending to be just another trio of rubberneckers, as she filled the profiler in on their situation. When they’d returned to their starting point, Trevor stood with hands on hips.

“So,” he asked Rogers, but his eyes then traveled to Reeder, “where do we go from here?”

Reeder answered with a question. “What contact have you made with Fisk today?”

Ivanek told them, concluding, “I couldn’t read her, Joe. Maybe you could have. She just seemed like Fisk. If she’s one of them, nothing she did or said was different... I mean, her task force disappeared on her and wasn’t checking in. How else would she act?”