THE COOKOUT was over, the sunshine was long gone, replaced with light rain, and Reiger and Hope were back in their plain suits and riding in their new Town Car.
“Orders all in order?” joked Hope.
“Yep, and locked away in my safety deposit box. I dropped by the bank as soon as you and your family left.”
“Getting paranoid on me? Good.” Hope rolled down the window and breathed in the moist air. “So who signed?”
“Everybody we need. Including Burns and Donnelly.”
“Guess the guy finally took us seriously.” Hope nodded at his partner. “Cookout was nice, Karl. Good idea.”
“Yeah, I’d rather be flipping dogs and burgers right now instead of driving to this place.”
Hope looked at the address that had come with the signed orders. “Warehouse in Arlington?”
“A front. They’re all fronts. We’ll see a ‘For Sale’ or ‘For Lease’ sign on the wall. A couple cars parked out of sight. A guy with a face you’ll never remember will answer our knock, we’ll flash our IDs, and the meeting will begin.”
“What are we hoping to get out of this tonight?”
“What I want are some recruits to do the trigger pulls while we coordinate from the sidelines. At least that way I can hate myself a little less.”
“But that’s another set of testimonies in court if this goes wrong. Geez, I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff.”
“We need to think about it, Don. But I’m not worried about these guys. I’m guessing Burns made sure they are not from this hemisphere. So we get the executioners in place and then the plan gets knocked together.”
“I know Perry has to go down. What about the punk lawyer?”
“If he hadn’t gotten in the way that night Perry would already have ceased to be a pain in our ass. But I’m not holding grudges. The order says Perry and anybody else deemed necessary. If we deem him not necessary he can go on being a lawyer after mourning the loss of his friend. I’m not looking to add to my bag of kills here. I’ve smoked my share of dirtbags, but none of them looked like me.”
Reiger looked up ahead. “There it is. What did I tell you?”
As they drove into the parking lot the “For Sale” sign was prominently mounted on one wall of the place that was actually three separate buildings on an acre of land in a section of Arlington that had seen far better days.
“Looks to be 1950s construction,” said Hope. “Surprised they haven’t knocked it down and put up condos. Land in Arlington is damn hard to come by.”
“Yeah, but if it’s secretly owned by an intelligence agency that doesn’t give a crap about cash flow, that is not your definition of a motivated seller.”
Reiger drove through a narrow opening between two of the brick buildings and stopped in the middle of the small interior courtyard.
“Like I said, couple of cars parked here. Now all we need is the faceless guy answering the door and I’m a perfect three for three.”
Reiger did not go three for three.
The woman who answered the door was petite with short brown hair angled around an oval face, and dressed in dark slacks, a tan windbreaker, and a pair of black-rimmed glasses. She flicked her badge and ID card at them. They did the same.
“Follow me,” she said.
They fell into line behind her as she led them through the darkened hall.
“Didn’t catch the name on the ID card,” said Reiger.
“Mary Bard.”
“Okay, Agent Bard. Karl Reiger and Don Hope.”
“Call me Mary. And I know who you are. I’ve been tasked to help with this assignment,” she said over her shoulder.
“Well, we can use the help,” said Reiger. “I assume you’ve been read in?”
“Yes. I can see why you two are frustrated. It seems to me they’ve been running you around like bulls in a china shop and expecting the impossible.”
“Exactly. We need to set the hit up our way instead of chasing them.”
She said, “Burns told me we’re to go over the logistics, call in resources as needed, and then lay the trap.”
“Now that sounds like a strategy.”
“Watch your step. I’ll turn the lights on once we get to the interior room. Cops sometimes patrol by here.”
“Understood. So where are you really from?”
“You saw my creds.”
“Right, I’ve got several sets myself and they all say something different.”
“Okay. Justice Department. That do it for you?”
Reiger grinned. “That’s what they all say.”
Bard smiled too. “I know.”
Don Hope was looking down. He lifted up one of his feet. “Plastic on the floors?”
Reiger reached out and touched one of the walls. “And on the walls?”
Mary Bard moved with the grace of a ballerina, but also with the speed of a tiger. The kick caught Reiger in the sternum, driving him back into the wall with such force that it threw his heart out of sinus rhythm. Since there was no light, the shine of the twin six-inch blades was never seen by either man as she whirled them in a blur of synchronized motion. One knife ripped across Reiger’s throat first. He didn’t even have time to scream. He fell to the floor clutching his severed jugular.
Don Hope managed to pull his weapon. Before his finger could close on the trigger, she drove her foot into his knee, ripping it backwards; supporting bones snapped and tendons tore away like sprung rubber bands. He screamed in agony, at least until she gave a backhanded slash with the second knife. The jagged blade ripped his throat apart; arterial blood erupted from the wounds, spraying the narrow hall.
Hope sank next to his dead partner, his last few breaths jerky, gurgling, and then his chest ceased to heave. As if on cue the lights came on and several people moved forward. As Bard stepped out of the way, hands rolled up the plastic with the men inside it. A truck was parked in the rear of the building. Reiger and Hope were placed inside and the truck sped off.
Bard had the blood of each man on her clothes. She stepped out of them and stood there in her bra and panties until she was handed a jumpsuit by one of her colleagues. Her physique was lean, with ropy muscles in her arms, shoulders, and thighs. The heightened definition of her body and absence of fat threw the scars on her torso into sharpened relief. She zipped up the jumpsuit, turned, and entered a bathroom where she scrubbed the evidence of the twin kills off her face, hands, and hair. She took off the eyeglasses and slid them into her pocket. They were actually night optics, allowing her to see her victims in the dark far better than they could see her. A few minutes later she left by another rear door. Her Smart car started up and she drove out of the parking lot, headed west, and entered Interstate 66. She placed the call.
“Done,” she said and then clicked off.
Jarvis Burns put his phone down and allowed himself a rare smile. “Now that, Agent Reiger, is chain of command.”
As he turned back to his work, he glanced at his watch. Two minutes later, in the safety deposit box where Reiger had placed his precious orders that would enable him and Hope to walk free after the job was done, the time-released chemicals built into the document’s threads did their work. In ten seconds there was nothing left except vapor.