Page 13 of Nobody's Hero
‘It woulddefinitelyhave been kinder to can me.’
‘So why agree to it?’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ Koenig said. ‘You both seem like good cops. Dedicated. If you got injured in the line and you were offered the choice of retirement with full benefits or the chance to go on training to make you an even better cop, what would you choose?’
‘Fair point,’ Wagstaff said.
‘Retirement,’ Mallinson said.
Wagstaff punched him on the shoulder. ‘Asshole.’
‘If this is true,’ Mallinson said. ‘If youdohave all this specialist training, why didn’t you put them on their asses? Wait for us to sort it out?’
Koenig explained how multiple assailants was a math problem, not a fighting problem. He said that one death out of four was a good result. He’d expected to kill them all. ‘They weren’t putting me in the trunk of that car,’ he said. ‘It makes me sleepy.’
‘It’s a nice story,’ Wagstaff said. ‘But at the end of the day, the DA has a dead cop, another in a coma, and two living ones who’ll spin whatever story they’ve rehearsed until it ain’t even funny. Cunningham is disfigured for life, and you can bet your ass the DA will put her on the stand. Let her cry crocodile tears. Ask her to show the jury what the nasty man did to her forehead. But you don’t seem worried. And you told us there were four things we needed to know about you. You’ve told us about the Russian bounty, the Urbach–Wiethe and your specialist training. I make that three. What’s the fourth?’
‘The fourth is why I keep asking you what time it is,’ Koenig said. ‘I wasn’t naive enough to think my training programme was altruism on behalf of my director, but I at least thought it was mutually beneficial. I got to return to work, and he got someone who’d walk through any door he pointed me towards.’
‘It was something else?’
Koenig nodded. ‘I believed it was my director who’d put together my training programme. I thought he’d called in all the favours he’d collected from thirty-odd years in law enforcement. And I thought that because that’s how it was sold to me.’
‘But?’
‘But in hindsight I should have realised that even the director of the US Marshals doesn’t have those kind of contacts. Like I said, some of these units don’t officially exist.’
‘Whodoeshave contacts like that?’
‘The people behind everything. And those people didn’t see a marshal who needed a helping hand.’
‘Whatdidthey see?’
‘A guinea pig.’
Chapter 10
‘A guinea pig?’ Wagstaff said.
‘Have you heard of DARPA, Detective?’ Koenig said. ‘The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency?’
‘Sure. I’ve seenThe X-Files.’
‘Turns out, DARPA had been playing about with the amygdala for years. They claim it’s to improve PTSD recovery rates, but I suspect their primary goal is getting our troops to react differently to effective enemy fire. Suppress that initial fear. I found out later that my training regime was a Department of Defense test programme. They wanted to find out what someone who doesn’t feel fear is capable of.’
Wagstaff snorted. ‘You took out four cops with a fucking credit card. I’d say they got what they wanted.’
‘But they didn’t,’ Koenig said. ‘Because of the Russian bounty, I disappeared before an in-depth assessment could be done. I didn’t know it at the time, but they’d assigned a handler to me. Woman called Jen Draper, and if you think I have a complicated past, it’s nothing compared to hers. She pretended to be a new member of the SOG. Really, she was there to evaluate me. Not just my skills. My decision-making was also important to the DoD. Someone who doesn’t feel fear is useless if they’re also reckless. They want soldiers, not berserkers.’
‘You’ve resurfaced now, though,’ Wagstaff said.
‘I resurfaced last year too,’ Koenig said. ‘Friend of mine tracked me down. Wanted help with something. I ended up killing a bunch of bad guys. And for my troubles I was given a choice: do what they asked or get convicted of murder. They had plenty of bodies to choose from.’
‘What did they want?’
‘Nothing. Jen Draper was still my handler, and all I had to do was check in once a month via an email account they set up. We did it through the draft folder. Nothing was ever sent. That’s why I know she’s on her way. I sent my last email. Didn’t save it to the draft folder. Cunningham didn’t think there was anything in the message she needed to worry about, but she’d missed the point. Sending itwasthe message. It’ll have set off all sorts of alarms. Jen will have called it in immediately, and they’ll have sent her up here to get me. She’ll have been in DC when all this happened. I figure with traffic to get out of DC and into New York, she’ll have ditched her car and taken a helicopter instead. Half an hour to get to a DoD airfield, ten minutes to clear a flight plan and a ninety-minute flight. Another thirty minutes to get from the airfield to the precinct.’
‘She’s late then.’