The tall man exclaimed, “Shit, you a ninja?”
Robie glanced down at the Sig he held. “It’s not balanced properly and it’s rusted. You need to take care of your weapons better or they won’t perform when you want them to.” He flicked the weapon toward them. “How many more guns?”
The third man’s hand went to his pocket.
“Drop the jacket,” ordered Robie.
“It’s raining and cold,” the man protested.
Robie put the Sig’s muzzle directly against his forehead. “Not asking again.”
The jacket came off and fell into a puddle. Robie picked it up, found the Glock.
“I see the throwaways at your ankles,” he said. “Out.”
The throwaways were handed over. Robie balled them all up in the jacket.
He eyed the tall man. “See where greed gets you? Should have taken the Benny.”
“We need our guns!”
“I need them more.” Robie kicked some water from the puddle into the unconscious man’s face and he awoke with a start, then rose on shaky legs. He did not seem to know what was going on, and probably had a concussion.
Robie flicked the gun again. “Down that way. All of you. Turn right into the alley.”
The tall man suddenly looked nervous. “Hey, dude, look, we’re sorry, okay? But this is our turf here. We patrol it. It’s our livelihood.”
“You want a livelihood? Get a real job that doesn’t involve putting a gun in people’s faces and taking what doesn’t belong to you. Now walk. Not asking again.”
They turned and marched down the street. When one of the men turned to look back, Robie clipped him in the head with the butt of the Sig. “Eyes straight. Turn around again you get a third one to look through in the back of your head.”
Robie could hear the men’s breathing accelerate. Their legs were jelly. They believed they were walking to their execution.
“Walk faster,” barked Robie.
They picked up their pace.
“Faster. But don’t run.”
The three men looked idiotic trying to go faster while still walking.
“Now run!”
The three men broke into a sprint. They turned left at the next intersection and were gone.
Robie turned and headed in the opposite direction. He ducked down an alley, found a Dumpster, and heaved the jacket and guns into it after clearing out all of the ammo. He dropped the bullets down a sewer grate.
He did not get many opportunities for peaceful moments and he did not like it when they were interrupted.
Robie continued his walk and reached the Potomac River. This had not been an idle sojourn. He had come here with a purpose.
He drew an object from the pocket of his slicker and looked down at it, running his finger along the polished surface.
It was a medal, the highest award that the Central Intelligence Agency gave out for heroism in the field. Robie had earned it, together with another agent, for a mission undertaken in Syria at great personal risk. They had barely made it back alive.
In fact, it was the wish of certain people at the agency that they not make it back alive. One of those persons was Evan Tucker, and it was unlikely he was going away, because he happened to head up the CIA.
The other agent who had received the award was Jessica Reel. She was the real reason Evan Tucker had not wanted them back alive. Reel had killed members of her own agency. It had been for a very good reason, but some people didn’t care about that. Certainly Evan Tucker hadn’t.
Robie wondered where Reel was right now. They had parted on shaky ground. Robie had given her what he had believed was his unconditional support. Yet Reel did not seem to be capable of acknowledging such a gesture. Hence the shaky parting.
He gripped the chain like a slingshot and whirled the medal around and around. He eyed the dark surface of the Potomac. It was windy; there were a few small whitecaps. He wondered how far he could hurl the highest medal of the CIA into the depths of the river that formed one boundary of the nation’s capital, separating it from the commonwealth of Virginia.
The chain twirled several times in the air. But in the end Robie didn’t fling it out into the river. He returned the medal to his pocket. He wasn’t sure why.
He had just started back when his phone buzzed. He took it out, glanced at the screen, and grimaced.
“Robie,” he said tersely.
It was a voice he didn’t recognize. “Please hold for DD Amanda Marks.”
Please hold? Since when does the world’s most elite clandestine agency have its personnel say, “Please hold”?
“Robie?”
The voice was crisp, sharp as a new blade, and in its undertone Robie could detect both immense confidence and a desire to prove oneself. That was a potentially deadly combination for him, because Robie would be the one doing this woman’s bidding in the field while she safely watched from a computer screen thousands of miles away.
“Yes?”
“We need you in here ASAP.”
“You’re the new DD?”
“That’s what it says on my door.”
“A mission?”
“We’ll talk when you get in here. Langley,” she added, quite necessarily because the CIA had numerous local facilities.
“You know what happened to the last two DDs?” Robie asked.
“Just get your butt in here, Robie.”
Chapter
4
JESSICA REEL COULD NOT SLEEP either. And the weather was as bad on the Eastern Shore as it was in D.C. She stared at where her home had once been before it had been destroyed. She had actually done the deed herself. Well, she had booby-trapped the place and Will Robie had triggered the explosion that had almost claimed his life. It was incredible how a partnership could have been born out of such grim circumstances.
She pulled her hood tighter against the rain and wind and continued to tramp over the muddy earth, while the waters of the Chesapeake Bay to the west continued to pound the little spit of land.
She had departed from Robie feeling both hopeful and lost, such an unsettling feeling that she was unsure from which end to work through it. If there was even a way to do so. For most of her adult life her work had been her entire world. Now Reel wasn’t sure she really had a job or world left. Her agency despised her. Its leadership wanted her not merely out of the way but dead.
If she left her employment there she felt she would be giving them license to terminate her in that far more permanent way. Yet if she stayed, what would her future be like? How long could she reasonably survive? What was her exit strategy?
All troubling questions with no apparent answers.
The last few months had cost her all she had. Her three closest friends in the world. Her reputation at the agency. Perhaps her way of life.
But she had gained something. Or someone.
Will Robie, initially her foe, had become her friend, her ally, the one person she could count on, when Reel had never been able to do that easily or convincingly.
But Robie knew her way of life as well as she did. Her way was his way. They would forever share that experience. He had offered her friendship, a shoulder to lean on if it ever came to that.