The Eyes of Others Page 16

  “I could sleep.”

  “You have one of those dreams?” Louisiana asks with a smirk.

  “Yup,” I say, holding the piece of paper from the notepad with my scribbles on it.

  “What’s going on?” Maryland inquires, lifting his head off the small decorative sofa pillow. It’s a lot quieter in this room now without his operatic rendition of a how a chainsaw sounds.

  “We’re watchin’ our surveillance watch us,” Louisiana explains. He’s calmer about it than I am.

  “You boneheads woke me up for that? We can’t do anything about it so just go back to sleep.”

  “We need to. We may be in danger,” I warn, causing him to sit up on the couch.

  “In danger from who? What are you guys talking about down here?” Tara asks, joining our gaggle at the window.

  She’s dressed in only an oversized T-shirt draped over her petite frame that doesn’t ride far down her thighs. I told her to get up and get dressed when I woke her, and this one article of clothing is all she managed. It makes me wonder what she was wearing before she got out from under the covers.

  “Oh, my.”

  “Shut up, Louisiana,” she barks. I’d admonish him myself, but it’d be hypocritical since I was thinking the same thing.

  “I had a memory. It wasn’t much clearer than the rest, but I know what was said,” I explain now that everyone is awake and moving.

  “What was it?” Maryland asks nervously.

  “I was in a room … a living room, I think. A guy was on the phone. He was talking about taking someone out.”

  “Who?” Tara asks.

  “Me.”

  “He said that?” Maryland asks, rising off the couch and joining us near the window.

  “No, not exactly.”

  “Then how do you know?” Maryland asks, playing a game of gotcha with me. I glance back at the notes just to make certain.

  “Because I think the man was Colby Washington.”

  “Your boss?” Tara asks, confused.

  “That’s crazy, Boston,” Maryland dismisses.

  “Yeah, I agree, but I know what I saw and I don’t think we should stay here. The man watching us could have been the one he was talking to.”

  “Do you really think he would order him to … what was it? Take us out?” Maryland sneers. “He’s an administrator, not a killer.”

  “He had a man break into my apartment, remember?” Tara chides. I’m not surprised she’s taking my side considering she was already a victim once and is still shaken up by it.

  “It’s a big step from breaking and entering to killing someone.”

  “Not as big as you might think,” Louisiana says under his breath.

  “I’m open to opinions, guys. You know my feelings on it, but do we stay or go?”

  “I never should have let you talk me into coming here. I have work in a few hours. I want to stay.”

  “We should just walk out and leave,” Tara counters.

  “It sorta defeats the purpose, sweetie,” Louisiana reminds her. “We don’t want to be followed.”

  “Then we can go out the back.”

  “We could, but if they have a guy watching the back door, we might as well take your suggestion and go out the front,” I counter.

  “All right, grab everything we need,” Louisiana says, leaving the window and going over to his black duffle bag.

  “What are you doing?” Maryland asks out of genuine concern.

  “Heading for the back door. Give me ten minutes.”

  “Why?”

  “I got the perfect thing to get us out of Big Brother's crosshairs.”

  .

  ~ CHapter 34 ~

  FBI Agent zach bruhte

  The ringing phone jolts me in my seat. I look around the car, then out the windshield and driver’s side window. Everything on the street is perfectly still. Crap, I must have dozed off. I find the phone on the passenger seat and answer it before the call goes to voice mail.

  “Yeah?”

  “It took you long enough to answer. You’d better not be sleeping,” the voice warns. Busted.

  “No, I wasn’t,” I lie to Garrett as I try to rub the sleep out of my eyes with my other hand. “The phone was buried under fast food wrappers in the passenger seat.”

  “I don’t care. Is anything going on there?”

  “It’s two thirty in the morning,” I tell him after checking the time on the dash. “Do you ever sleep?”

  “Just answer the question,” he commands.

  “No, it’s quiet. Nothing has happened since Williams showed up. They all seem to have crashed out here for the night.”

  “They are cooking something up, I just know it. Stay on your toes. Things are progressing as planned on this end.”

  “Progressing how?” I ask him, still wondering what the ultimate endgame is.

  “That’s not your concern.” Of course that’s his reply.

  I’m tiring of this game. I don’t like being kept in the dark about things, and the more I think about it, the more I feel like a marionette with Garrett pulling my strings. My career may be in tatters with the bureau, but I’m still only on suspension. How long before he manages to make that separation permanent? I have already broken a dozen laws for him.

  “Garrett, I read the file I stole before I gave it to you. How does this have anything to do with the mole we’re looking for?”

  “That’s a small piece of the bigger picture. All I need is for you to do your job.”

  I’m about to press my argument when I see someone emerge from the front door. It looks like Boston is leading the doctor and Eric Williams straight for their car without looking up and down the street. He must not suspect they’re being watched.

  “Hold on a second, Garrett. They’re leaving the house.”

  “How did you miss that?” he mocks.

  “A light never went on. Three of them are climbing into the doctor’s SUV.”

  “What’s the fourth guy doing?”

