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  Logan heard a quiet commotion behind him as he came around the dividing wall. The double doors at the back opened and another woman agent looked out at them. Cahill nodded at her and went to a table two up from Hunter against the same wall. He nodded at Hunter as he passed by. Hunter returned the nod and went back to reading, or pretending to read, the newspaper in front of him.

  Horn watched them, expressionless.

  Collins shook his head and sipped from a cup of black coffee.

  Cahill sat in the chair nearest the front, turned the chair sideways so that he could see the entrance. Logan sat with his back to the rear wall.

  The male agent at the cash register walked to the gap in the dividing wall and stared at Cahill.

  ‘Can we get some coffee?’ Cahill asked loudly.

  ‘What the hell are they doing here?’ Grange shouted after watching them on the monitor. ‘I told you he was trouble.’

  He turned to face Webb, his lip curling up into what was almost a snarl. Webb thought that it was the most angry he had ever seen Grange.

  ‘He timed it well,’ Webb said impassively.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s too late.’

  Grange looked like he was ready to explode. Webb held up his hands. ‘Tell them over there,’ Webb said, pointing at the diner on the screen. ‘To be cool.’

  Grange boiled. Then he got on the radio and told them to be cool.

  Logan saw the agents at the front move back to the cash register. Heard them talking quietly and then the woman in the kitchen came out with coffee and filled their cups. She even smiled.

  Logan noticed for the first time how rigid Horn’s body language was. Everyone else was doing a passable job at looking relaxed.

  Outside on Seventeenth Street Agent Ruiz watched from the driver’s seat of his car as a pick-up truck pulled up and stopped on the block north of the intersection with Market. He and Martinez were on the block of Seventeenth Street immediately to the south of the intersection. The pick-up was no more than fifty yards from them.

  Ruiz nudged Martinez who was dozing beside him. He jutted his chin to point at the pick-up. They could make out four people in the cab, but not much else. No one made a move to get out of the truck.

  ‘What do you think?’ Martinez said.

  ‘Get on the radio.’

  Ruiz reached inside his jacket and unsnapped the catch on his shoulder holster.

  ‘We got a vehicle on Seventeenth,’ Martinez said into his radio. ‘Pick-up truck. Four occupants. Copy?’

  Hiss

  ‘Copy that,’ Webb’s voice sounded. ‘What are they doing?’

  Martinez paused. Still no movement in the truck. ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘Keep watching. Let me know the second anything changes.’

  ‘Copy that, sir.’

  Martinez followed the lead of his partner and unsnapped the catch of his holster. They exchanged a glance. Neither of them had ever discharged their weapon on active duty.

  A sedan passed by their car heading north with two occupants. It slowed as it passed the truck, then sped up and turned left on to Blake.

  Martinez spoke into the radio again.

  ‘Got another one. A sedan. Passed us and turned on to Blake behind you. Copy?’

  Hiss

  ‘Follow the sedan.’

  Ruiz started the car, checked for traffic and pulled out. Martinez looked into the interior of the truck as they passed by.

  ‘Four men,’ he told Ruiz as they turned on to Blake. ‘Didn’t look at us.’

  Ruiz nodded, his jaw clenched tight shut. He knew it wasn’t good when four men in this situation didn’t look at a car passing by. It would have been natural for at least one of them to glance their way.

  The sedan was at the far end of Blake Street, at the intersection with Sixteenth Street. Its brake lights burned red. It turned left going south on to Sixteenth, towards the intersection at Market.

  Doubling back.

  Ruiz followed the car and stopped at the intersection where the sedan had been. He and Martinez looked left, saw the sedan stop short of the next intersection. The one at Market Street.

  They had now covered both ends of the block where the diner was: the truck at the far end and the sedan at this end.

  Not good.

  Martinez looked anxiously at Ruiz.

  ‘Tell them,’ Ruiz said urgently.

  21

  ‘They have the street flanked.’ Ruiz’s voice sounded in the room.

  Webb looked at the monitor with the diner displayed on the screen. There was no movement there. He didn’t notice, on one of the other monitors, the homeless man roll over, stand up and walk down the short flight of stairs on to the sidewalk. His legs looked steady enough for a man reeking of booze.

  Webb looked at Grange.

  Grange turned to the two agents behind him.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he told them, moving towards the door of the room.

  ‘Get them out of that truck,’ Webb told him. ‘Ruiz and Martinez can cover the sedan.’

  Grange nodded.

  The three men left Webb alone in the room. He turned and saw the homeless man standing outside the diner. The man was looking at something in his hand, appeared to be prodding a finger at it. Webb leaned in to have a closer look, but the definition on the picture was too grainy close up to make much of it.

  The driver of the pick-up looked at his vibrating phone. Saw that it was Raines calling. He didn’t answer the phone, turned to the two men in the rear of the cab and nodded. The two men opened their doors and got out, walking round to the bed of the truck. One of them pulled at the canvas cover, exposing the weapons underneath.

  The other man reached under the cover and grabbed two of the handguns, slipping them into the rear waistband of his jeans. After that, he picked up the rifles and moved to get back in the truck. The man holding the canvas cover reached in and took the other two handguns.

