by Mark Dawson
“Wouldn’t necessarily be you next time.”
It was an obvious threat, and Boon could see that it registered. Milton unfolded his arms and, with slow deliberation, laid his right hand on the bar. “Listen to me, Avi. If anything happens to her or to her family, all bets are off. I’ll kill you, then I’ll kill Dubois, then I’ll kill Babineaux. You know that’s not a bluff.”
Boon eyed him. “Isadora Bartholomew will be crushed in the end. We both know it. It might take a few months and a few million dollars, but doesn’t it make more sense for that money to go straight to her rather than making rich lawyers even richer?”
Milton nodded. “Maybe we can agree on that.”
“They’ll negotiate?”
Milton spoke calmly. “How’s this, I’ll talk to Babineaux and make him realise that it’s going to take a lot more money than he’s offering. If he agrees, I’ll talk to the charity. If I can get them to agree, we can move on to what comes next. You give me the kid, I give you him.”
“And I’ll speak to my side. Make them see sense. That might work.”
Milton stood. “We good?”
Boon reached out and took Milton’s wrist, anchoring it. “Hold on. We do what we gotta do, right? I’ve been retained by Babineaux. I only get work if people know I can do what I tell them I can do. Maybe this time, the problem gets solved another way, no need to spill blood over it. But, let me tell you something, Milton, and this is no word of a lie. If we can’t get this sorted, if we can’t get them to agree on a price, then, odds are, we go back to where we were before. Now that we’ve had this nice chat, this chance to reminisce, I can’t say that I’m gonna get any pleasure from taking you out. But, Milton, don’t mistake me, if it’s between you and my reputation, I’m taking you out.”
Milton nodded his understanding. “That cuts both ways. Like I said, you only get one shot at me. The way I see it now, you are owed. If this isn’t settled, and I have to come after you—you, Babineaux, and anyone else who gets in my way—you are done for. I don’t want any more blood on my conscience, but you need to know that I’ve killed since I left the service. And I’ll kill again if you make me. Between you and me, Bachman, I’ve tried to bury the monster so deep that I could never find it again. But I can’t. It’s there, right beneath the surface. Ready.” He held his eye and clicked his fingers. “That’s all it takes to switch all that back on again. Now—take your hand off my arm before I break your wrist.”
Boon left it there for a moment and then lifted it clear.
“We both understand each other, then.”
“We do.”
“Maybe it comes to that, maybe it doesn’t.”
“Or maybe we’ll never see each other again.”
They held each other’s gaze for a long moment, neither of them prepared to blink first. Then Boon took out his wallet and left a ten on the bar, standing his empty bottle over one corner of the note. He stood, gave Milton a nod of his head, and left the bar.
Chapter Forty-Six
THE MAN who Milton had identified as Avi Bachman was driving a scruffy Ford, dust slathered around the wheel arches. Ziggy watched him from his own car parked a hundred yards away on the opposite side of the road. Bachman paused for five minutes, long enough for Milton to come out of the bar and get into his Corolla and drive away. Bachman stepped outside then, with a small handheld device in his hand. Ziggy recognised it. He was checking for the traces of a signal that would give away the presence of a tracker. When he was satisfied that the car was clean, he went back inside and pulled away.
Ziggy waited for thirty seconds and then followed.
The road was quiet and Ziggy drove a little closer to Bachman’s car. He was driving slowly and carefully.
Ziggy had been busy. Milton had taken a laptop from Babineaux’s house. It had reasonably robust encryption, but that didn’t delay him for very long. Once he was past the protection, he had extracted all of the data and then analysed it. Babineaux was no fool. There were no smoking guns to be found, but there were plenty of clues to follow to secondary sources of information. His lawyer. His accountant. Neither with particularly secure servers. Once he was done, he could demonstrate clear links between Babineaux Properties and the mayor’s office, including instructions to a bank in the Caymans to transfer a series of large payments to an account that he was confident he would be able to link to the mayor’s wife. That evidence had been collected in just a few hours. There were over ninety gigabytes of emails and other data for him to investigate. He was sure that, with a little extra time, he would be able to tie Babineaux up in a bow and deliver him to Izzy.
