Crossing the length of the room, he searched for the green binder. It took a few minutes, but he found it on the very last shelf. A simple label on the front cover said EP DEPLOYMENTS.
“That’ll be staying here,” came a deep voice from behind. “As will you.”
Pitt looked over his shoulder to find Richards entering the room, a pistol extended in his hands in front of him.
53
Pitt slowly turned toward the doorway, holding the binder in front of him. Richards stood there breathing hard, but with a steady grip on his weapon.
“Don’t you have some water leaks to attend to?” Pitt asked.
“I’ll stuff them with your dead body,” Richards said. “Put the book down and come with me. I don’t care to dirty our conference room.”
That was all Pitt needed to hear. Richards had not seen the compact SIG Sauer pistol Pitt concealed behind the green binder. But he was in no position to aim and fire. Not yet.
Pitt took a step forward, better aligning himself. “There are some interesting details in this book,” Pitt said. “Enough to put you and your boss away for quite some time.”
“I’ll tell you just once more. Put the book down.”
“Here, you take it.” Pitt extended the binder in front of him with his left hand, despite the distance across the room. As he did so, he pivoted the SIG Sauer in his right hand and fired two shots through the cover.
Both nine-millimeter slugs struck Richards in the chest, pushing him backward. He squeezed off two of his own shots as he collapsed, firing into the ceiling. Falling against the conference room door, he slid to the floor and didn’t move. His eyes were glazed in a vacant stare as Pitt stepped over him.
“Next time, shoot first and talk later,” Pitt said.
Figuring that the other guards were occupied in the production room, Pitt turned down the hallway toward the entrance. He passed more lab workers rushing toward the production bay. Most gave a wide berth to the man in the wet lab coat toting a green binder and a pistol.
The front guard desk was empty as Pitt stepped passed it and out the main door. The first rays of dawn were streaking across the sky, revealing a gray mist over the loch. The landscape was still and quiet, save for the sound of a motorboat somewhere on the lake.
Pitt followed a stone walkway that meandered between low hedges toward the waterfront. As the dock came into view, he detected movement ahead. It was Perkins and Giordino, angling across the grounds from the back of the building. Perkins was still hobbling, his foot in more pain than he’d let on. They were well ahead of Pitt as they stepped onto the dock.
The motor had grown louder, and Pitt could tell it was running at high speed on an approaching course. A few seconds later, the black speedboat he had seen in the McKee boathouse burst out of the mist.
As the pilot cut power, the sound of its motor was replaced by the staccato report of an assault rifle. Muzzle flashes erupted from the boat, and Perkins crumpled to the dock alongside Giordino.
Pitt took off at a dead run. He raised the SIG Sauer and squeezed off four rounds at the boat. The slide locked open on the last shot. He tossed it aside as another muzzle flash flared from the boat. The walkway in front of him exploded in small chunks. Pitt dove to the side, clearing a hedge and rolling behind a small tree.
A few seconds later, gunfire swept across the dock and shoreline. Giordino had pulled Perkins off the dock, and the two men were crouched behind the thin cover at the water’s edge. They were out of the gunman’s sight for the moment, but all bets would be off once the boat reached the dock.
As the boat came closer, Pitt noticed the small control room they’d entered earlier was just off to his left. He stripped off the white lab coat, which made for an easy target, and sprinted for the building. He went unseen, diving down the steps and into the doorway. The gunman continued to fire short bursts toward Giordino and Perkins as the boat idled closer to the dock.
Pitt entered the room and scrambled to the control panel. Eyeing the buttons, he toggled on a switch labeled POWER. Several green lights blinked on, along with a split-screen video monitor. The left side showed a live feed from the