Supreme Justice (21 page)

“Just the two of us, partner.”

She smiled a little, brushing breeze-driven hair from her face. “What do you have in mind?”

He told her.

“People are very quick to ridicule others for showing fear. But we rarely know the secret springboards behind human action. The man who shows great fear today may be tomorrow’s hero. Who are we to judge?”

Audie Murphy, most decorated soldier of World War II, Congressional Medal of Honor winner.
Section 46, Lot 366-11, Grid O/P-22.5, Arlington National Cemetery.

TWENTY-ONE

The gentle breezy evening presented a quiet calm, but Reeder’s midsection was tight, a cage for butterflies. Patti Rogers had parked the car behind the nearby elementary school, and the pair hiked through the woods, much as Tom Marvin must have a few nights before. Both agents wore black—turtlenecks, jeans, sneakers.

Reeder had the SIG Sauer in hand, and Rogers carried a Remington 870 shotgun—for the sake of irony, the same model that had killed Justice Gutierrez, but of a more recent vintage. They assumed Sloan, and God knew who else, would be waiting for them at the Justice’s mansion-like residence.

They could communicate when separated—Rogers had brought along two walkie-talkies with headsets, tuned to a little-used channel. In the silence of the evening, however, even whispering seemed risky.

They moved slowly, carefully, as soundlessly as possible while picking their way through the woods by the less-than-half-a-moon and some stingy starlight. A twig broken underfoot might initiate a firefight that could see them gunned down before getting anywhere near the Chief Justice, who—like Reeder and probably Rogers—was scheduled to die tonight.

No way to know how many co-conspirators awaited them, or good guys, either, but he and Rogers were surely outnumbered. Reeder was knowingly walking into a frame for the murders of three Supreme Court justices, designed by a man who knew him well, and who Reeder suspected was at the top of the conspiracy.

But what other choice did he have?

If he and Rogers failed tonight, another justice would die, and Amy? Her usefulness to the conspiracy would be over, her chances for survival negligible.

They squatted in the trees behind Jackson’s house, near the bottom of the backyard’s gentle slope, where not long ago he had broken Tom Marvin’s leg with a baton. Bright lights, armed guards, and leashed dogs on patrol might have awaited them, the big brick home a veritable fortress. But what met them was a darkness-shrouded house with no one in back of it.

Typical night sounds kept them company—crickets, a querying owl, fingers of breeze rustling the trees. From the house, nothing at all; the place was as silent as Arlington at midnight.

A horseshoe of woods bordered the near-mansion all the way to the street, with more woods across the way. Reeder pointed to the left and Rogers nodded. Staying within the trees, she moved off in that direction. Within three minutes, she would come up parallel with that side of the house.

He waited. Sloan may well have predicted this approach, and might have a team of accomplices primed to come up through the woods behind Reeder and Rogers. But no sounds indicated that, the crickets and owls and tree rustle unperturbed.

As Reeder saw it, Sloan had only two options.

First, drown the Jackson residence in security, arranging an army to cut Reeder down, with Sloan somehow making Jackson a friendly-fire casualty.

Second, and more likely—minimize tonight’s security at the Jacksons’, filling the roles with fellow conspirators and/or cannon fodder, a small company of players so that Sloan might more easily stage-manage the Chief Justice’s tragic demise.

Judging by the low-key—hell, nonexistent—nature of security in back of the Jackson residence, Sloan was taking the second option.

“Set,”
Rogers whispered in his ear.

If she’d seen anything, she’d have reported it.

Reeder moved to the right, staying within the trees as Rogers had, coming up alongside the house and finally positioning himself near where the woods gave way to the street. When Chief Justice Jackson and his wife returned from dining out, Reeder would be close by, or as close as he dared.

He needed the confrontation to go down outside—inside the house, Sloan would have a distinct advantage. Reeder had never set foot in there, and the SAIC would know the layout intimately.

But Reeder also wanted to avoid putting the Justice and Mrs. Jackson at risk.

Standard operating procedure would be to whisk the Chief and his wife inside, with some of the security contingent lingering outside, making sure no surprise was coming up behind them, securing the site. If that was the case tonight, Sloan would likely be outside, however briefly, with the Jacksons safely in.

And that was exactly where Reeder wanted his old friend.

