Inside Outt

“Right now. I’ll get there faster on foot.”
    “What the hell—”
    “He’s going to take out the second team. I’ve got to warn them.”
    He sprinted down the street, the Glock out, his eyes scanning the hot spots. He passed another van, a bloody body splayed out in the street beside it. People were looking out windows and coming to doorsteps. He pulled the baseball cap lower and ran.
    He cut across corners and between parked cars and it took him less than two minutes to cover the distance to Nico’s office cul-de-sac. Fifty yards out, he heard two more .45 caliber shots.
    He burst onto the street just in time to see Larison pumping another white van full of bullets. Larison was standing on the passenger side, just behind the door, the angle obviously calculated to make shooting maximally difficult for the people inside. Two shots, a third. Then he calmly walked to the back of the van and emptied a half dozen more rounds into it in a pattern that no one hiding inside could have avoided.
    Ben sprinted down behind a parked car. He hoped it would provide cover. He had a feeling Larison was using AP rounds.
    Larison looked left and right. He took a fresh magazine from a fanny pack or belly band and swapped it into his gun. Ben had the shot. All his instincts, all his experience, told him to take it.
    He ground his teeth together and fought warring impulses. He could end this thing right now. Right here. But wouldn’t that mean the tapes, set to a deadman trigger, would be released? Wasn’t that exactly what he was supposed to prevent?
    Larison picked up his bike and mounted it. He rode past Ben. And looked directly at him.
    Somehow, even through the visor obscuring Larison’s face, Ben thought he felt a kind of… recognition pass between them. He still had the shot. Larison must have known it. But he didn’t react. He just looked at Ben, and then rode away.
    A second later, Paula came barreling down the street, going right past Larison. She must have missed Ben crouching between the cars because she went by him.
Shit.
He ran out after her.
    She turned around in the cul-de-sac. Her window was down. “Here,” Ben called. She nodded and stopped. Ben went around the back of the van and saw her pushing the passenger door open as he came up the side. He would have preferred to drive, but if they encountered opposition, for the moment it would be better for Paula to drive and for Ben to shoot.
    There was a squeal of tires from the opening of the street. Ben gripped the side of the door and watched a brown sedan rapidly approaching.
Cops?
he thought. It would have been a pretty fast arrival. And that kind of bad luck twice in a row, first Manila, now here… he didn’t believe it.
    “Keep your head down,” he said. He could see a passenger and a driver, both Caucasian, both wearing shades. No one in back.
    The car stopped ten feet in front of them. The driver and passenger, both in poplin suits, stepped out. Their hands were empty. Ben scanned the area. He saw faces in gated windows and people coming to their doors. But no other immediate threats.
    “Paula Lanier?” the passenger asked, moving toward the driver side of the van.
    Paula looked at him. “Who are you?”
    Ben didn’t like the whole thing from the beginning, and he was liking it less by the second. The way the car was blocking them. The fact that whoever these guys were, they wanted to have a conversation of some sort at the scene of a recent multiple homicide. The way the passenger had called out Paula’s name, which felt like an attempt to lull her by establishing false familiarity. And now they were engaging in a flanking maneuver. Five more feet, and the passenger would disappear from Ben’s view. Meanwhile, the driver was continuing to advance on Ben.
    He didn’t think these things consciously, but rather realized them in a kind of instantaneous mental shorthand. Nor did he consciously weigh a decision. Rather, he simply understood what needed to be done. And did it.
    He moved up from the side of the van, tacking right so he could keep the driver and passenger in a single line of vision. “Stop moving,” he called out, loudly and in a flat tone that would have made an attack dog pause. He put the Glock’s sights on the driver’s face. “Now.”
    But the passenger didn’t stop. And the driver said, “Relax, fella, we’re here to help. Diplomatic Security. Here, let me show you ID.”
    The guy started to reach inside his