A Murder of Crows (16 page)

“You already know who you’re dealing with,” Hicks said. “You’re dealing with people who know any move you’re going to make before you make it. You’re dealing with people you can’t define and can’t take down. This is the point in the story where a smart man backs off and regroups before he gets his people killed.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who doesn’t know who you’re dealing with, asshole. I’ve got my men sweating somebody right now. Somebody who I’d bet my pension on being one of your people. No one’s laid a finger on him yet, but that can change in a heartbeat on my say-so. Unless I get some names to go with voices, I’ll treat your boy like he’s the enemy and you sure as hell don’t want that.”

Hicks resisted the urge to tell Avery he was watching Stephens get strangled to death in his own interrogation chamber. They’d cut the feed the second they had any idea it had been compromised.

Besides, Avery’s bruised ego was all the leverage Hicks needed. “All you need to know is we’ve been playing defense until now and we’ve won each time. If you don’t release the man you’re holding right now, we go on offense. And, believe me, Ace, you’re not going to like that. You’re going to like explaining the aftermath to your bosses even less.”

Hicks could practically hear Avery redden through the phone. “I don’t like being threatened.”

An empty comeback. Hicks knew he already had him turned. There was no reason to push the knife in any deeper.

He checked Scott’s tactical screen. He and his Varsity squad were now less than two minutes out.
“So let’s call this off and save ourselves a hell of a lot of trouble and embarrassment. A black SUV will be outside your facility in two minutes. You’re going to let your prisoner get into the SUV and drive away. You will not harm him and you will not attempt to follow or track him in any way. If you do, we’ll know it and there will be consequences.”

“You don’t know where we are and there’s no way in hell he goes free,” Avery said. “I’ll put a bullet in his brain before I let him go.”

“Don’t think of it as letting him go. Think of it as a way of building some good will between your group and mine. You can still cover up all the fuck ups your people made today as long as your prisoner is in my SUV in two minutes.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then you’re going to be calling a lot of widows tonight. And my next call will be to the media. I bet they’ll enjoy seeing a building full of spies scrambling to pull up stakes in Weehawken.”

“Weehawken”, Avery repeated. “How the hell did you...”

Hicks didn’t give him the benefit of an answer. “Some decisions are tough, Ace. This isn’t one of them.”

He glanced at the tactical screen and saw Scott was two minutes out. “You have two minutes. Now, put my man on the phone.”

Hicks looked at the feed from Roger’s cell. Roger still had Stephens pinned to the table. Although the feed was still muted, the men appeared to be still yelling at Roger, but hadn’t lowered their weapons.

He hoped Avery bought his bluff.

He saw Avery trudge back into the frame. He was holding out his cell phone to Roger.

Roger motioned for him to put the phone on the table and slide it over. The fat man did as he was told. The phone bumped into Stephens’ shoulder. Hicks watched Stephens squirm when Roger put weight on the taught chain as he stretched to pick up the phone.

He brought the phone to his ear and gave his confirmed all clear sign. “Hello, mother. This is Norman. How are you doing? You looked a bit drawn the last time I saw you.”

Hicks knew the DIA would be recording the call, so he kept the details to a minimum. “Keep your mouth shut and you’re out of there in two minutes. Do what they tell you to do, and don’t make anything worse.”

“Yes, dear. Do you want to talk to the nice man again?”

He watched Roger flick the phone back to the fat man who trapped it against his chest. He saw Roger smile as he whispered into Stephens’ ear before he took the chain off his neck and shoved him off the table. One agent holstered his weapon and helped Stephens off the floor. The other agent kept his gun trained on him.

Hicks watched the fat man bring the phone up to his ear as he walked out of the room. “You satisfied?”

“I’ll be satisfied when he’s in the car and driving away. Afterwards, I’ll be in touch.”

Hicks killed the connection and took the feed off mute. He watched both agents help Stephens get up from the floor while Avery unlocked Roger’s handcuffs. Hicks goosed the audio and listened in.

Roger rubbed the circulation back into his wrist while the fat man said, “Get your ass upstairs and out of my building before I change my mind. And if I ever see you again, I’m putting a bullet in your brain.”

Hicks expected Roger to have some kind of comeback. He was glad Roger kept his mouth shut and simply walked out of the room.

Via the security cameras, Hicks tracked Roger’s progress down the hall and up the stairs. The facility’s P.A. system kicked on and the fat man’s voice echoed over the feed. “This is Avery. The suspect is free to leave. All forces stand down. Do not intercept. Do not follow. Let him go.”

Hicks tracked Roger as he called Scott. The Varsity man picked up immediately. “I’ve been tracking the whole thing on tactical. We’re twenty seconds out. We’re within sight of the building.”

“Get Roger in the car and get the hell out of there. If you see you’re being followed, take evasive action and defend yourselves as necessary.”

“Got it. And Hicks. I heard the whole thing. That was some cowboy shit you pulled in there. Good job.”

