“I hope not,” Rispel said. “You know, I’ve heard conflicting things about you. That you’re retired. That you’re not even real.”
“Roger that,” Dox said. “Put ’em in my sights and I’ll take care of the rest.”
“People exaggerate,” Rain said. “I’ve heard a few things about you, too.”
“I can assure you, everything you’ve heard about me is true. Now, please do come out as I’ve instructed.”
“I said, how do we know you’re telling the truth?”
“You don’t. But think about it. The fact that this woman and Mr. Manus are still alive should be evidence both of my good intentions and of my good faith.”
Or that you want to disarm us so you can mow everyone down without bullets flying in your direction.
“Come out,” Rispel said. “You can see for yourself, and then you can tell the rest of your people to join you. You see? Good faith.”
She’d snowed Maya, so she must have had impressive technical support. And a skilled team of gunfighters, too, to have gotten the drop on both Manus and Delilah. But there were gaps in her intel. She didn’t know Delilah’s name. She seemed to be surprised at Rain’s presence. Most of all, she didn’t know Dox was part of the team. Or at least they didn’t know he was positioned somewhere with a rifle. If they had, they would have been afraid to be anywhere outside.
Maya waved and gave Rain a thumbs-up.
Rain nodded. “Okay,” he said to Rispel. “I’m coming out.”
chapter
seventy-six
RISPEL
Rispel glanced to her sides—a reflex, like checking the chamber in a gun you already knew was loaded. Three men left, three right—a semicircle, branches forward, Rispel at the center, the outermost man to her left holding Manus and the outermost to her right holding the blonde woman. All Special Operations Group veterans. And a seventh person, alongside Rispel, a woman from the technical branch named Fiona, who had uncovered Maya’s tracks inside Guardian Angel. The shooters in the organization were all still men, it seemed. But Rispel didn’t mind. Brains were more important than brawn.
Fiona had hacked Grimble’s camera network and looped in previous footage. The original plan had been to take control of the network itself, but it seemed someone had already done that. Credit to Fiona for implementing a creative solution on the fly. Rispel wouldn’t be able to use Grimble’s cameras as her eyes, but at least she was aware of the deficit. The other group would think they could see, while in fact they couldn’t. Better to be blind than to have your eyes deceive you.
Had Dutch been able to spare more men, Rispel would have taken them. Still, six operators were probably enough, especially given their skills and experience. The problem was, she couldn’t be sure how many she’d be up against. Kanezaki, of course. And Maya. But they weren’t shooters. The wild cards were the sniper Dox and the other man the Freeway Park team had spotted. She had suspected Manus would be in the mix, and she’d been right. There was the blonde woman. And now it turned out this man Rain was involved. Rispel had to give Kanezaki credit—he knew how to build a private network. What a waste.
She’d heard stories about Rain that sounded like urban legends, including that he was some sort of martial arts master. Maybe he was the one who had broken the neck of her sentry. Which turned out to be not such a bad thing, as the sentry’s failure to check in had alerted Rispel to the fact that Kanezaki was inside Grimble’s compound. She had considered going in at the Mountain Home main entrance, and then decided Kanezaki would be more likely to expect that. She’d told the driver of the Sprinter to let them off on Manzanita, and to wait down the road from the main entrance, either for her signal or for her arrival.
The door to one of the structures opened. An Asian man came out, hands up as Rispel had instructed. Rain. In one hand he was holding a laptop; with the other, he pulled the door closed behind him. He walked down the short set of stairs, his eyes moving from side to side. He saw the blonde woman, who one of Rispel’s men was still holding with a gun pressed to the side of her head. Rain didn’t react to that, or to the sight of Manus in similar straits, or to the four men who were pointing suppressed machine pistols at him. His eyes just kept moving, as dispassionately as though he were crossing the street and checking first for traffic. Rispel considered herself a good reader of people, but she couldn’t work out what was going through the man’s head. It wasn’t that he seemed calm. He seemed almost . . . past calm. As though what was happening here had happened long ago and was already over.