  The short, pudgy one they call “Louisiana” is walking in the street straight towards me. He can’t have known I was here. Is it a coincidence? I need to play it cool, but I feel for my weapon and the reassurance of it being there.

  “Garrett, I have to go,” I say, ending the call and dropping the phone back in the passenger seat.

  I sink down lower, hoping the figure walking towards me will just walk by. The headlights on the SUV turn on, bathing the street in more unwelcomed light. The car inches slowly out of the space along the curb it was parked in. I’m glad I put a tracker on her car, too.

  The guy is only fifteen feet away, walking straight at me, when I notice something in his hand. What is that? I realize I’m blown and am about to get out of my BMW and flash my badge when he slaps the top of the cylindrical object and starts running towards my car.

  I have no time to react. He slams the coffee can-sized metal device on the center of my hood, smiles at me, and takes off back down the street. What the hell?

  The windshield in front of me explodes in white light as the device erupts on the hood. Flash blindness sets in as my dilated pupils fail to defend my retinas from oversaturation. I can still see the sparks flying everywhere at the front of my car as I struggle to shield myself from the intense heat.

  “Holy shit!” I scream as I struggle to get out of the car. Running fifteen feet behind the rear of what’s left of my vehicle, I notice that the device has already melted through the hood and is now going to work on the engine block. It’s the kind of pyrotechnic show you only get with thermite.

  The doctor’s little red SUV does a U-turn in the street and Louisiana jumps into the backseat. That bastard just destroyed my car. I’ll be damned if he’s getting away that easy. I draw my weapon and start to run towards their SUV some fifty feet ahead of me. The blistering heat forces me to make a wide circle around my melting car.

  Lights are now switching on in the townhouses that line the street as they become a
ware of the fireworks show destroying my car. So far the damage is contained to my own vehicle, but two others parked only a dozen feet up and down the street from me are starting to show the effects of the heat the thermite is throwing off. No time to think about that now, though.

  The SUV begins to pull away from me and accelerate down the street. I’m not going to reach it in time to stop it. I have to settle for the next best thing. I quit running, pull up a perfect shooting stance, line the sights of my Sig Sauer nine millimeter and squeeze the trigger, firing off a single round, and then another as the rear window of the SUV explodes.

  .

  ~ CHapter 35 ~

  eugene “boston” hollinger

  “I bet you didn’t see that shit in your dreams, Boston! Spa-doosh!” Louisiana yells as he climbs into the back of Tara’s car.

  “I only dream about stuff that’s already happened, you reckless moron! What the hell was that?” I shout back from the driver’s seat as I hit the gas and start to flee this scene.

  I check the mirror and see the man from the car heading towards us, making a wide circle around what was once his car. I hear a pop, then another when the back window explodes, showering glass on Tara and Louisiana. Tara screams as they both duck their heads behind the seat.

  “Gents, I do believe he’s shooting at us,” Louisiana observes a little too calmly.

  “He’s shooting at us!” Maryland yells from the passenger seat in the more expected panicked tone. Tara is still screaming in the back, trying to keep her head down as I hear another bullet slam into her rear hatch door.

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious! Louisiana, I hope you have another idea!” I exclaim as I slam the gas pedal to the floorboards.

  “Actually, I do.”

  I glance in the mirror to see Louisiana holding up a small black device. He presses a button, and the car, already an inferno in the front, bounces up the in the air as a second explosion rocks the rear end of it. The roar is deafening, and the guy shooting at us only a moment ago is hurled forward and lands facedown in the street.

  “Oh my God! You’re all crazy,” Tara screams.

  The fireball billows into the air and then dissipates quickly. The BMW is now a smoldering wreck, and the owners of the cars near it are going to have quite a story to tell their insurance adjusters. I glance over at Maryland whose mouth is hanging open in shock. In the mirror, I can see Louisiana looking on with satisfaction.

  “What the hell was that?” Maryland scolds with a look of anger I’ve never seen on him.

  “Plan B,” Louisiana answers, not even trying to suppress a smile.

  “Plan B? You call that a plan? Blowing up a car on my street?”

  “Okay, maybe I used a little too much plastic explosive.”

  “I said disable it, Louisiana, not destroy it,” I tell him, as I make a couple of quick turns and try to find a quick way out of the Adams Morgan section of Washington. In a part of town with this much money, police response is measured in seconds, not minutes.

  “To-mato, to-mah-toe.”

  “Just like the old days, right, Boston?” Maryland laments as Louisiana tries to console Tara’s hysterics in the backseat. “Only instead of paperwork in Iraq, it’ll be a federal penitentiary right here in the good ’ol U.S. of A.”

  I can hear the wail of sirens already heading in the direction of Tara’s. I don’t know who the guy watching us was, or whether he will stick around to have a discussion with the officers when they arrive on the scene. Regardless, any of the neighbors may have seen our car pull away, and it will only be a matter of minutes before the entire city is looking for us. I need to put some distance between us and that explosion, and I need to do it fast.

  “Stupid bastard is going to land us all in prison,” Maryland mumbles, along with a couple other comments I don’t hear. He’s only moments away from really freaking out about this, so I need something constructive for him to do.

