The Detachment (9 page)

“You know how hard it would be to be to get close enough and alone enough to make something like this look natural, in a casino?”

“You’ll have some special tools. Go ahead, take a look in the case.”

I opened it. Inside were two Primatene asthma inhalers, held in place with Velcro straps.

“What are they?” I asked.

“The one with the red top is aerosolized hydrogen cyanide, three thousand parts per million.”

I whistled softly. Three thousand ppm is about what’s delivered in a gas chamber.

“That’s right. You spray it in a man’s mouth, or even just in his face, and he will be dead in under thirty seconds. But it dissipates extremely rapidly, and is—”

“Hard to detect, I know.”

“Especially if you’re not specifically looking for it. You’ll want to hold your breath when you administer it and I’d advise that you not linger in the vicinity, either.”

“Even so, three thousand ppm…”

“Yeah, it’s dangerous stuff, true. But you see the vial with the blue top? That’s the antidote, in case you accidentally inhale some yourself.”

“Hydroxocobalamin? Sodium thiosulfate?”

“You know your compounds. It’s both—they work best together. There are also hydroxocobalamin ampules in there, labeled adrenaline for bee stings in case anyone goes looking, and syringes. If you decide to go the cyanide route, and obviously it’s up to you, I recommend you all dose yourselves beforehand, just in case.”

“What else is in there?” I said, feeling myself getting sucked in, wondering why I wasn’t trying harder not to.

“Everything you could reasonably need. Encrypted phones, miniature wireless audio and video, everything. You work with me, you don’t need to spend time in a military surplus store. This is state of the art.”

Maybe so. It would still all need to be examined for tracking devices.

I looked around the dining room. Waiters moved briskly from table to table, carrying trays of pastries and fresh-squeezed juice and omelets to order. The tourists munched on forkfuls of eggs Benedict, excited at how soon the Rodeo Drive boutiques would be opening for them. The movie industry types smiled vacuously as they did their deals, bleached teeth radiant against salon tans. Dox sat watchfully, still as a statue of Buddha.

I’d need to test the spray before we went live. I might have tried it on Horton then and there and let him take his chances with the antidote, but it would have caused too much of a commotion. Well, I’d think of something. As for injecting myself with the contents of a syringe Horton or anyone else provided me, the chances of that were about zero. Anyway, I wouldn’t need to. There were commercial kits available.

I realized that, even with myself, I was raising only practical concerns. And neatly addressing them.

I asked myself what I was doing. I’d left Delilah because she wouldn’t get out of the life. But it seemed that, if anything, the problem wasn’t that I didn’t want to be in the life. The problem was, I wanted it too much. I was like a recovering alcoholic, and being with Delilah was making me want to drink.

So what was the first thing I’d done after leaving her? It looked like I’d found myself a bar.

I looked over at Dox. Just a prearranged signal, and he’d put a bullet in Horton’s head, then follow me out through the side entrance.

The problem was, I didn’t know if that would be the end of trouble for me, or the beginning.

Or maybe that was a rationalization. I didn’t know. Maybe Dox and Kanezaki were right about me.

I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I’ve only ever had two clients I found out were lying to me,” I said. “You know what happened to them?”

“I can imagine,” he said dryly.

“When I do a deal, the client’s life is his collateral. You comfortable with that?”

“It’s what I expected.”

“No women or children. No non-principals. No B-teams.”

“Understood.”

“Have you told Treven and Larison how much you’re paying?”

“No, I have not.”

He probably thought I wanted to hold out on them. “Make sure you do,” I said. “We’re going to split this four ways even, and I don’t want any confusion about the size of the pie.”

He sipped his coffee. “I admire an honest man.”

“Where are they now?”

He smiled just slightly. “Waiting for you. In Las Vegas.”

I
sat on one of the twin beds in a room at an off-strip Embassy Suites, Dox to my left, Larison and Treven facing us on the opposite bed. We would all check into the Wynn later that day, but once we were there, it would be better if we were seen together as little as possible. This would be our only chance to discuss Shorrock face-to-face.

It was strange to be in charge of the op. I prefer to be in charge of nothing larger than myself, and though I supposed that several years and multiple close calls of teaming with Dox and sometimes Delilah constituted a kind of practice, managing Larison and Treven was going to be a challenge. Neither struck me as a natural team player, and I imagined each was accustomed to long stretches alone in the field and to doing things his own way. Also, because I knew Horton had something on each of them, though I didn’t know what, it meant that in addition to whatever innate alpha male stubbornness I might encounter in taking charge of things, I also had to remember that their agendas might range considerably beyond the money the op represented.

But Horton was right—I needed four at least, and even so it wasn’t going to be easy. We knew Shorrock would be staying at the Wynn, but that was about all. We didn’t know what room he’d be in, and, outside the keynote, we had no details about his schedule. Given the size of the resort, without more it would take a lot of luck to find and fix him, let alone make him expire of “natural causes.” Nonetheless, I had an idea for how we might close to him, and I might have proposed it directly. But I decided it would be better to solicit opinions. I had no command authority over these people, and I sensed things would go more smoothly if I helped them reach their own conclusions, rather than presenting them with mine. So I asked Treven and Larison what they thought.

“The keynote,” Treven said immediately. “Cover the exits, follow him when he’s done, rotate the point, wait for the opportunity.”

It was the response I was expecting from Treven, who struck me as a little more eager and a little less devious than Larison, and I didn’t like it. “The keynote’s tempting because it’s our only real fixed point,” I said. “But that’s also the problem. Most likely he’ll be surrounded by hangers-on before and after. And worse, because it’s on his public schedule and therefore an obvious vulnerability, his security detail will be alert and keeping very close. It couldn’t hurt to try, especially if we find we can’t pick him up any other way, but I don’t think it’s our first choice.”

