David Hagberg - End Game

“Do I get a gun again?”

“Not this time.”

“What about me?” Pete asked.

“I want you to organize someplace secure here on campus for an interrogation. And I do mean secure. At least four people for muscle, and I want it done within the next half hour or less.”

“If she’s as tough as Roy thinks she is, it may take a while to get through to her.”

“Stock the cupboard,” McGarvey said.

Out in the corridor, he and Schermerhorn raced down to the stairwell. Several people out in the hallway moved aside as they passed. None of them knew exactly what was going on, but several of them recognized McGarvey and figured that if the former DCI was in such a hurry, whatever was happening to cause the lockdown had to be big.

“Unit two, copy?”

The radio on the passenger seat next to Alex had fallen silent — until now.

“Two, copy.”

“It’s possible she’s going to try to talk her way through the main gate. I want you to get over there ASAP. Take up position down on the Parkway in case she does manage to get through.”

“We’ll have to take the long way.”

“Hustle.”

Alex pulled off the road a hundred yards from the back gate, just as two men got into a Company SUV and drove off. It didn’t smell right to her. First there’d been a lot of radio chatter, then nothing, and finally the last exchange. It was a setup, of course. By now they would have notified the Virginia state police to block off 193 and 123 on either side of the gate. And it was also possible, though she wasn’t sure of the technical requirements, that the rear gate had been locked down even for security personnel.

“If you start to get sentimental, you might just as well write your will,” Bertie Russell had told them before they’d headed to Iraq. “Let it take over, and you’ll end up dead meat.”

Alex could not remember ever hearing any remark of his that could have been the least positive. But he’d always been right. And he’d been the only man in her life she hadn’t been able to seduce.

Just before Germany she’d gone to his quarters on the Farm, carrying two glasses and a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, an inexpensive but decent champagne. It was after midnight, but he had been awake, and he answered almost as if he had been expecting her.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said.

He was in a pair of gym shorts and a T-shirt. She was in sweats, nothing on underneath, and it was obvious.

He laughed a little. “I prefer Dom Pérignon, actually.”

“Not on my salary,” she said. And remembering the incident now, even in the middle of everything from last night and this morning, she’d been embarrassed at that moment. She’d felt shabby. Even cheap.

He’d shrugged. “Go back to your quarters, Alex. Get some sleep. We’re shipping out in the morning right after our final briefing.”

“I can sleep just as easily in your bed as in mine.”

“Go home.”

“What? Are you a eunuch?”

“No, just discriminating,” he’d said.

He was the only man who’d ever turned her down who she hadn’t wanted to kill. And she’d thought about him almost every day, wanting to try again, except he was dead. Only bits and pieces of him — nothing much identifiable as human — had ever been brought back for burial or cremation or whatever had happened in the end.

She powered the window down and searched the sky. They would have choppers up before long, looking for her on foot. Blankenship would know by now that she would try to make her way out the back gate. It was the obvious reason he’d broken radio silence.

She put the BMW in gear and slowly made her way down the shallow drainage ditch and into the woods. This part of the campus bordered on Langley Fork Park, which was for the most part heavily wooded. There were hiking trails through the northern portion of the sprawling park, but nearer the highway were baseball, soccer, football, and other sports fields. On weekends and throughout the summer, the place was busy. But this morning she figured it would be empty or practically so.

She pulled up about thirty yards from the tall razor-wire — topped chain-link fence that marked the edge of the CIA’s property. On the other side, no trespassing notices had been posted, marking it a restricted government area. Federal parks and roads property, a fiction no one had believed for a long time.

Stomping down on the gas, she headed straight for the fence, smashing halfway through but destroying the front end of the car. The engine bucked and heaved, then stopped.

She got out, stood beside the ruined car for a moment or two, but then retrieved her bag, her pistol, and the radio. She headed back the way she had come, but staying in the woods and out of sight of anyone passing on the road.

McGarvey pulled up just off Colonial Farm Road, where tire tracks led off into the woods to the west, took out his pistol, and got out of the car. The morning was bright and sunny.

In the distance to the south he could hear at least two sirens, possibly more, probably the Virginia state police setting up roadblocks.

“God damn it, I want a gun,” Schermerhorn said.

“In the glove compartment,” McGarvey told him. “But if you shoot at her for anything other than self-defense, I’ll shoot you myself.”

McGarvey started along the tire tracks, not believing for one minute she would try to kill him. She had had the chance, once she was armed, to walk back into Page’s office and kill them all, because she knew they hadn’t been allowed to pass through security while carrying their firearms.

She’d also had the chance, and the cause, to kill the security officer who’d confronted her in the parking garage. But she had merely disarmed him and let him walk away, knowing he would report the contact once he reached a phone.

Schermerhorn came after him, the Beretta 92F in his left hand.

McGarvey looked at him. “Are you ambidextrous?”

“No, always been a lefty.”

“What about Alex and George?”

“George is right-handed. Alex is a lefty just like me,” Schermerhorn said. “We were the only two.” He suddenly caught on. “The killer is right-handed?”

“The autopsies on the three killed here on campus showed they were murdered by someone right-handed. The CSI people confirmed it.”

“Lets me off the hook,” Schermerhorn said. “And Alex.”

“Leaves only George,” McGarvey said.

Schermerhorn stopped and scanned the woods ahead and to the left and right. “Then why the hell did she run?”

“Maybe she doesn’t trust you.”

“Great,” Schermerhorn said. “I will defend myself.”

They followed the tire marks another fifty yards or so through the woods until they came to the clearing, across which the green BMW convertible was crashed halfway through the fence. On the other side was a matching clearing that bordered the thick woods. Highway 193 was a mile or so off to the left, on the other side of the playing fields.

McGarvey walked to the car and looked inside. No blood, no purse.

In order to make it past the car to the other side of the fence, Alex would have needed to have gotten up on the hood and slid across. The car didn’t look as if it had been washed in the past week or so, and was a little dusty. But there were no marks on the hood.

He looked in the car again, but the radio was not there. She hadn’t left it on the passenger seat, or tossed it onto the floor or in the back. But once off campus, it would be out of range, so there was no reason for her to have taken it.

“She’s on foot. Shouldn’t be hard for the cops to round her up,” Schermerhorn said. “But they should be given the heads-up that she’s armed and she knows how to use a gun.”