Hostage Zero

Now Leger’s jaw twitched. “You mean the janitor? He died?”

Brandy shook her head. “No, I mean one of the targets.”

He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with three fingers. “Which one?”

“Bravo,” she said. Notwithstanding the fact that the limo was sealed and checked daily for listening devices, neither of them felt comfortable speaking of these matters in plain English. It’d be different if they were planning an invasion, but as it was, this sort of business needed to be guarded with the utmost secrecy.

“Why am I just hearing about this now?” He asked the question through clenched teeth.

“I was hoping to be able to report on solid damage control.”

He looked at her like she was crazy. “Damage control? He’s dead, for God’s sake.”

This was the part she’d been dreading most. Her strategy all along was to just blurt it out and let the storm happen, so she said, “We’ve got people going out to pick up the body.”

Something happened behind his eyes. For an instant, she thought Secretary Leger might hit her. “ Pick up the body? Pick it up from where?”

Brandy chose her words carefully. “Because of the shooting, the team panicked a little. They knew that the police would go crazy, so they were in a hurry to get out. The pilot of the chopper told them that he couldn’t handle all the weight, so they took Bravo to the woods and shot him.”

Leger’s eyes grew huge, an expression of genuine horror. “Jesus.”

Brandy went on, “I didn’t find out about it until Viper called at three this morning. He swears there was no alternative. He told me where they’d stashed the body, and I’ve sent a team out to recover it.”

Leger scowled. “Viper called at three this morning? Twenty-four hours after the event?”

“Yes, sir. Apparently there was a communication breakdown.”

Secretary Leger stared at her, as if he wasn’t sure he understood the words. Then he shifted his gaze to the front of the limo, to the panel with the Defense Department shield that separated them from the security team. His face drooped.

Brandy said, “Sir, I assure you that this is under control. We knew going in that there were risks, but overall-”

“Brandy.” He turned his head and looked at her with an expression that defined exhaustion.

“Sir?”

“Shut up for a while, okay?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“I didn’t do nothin’ to the kid,” the hippie insisted. Jonathan detected a slight Spanish accent. “I saved his life.” The guy kept putting his hands up as they walked toward the Batmobile, and Jonathan kept telling him to put them down. They were beyond the cover of the trees, back out in the open, and few images could draw attention quite like a scruffy man in full surrender.

Jonathan thought it was important to move Jeremy away from the bodies as soon as possible. Poor kid already had enough to deal with; he didn’t need to see spattered brain tissue. Boxers was still back there, though, rifling through the men’s pockets and gathering intel.

Jeremy might as well have been welded to Jonathan’s side. More behavior that seemed too young for the boy exhibiting it. Jonathan needed to get him to Father Dom’s head-shrinking couch as soon as possible.

“Tell him, Jeremy,” Harvey said. “Don’t let me hang out to dry like this. Tell him I saved your life.”

Jeremy wasn’t talking to anyone about anything. He kept his focus straight ahead.

Harvey went on, “Look, Mister, I swear to God-”

“I believe you,” Jonathan said, cutting him off. They were still thirty feet from the Hummer, but Jonathan stopped the parade.

Harvey’s face showed only distrust.

“Swear to God,” Jonathan said. “I saw how you were protecting the boy. I saw you pulling their aim away from the campsite, and I know you didn’t take him. So relax, okay?”

Fear gone. Cue the anger. “Relax!” Harvey erupted. “How the hell am I supposed to relax when there are two dead guys in the camp that everybody knows is mine? And, all respect, how the hell am I supposed to relax when I’m talkin’ to the guy who killed ’em?”

Jonathan shot a nervous glance down to Jeremy. He didn’t like this kind of talk in front of a child. Then he realized how far out of the bottle that particular genie was. “Any idea who they were?” Jonathan asked, softening his tone in the hope that Harvey would follow suit.

“I know they were killers!” Harvey said. “They were there to get his body”-he thrust a finger around Jonathan to Jeremy, who continued to reside in his own world-“only he wasn’t dead because I saved his life. They’d drugged him-I could tell from the pinpoint pupils-and they were supposed to have shot him, only they missed.” The details spilled out in a rush of words and arm flaps. He covered all of the details of his medical ministrations. “I swear on a stack of Bibles that I didn’t do nothin’ but good for that boy. I sure as hell didn’t touch him inappropriately or nothin’ like that.”