His phone vibrated. He took the call on the speaker.
“You got him?” Milton asked.
“I got him.”
“Stay back. He’s very careful.”
“Don’t worry, Milton.”
“And dangerous.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“Stay on the line.”
He reached down and powered up the StingRay. It was a rectangular box, twenty inches wide, six inches high and six inches deep. The fascia was furnished with a power switch, DC input and a number of jacks for TX, RX, DF, and GPS antennas. The box was an IMSI catcher. Every device that communicated with a cell tower—mobile phone, smartphone or tablet—had an IMSI chip. The StingRay broadcasted a pilot signal that was stronger than the signals from legitimate cell sites operating in the vicinity. It drew the unique IMSI signals into its grasp and, when it had achieved that, once it was locked onto the signal, then the magic started. The box could siphon data from the phone, block it from working, or, best of all, it could track it.
Ziggy had known about the technology for months. Military police had discovered Russian-made catchers attached to light poles in the Pentagon parking lot. Others had been found near defense contractors and in the parking lots of tech firms in Palo Alto. There were rumours that the FBI attached StingRay-like devices called Dirtboxes to the undersides of helicopters and flew them over foreign embassies in Washington. This one had been sourced from a tech start-up in Brazil. It was small enough to fit inside a suitcase. A hacker who offered illicit goods on the Silk Road, a woman he had IMed and trusted—insofar as trust was a legitimate concept on a site like that—had couriered it to him. It had cost ten grand. Ziggy would normally have added that as an expense, but he was going to let it slide this time. It didn’t seem like the right thing to do in the circumstances and, besides, it was a funky toy. He had wanted one for months.
Ziggy let Bachman drift out again. He was still within range of the unit, he just needed to maintain line of sight. Ziggy was concentrating hard. He felt the prickle of adrenaline and saw that the hairs on the backs of his arms were standing up. This was what he had always imagined fieldwork would be like: clandestine, furtive, on the edge of things. He had long harboured an interest in the history of espionage. He knew about the Nazi radio trucks that had cruised the streets of Paris, looking for signals sent by Resistance agents. Wasn’t this just the same, albeit light years more advanced?
“Has he called out?” Milton said.
“Not yet.”
“Where are you?”
“Kenner. Headed west. Just coming up to the airport.”
“He’s going out of town.”
“I know.”
“If he gets out of the city, it’ll be quieter. You won’t be able to follow him. He’s too good, Ziggy.”
“Jesus, I know that, Milton. Stop telling me my job. We’re not there yet. He’s not going to be able to make me yet.”
“You need to get a fix on him before that happens.”
“That’s on him. I can’t make him call.”
“I know. I’m just on the 610. Ten minutes behind you.”
The junction ahead went to red. Bachman’s car slowed and drew to a stop. Ziggy pulled up four cars back, in the lane directly to Bachman’s left. He could see across the road, through the window of the car directly behind him, and
see Bachman. He watched as he reached into his pocket, took out a cellphone and put it to his ear. He held his breath. This was it. Bachman started to talk. Ziggy double-checked that the StingRay was powered, watching the readout as it corralled all of the signals in the area. There were several thousand phones within range. The StingRay would force all of them to connect to it, and then it would store their identifiers.
The lights changed to green and the snake of traffic slithered on.
Bachman removed the phone from his ear and replaced it in his pocket.
Ziggy needed to keep following. As long as he was able to stay unobserved, he would narrow the area that they would subsequently have to quarter and search. Milton had suggested that Bachman would have taken Bartholomew to a quiet area, probably somewhere out of town. He would have chosen somewhere deserted, difficult to find, and, if it was compromised, easier to defend. The quieter it was, the less traffic there would be, and the sooner Bachman would make Ziggy. If that happened, it would be game over. But if he broke off the pursuit too soon, the area that they would be left with would be too broad to search. He had to play it just right.