  Back in the truck, each of the four men took a handgun, checked that the magazine was full and that the slide mechanisms were working. The two men in the rear of the cab sat with the rifles across their laps.

  Grange came out of the building on to the street and saw the homeless man open the door of the diner across the road. He stopped briefly, watching the man. The two agents came out behind him and Grange forgot about the homeless man.

  They walked briskly to the corner of the building at the end of the street and stopped. Grange took his gun from its holster and gripped it with both hands, bringing the gun up until it was just under his chin. The two men copied him. Grange turned to them.

  ‘We go out together,’ he said. ‘You guys move to cover the sides of the truck and I’ll cover the front. Any movement you don’t like, anything you see you don’t like, you shoot.’

  The men nodded.

  ‘On three.’

  Grange held a hand up with three fingers extended. He started to count down silently from three.

  Webb’s voice sounded in Ruiz’s car. They were stationary at the intersection, watching the men in the sedan.

  ‘Get the men in that sedan out and secured. Grange is covering the truck.’

  ‘Copy,’ Ruiz said, opening his door and stepping out on to the street.

  Martinez got out after him on the other side of the car. They drew their weapons and started towards the sedan.

  The driver of the sedan was looking at his phone as it glowed in the car. The driver of the pick-up truck was calling. That meant it was time.

  ‘Get the guns out of the trunk,’ he told his passenger.

  The passenger nodded and opened his door. The driver reached around to the floor behind his seat and picked up a handgun.

  He looked in his rearview mirror and saw the two FBI agents approaching at a fast walk, their guns raised. He reached over to grab his passenger, but the man had stepped out of the car.

  He heard them shouting.

  ‘Freeze. FBI.’
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  22

  Grange moved quickly to stand directly in front of the truck, maybe eight feet from the front grille. He raised his weapon and pointed at the driver’s head through the windscreen.

  The two agents with him ran to their positions on either side of the truck, level with the front doors. They trained their guns on the men in the rear seats.

  No one in the truck moved.

  ‘FBI,’ Grange shouted. ‘All of you in the truck slowly put your hands out of the windows where I can see them.’

  Still no one moved.

  ‘Do it now.’

  Ruiz stopped after shouting his warning and aimed his gun at the back of the headrest of the driver’s seat of the sedan. Martinez was focused on the passenger who had stepped away from the car by about three feet. The man stood still with his hands by his side. He held a gun in one hand.

  ‘Driver,’ Ruiz shouted. ‘Hands out of the window slowly. Do it now.’

  The passenger looked from Martinez to Ruiz and into the car.

  The driver made no move to put his hands out of the window.

  Ruiz felt like his head was about to explode. His finger tightened a fraction on the trigger of his gun. He started to walk slowly forward. Martinez copied him.

  They were fifteen feet from the rear of the car.

  The driver of the truck looked past his passenger at the FBI agent pointing his gun into the rear of the truck’s cab. He turned his head to look at the agent on his side. Finally, he looked back at Grange.

  The two agents at the side looked scared.

  Grange didn’t.

  Looked like a gunfighter.

  That was a problem.

  ‘Hands. Out. Of. The. Car. Right. Now,’ Grange shouted. ‘Last warning.’ The men in the back turned the rifles on their laps until they were able to get their fingers inside the trigger guards. They eased them slowly forward until they were, as best they could tell, aimed through the doors of the truck at the two agents.

  Grange was done. These guys were not moving. Which meant only one thing. He squeezed the trigger of his gun twice in quick succession.

  The truck’s windshield burst in a cloud of red as the bullets tore into the driver and killed him.

  The two men in the back of the truck pulled the triggers of their rifles, the roar of the powerful guns deafening within the confines of the truck’s cab.

  The rifle bullets crashed into and through the truck doors, most of them deflected from their true path as a result of the impact.

  The two agents with Grange fired almost simultaneously, shattering the rear windows of the truck.

  The truck’s passenger lifted the handgun he held in his lap to aim at Grange. Fired.

  Bullets cracked out of the ruined windscreen and fizzed by Grange’s head.

  Grange didn’t flinch. Took aim at the passenger and fired twice.

  One of the bullets took the top of the passenger’s head off.

  The agent to Grange’s left fell silently to the ground, half his face missing.

  Grange emptied his clip into the interior of the truck.

  The air in the truck fogged with blood and dust from the shredded seats.

  The gunfire stopped.

  The exchange had lasted less than five seconds.

  In the truck: three dead and one seriously wounded.

  Outside: one agent dead.

  If Grange had notches on his belt the count would have increased to six.

  23

  Ruiz heard the gunfire; cracks in the near distance, the sound dissipating quickly in the air.

  It stopped.

  ‘Man down.’ Grange’s voice sounded in his earpiece. ‘He’s dead. Truck is out of commission.’

  Ruiz and Martinez kept walking. The passenger of the sedan came to a decision. He dropped his gun and slowly lifted his hands into the air.

  Ruiz reached the door of the car, yanked it open and hauled the driver out on to the road with one hand. The man didn’t resist, a handgun slipping from his grasp and skittering away across the road. Ruiz put him face down on the tarmac, crouched over him and pinned the man’s neck with his knee.

