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I take another sip from my bourbon. “Busy with what? Government work?”
“She doesn’t say and I don’t ask.”
Alex’s wife, Bree, used to be with me at DC Metro, where she was the chief of detectives, and a good one at that. But politics and idiot bosses caused her to leave and now she’s working as an investigator at the Bluestone Group, an international private security firm.
“You okay with that?”
“No,” Alex says. “But we’re doing the best we can. She’s got a car service that takes her to and from work. I don’t have to worry about her safety.”
“What do you worry about, sugar?” I ask.
He ponders that for a moment. “Everything. How can I not?”
“What did you think about our high-level meeting earlier?”
“Impressive and detailed, except for that major absence that you pointed out. And it went about as well as our briefing with the chief. But something about that meeting bothered me.”
That’s my Alex. Always able to look ahead, peer around, and see patterns that others miss. “Go on.”
He shrugs. “It looks to be random, but to me it’s not. Why it’s not, I can’t see clearly right now, but I know the pattern’s there.”
“The general said someone or a group of people are orchestrating all the attacks. You don’t think they’re tossing the dice and saying, ‘Okay, we came up with eleven, it’s Kansas City’s turn’—you think the sequence is more deliberate?”
Alex says, “I do. The attacks seem random, unusual—everything from a shooting at a mall to car bombs here and in other major cities—but I think they’re driving toward a goal.”
“You think there’ll be a major strike here in DC in a week, like they said?”
He takes a sip of his bourbon. “Maybe.” He sighs. “I won’t be sleeping tonight. I’m trying to figure this out.”
“Think you’ll have something for the nine a.m. meeting?”
“That’s the goal, my friend.”
We sit in silence, each with our own thoughts, until I say, “I should get going. Let’s meet at Metro headquarters tomorrow morning before we head off to our next secret and secure location. Say, eight thirty?”
He clinks his tumbler against mine. “Works for me.”
The door opens and Nana Mama comes onto the porch. “What are you two wildcats up to?”
Alex says, “Just shop talk.”
I say, “We’re trying to save the world.”
“Huh,” she says. “You two fools ’bout twenty years too late for that.”
I laugh, put my tumbler down, pick her up, and give her a kiss on her wrinkled cheek. “Nana Mama, if we had ten more of you, we could take over the world, never mind save it.”
She struggles but not too much. “John Sampson, you put me down. And the world couldn’t handle ten more of me.”
Alex laughs. “Sure would love to find out, Nana Mama.”
Chapter
6
In unit 14 atthe Planet Storage facility in Chevy Chase, Maryland, four men work slowly and methodically to get ready for tomorrow’s mission. Taking up most of the interior storage room is what appears to be a dark blue Amazon delivery van emblazoned with the company’s swooping insignia. A police check of the license plate on the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, the typical vehicle for the behemoth corporation, would show that the van was registered to Amazon.
On one side of the van is a workbench with tools and paint, and on the opposite side there’s another workbench holding the items to be used and delivered tomorrow, including bullet-resistant vests and two HK MP5 submachine guns.
