e police?"
The woman shook her head.
"No, he just happened to walk out of a building while two kids were trying
to jack a Mercedes. One of them pulled a knife on him, so he showed them the
antique .45 he carried when he wasn't on duty and turned them over to the cops."
"I see. So he's never taken any prisoners when he's been doing agency work?"
The guy shrugged and said, "If he has, I've never heard about them."
"Wait a minute, Jerry," said the woman, "I think she's getting the wrong
idea, here. Ma'am, Cade's no 'Dirty Harry'; he just seems to have an absolute
knack for being right where the shit hits the fan. To the best of my knowledge,
he's never had a really decent opportunity to take a prisoner, you know what I
mean? When it goes down, you do what you have to and hope you're making the best
decision."
"Still... You really think that not one of those twenty kills could have
been arrested instead?"
"Maybe," said the guy, "If they'd have run out of ammo or volunteered to
stop shooting. In the only case I know about personally -- I was there -- the
guy went down shooting at us with an AK. Didn't stop firing until he ran the
clip dry. By then Cade had returned fire and put four rounds in him. It was a
clean shoot, ma'am. The guy died pulling the trigger. As far as I know, all his
kills have been like that. Nasty to the end."
"One thing, ma'am," said the woman, "Cade doesn't shoot to wound or
incapacitate. If he shoots at all, he shoots to kill. That's what some of the
flak's been about in his records, but the fact is, we all do the same thing.
This outfit doesn't deal with muggers and burglars. We mostly get the diehards
and psychos. At our end of things, if you pop a guy in the leg and yell 'drop
the gun', chances are real good he'll kill you when he goes down shooting."
The guy beside her chuckled and said, "Cade's just been in a lot of wrong
places at wrong times. Like Cindy said, he always had a real talent for that."
Mandi chatted with them about some of the things they'd been through to try
to get a perspective on Cade's agency performance, but by the time she'd been
called into John's anteroom office, she'd begun to have some misgivings about
having converted Cade.
It had occurred to Mandi to wonder how Cade would handle being converted
without consultation, but not for long. He seemed to be exactly the kind of man
Mandi wanted on her team; capable