“Ziggy?”
“He called out. Thirty seconds, no more.”
“That’s enough?”
“Should be.”
“Where are you now?”
Ziggy looked at the satnav stuck to the inside of the windshield.
“Just coming up to the edge of town. He’s going west.”
“Into the bayou.”
“There’s still a lot of traffic. I’m still on him.”
“Be careful. We don’t want to spook him.”
“Affirmative. Where are you?”
“Metairie.”
“Stay back. I’ve got this.”
Ziggy drifted out to a hundred feet behind Bachman. The Ford was doing a steady sixty, careful to stay under the limit, careful not to attract attention. Ziggy started to speculate where he might be headed when he saw the right blinker on Bachman’s car flashing. He indicated, too, following Bachman off the interstate and onto the slip road. The road continued down to a junction. There was no other traffic, just the two of them as Bachman slowed at the stop sign and Ziggy drew in behind him. There were two: one to the northwest, the other to the northeast.
“Ziggy?”
The roads ahead were empty. Ziggy knew he could go no farther. Bachman pulled away and took the first exit. Ziggy followed after him, taking the second exit. The road Bachman had chosen was empty and desolate, a sign up ahead suggesting that it would lead into the swamp around Lake Maurepas.
“Ziggy?”
“I’ve let him go.”
“Where?”
“Junction of the 10 and the 55.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t stop. Keep driving. If he’s made you, he’ll come back. You don’t want to be there if he does.”
“He didn’t make me.”
“Like the Irish didn’t make you?”
Ziggy felt a flash of hot humiliation. “It’s not—”
“You can’t say for sure.” Milton spoke over him. “No chances. Keep driving.”
Ziggy did as he was told. He didn’t know much about Bachman. But if Milton was concerned about what he was capable of doing, that was good enough for him. He looked down at the StingRay. He thought that he had enough data now. Bachman just needed enough time to get back to wherever it was that he was hiding. Ziggy would wait for Milton, then follow Bachman’s route to the northwest and have the StingRay force connections from all compatible devices in the area. Eventually, they would find the identifier of the phone that Bachman had used at the lights. Once they had that, they could triangulate the signal and trace him.
Chapter Forty-Seven
MILTON DROVE as fast as he dared. He knew that Ziggy was careful. And he knew that his experience the last time he had visited New Orleans would, most likely, inure him to the temptation of trying to be a hero. But he also knew that Avi Bachman was a dangerous operator, with a résumé that would match his own for prolificacy. He was smart and savvy, with the kind of instincts that were developed in the brutal crucible of the field, when a mistake would end with a bullet in your head or a knife between the shoulder blades. But Ziggy was proud, too, and Milton had not completely dismissed the possibility that he would try to do something to impress him to make up for his failures from nine years earlier.
He drove a little faster.
#
HE FOUND him parked at the side of the road. He slotted the Corolla behind the Hyundai and stepped out onto the baking asphalt, a denunciation ready on his lips. He had told Ziggy to keep driving. He stalked to the car, but, before he could say anything, Ziggy opened the door and stepped out.
“I found him.”
“What? How?”
“The exits back at the roundabout?”
“Yes. Two of them.”
“This one bends back to the northwest after a mile, and then they run pretty much parallel to each other. There’s a mile, maybe two, between them. I drove on, just put the StingRay onto track, and it picked up his phone.”
He stepped aside and Milton glimpsed into the car. The StingRay was on the passenger seat with an Apple MacBook resting on top of it, the laptop angled so that the screen was easily visible to the driver. The computer was displaying a map. The StingRay had placed a glowing red dot on the map in the countryside between the two roads.
“How accurate is it?”