No movement in front of the house, either—no standing watch or walking patrol.
How many were inside?
he wondered. Sloan had accompanied the Justice and his wife, with several other agents, probably Secret Service.

The front door opened and a figure stepped onto the portico-covered
porch, its amber overhead light glowing: Jessica Cribbs in black, a bulletproof vest discernible over her dark blouse and above dark slacks. She slowly scanned from far left to far right and then back again.

Finally, into a lapel mic, she said,
“Clear,”
then slipped back inside, leaving the door ajar.

That indicated the Jacksons were due any moment.

So there was one agent inside, anyway. Likely more. Her partner, Walt Eaton, maybe.
Did Cribbs’s being here make her a Sloan accomplice?
Not necessarily. And Rogers trusted Cribbs, which carried a certain weight.

Still, the smaller the contingent Sloan had assembled tonight, the more likely it consisted of conspirators.

Reeder hunkered at the edge of the trees near the front lawn, waiting, SIG Sauer in hand. His eyes traveled across to the woods that edged the opposite side of the yard, knowing Rogers was there, glad he couldn’t make her. The driveway to the attached garage was on her side, but a good chunk of yard separated her from it.

Within a minute, a Lincoln limo rolled into the driveway to a smooth stop. Simultaneously, Cribbs emerged from the house and quickly went to the vehicle.

Reeder poised himself like a track runner waiting for the starting gun.

The driver’s side door opened, the dome light revealing Cribbs’s partner, Homeland Security Agent Eaton, behind the wheel.

Not in the house, then,
Reeder thought.

The beefy Eaton got out, opened the back door on his side for Mrs. Jackson, a petite woman perhaps in her sixties, in an evening dress of various shades of blue. Cribbs helped her out, Eaton shut the door, then he and his partner ushered the woman swiftly up the connecting sidewalk to the porch.

Sending Mrs. Jackson in first was probably the Chief Justice’s idea—the CJ was the potential target here, after all, so getting her quickly out of any potential line of fire made sense.

But, damnit, Reeder had hoped
both
Jacksons would be inside before he had to act . . .

Sloan got out on the passenger side, providing a view of not much more than his blond head. Secret Service Agent Alan Stein from the task force emerged from the driver’s side rear, swiveling his head in an immediate threat-level assessment.

Once the front door of the house had closed behind Eaton, Sloan said, “Your wife is inside, sir.” Stein opened the rear driver’s side door and Chief Justice Jackson stepped out, followed by Secret Service Agent Ho, sliding over.

Stein, still close to the vehicle, was looking across the vast lawn toward the woods where Reeder crouched, not seeing him. On his feet now, Ho was sweeping his eyes up and down the deserted street. That left Sloan, behind them, to cover the woods on the side where Rogers hid.

But that wasn’t what Sloan was doing.

He was bringing a silenced Glock out from under his shoulder.

At once, Reeder knew what Sloan intended. The SAIC expected Reeder to break cover and run toward the vehicle, but if he did, the two Secret Service agents would turn their attention his way, to disastrous results.

So, still within the trees, Reeder yelled, “
Behind you! Look out
!
”

But even with Reeder not visible, Stein and Ho—their unbuttoned suit coats flapping—swung their attention toward the trees from where he’d called, the latter grabbing an automatic from a hip holster, the former bringing up an MP4 machine gun to bear down on this possible new threat.

Behind them, Sloan’s pistol coughed, and Stein’s head cracked open like a bloody egg. The agent went limp and fell in a pile.

Reeder flew from the woods and, staying low, weaving, made for the vehicle even as Sloan’s pistol coughed a second time, and Ho took the shot in the back of the head and a gob of brain, blood, and bone burst out his torn-open forehead and plopped somewhere, like a flung mud ball, and the muscular agent belly-flopped on the pavement, leaving behind a sparkling crimson mist.

Running across that wide lawn, Reeder glanced occasionally at that front door, where Eaton and Cribbs had gone in. The silenced shots and his shouts might not have alerted them. Even so, the agents would presumably stay put anyway, Mrs. Jackson’s safety their priority.

But if either agent emerged to see Reeder sprinting across the grass with a pistol in hand, toward a scene of carnage, Stein and Ho littering the lawn like busted garden gnomes, he might well get caught in a cross fire.