  Martinez told the passenger to turn around. When he did, Martinez stepped up and kicked the back of his knees hard. As the man fell forward with a shout, Martinez pushed him in the back. He moved quickly to put plastic ties around the prone man’s wrists. Ruiz did the same with the driver.

  ‘Sedan secured,’ Ruiz said over the radio.

  He turned his head to the side, felt like vomiting on to the road. Managed to hold it in.

  24

  Webb had been watching the diner on the monitor when the gunfire at the truck started. The radio traffic that followed was brief. Both vehicles were secure, but he had lost an agent.

  When he looked back at the monitor, the two agents at the front of the diner were now out on the street sprinting towards the sound of the gunfire. Webb had not told them to leave their positions.

  The homeless man was walking around the internal dividing wall of the diner.

  Webb turned and ran for the door.

  Logan smelled the man before he saw him, his nose wrinkling at the stench. Cahill saw him come in and the gunfire started outside.

  Cahill stood, his chair clattering back against the wall.

  Logan noticed the homeless man did not even flinch at the sound.

  Hunter got up and walked to the front of the diner as the FBI agents there drew their weapons and ran out the door.

  Collins stayed seated.

  The homeless man walked to Matt Horn’s table and stopped in front of Horn. He had on several layers of old clothes, including a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up. He reached up, pulled the hood back off his head and raised his other hand to point a gun at Horn.

  Logan reached for his gun. Knew he wouldn’t make it in time. No one else was watching.

  ‘I loved you like a son,’ Seth Raines told Horn.

  Then shot him in the face.

  Horn toppled back off his chair, blood, bone and brain matter splattering the wall behind him.

  Raines turned in a sweeping motion towards Hunter, pulling the trigger of his gun.

  Hunter had flinched when Raines shot Horn, the movement saving his life.

  Raines fired twice at Hunter as he turned, the motion taking his aim just a little off and Hunter’s flinch bringing his head down under the trajectory of the bullets.

  Raines kept on turning and firing.

  Cahill shouted out in pain and went down.

  Logan saw blood on Cahill’s head.

  Raines aimed at Logan.

  Logan raised his gun and fired.

  The bullet tore through the layers of cloth on Raines’s gun arm, grazing a shallow track along the flesh of his forearm. Raines dropped the arm to his side.

  Danny Collins shot Raines three times.

  Part Ten:

  Blood

  1

  Logan sat on the kerb as blue light strobed around him, the place awash with cops and paramedics.

  It had been an hour since Collins shot Raines.

  Randall Webb walked to Logan and stood over him on the sidewalk. Logan looked up at him.

  ‘The next thing you’re going to do,’ Webb said, ‘is go back to your hotel, pack and get on the first flight home.’

  Logan frowned.

  ‘What about the guns? Our guns.’

  ‘What guns?’

  Logan nodded and bowed his head.

  Webb walked away from him.

  Logan stood, his legs still unsteady. He wasn’t sure if they would hold him. They did.

  He walked to the far side of the street to an ambulance which was parked with its rear doors open. As he came around the doors Cahill looked up from the ambulance steps and smiled at him.

  ‘How’s your head?’ Logan asked.

  ‘Feels like someone hit me with a hammer,’ Cahill said, touching the padded dressing a paramedic was securing on the side of his head.
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br />   ‘He’ll be fine,’ the paramedic told Logan. ‘Bullet just grazed him. But he should get it looked at when you get home.’

  Cahill thanked the man and stood.

  ‘Webb told us to go home,’ Logan told him.

  Cahill shook his head. ‘I can’t. Not yet.’

  Logan stared at him.

  ‘I need to ask Webb a favour.’

  ‘Don’t you think that we’ve used up all our goodwill already?’

  ‘Maybe. But I need a favour anyway.’

  ‘You are a stubborn-’

  Cahill waved him off and started walking across the street to find Webb. Logan didn’t have the energy to follow him so he sat on the steps of the ambulance and watched.

  Jake Hunter and Danny Collins walked over to the ambulance from the chaos of the diner.

  ‘How is he?’ Hunter asked, looking at Cahill.

  ‘He’s got a hard head.’

  Hunter laughed.

  ‘I noticed. And you?’

  ‘I’m okay. But if you don’t mind I won’t stand.’

  Hunter reached out a hand. Logan took it and they shared a firm handshake. Collins did the same.

  ‘You probably saved someone’s life in there,’ Hunter told him. ‘We owe you a thanks.’

  Logan didn’t know what to say, so said nothing.

  ‘I heard that Raines is still hanging on,’ Collins said. ‘Tough son of a bitch. Took three slugs.’

  ‘And the rest of his crew?’ Logan asked.

  Collins shook his head.

  ‘That guy Grange,’ Hunter said. ‘He’s some cowboy.’

  ‘Still an asshole,’ Collins added.

  Logan wanted to laugh but found that he couldn’t.

  ‘Take care,’ Hunter said.

  They turned to leave Logan at the ambulance. Hunter stopped halfway across the street and turned back to Logan.

  ‘They got the guy over in Scotland,’ he shouted. ‘Shot a cop before he went down.’