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Chapter

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IT WAS NORMALLY one of the safest places on earth

But not today

The J Edgar Hoover Building was the world headquarters of the FBI It opened in 1975 and had not aged well—a blocks-long chunk of badly dilapidated concrete with honeycomb s, and fire alar strung around the top of the building to catch chunks of cru concrete before they could fall to the street below and kill someone

The Bureau was trying to build a new facility to house eleven thousand employees, but a new location hadn’t even been chosen So the opening of a new headquarters was about two billion dollars and seven years away

For now, this was home

The talldown the tree-lined sideas Walter Dabney He had taken an Uber to a coffee shop down the street, ordered so the rest of the way He was in his sixties, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair parted on the side It looked recently cut, with a bit of cowlick in the back His suit was expensive and fit his portly frame with the touch of a tailored hand A colorful pocket square adorned the front of his dark suit He wore a lanyard around his neck loaded with clearances sufficient to allow hi with an escort along for the ride His green eyes were alert He walked with a deter pendulum arcs in the air

A wo from the opposite direction Anne Berkshire had taken the Metro here She was in her late fifties, petite, with gray hair cut in parentheses around her long, oval face As she approached the Hoover Building she seemed to hesitate There was no lanyard around her neck The only ID she possessed was the driver’s license in her purse

It was lateand the streets were not as crowded as they would have been earlier Still, there were a great many pedestrians and the street hummed with activity as cars passed up and doith soe at the Hoover Building

Dabney picked up his pace a bit, his Allen Ed the stained pavement with purpose He started to whistle a cheery tune The man seemed not to have a care in the world

Berkshire was noalking faster too Her gaze went to the left and then swung right She seelance

About twenty yards behind Dabney, A alone He was six-five and built like the football player he had once been He’d been on a diet for several ht, but he could stand to lose quite a bit more He was dressed in khaki pants stained at the cuff and a long, rumpled Ohio State Buckeyes pullover that concealed both his belly and the Glock 41 Gen4 pistol riding in a belt holster on his waistband Fully loaded with its standard thirteen-round hed thirty-six ounces His size fourteen shoes hit the pavement with noisy splats His hair was, to put it kindly, disheveled Decker worked at the FBI on a joint task force He was on his way to a

He was not looking forward to it He sensed that a change was coh of it in the last two years to last him a lifetime He had just settled into a new routine with the FBI and he wanted to keep it that way Yet apparently that was out of his control

He stepped around a barricade that had been set up on the sidewalk and that stretched partway into the street A e web barrier had been opened and workers were congregated around the area Oneof the manhole and was passed a tool by anothercoffee and others chatting

Nice work if you can get it, thought Decker

He saw Dabney up ahead but didn’t focus on hi that far up the street He passed by the garage entrance and nodded at the uniforuard shack situated on the sidewalk The ralasses as his gaze dutifully swept the street His right hand was perched on top of his holstered service weapon It was a nine mil chambered with Speer Gold Dot G2 rounds that the FBI used because of their penetration capability “One shot, one down” could have been the a as it hit the intended target in the right place

A bird zipped across in front of Decker, perched on a lamppost, and looked down curiously at the passersby The air was chilly and Decker shivered a bit even in his thick pullover The sun was hidden behind cloud cover that had materialized on the horizon about an hour before, passed over the Potoray dome