Edge

gotstarted in the business . . . your sign cutting, your orienteering. All lies?”
    “No.”
    “Bullshit.”
    My heart went out to him. How could it not? A man who’d been robbed of a career he loved—and by his wife, no less.
    Who’d been robbed of his status as a hero.
    And lied to by me.
    He whispered, “Give me this chance. I’m a good shot and the limp’s nothing. I can move fast, if I have to.”
    Joanne said, “No, Ry. Let them handle it.”
    “I’m sorry,” I told him.
    “Well, I’m going anyway.” He was speaking to me. “You can’t stop me. I know where she is. After you’re gone I’ll just get in somebody’s fucking car and go anyway.” His hand strayed to his weapon.
    A moment of dense silence. My eyes needed only to slip toward Lyle Ahmad, and the former marine stepped up behind, easing Ryan to the floor with a basic wrist grip on his gun hand. There was a countermove, by which Ryan, the larger of the men, could have escaped but, if he’d ever known it, he’d forgotten.
    His eyes on mine, he growled, “Fucking coward. You couldn’t even take me yourself, could you? Had to have somebody get me from behind.”
    I stepped forward and slipped nylon restraints around his wrists.
    “No!” he cried.
    “I’m sorry.”
    “She’s my daughter!”
    It was Joanne I was looking at, though. For thefirst time since I’d met her, tears were now streaking down her cheeks.
    Ahmad got Ryan into a sitting position. I leaned down toward his thick, damp face, dark with anger. I said firmly, “I’m going to bring her back to you. This is what I do. I’ll bring her back safe.”

Chapter 60
    ROUTE 15 IS a hilly road through the heart of Civil War Virginia, forty miles outside of Washington. Large, private estates on the capillaries of horse country fight against the encroaching cookie-cutter developments with streets named according to themes, like Camelot, flora, colonial New England.
    You’ll find oddities along the highway. Decrepit, abandoned farms whose owners aren’t willing to sell to salivating developers or who have simply disappeared—often because they prefer staying off the grid for any number of reasons. There are also ominous structures, stained concrete or rusting steel, ringed with dire warning signs and sharp, equally rusty wire, blanketed with kudzu. They once supported various attempts at defense systems during the Cold War. We can’t take down intercontinental ballistic missiles nowadays, much less fifty years ago, but that didn’t stop the army or air force from trying. Some of these buildings were actually for sale but since most of them had served as weapons storage facilities, the toxic cleanup costs would be prohibitive.
    I’d done a thorough run-down of our destination, USAF-LC Facility 193, a large concrete building only thirty or forty minutes from the safe house in Great Falls.
    I piloted my car past the facility now and noted the concrete facade and the forty- or fifty-foot mound of earth, grass covered, that the building disappeared into. It was, as McCall had told Joanne, set back about one hundred yards. The gate was closed but the fences around the front and sides weren’t imposing and didn’t appear to be electrified or mounted with sensors.
    I eased to a stop. Examining the place through my Xenonics night vision monocular, Pogue said, “Two SUVs, can’t tell the tags. Some lights inside the building. One person outside, can’t tell if he’s armed. Assume he is.”
    I continued, pulling off the shoulder into bushes, then shut the engine off. It was 8:45 and dark. Normally the stars were striking here but tonight they were invisible, thanks to the blanketing clouds. Pogue and I climbed out, waited for a semi to burn along the road, spinning up dust and limp leaves in its wake. We crossed the road and moved toward the facility, using the dense brush and trees for cover. Pogue studied the place again through the monocular and held up a single index finger. Only one guard still.
    I looked too. A youngish man with a close crew cut. He wore dark jeans and a sweatshirt. He kept his hand at his side and when he turned and made some brief rounds, I could see that he wore a semiautomatic pistol on his hip.
    Still thirty yards away, Pogue slipped an earpiece in and spoke into his collar. I couldn’t hear the words clearly but I deduced he was reporting in to Williams, Joanne’s former boss.
    If McCall was right about the times, the primaryhad not yet