  “How’s Tara doing back there?” I ask him, unable to see her in my rearview mirror and noticing the absence of the screaming and cursing coming from her only a few minutes ago.

  “She’s curled up in a ball and looks pretty upset,” he reports after contorting his body to check the backseat.

  “Look, Maryland, I―”

  “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he cuts in. “Let’s just not get caught by the police in the next ten minutes and give me a chance to collect my thoughts.”

  I respect Maryland’s decision and pull out my phone to make a call. I know I’m driving and will get chastised by Maryland for it, but it’s the least severe of the laws we’ve broken tonight.

  “If they’re watching us, there’s a pretty good chance they’re monitoring that,” Maryland warns as I select the number and put the phone up against my ear.

  “Yeah, but we have no choice. I’ll keep it quick and vague.”

  “Hello?” Gina asks groggily on the other end of the line.

  “Hi, sweetie. I’m sorry to wake you up, but we’re in a little trouble.”

  .

  ~ chapter 36 ~

  eric “MARYLAND” williams

  “Are you done with that phone?” I ask Boston when he finishes his call with Gina.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Give it to me,” I command, holding my hand out until he surrenders it. I roll down my window and toss it out, followed by my own.

  “What the―!”

  “They can track it, Boston. You know that. Yours too, Louisiana.”

  “I’ll take care of my own, thanks,” he relays to me as he pitches his out his own window. “My love?”

  “You’ve already ruined my life tonight, asshole! You’re not getting my phone, too. I’ll turn it off.”

  “We can’t take that chance,” I explain to Tara. “Within thirty seconds, they’ll have our location and have us in cuffs five minutes after that. Hand him your phone, please.”

  “No.”

  “Tara …”

  “Why would they track it? You said Gina told you whoever was watching us wasn’t part of the government. How could they track my phone if that’s true?” She brings up a good point, but Louisiana answers before I can.

  “He was government, or at least was once. Former FBI, CIA, or military.”

  “And how do you know that?” Tara sneers to her backseat companion.

  “Because of his stance when he was shooting at us, but that’s not the point,” Louisiana explains. “It doesn’t matter if the surveillance was sanctioned or not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the jackass sitting next to you blew up a car in a residential neighborhood in the nation’s capital. If the FBI wasn’t involved before, they are now,” Maryland chides.

  “Then why do it?” she asks Louisiana.

  “That’s not important right now,” I interject. “Everyone is going to be looking for us, and our phones will be among the first things they check for. We need to ditch them. All of them.”

  Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden released classified information that many of us in the intelligence community knew for years. Among his disclosures was that the NSA has been gathering nearly five billion records a day on the location of cell phones around the world via their internal GPS to track the movements of individuals. The records feed a vast database that stores the information. Those of us in the know understand they can do it in real time.

  Tara hands Louisiana her phone and he tosses that one to meet the same fate as the others in middle of New York Avenue. Now we need to put some distance between us, our now abandoned cell phones, and what’s left of the car Louisiana blew up at Tara’s place. Then somehow I need to get us out of this situation.

  “This don’t look like D.C. anymore,” Louisiana observes using a more Cajun than normal accent after a few minutes of silence.

  “It’s called Ivy City. It’s one of the poorer areas of the city,” Boston explains to him.

  Ivy Cit
y is an industrial neighborhood dominated by warehouses and an Amtrak rail yard. D.C. politicians love to gush about the revitalization of the area that accompanied an influx of nightclubs and young professionals seeking less costly housing in the district. It’s all smoke and mirrors. The area is basically a ghetto that ranks as one of the most dangerous parts of the city.

  “Clearly. It might be a good place to pick up a new ride though.”

  “He’s right. We need new wheels,” Boston agrees.

  “And we need to get off New York Avenue. We probably have an ABP on us by now,” I offer, if only to suggest something likely to keep me out of prison.

  “APB? I’m done with this. Let me out of the car!” Tara demands suddenly. I get the impression she’s led a sheltered life. It’s not surprising that the stress of our current predicament is getting to her.

  “What?”

  “You heard me! I said, let me out.”

  “Tara, I understand you’re upset, but if you think for a second that I’m going to drop you off by yourself in this part of town, you’re the one who’s crazy.”

  Boston’s declaration seems to placate Tara who starts noticing the old, run-down warehouses and homes with bars on the windows. Neither of those things is a good place for an attractive young woman to be near, alone, at three in the morning. I have the perfect solution though.

  “I’ll get out with her,” I inform the group.

  “We’re not droppin’ two women off either,” Louisiana derides from the back.

  “Shut it, Louisiana.”

  “Everybody sit tight for a few minutes,” Boston tries to placate. “We’ll get this all sorted out, but let’s do what we need to first.”

  “Make a left at the corner and stop the car, bro. I know where I can get us a new ride,” Louisiana offers, pointing back to a sign on the brick wall of the warehouse we just passed.

  “And just how are you going to handle that? It doesn't require blowing something up,” Tara sneers, her arms practically welded across her chest.

  “Boston, who comes from Louisiana?”