Been on the floor earlier, sticking to the far end, past the nurse’s station. The cop was leaning on the desk, chatting up a blonde who was doing some charts. See where he was tomorrow, then make the call whether to come from the right or the left. Liked the layout, the way the nurse’s station was tucked in to an alcove, the seats facing away from the target’s room.

Already been down the other stairwell, the exit stairwell. Nice little gap under the stairs at the bottom of each flight, space enough to dump the sweater and wig. Be a while before anyone found those. A little variety on the scrubs, but the dark blue was dominant, so go with that.

Nothing more to see here. Time to do a little shopping.

CHAPTER 96

Starshak followed the ambulance to the ER, Bernstein riding with him. Took a while for the docs to finish up with Lynch, stitches on the outside of his thigh from a few inches below his hip damn near to his knee, his whole thigh wrapped in bandages. Starshak on the phone a lot while the docs worked. The brass, DA, review board, seemed like pretty much anybody from any federal agency anywhere that felt like calling him.

Bernstein got X-rays: did in fact have a cracked rib. Not much to do for that. Nurse wrapped him back up.

When they were done, Starshak drove them to Bernstein’s place first, Bernstein grabbing a sweater he could work his arm into. Then they headed to Lynch’s condo, Lynch pulled on an old BC sweatsuit, the only thing he could fit over his thigh.

Then the three of them sat at Lynch’s kitchen table.

“You guys OK?” Starshak asked. Bernstein nodded, said nothing.

“Just a scratch,” Lynch said.

“Big fucking scratch,” said Starshak.

“Yeah,” said Lynch.

“That wasn’t what I was asking.”

“I know.”

The three of them quiet for a while.

“Never been shot at before,” Bernstein said. “Never shot at anybody.” He sounded a little hollow.

“You did good,” Lynch said.

“Right,” said Bernstein. “Took a round in my iPhone, emptied my clip, I think I got one guy in the calf.”

Lynch shrugged. “Four guys, three with machine guns, you stood your ground, did your job. You weren’t there, I’d be dead.”

Bernstein nodded. They were quiet again for a while.

“We got lucky,” Bernstein said.

Lynch nodded.

“Hardin and Wilson hadn’t stepped in…” The thought trailed off.

“They say why they did that?” Starshak asked. “They could have walked clean.”

Lynch shook his head.

“You got any ideas?”

Lynch pursed his lips, looked out his window for a moment. “They’re just on the right side, I guess.”

“Running up quite a body count for being on the right side,” said Bernstein.

“I’m OK with the bodies,” said Lynch. “Corsco’s goons? Hernandez’s goons? And from what I can see, nobody that didn’t come after them first. Hardin stole some diamonds maybe, but not in my jurisdiction, and look who he stole them from? And Wilson? Stand up cop, up until this week. You look at their history, what we know about the two of them now, this shit with her brother, Hardin does two tours, then gets chased out of his own country by some punk hood, spends a decade in Africa taking out other people’s garbage. I don’t know. You’ve got the law, and that’s great. Most of the time, for most people. But the law never did shit for either of them. So I think maybe they just go by right and wrong, now, as best they can. I hope they come out of this OK.”

Quiet again. Lynch got up, walked stiff legged to the cabinet, got out a bottle of Bushmills, three rocks glasses, set the glasses on the table, poured them each a couple of inches.

“You were on the phone a lot,” Bernstein said, looking at Starshak.

“Yeah. Lots of new friends.”

“Any idea what’s going on?”

Starshak just shook his head. “You two would know better than I would. Seems you two were participating in an operation vital to national security and helped to derail a significant terrorist plot. That’s what I’m told.”

“Felt like we were just getting shot at a lot,” Lynch said. “There’s something else, though.”

“What?” asked Starshak.

“Hernandez, al Din, I mean fuck it, right? What are we going to do? A couple of Chicago cops? We’re gonna clean up the international drug trade, stop terrorism? But that shit with Ringwald, al Din taking out his whole family, that points at Corsco.”

“The South Shore thing, too,” said Starshak.

Lynch nodded. “Corsco we can do something about.”

“You got an idea?” Starshak asked.

“Maybe,” said Lynch. “Hey, Bernstein, what do we hear about Fenn?”

“Expecting a full recovery, give or take. They’re keeping him another couple of days.”

“Let me think on that,” Lynch said. He looked up. “Anybody hungry?”

Bernstein looked surprised. “Yeah, actually.”

“We can head downstairs, get something. Big fucking heroes like us; maybe Starshak explains that to McGinty, we get a freebie. Besides, we gotta keep our strength up. You can sweat the moral dilemma all you want, Slo-mo, but you’re going to find out the true human tragedy of pulling your piece.”

“Which is?”

“Paperwork.”

“Actually, that’s the good news,” Starshak said.

“There’s good news?” said Bernstein. “Something from one of your phone calls?”

Starshak nodded. “Yeah. The good news is no paperwork. This was a task force deal, remember? Evidently you were on loan. They’ll write up your paperwork, you’ll just have to sign it.”

“For the best, I guess,” Lynch said. “How am I supposed to write it up when I don’t know what the hell is going on?”

“We get to perjure ourselves?” Bernstein said. “That’s the good news?”

“Maybe,” Starshak said. “You gonna be able to prove that anything they feed you isn’t the truth?”

“Will my lips still move when I speak?” Lynch asked.

“Of course,” said Bernstein. “The dummy’s lips always move.”

“Thought I felt somebody’s hand up my ass,” said Lynch.

Starshak’s cell rang. He answered, listened for a minute, then hung up. “We’re supposed to get down to the Federal building, some kind of pow-wow, learn all our lines.”

CHAPTER 97

Munroe was in a windowless conference room in the Kluczynski Federal Building at Adams and Dearborn, and he was in a good mood. Turned out al Din’s computer security wasn’t that great. Still a lot to work through, but Munroe had Atash Javadi cold. That was huge. Javadi, he was the right wing’s go-to guy on Islam, half the politicians in Washington had him on speed dial. Hell, Langley’d had the bastard in to consult more than once. SOG had already snatched Javadi up, nice and quiet. Had him on a Lear out of Mitchell up in Milwaukee, headed for the proverbial secure, undisclosed location. If they could flip him, run him as a double, they’d have their best set of eyes ever into Tehran. Even if they couldn’t, the stuff they’d get out of him? Priceless. And they would get it out of him. They always did.

Munroe had the early rundown on the device from al Din’s room from some slide-rule types down at Argonne National Laboratory in the southwest ’burbs. It was Heinz’s bio-terror cocktail. Really pure, professionally weaponized shit. Remote trigger; ran off a cell phone. But Lynch must have got al Din before he could push the button. Because if al Din had pushed the button, there’d be weird cases popping up in ERs all over hell by now. Techies said give them a week and they’d work out a way to get the receivers to send out a signal. Then they’d fly in some boys from Fort Dix, pick the rest of the devices up on the QT. Said the things should be safe until then.

But you never put all your eggs in one basket. Not in this game. So Munroe kept up the full court press on al Din’s timeline. If he could find the devices faster, he would. All around the room, he had guys cataloging, mapping and time-lining every al Din sighting since he hit town. Data out of the Chicago system, various municipal feeds around the suburbs, the toll way cameras, private security. He’d pulled some strings, had some pocket protector types feeding everything into a couple of Crays out at Livermore. Sped the processing way the hell up. They were filling in the gaps pretty quickly.