Point Blank

Madonna?”
    “Sure, Rafe, come here and we’ll talk about it.”
    “Let me show you my model!”

CHAPTER 6
    ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERYARLINGTON, VIRGINIASATURDAY MORNING
    THE LIGHT SNOWFALL had stopped two hours before, at seven a.m. The sky was iron gray, the clouds thick and bulging with snow that was forecasted to begin again at about noon. Agent Ron Latham was standing two feet from Agent Connie Ashley, who was perusing a map of Arlington National Cemetery. “Why would Moses Grace come here? I think old Rolly has got some expensive habits he needs to feed—”
    “No,” Connie said automatically. “Not feed—drink.”
    “The guy’s an alcoholic on top of everything else?” Agent Jim Farland was pretending to speak into a cell phone.
    “Well, I don’t think so, no. I’ll tell you later about his drinking habits.”
    Agent Jim Farland said into his cell phone, his voice loud enough to be heard ten feet away, “Hello, Mom. Yeah, we’re going to go over to section twenty-seven, where all the former slaves are buried…. Yeah, that’s where all the pre–Civil War dead were buried again after 1900. Listen, Mom, I’ve gotta go, a funeral is expected in twenty minutes. See you soon.”
    Ron said to Connie, “They put this op together so fast I’m not sure I’m clear on all the details. We’re supposed to hang out here acting like tourists until Moses Grace and Claudia show up, for whatever reason we don’t know, Pinky Womack in tow?”
    “Yeah, that’s what the psycho snitch told me. Ruth said Rolly’s never let her down. He’s reliable and we’
    ve got to go with that, until we know for sure. The only reason I’ve got her cell phone is because I’m a woman and Rolly doesn’t relate well to guys. Anyway, time for us to get ourselves moving.”
    Ron said with a smirk, “I like that pillow tied around your belly, Ashley. Hey, how many kids you got?”
    Connie waved both of them off and paused to rub her back. It wasn’t just for show. She’d been walking around the cemetery for almost two hours, stopping to listen in at a funeral, speaking briefly to other agents, all of them dressed as tourists strolling through the huge cemetery. She’d read in her brochure the astonishing fact that more than two hundred and sixty thousand people were buried here. She wondered if she’d walk by every marker and monument and memorial before she was through. She thought of Ruth, hoped she was having a better weekend than she was. She would have liked to be in the wilds of Virginia with her rather than here, waiting for a crazy old lunatic to appear. Many of the agents and all of the snipers were from the Washington, D.C., field office, the snipers posted wherever they could find cover in the cemetery, in position since eight o’clock that morning. Savich stood by the Memorial Gate in section 30 speaking on his cell to Deputy Assistant Director Jimmy Maitland, his boss. “There’s no sign of them yet.” Just as there hadn’t been an hour before when he’d reported in, but he didn’t say that. “There aren’t that many real tourists around, understandable given the weather, and that’s good since we can’t do anything about it in any case. We’re keeping an eye on them, while we all try not to do anything Moses Grace could spot easily.”
    Maitland sighed. “One of my boys is playing basketball today, his first time starting as Maryland’s forward, and here I am sitting in a damned van waiting for a psychopath crazy enough to detonate a bomb on top of my agents in a frigging motel to show up here in the nation’s biggest cemetery. I doubt Pinky’s still alive. You agree, Savich?”
    “You’re right, not likely. Anyone who would pull that stunt at Hooter’s Motel wouldn’t bother to keep Pinky alive. I didn’t tell that to Ms. Lilly, though. She’s still hopeful. Pinky’s such a piece of work, no harm in him, not really, just a big mouth, always saying the wrong thing to the wrong person. I’ve got an incoming call I should get. I’ll call you back in an hour with a status report. Can you get your basketball game on the radio?”
    “I’m counting on it, Savich.”
    Savich raised his face to the steel-gray sky, breathed that fresh wild air deep into his lungs. He could feel Moses Grace was close. He punched up the incoming call. “Savich here.”
    “Hello, boy. This here’s your nemesis. Ain’t that a grand word? Claudia read it to me out of a book, said that’s what I am