The Detachment

Virginia.”
    “All right, Ray,” Larison said. “What’s your connection to Horton?”
    Ray swallowed. “We freelance for him.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “We do…contract work.”
    “You’re contractors?”
    “Yes. No. I mean, we freelance. Sometimes Horton asks us to do things on the side. You know, moonlighting. Off the books.”
    “What else has he had you do?”
    “I don’t know, all kinds of stuff.”
    Larison didn’t answer, and after a moment, Ray hurriedly went on. “Black bag work. Eavesdropping. Surveillance. Sometimes a hit.”
    So far, Larison hadn’t elicited anything we hadn’t already assumed. But I was thinking about the four guys we’d dropped at the Capital Hilton. That was an important op for Horton, and we were no easy target, so I knew he would have cared enough to send only the very best. My sense was that Ray and Carl were backup, a B team. If they were pinch-hitting for the four dead guys here, where else would they have to step in? What else would Horton have in mind for them?
    “What do you think?” I said to Larison. “Are you liking this guy? Feeling grateful for what he’s telling us?”
    Larison kept his eyes on the guy and shook his head. “No.”
    Ray said, “Look, I don’t want to die here, okay? This is just a job for me. I’m not trying to protect anyone. Just tell me what you want, I’ll tell you everything I know.”
    “How long are you supposed to watch Kei?” I said.
    “Horton told us probably a few days,” Ray said. “Until further notice. He paid for a week.”
    “How long have you been out here?” I said.
    “Horton called us four days ago. We flew in the next morning.”
    That tracked with when we took out the team at the Hilton. Horton must have gotten paranoid—though obviously not without reason—and called on these guys just in case one of us learned about his daughter and decided to make a run at her.
    “Did he mention any other travel?” I said. “Any other assignments?”
    “No. He just asked us to keep our schedules open—to let him know if anything was going to tie us up in the next couple weeks so he could have first dibs.”
    If that was true, it meant Horton was planning something else, or was at least planning for a contingency. But that was neither surprising, nor particularly useful.
    “Nothing else?” I said.
    “No.”
    I decided to try for a long shot. “Nothing about schools?”
    He looked genuinely puzzled by that. “Schools?”
    I was disappointed, though not surprised. After all, it wasn’t likely Horton would have shared anything operational with these two beyond what was immediately necessary. But Kanezaki had said there was chatter about possible school attacks. And Treven and I had been speculating about the same thing.
    Larison said, “Tell me how to get to Hort.”
    “Get to him? I couldn’t get to him myself. But wait…wait. Maybe I can help you think of something. I mean, he lives in the Washington area, I think. I could call him, on a pretext, tell him—”
    He was just blathering now. Scheherazade, without even a story to tell. “—that I need to meet with him in person, something like that. Flush him out for you.”
    “I don’t think he knows anything,” I said to Larison. “There’s no real reason to think he would.”
    Larison nodded. “I agree.”
    Ray said, “Look, I’m really trying to help you. I really am.”
    Larison said, “I believe you,” and shot him in the forehead. Ray’s head snapped back, then his body sagged and he slumped over against his partner.
    “Maybe we’ll get something from the phones,” Treven said from up front.
    “I doubt it,” I said.
    Larison took Ray’s body by the collar and dragged it forward, away from the rear and side sliding doors. “If we grab Kei, it’ll all be academic,” he said. “But it’s nice that Hort keeps losing guys like this. At some point, he’s going to get short on volunteers.”
    I hauled the other one forward and we covered them with a tarp. We could reveal them to Kei as circumstances warranted, but I wanted to have the option. No sense freaking her out without a reason.
    I didn’t mind that the two of them were dead. If Larison hadn’t been so quick to do it, I would have taken care of it myself. They were certainly here to do the same to us. Besides, as Larison had observed, it was two fewer pieces on the opposition side of the board.
    But I’d have to watch him with Kei. Dox had been right. It