“Right now? Not very. All it has is the signal strength and the general direction of the ping. It’ll give us a search area of two or three miles in diameter. I need to get more readings. If I can get five or six, the software can draw circles from each point and wherever they intersect will be within one hundred metres of the location.”
“How long will that take?”
“An hour.” He opened the door, collected the computer and rested it on the roof. He traced the local features with his finger. “This road bends around and joins the other one ten miles ahead, here. If we follow that, come back on the other one, we should get what we need.”
“We need to do it now. He’s going to think about moving Alexander soon. I need to attack before he does. Out here will be a lot better than if he takes him back into the city.”
#
MILTON FOLLOWED Ziggy’s car. He was driving at a steady forty, and Milton watched as he frequently turned his head to the laptop on the seat next to him, occasionally reaching across to, he guessed, tap something on the keyboard that was out of his line of sight.
They followed the road to the north, turned west, then came down on the other side of the area within which Bachman’s cell had been located. They reached the roundabout that led back to the interstate and took the second exit again. They completed the loop for a second time.
Eventually, Ziggy drew over to the side of the road next to a narrow track that disappeared into the swamp.
“I’ve got him,” he said through the open window of the car.
Milton looked into the cabin. Ziggy held the laptop for him to see. The red dot had shifted half a mile closer to them. The satellite image of the terrain revealed the track and, next to the dot, a collection of small buildings.
“You’re sure?”
“That’s where the phone is. I’ve got seven readings. That’s about as certain as I can be.”
Milton nodded. “Well done.”
“What’s next?”
“You go back to the city.”
He looked disappointed. “You don’t want me to stick around. In case—”
“No,” he cut him off. “It’s too dangerous. He’s had a day or two to prepare this. I’m guessing there’ll be tripwires, maybe grenades. And I’ve no idea what hardware he’s got. I can’t worry about you, too.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Stay with Isadora. Bachman might not be working on his own. And I’m not playing them straight. There’s no reason they won’t be doing the same with
us.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
MILTON WATCHED Ziggy’s Hyundai as it disappeared to the southeast. He went to the back of the Corolla, popped the trunk, and took out the equipment that he had retrieved from the buried cache. He took a covert ballistic vest. It was lightweight, made from layers of high-grade Kevlar. It would be effective against knives and most small-calibre, low-velocity rounds. Bigger bullets would still make a mess, but he’d try to make sure that he didn’t get hit by any of those. The weather was baking hot, and he was already sweating. Wearing the vest was going to be a bitch, but it would be worth the discomfort. He pulled it on and fastened the zip. It was a little small, but not uncomfortably so. It would do.
He went back to the trunk and looked down at the weapons arrayed there. He had not expected to have a use for the M16, but now he was pleased to have it. He took it out, ejected and checked the magazine, then pushed four spare mags into his pockets. He took the P226, shoved it into his jeans, and added the MP5, too. None of the weapons were particularly heavy and, since he had no idea what he would face when he reached Bachman’s location, he preferred to have more than he needed rather than less.
He slapped his palm against the magazine of the M16, making sure that it was snugly fitted into the well, and then pulled back the charging handle. He tapped the forward assist assembly to ensure the bolt was closed, released the handle and the bolt slammed home, feeding a round into the chamber and locking into place. The rifle was equipped with a strap, and he put it over his head, arranging the gun so that it was diagonally across his back.
He closed the trunk, took out his cellphone, and called up the map.
Due east.
One mile.
He crunched across the gravel at the side of the road, descended the slope into the scrubby vegetation below, and kept moving.
#
CLAUDE BOON took a bottle of water from the fridge, unscrewed the cap, and slugged down half of it in hungry gulps. Babineaux was paying him and Lila a lot of money for this, but he was beginning to doubt whether it was worth it. Forced out into this godforsaken swamp, eaten alive by mosquitoes, with John Milton out there to deal with. It took plenty to give Boon cause for concern, but Milton had managed to do it.