End Game by John Gilstrap Page A

were expecting a possible attack, then they might want to have personal security.”
    “But only one person?”
    “Probably for the boy,” Philip thought aloud. “Was she young?”
    Anton laughed. “To me, everybody is young. I guess under thirty, but not much.”
    Philip nodded. Yes, he’d seen this before. It was a trick used over in the Sandbox when defending important families. Young people are inherently resistant to personal protection, so to combat that, contractors would recruit younger operators for that purpose.
    “You’re smiling now,” Anton said. “First vision from God and now something funny. What is funny about armed security guard?”
    “It means they had a contingency plan,” Philip said. “And plans have to make sense. To make sense, they have to follow a straight line.”
    “Straight line to where?”
    He paused a beat. “I don’t know yet.”
    “Is lots of help. You don’t know.”
    It had been seven years since Philip was last directly involved in running field agents and field ops, so it took him a while to pull the standard protocols from memory. Of course, there was no guarantee that the Bureau would use the same protocols as the Agency, but the elements had to be pretty much the same. You had the routine components, such as never traveling predictable routes, and the tradecraft to recognize and elude tails. Then there were the elements that kicked in at the time when shots were fired—the specific actions to guard the protectees and get them out of harm’s way. Those he knew for a fact were common not just to the two agencies involved in this mess, but also to Secret Service and State. Anybody who protected anyone.
    Equally predictable, yet far more fluid, were the protocols to be followed if a protectee under assault was hit in the crossfire. Hospitals would be prequalified for their capabilities and preplanned as a function of the nature of the problem. Most any hospital could help a protectee with a gallbladder attack, but if a gunshot wound were involved, only a shock trauma center would suffice when such facilities were available. When the protectee was a senior government official, certain staffing requirements at the hospitals would need to be proved prior to the trip.
    Coming into this meeting, Philip had known that people had been shot during last night’s incident, but a check of hospital records had turned up nothing.
    “Other than the mother, Sarah, were there any surviving wounded from either assault last night?” Philip asked.
    “Yes,” Datsik said. “But they were all on our team.”
    “And where did you take them?”
    Datsik’s expression turned dark, defensive. “We took them to what your government likes to call a secret, undisclosed location,” he said. “That means none of your business.”
    Philip pointed at Datsik’s nose. “Exactly.”
    “Exactly what?”
    “Exactly the answer. When it is important to remain covert, hospitals are out of the question. At least standard hospitals are out of the question.”
    Anton smiled as he got the point. “You have secret hospitals, too.”
    Philip confirmed by making his eyebrows dance. “Won’t it be really freaking weird if we both use the same doctors?”
    “I doubt that to be the case.”
    The irony thing again. It was a strange part of Anton’s personality. The guy had a biting sense of humor and he enjoyed a good laugh, but subtleties were often beyond him. Perhaps it was a language thing.
    The question on the top of Philip’s list was how to determine who that doctor might be. It was possible that the Agency and the Bureau used the same medical contractors, but extremely unlikely. Just as it would be awkward to run into Russian FSB operators, it would be equally awkward—maybe even more so—to run into a Bureau puke. The two groups did nearly as much warfare between each other as they did with the nation’s enemies.
    It was not uncommon for agents of the CIA to see agents of the FBI as the