Termination Orders(90)

“No way,” he had told Morgan, outside the door to his apartment building. He was jiggling his keys nervously. “No chance in hell.”

“I can’t do this without you.”

“You’re going to have to.”

“She’s going to assassinate a senator, Lowry. And there is no one to stop her but us.”

“Look, Cobra, I’ll bring this to Kline for you. I don’t even have to tell him I saw you. We’ll look into it and take the necessary precautions.”

“I’ve already talked to Boyle, Lowry. He wasn’t exactly receptive.”

“So now you want me to go against the Director? Cobra, that wouldn’t just be career suicide. That would be real, honest-to-God suicide.”

“Then you’re just going to let the senator die?”

“I don’t even like her,” said Lowry.

“What about Nickerson? What about Natasha? You’re going to let them win?”

“You’re the action hero, Cobra. Look at me.” He motioned down at his dumpy figure. “What do you think the odds are that I would survive an encounter with an operative?”

Morgan threw up his hands. “I told him! I told him you wouldn’t do it.”

“Told who?”

“Cougar,” said Morgan. “I told him you’d side with the pencil pushers.”

“Did you say Cougar? Are you by any chance implying that Cougar’s alive?” said Lowry, astonished.

“Yeah,” said Morgan. “And he said you’d help us, that you’d do the right thing. I said you didn’t have the spine.”

“Do you really expect that reverse-psychology trick to work?” asked Lowry.

“No,” said Morgan. “That’s what I’m telling you. I said you wouldn’t help us.”

“Because it’s not working, Cobra.”

“I didn’t think it was,” he said. “That’s what I told Cougar. But he insisted that you would come through. I guess I was right, after all.”

Lowry turned around to leave, faltered, and then glanced back at Morgan with a look of annoyed frustration. “Okay, fine,” he said. “You win. I’ll listen to what you have to say.”

“I appreciate it, Lowry.”

“I’m not agreeing to anything yet!”

“I know,” said Morgan.

Three days later, they were in the back of the van in the RFK parking lot.

“He had better be treating my car right,” said Morgan, as he put his foot up on Lowry’s chair and strapped a holster to his ankle. Then he picked up the gun, the small and easily concealable Walther PPK, his gun of choice from his days in Black Ops. He inspected it one last time, clicked the safety catch, and slid it into the holster. He looked at Lowry impatiently. If there had been more room, he would have been pacing.

“When did you say Conley was getting here?” Morgan asked.

“Three . . . two . . . one . . .” said Lowry, and, right on cue, there was a knock on the back door of the van. Lowry opened it to let Conley in, dressed in a suit to match Morgan’s.

“That GTO steers like a dream,” he said, smiling broadly.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” grumbled Morgan. “You’re not the one who’s driving it out of here.”

“If things don’t go right, neither of us is,” said Conley.

“Shit,” muttered Lowry to himself. “Tell me, why am I helping you guys again?”

“Because you’re an honorable man working for a corrupt organization,” said Conley. “And you want to set things right.”

“Yeah, that must be it,” Lowry said wryly. “Now, look here. We’ll go over this one more time before you jokers go in. Natasha will be a needle in a haystack, but we’re not flying blind here.” He pointed to one of the screens. Morgan and Conley bent down to look at it.

“That number on the blueprint, 340. The section numbers don’t go that high, so our best guess is that this is a range. That’s the distance she will be shooting from. Here”—he gestured to a screen in front of him, which showed a seating diagram of the stadium with a circle superimposed on it—“is the perimeter drawn by that range, measured from the stage as marked on Natasha’s blueprint, plus or minus ten feet. It just happens to intersect with the newly built luxury boxes, and Natasha’s blueprint is recent enough to include them.”

He indicated the seating diagram on the computer, a row of squares, and pointed to the edge of the upper level. “And this one here, L13, was requested by none other than Senator Nickerson. From there, Natasha would have a clear view of the stage, as well as total privacy.”