Collision(123)

The feint worked. He hit the floor, rolled out of the back hallway into the dining room, his gun spitting, and he caught one Cellar agent waiting for him close to the window, in the knees, the agent firing back, a bullet needling into the meat of Pilgrim’s shoulder. He rolled hard, under a table, fired again, screaming without thinking, “CIA! CIA!”

He was once, and always would be, and now he was again.

A bullet smacked into the table he was under, fired from his left. He could see one body, in T-shirt and pajama pants, on the kitchen floor. They’d already killed one. He shot the agent closest to the window again in the leg, and the wounded agent staggered into the kitchen.

A hallway phone began to ring. Thanks, Vochek, you got their attention. Too late.

A second Cellar agent had also made a retreat into the kitchen, firing at Pilgrim from an awkward angle, pinning him down. Bullets cracked into the back of the pine chairs at the dinner table.

“Abort!” Pilgrim yelled in the pause between the shots. “Hector killed Teach!”

Silence. The pause lengthened and he risked bolting from the table down the hallway.

As he ran toward the end of the hall, the lights came on.

Pilgrim could see on the stairwell a young man no more than twenty-three: black-haired, wearing eyeglasses, mouth twisted in fright, holding a Glock with trembling hands. Hector crouched at the bottom of the stairs, aiming at the kid.

Pilgrim fired and the bullet sizzled hard into Hector’s gun, the impact powering the weapon from his hand. Hector staggered into a room beyond the stairs, Pilgrim firing, the back of Hector’s jacket tearing as a bullet hit him between neck and arm. But Hector kept going, out the front.

The young Arab swiveled his gun toward Pilgrim, firing blindly in panic.

Pilgrim retreated back down the hallway and out the back door. The remaining two Cellar agents had fled the kitchen and were running across the yard, the uninjured one carrying the man Pilgrim had shot.

Pilgrim hit the grass, ran around the house toward the stone wall.

A blast of gunfire erupted from the house’s upper windows. The CIA trainees were awake and pissed. Bullets churned the lawn by his feet. They were shooting at him in the darkness, thinking he was the enemy.

In the sudden gleam of the van’s headlights on the street, Pilgrim saw Hector hauling himself over the stone wall.

Lights flickered on at the safe house. Upstairs, downstairs.

Pilgrim hit the stone wall, vaulted over it. Agony flamed his shoulder. The Cellar van kicked to life and in the rising glow of lights from the safe house he saw the van tech, not Hector, at the wheel, slowing long enough for the woman with the broken arm to stagger inside.

Where was Hector?

The van surged at him, pedal to the floor, closing on him, and he dodged the impact, jumping into high weeds, a bullet snipping off the tops of the grasses by his head. He went low and ran and the van accelerated past him, took off.

Four lots further down, a car started on a cracked driveway that lacked a house. No lights.

Hector. Pilgrim turned and dashed through the yards, the empty lots, hauled himself over a newly built fence, reached his own car.

He revved back onto West End, saw Hector’s car in the distance. Hector turned onto Veterans Boulevard heading west, his car’s headlights coming alive. Pilgrim followed long enough to believe that Hector was not heading back to the Cellar safe house in Metairie but further west, toward the airport.

Toward where Ben thought Hector had a hiding hole.

Run home, your sorry-ass bastard, Pilgrim thought. His arm ached. He steered with his elbow, did a one-handed click through the call log to the stolen cell phone Ben had, dialed.

No answer.

Run home, your sorry bastard, he thought. Run home so Ben and I can kill you.





44

Ben turned onto a darkened street near Louis Armstrong International. Warehousing and storage facilities lined the street. He saw signs for FEMA and a bevy of government contractors, some of whom had once been clients of his.

The address he had was for an entire complex of warehouses, with a darkened, empty guard station. But the wooden arm was down. He noticed there was a passkey reader. He tried the passkey he’d taken from Jackie and the arm lifted and he drove into the complex.

A scattering of cars sat in the parking lot slots near the various warehouses—there were at least four large warehouses. The one he wanted, B, lay dark, no cars close by. He parked Jackie’s rental near the door—let Hector see Jackie was back, safe and sound. The sign on the door indicated this was “MLS Limited.” The name of one of the shell companies used by Hector; he must have rented the space in this name, not Hector Global. Ben tried the two keys on Jackie’s ring that didn’t have the rental car company tag on it. The second one worked. With his heart in his throat, he eased open the door.