Inside Outt

jacket. Under more relaxed circumstances, Ben might have asked,
What part of “stop moving” don’t you understand?
As it was, he shot the guy instead. A neat hole magically appeared in the guy’s forehead. His body twitched once and slid to the ground.
    The other guy lurched toward the driver side of the van. Ben sprinted forward to prevent him from getting to cover, the Glock at chin level in a two-handed grip. As he angled around the front of the van, he saw the guy had gotten his gun out. Too late. Ben nailed him with another head shot. Blood and brain matter sprayed the side of the van and the guy tipped over to the ground.
    Ben ran up to the door and yanked it open. Paula’s mouth was hanging open in shock. Her face was flecked with red and gray. He knew she wasn’t going to be able to drive. Not now.
    “Move,” Ben said. “Passenger seat. Go.”
    She complied. He stepped over the dead guy, jumped into the seat, engaged the transmission, and swerved around the sedan. The sedan’s front bumper clipped the open door and slammed it shut as they squealed around it.
    “What… what the fuck…” Paula spluttered.
    Ben drove. They could figure out what the fuck later.
    “What did you just do? They said… they said they were—”
    “What they said was bullshit.”
    “How can you be so sure? You
killed
them.”
    “You’re goddamned right I killed them. You think Diplomatic Security doesn’t know enough to stop moving when a guy pointing a gun pointblank at their faces tells them to? You think DS is so inept that not only don’t they stop, they reach for something unseen? There’s not a cop or a DS in the world that stupid.”
    “That’s it? You decided to kill them… based on that?”
    Ben shot onto the highway and headed west. He slowed his speed to normal.
    “Actually, no, there were a dozen things. The way they stopped. The way they approached. The way they used your name. And why wouldn’t anyone have had the sense to tell us they were coming? You don’t send in a B-team like that without a heads-up to the A. It’s guaranteed to cause friendly fire.”
    “They knew me!”
    He glanced at her. “Did you know them?”
    She shook her head. “No.”
    “Then they didn’t know you. They knew your name. I’m sure they had a photograph. The rest was artifice to help them get close.”
    “But how could you really
know
—”
    “Look, I don’t tell you how to dust for fingerprints, okay? So don’t tell me how a couple operators get close to their targets before drilling them with head shots. If you’d waited a second longer for the proof you want, you’d be dead now.”
    “Then who were they?”
    Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m starting to think they could be anyone. That’s the problem with those damned tapes.”
    He thought. Could Hort have set him up? He still didn’t trust him, not after Obsidian. But why would he? Hort was getting overruled back in Washington, and Ben was his only set of eyes and ears on the ground. What possible gain would there be for Hort?
    Besides, if it had been Hort, why would that guy have used Paula’s name and not Ben’s? It was Ben they needed to lull more than Paula. He was the greater tactical threat. If Hort had sent them, he would have told them as much.
    And it was more than that. So soon after the emotional whipsaw of Obsidian and Manila, Ben didn’t
want
to believe it could have been Hort. Some things, he decided, just had to be determined by your gut. And his gut told him it wasn’t Hort.
    Which didn’t answer the question of who it
had
been. Backup for the snatch teams? What would have been the point? And why would they have asked for Paula? CIA? FBI? He just didn’t know.
    About the only thing going well for them at the moment—beyond the welcome fact that they were still alive—was that it was getting dark and starting to rain. The cars on the highway were becoming indistinct, their headlights on, their wipers pumping. Still, a van was far from impossible to spot. Fourteen people shot to death in a quiet San Jose suburb, probably a dozen witnesses describing the vehicle leaving the scene, possibly noting that a white man and black woman had been inside it. An unusual combination, one the staff at the InterContinental might remember, even if they couldn’t describe the faces of the man or woman in question. He knew he’d been careful about keeping his head down in the lobby and elevator of the hotel, where the cameras