Page 94 of The Fourth Option
“Why?”
“Because our friends are going to find him before he can talk.”
“Bates?”
“Could be Bates. Could be Cuchillo’s people. Could be both. Regardless, he’s not going to be around much longer.”
“Meaning the official story sticks and Icy can spin it right into the governor’s mansion.”
“Exactly. One guy and a dog against Bates’s COPE unit and Cuchillo’s assassins? Shit, sir. I wouldn’t want to be him.”
Matheson leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes.
Neither would I.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
WALKER DOWNSHIFTED TOsecond gear to slow Belle’s old BMW, killed the headlights, then stepped on the clutch, allowing the car to coast slowly to a stop along the curb.
“Nice,” Belle said. “They teach you the silent approach in the CIA?”
He glanced at her in the passenger seat, her face illuminated by the glow of Google Maps.
You sure this is a good idea? You thinking straight?
He checked the rearview. Clear.
Ahead, a few streetlights, leaning on crumbled foundations, still tilted in the direction Katrina’s floodwaters had forced them twenty years earlier. Walker had once read about an old mining town in the California Sierra foothills that had been forcibly abandoned to make way for the Folsom Dam. Later, during a drought, the reservoir got so low that the old buildings were visible again. In the pitch black of 1 a.m., this section of the Ninth looked like that; a city of ghosts.
“Learn what in the CIA?” he asked her.
They had spent the past four days poring over Connor’s journals in the van. When she went to work at the tattoo shop, he remained behind, clacking on the old typewriter, connecting dots and thinking through the plan. Then, in darkness he surveilled their target.
“Rolling to a stop in the shadows, Jason Bourne. What did you think I meant?”
“I knew what you meant. Let me see the SAT photo.”
She handed him the phone. He pinched in on the satellite overlay.
“Is that where you set up the past few nights?” she asked.
“Yeah. It really wasn’t enough time to establish patterns.”
“And that’s where you’ll be on overwatch?”
“Overwatch? Where’d you hear that one?”
“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Three. Like a decade ago.”
“No. I won’t be able to get to you in time if something happens. I’ll be closer.”
“I told you, Chris. Kids score here all the time.”
She reached to release her seat belt.
“No. Not yet,” he said. “I want to make sure nothing’s changed.”
“Get some G-2?” she asked, smiling.
