Michael Walsh Bundle by Michael Walsh

easier.
    Still, American special ops had gone to school on Beslan, and knew how to avoid most of the mistakes the Russians had made. For one thing, they weren’t going to run out of patience and come charging in, shooting indiscriminately. Devlin and his Xe team would invest the battlefield but remain invisible. They would take out the terrorists, not one by one, but all at once. And when they finished, the bad guys would be lying dead—no, not just dead but spectacularly, object-lesson dead—and the team would be gone, a wraith in the night. KRV—kill, rescue, vanish. And no one the wiser. The FBI would take all the credit. As for the media, the press was more lapdog than watchdog. For Devlin understood one big thing about reporters: they might be alcoholic malcontents, frustrated screenwriters, snarky Harvard boys afraid of inanimate objects, and hallucinating politicians-in-waiting, but there was one thing they never wanted to be, and that was reporters. They were always playing another angle.
    Wheels down brought Devlin out of his reverie. The flight attendant gave them the obligatory, insincere welcome to St. Louis, where the local time was whatever. He gathered his sports satchel from the overhead compartment, which contained everything he needed for an operation like this, and slung it over his shoulder.
    There was a full rank of taxis outside, but he passed them by and headed straight to the parking garage. Devlin favored large black SUVs, since their owners should know better than to put such an ungainly, unwieldy, and unpatriotic vehicle on the road. Besides, the owner would get the insurance money, the plates would disappear from every police registry in the country, and everybody would be happy.
    The Escalade was ridiculously easy to jack. The Arch gleamed as he swung over the I-70 bridge. The streets of East St. Louis were dark, dangerous urban prairies. Perfect.
    He headed for the intersection of Martin Luther King Drive and North 7th Street. Every American city had a street named after Martin Luther King Jr. North 7th Street was only a few blocks in from the river.
    There were six youths standing on the corner, very busy doing nothing. As he approached, he ran a quick scan with the infrared monitor inside his PDA. You never knew who was hiding in the garbage can.
    A white man in a cap behind the wheel of an SUV was not exactly an unknown sight in ESL: a transaction was in the offing.
    The young men crowded around him as he got out of the jacked wheels. As with every group of young men, there was a Big Dog and a pack. Devlin could always spot the Dawg—the drill sergeant of gangsters, the NCOs of urban crime.
    â€œYo, check it out,” said the Dawg. “I got smoke, coke, coke, smoke.”
    â€œI’ve got an SUV,” said Devlin. “You want it or don’t you?” Fight or flight, he liked to get it down to basics, to get the bullshit out of the way.
    â€œThat piece of shit?”
    â€œIs clean, is worth fifty grand new, twenty grand chopped, its owner doesn’t even know it’s gone yet, so I make that at least thirty K profit to you, give or take your paternity payments, asshat.” Devlin looked ostentatiously at his watch. “I don’t have all day.”
    Asshat got in his face. “What if we just take it?” The others, the small dogs, began sniffing around.
    â€œYou could try,” said Devlin.
    There was a kind of primitive beauty to every confrontation among men, primates reverting to type. No matter what the PC weenies insisted, might always made right in the end.
    â€œYou alone,” observed Asshat.
    â€œSure about that?”
    â€œI don’t see nobody else.” Not quite as sure now.
    â€œThat’s different. Would I be dumb enough to come here in a fifty thousand dollar car if somebody didn’t have my back?” As Asshat considered this—
    â€œOn the other hand, I know you have five homies here and two