Termination Orders(68)

They bolted behind a Dumpster as another car, a sleek silver Audi sedan, rolled in through the gate in the fence and into the open warehouse door.

Morgan scanned the surroundings. He couldn’t go in through the same gate as the car, or he would be seen, and the fence was too high to climb over. The warehouses closest to them, he had noticed, were liberally covered in graffiti. His eyes ran along the fence, looking for something he knew must be there. He found it, a short way back toward where they had parked—a gap in the fence, concealed, not large, but large enough for him to squeeze through.

“Conley, I’m going in.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I need to see who it is. I need to hear what they’re saying. Do you have your comm?” Conley nodded. “Good. Try to get a clear view of the inside from out here. I’ll keep you posted when I can.”

Before Conley could protest, Morgan ran for the gap in the fence, pulling a thread in his shirt as he wriggled through it. He dashed for the warehouse, taking cover behind car-sized boxes wrapped in tarp that were arranged in the yard, until he approached number six.

Now what? He was too likely to be seen if he approached from the front, but coming in from the back would put a huge empty warehouse between him and his targets. That’s when he looked up at the graffiti again.

It hung down like a hem over the edge. The roof here was not at the very top of the warehouse but was over a squatter area that jutted from its side. The kids who tagged it had to have gotten up there somehow. If they could, so could he. He ran along the side of the warehouse through the little alley between it and the one next to it. He got his answer when he rounded the back corner and found a service ladder that led to the roof.

He climbed it, slowly, steadily, as quietly as possible, until it took him to the top. Over the edge, he saw—beyond the small nest of discarded joint tips and cigarette butts—just what he hoped for: windows, waist-high from the top surface of the lower tier.

His real problem, of course, was the roof itself. It looked strong enough to hold him, but even a light step might reverberate loudly in the expansive hollow of the warehouse. This was the time to be careful and methodical. He made his way across the roof, one . . . step . . . at . . . a . . . time.

What should have been a thirty-second walk at a leisurely pace took him nearly three minutes of cautious, deliberate movement. He could just barely hear the voices of two men barking at each other below. Standing right above them, he peeked into the window, concealing himself as much as possible. He could see them both, but it took him a few seconds to make out the other man’s face through the glare from the clear blue sky. Son of a bitch.

“Cougar,” he said, only loud enough for Conley to hear him over the comm, “it’s Nickerson. It’s Senator Edgar Nickerson.”

“Shit,” said Conley, through his earpiece. “We got him, Cobra. That’s all we needed. Now get the hell out of there.”

“I need to hear what they’re saying.”

“Cobra, don’t be stupid. We have our lead. Sticking around is suicide.”

Morgan chose to ignore Conley. Chances like this didn’t come around every day. He edged closer to the window. The roof underneath him creaked, and he froze. But the two men seemed to take no notice, so he leaned in and listened.

“The son of a bitch knows, Ed. He’s got proof.”

“He didn’t ask for anything?”

“No. He basically came out and said that the point was just to rattle us.”

“I’m glad to see that’s not working at all.”

“You think I’m scared? I’m not scared of that . . . that piece of crap. He’ll be begging for me to let him die by the time I’m done with him.”

“I’m sure. Do you know who that piece of crap is, Les? He’s a former CIA spook. A good one, too. You think your hired monkeys can take him? You think they can outsmart a man like him? You think you can, Les?”

“I took care of the journalist, didn’t I?”

“You sent your goons to ‘disappear’ some uppity little basset hound who got a whiff of a Pulitzer, and you think you can handle this?”

“And what would you do, huh?”

“Forget it, Les. I’ll take care of it. Just have your men stay out of my way.”

The roof under Morgan creaked again. Nickerson looked up. “What was that?”

“It’s probably nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing. The surface under Morgan’s feet was wobbling. The corroded structure of that corner of the roof was buckling under his weight.

“It’s just some animal or something, Ed.”