“Then what?” Treven said.

I rubbed my chin as though thinking. “The file says he’s a fitness fanatic,” I said. “I wonder if there’s something we could do with that.”

“You think the gym?” Treven said.

I nodded slowly as though favorably considering his idea. “Maybe. Yeah, maybe.” I turned to Dox. “What do you think?”

A dog was barking outside, the sound high-pitched and screechy, probably a small breed and apparently an exceptionally neurotic one. It had been going off intermittently since we’d checked in and its fingers-on-a-blackboard pitch made it hard to tune out. Dox got up, opened the drapes a crack, and looked down. “Wish that mutt would simmer down,” he said. “Looks like somebody tied it up by the pool. Nobody’s even there, what the hell’s it yapping at? Lucky for it I don’t have my rifle.”

When Dox was engaged—on what he was watching through his sniper scope, for example—his focus was supernatural. But when he wasn’t all the way on, he tended to be all the way off. “What do you think?” I said again, drawing on the patience our partnership required.

Dox let the drapes fall closed and sat back down on the bed. “Shoot, partner, you know I do my best work outdoors. I defer to you on this kind of situation. Main thing, it seems to me, is that we get him alone and away from all the cameras for a minute. Could be that means something with the gym. Or maybe a lavatory. Figure he’ll be drinking a lot of coffee, or green tea if he’s a health nut, he’ll have to hit the head at some point. Follow him in, spray him in the face, head back to L.A. for a beer.”

“We’ll need to test the cyanide first,” Larison said. “And assuming it works as advertised, pick up a commercial antagonist. No telling what Hort has in that ‘antidote.’”

At some point, when the moment was right, I’d press him on what was up between Horton and him. But not now. “How do you see it?” I said, looking at him. “The keynote, or the gym?”

Larison smiled, and I wondered if he knew what I was doing. “I think we can exploit the gym,” he said.

“I’m not saying we can’t,” Treven said quickly. “But it’ll take some luck. The file says he’s into CrossFit. Well, I do some CrossFit WODs myself, and you’d have a hard time predicting on any given day whether you’ll find me in the gym or out on the road. So for all we know, Shorrock could decide the hell with the gym, I’ll go for a run and see the sights.”

“Wads?” I asked, not revealing that I was pleased by his objections.

“Workout Of the Day,” Dox and Larison answered simultaneously.

I mentally corrected to WOD. “Am I the only guy who’s not doing this CrossFit stuff?”

“You do it already,” Dox said. “You just don’t know the name.”

“Well,” I said, “whatever Shorrock does, let’s take the potential obstacles one-by-one and see if the workout intel could be useful. First, how likely is it he’ll go for a run?”

Dox tugged on his goatee. “Hundred degree heat, hordes of tourists to dodge? Plus I guarantee the gym at the Wynn is fancy, and there’ll be ladies in spandex. Who’d want to miss that? So I’d bet against a run.”

As was often the case, I wouldn’t have put it the way Dox did, but I couldn’t disagree with his logic.

“All right,” Treven said, holding up a hand in a
maybe so, but…
gesture. “Let’s assume he’ll be at the gym at some point. It’s still a huge window. A real CrossFit guy would get up extra early if necessary to squeeze in a WOD before a full day of meetings. Or he might skip lunch to get one in, or maybe right before bedtime.”

The dog barked again. Dox said, “Christ almighty. That is the worst bark I’ve ever had to endure. Sounds like someone’s giving the damn thing an electrified enema.”

I tried not to picture it. Which of course just made it worse.

“You’re right,” I said, looking at Treven. “Still, if there were a way we could catch him at the gym, it could really put us in business. It’s not on his schedule, so not a hot spot from the perspective of his security detail. In fact, if one of us could be in there when he arrived, we’d likely be overlooked. He’s supposed to have two Secret Service bodyguards, right? That’s not a full detail. If it were the president, they’d have a full team to clear every room ahead of time, whether he was announced or not. But with just two, they’ll be focused more on anyone trying to follow Shorrock than they will be on people who are already in a place he randomly decides to visit.”

There was quiet for a moment. Treven said, “Well, we could try rotating through the gym. We’re all in shape, so to anyone else in the gym, the staff or whoever, a ninety-minute workout wouldn’t seem unusual, and probably each of us could kill a good amount of time showering or using the sauna or whatever in the locker room before and after. If we rotate through one at a time, two hours each, that’s an eight-hour window we’d have covered. Still fifty-fifty in a sixteen-hour day, but not bad, either.”

I nodded, pleased. I had the same idea, of course, but by expressing it as a vague wish, I’d let Treven turn it into a plan he could now feel was his own.

“It’s an interesting suggestion,” I said. “And now that you mention it, I think we might do even better. We don’t need wall-to-wall coverage, do we? Figure Shorrock will work out for at least an hour. If he’s not there when the first of us is ready to leave, the next person could show up, say, thirty minutes later and still easily overlap with Shorrock. That means we’re up to almost ten hours of coverage. And I’m betting he’s more likely to show up early than late. The part of his day that’ll be easiest to manage is the part before the meetings. Plus, the main reason he’s out here is to be wined and dined. That would all happen at night. So if we play it right, we’re actually doing significantly better than fifty-fifty.”

Dox drummed his hands on his belly. “Not bad odds, for Vegas. And there’s one other possibility, though I’d call it a long shot given the Sin City venue and all that. The file says he’s a church-going man. Every Sunday.”

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Well, he’s scheduled to leave on Sunday. Maybe a pious man would stop at a local house of worship on his way out of town. By the time his flight gets to the East Coast, with the three-hour time difference, he’d be too late for anything back home.”

I nodded. “Agreed, a long shot, and hard to know where he’d be going ahead of time, assuming he goes at all.”