Hicks watched the satellite feed and saw the SUV skid to a stop in front of the warehouse. He saw Roger walk outside the warehouse and climb into the back of the SUV and drive away. No one from the building seemed to be following. They were most likely tracking the SUV by satellite, but that was Scott’s problem. The Varsity had backup cars in underground parking facilities nearby. He had made a career of beating covert surveillance.

Hicks killed the hack into the facility’s system before Avery’s people could trace it back to OMNI. There were countermeasures in place to make such traces difficult, but not necessarily impossible, especially for the Barnyard folks. Best not to tempt fate.

He’d already done that enough for one day.

A new window appeared on Hicks’ screen. It was an instant message from Jason:
WE NEED TO DEBRIEF AND COME UP WITH AN IMMEDIATE ACTION PLAN. AVERY IS NOT SOMEONE WHO MAKES THREATS LIGHTLY.

Hicks already had an immediate action plan.

He ran into the bathroom and threw up.

H
ICKS GARGLED
some mouthwash and spat it into the sink. It killed some of the taste of the bile, but not all of it. All the mouthwash in the world couldn’t do that.

He looked at his reflection in the mirror and didn’t like what he saw. It wasn’t because of the unkempt hair or the bags forming beneath his blood-shot eyes or the paleness of his skin.

It was because he had just threatened the Barnyard. He had gone toe-to-toe with the American intelligence complex. He had come out ahead, gotten his man out alive, but it felt like a loss.

Men like Avery weren’t his enemy. Neither was Stephens. They weren’t traitors or spies or greedy men looking to profit from the deaths of others.

Both men were patriots, good men doing their job, working for the same goals as the University, to keep this country safe. Hicks knew he should be trying to recruit a man like Stephens to the University, not fighting him or threatening him. The country had enough enemies outside its borders. It couldn’t afford infighting among the people who were supposed to keep it safe.

Hicks understood the Dean’s argument about evading the other agencies until they could use Jabbar as a bargaining chip. He understood it, but didn’t agree with it. His strategy was making an already complicated situation even worse. Until now, Stephens and his people had been curious about who had abducted Bajjah. Now Hicks had made them look foolish twice in as many days. A career bureaucrat like Avery would be looking for revenge. And Stephens wouldn’t allow Roger’s attack to go unanswered.

He gargled another slug of mouthwash and spat it out.

He didn’t know how Stephens had found him on the street earlier that morning. Maybe they had gotten lucky by accessing a security camera he’d walked by and had a go team in the vicinity. It had happened before.

But finding Roger was more of a mystery. Roger hadn’t been with Hicks when he grabbed Bajjah down in Philadelphia. There was no reason why they should have known who Roger was or what he looked like, much less where to find him.

Something didn’t make sense.

He wished the Dean had helped our during this crisis. His expertise would be invaluable right now and help him cut through all of the doubt flooding his mind. Maybe after this incident with Roger, the Dean would change his mind about keeping the Bajjah information within the University, though he doubted it. The Dean never made snap decisions, so changing his mind wasn’t easy. Nothing about this life ever was.

He wanted to get over to The Jolly Roger Club as soon as possible to debrief Roger. He knew Avery and Stephens wouldn’t hang around for long now their facility had been discovered. Any detail Roger could tell him about the abduction event and the Weehawken facility could be vital.

Hicks kept looking at his reflection in the mirror and knew he had to make a change. Not only in his tactics, but in his general appearance. The Barnyard knew exactly what he looked like. Their facial recognition programs were powerful, but not foolproof. He decided to make their job more difficult.

Since he didn’t have any hair dye on hand, he grabbed his trimmer, set it to the second-lowest level, and began to sheer off his hair. The trimmer left a thin layer of stubble on his scalp, which should be enough to throw off any of Stephens’ men trying to eyeball him. He also cropped his eyebrows, lathered up and shaved off the stubble on his face. He looked cleaner and squared away, a far cry from the shaggy man Stephens had been hunting. It gave him a more military look than he would have preferred, but given his options, he didn’t have much choice. He hoped it would be enough to buy him some time.

He took a quick shower and changed his clothes. Knowing Stephens would be looking for someone in a sweatshirt and jeans, he put on a gray suit and white shirt. He skipped the tie. He took a gray raincoat out of his closet and put it on. He hoped the loose coat might give Stephens’ men pause if they tried to grab him again. They would have to consider he might have a shotgun under the coat, which should be enough to give them pause, hopefully enough of a pause to give themselves away again. He popped on a pair of black sunglasses which he knew should be enough to throw off any recognition program scans of his face. He’d still register as a probable match, but it wouldn’t be an exact hit. With an angry intelligence complex on his heels, his life might hinge on such margins.

He also pocketed two extra speed loaders for the Ruger, which should make those margins a bit wider.

He opened the hatch and walked through the false basement. He’d always found comfort in the hiss of the hatch automatically locking behind him.

He stopped on the staircase when he heard something he had never heard before.

Someone knocking on the front door of the apartment.

Hicks pulled out his handheld and activated the facility’s external camera to see who it was.