One small blessing was that the Chief Justice had the sense to hit the deck, his tall frame flat on the pavement, as if in imitation of the late Ho.

With Jackson out of her line of fire, that freed Rogers up to let go with her shotgun, her blast narrowly missing Sloan, taking out the limo’s front passenger window in a brittle spray of safety glass.

Sloan swung around toward Rogers and the woods and his silenced pistol coughed two more times, fairly blindly, and Rogers fired again, thwacking into the front right fender.

Sloan returned fire as he came around the back of the limo, to the driver’s side, then fired toward the moving Reeder, again rather blindly, but the bullets were enough to encourage Reeder to follow the Chief Justice’s example and hit the deck, grass cool on his face but in no way soothing.

Turning back toward the woods, Sloan emptied his clip in the general direction of Rogers’s gunfire, ejected the clip, slammed in a new one, and fired one in Reeder’s direction, a little divot flying up, too close.

Sloan reached down for the Justice, grabbed him by the arm, jerked him to his feet, and got behind the man. The Justice was tall, making a damn good human shield.

“Stand up and be counted, Peep!” Sloan called. His voice had a manic edge Reeder had never heard before.

Was Rogers maneuvering around to get a better shot? Christ, he hoped so . . .

“I’m comfy right here, Gabe,” Reeder said, close enough not to need to yell.

Those shotgun blasts should have alerted them in the house—where were Eaton and Cribbs?

Or were they Sloan’s?

“Get on your feet, Peep. Come closer. You have a right to a ringside seat. You’ll be taking the credit, after all.”

He risked looking up a little. Sloan’s eyes were wide and crazed, but then so were Chief Justice Jackson’s, shaking in his gray Brooks Brothers like a skeleton doing a dance.

“Really, Gabe? You
really
think these atrocities honor Kathy’s memory?”

“Don’t waste your time, Peep. I’m way past sentiment. Get up and come over, or I’ll just shoot the Justice now. Time’s limited. Even out here in the boonies,
somebody
may have heard that shotgun.
You’re back there, aren’t you, Patti? Let me have it with that baby, why don’t you? Of course,
Jackson
will get it as bad as me!”

Sloan was right. No matter what position Rogers maneuvered herself into, Jackson would almost certainly be collateral damage.

Where were Eaton and Cribbs?
And would they ride to his rescue, or ambush his ass?

Reeder got to his feet but kept the SIG Sauer trained. He had a decent shot at Sloan’s head, mostly exposed next to Jackson’s. Getting closer was not a bad idea. A head shot would take Gabe out, shutting off his motor reflexes like a switch. No danger of Jackson dying, despite the silenced pistol in his neck.

“Yes, yes, Peep, come on over . . . good. Good. No, let’s hold it right there. A little respectful distance will do us both some good.”

“I agree,” Reeder said, weapon still aimed at Sloan. “I don’t want you anywhere near my gun. Killing the Chief Justice with your own piece wouldn’t do—you need me to give up mine so you can shoot me, and then the Chief Justice, with it.”

Sloan gave the Justice a nudge in the neck with the silenced pistol. “Oh, this
is
your gun, Peep. Seems you bought it from a guy I know who could use a friend in the Bureau about now.”

The Justice looked faint, like he might collapse, the dignity of his bench worlds away.

“Gabe . . . I understand. I really do. If something happened to Amy, I’d go as crazy as you losing Kathy. We really
were
friends, right? So how could you
do
this? Oh, I don’t mean killing right-wing bastards like Jackson here.”

The hostage’s wide eyes tightened.
This
was the man pleading his case?

Reeder continued: “But taking Amy.
Kidnapping
her. How the hell could you stoop that fucking low? After everything, after all these years?”

Sloan’s eyes glittered with moisture. And insanity. “How could
you?
How could you love your daughter so little that you didn’t back off when I told you to? What the hell kind of man, what the hell kind of
father,
are you, Peep?”

“Tell me you won’t hurt Amy.”

“That I will give you, Peep. I promise that when you are dead and this quivering piece of shit here is likewise, she will go free.”

A head shot and the Justice would be saved.

But killing Sloan might cost Amy’s life.

Sloan did have affection for Amy, and the man was, after all, motivated by good things that got twisted into something foul. But with Sloan gone, would the others working with him see Amy as anything but a loose end that needed clipping?

Where was Rogers?