“Lower your gun!” she shouted to Carl. “He can go. If he’s smart.”
Carl lowered the Wilson.
“Leave,” she said to the man. “Right now. This is your chance.”
He looked at her, panting, then at Larison. He eased the muzzle of his gun away from Schrader’s face, relaxed his grip, started to move to the side—
Livia stepped offline, brought up the Glock, and put two rounds in his face. His head snapped back and he went down.
“Oh, my God!” Schrader screamed. Larison stepped in and kicked him field-goal style in the balls. The scream was instantly cut off and Schrader doubled over.
Larison looked at Livia and smiled. “You’re good. For a second there, you had me convinced, too.”
Carl rushed in. He and Larison grabbed Schrader by the arms and half dragged, half carried him out the back, Livia covering them from the rear.
She heard sirens. But in seconds they were in the woods, and a minute later, the van. Carl and Larison threw Schrader in back and sat on him. Livia jumped in front.
“You got him?” Diaz said.
“Go,” Livia said, her heart pounding. “Drive normally. Head west. Yeah, we got him.”
She turned around and watched as Carl and Larison flex-tied Schrader’s wrists behind his back. She heard Diaz say, “Actual fact, girl: you are badass.”
Schrader was crying. He said, “I want to go home.”
“Don’t worry,” Livia said. “That’s the plan.”
chapter
fifty-seven
RISPEL
It was already ten in the morning on the East Coast, and still no word from the Seattle team. Of course, a benign explanation was possible, but Rispel knew something was wrong. Everything about the Schrader operation had been a clusterfuck, almost from go. Well, not everything. Getting Schrader released from jail had worked. Weirdly, it was the most audacious move of the entire game, and the only one that had gone smoothly.
She told her admin to hold her calls, then tried Sloat again. Then Tyson. No one answered. She tried them on their alternate burners. Nothing.
She checked the news feed on her desktop monitor. Nothing out of Seattle. But the Washington Post had a scoop: intelligence about the discovery of a Russian disinformation campaign, including deep-fake photos and videos of administration officials engaged in salacious acts. “This is the next step in the information wars,” an unnamed senior intelligence official was quoted as saying. “Russia’s ability to wage this kind of asymmetric, low-intensity warfare against the integrity of our government, our elections, and our way of life cannot go unanswered. America needs to develop a robust set of tools for a full suite of potential responses throughout the battlespace. Until that happens—until our adversaries pay a price for this kind of meddling—we’re going to see continued escalation of fake news from the Kremlin.”
Devereaux, she thought. Playing bullshit bingo with the press. Information wars, meddling, fake news, the Kremlin . . . It was actually an astute move, and she mentally kicked herself for having given him the idea. You could get the establishment media to print anything on background, and then quote it yourself later as proof of the need for whatever policy you were selling. In this case, Devereaux was indeed shaping the battlespace. Now if those videos were released, he’d be able to point to reports like the one he’d just dictated to his stenographer at the Post as proof that the videos were nothing but fake news. Information wars, indeed.
She paused for a moment, thinking. Had Devereaux learned something about an imminent release of the videos? Why else would he be establishing this preemptive groundwork?
Or—had something been released already?