Backblast

by Candace Irving

  Yes. "That's them."

  Despite the loss of the round she'd fired, adrenaline surged. Because with those sunglasses came the same holy grail of forensic evidence that she'd have gotten from a bloodied bullet: DNA. Especially since they were all assuming Webber had taken that shot, but no one was certain. Even her. Despite all those floodlights, there had still been too many shadows flitting within that mass of bodies; the bastard's features obscured that much more by those wraparound lenses he'd been wearing.

  But the odds were excellent that those glasses would contain epithelial cells, possibly even recoverable fingerprints.

  "Don't get so excited. They're already gone. I gave the glasses to a gunnery sergeant in the RSO's office to put in the safe, so you could do your detective thing when you got back. But when the RSO opened the safe so I could grab your laptop and kit, they weren't in there. I tracked down the gunny. He swears he put them in the safe, but they're definitely gone now."

  Christ.

  Regan sank down onto the couch. What the devil was going on? If the shooter had been Webber, why would he want to kill John now? Even if Webber did want John dead, surely there would have been easier times and places to set up that shot?

  "I got one more oddity—and this one's truly weird. It pertains to that suicide bomber."

  "What about him? Did you manage to get an ID?"

  Tulle shook head. "But we do know he was murdered. That vest—it was a dummy rig. But there was one live charge in it. The one over his heart. And, get this: it was rigged to blow in, not out, and not by much. It looks as though no one else was meant to be shredded during that speech, much less killed, 'cept the bastard who was eager to enter Paradise early and collect his seventy-two virgins."

  She set the takeout cup on the coffee table and sank back into the couch as the confusion continued to rip in. None of this made sense.

  Why would someone premeditate a murder so meticulous upon a would-be suicide bomber? Had the bomber simply been meant to serve as a distraction so that Webber could set up his kill shot on John? But why so elaborate? More importantly, was their murdered bomber—and that kill shot—connected to their search for the traitor?

  The one still inside Embassy Islamabad?

  Because she was more convinced than ever that Crier's death hadn't ended her quest.

  She needed to view that security footage leading into Crier's office. She'd asked Corporal Vetter to have it sent to her CID email. Had the Marine even had the opportunity to get the footage downloaded from the embassy's system with everything that had gone on since she'd found Crier's body at his desk a mere six hours ago? Hell, she still hadn't had a chance to dust that Glock and envelope for prints.

  She reached for her laptop bag.

  "You got work to do, don't you?"

  "I do." She tipped her head to the right. "But there's plenty of room on the other side of this couch. Have a seat."

  He smiled. "Not for an ape my size, there isn't. But I appreciate the fib."

  Her heart twisted at the ape comment. "I can request a chair."

  If the locals were incredibly generous enough to donate blood on John's behalf, surely a spare seat wouldn't be too out of range, would it?

  Tulle's light blue gaze darkened with the ghosts of too many soldiers who'd passed as it slipped to the center of the room. To those taunting, empty sheets.

  Like most soldiers, she was all too familiar with that haunted stare. With the memories trapped within. She'd confronted too many hospital beds recently emptied by buddies to not be. Beds that hadn't been emptied in a good way.

  "If you don't mind, ma'am, I'd rather walk the halls. If I eavesdrop enough, I just might polish my Urdu."

  "Sounds good. Come back when you're bored. Meanwhile, I'll call if and when I hear something. But…stick close. I may need you professionally."

  Exceptional SF soldier that he was, Tulle didn't question that final comment. He simply nodded.

  She was already unzipping her laptop bag and dragging her computer out onto the low table as the door closed behind the staff sergeant.

  She retrieved her CID credentials from the back pocket of her scrubs and slid her access card from its slot on the wallet side. Within minutes, she'd used it to assist in her push through the requisite security protocols and was skimming her overflowing email inbox. Fortunately, Corporal Vetter's email—and attached files—were near the top.

  And there it was: the security footage she needed.

  Even at a jacked-up viewing speed, it took a mind numbing ninety-four minutes to zero in on the sections of footage that she needed. The sections that would make her case—and ruin an embassy staffer's career.

  Not to mention seal his pending conviction for treason.

  She pushed through her fury and closed her laptop, swapping out the computer for her phone. Double confirmation was always a plus when it came to court-martials.

  It took her a few minutes to phone Corporal Vetter at the embassy and wait not-so-patiently while Vetter looked up Warren Jeffers' personal phone numbers.

  Upon hanging up with the wonderfully chatty and informative Vetter, it took her mere seconds more to check her watch and calculate the time zone difference between Islamabad and Orlando, Florida, where Mrs. Bethany Jeffers' recent commercial flight had apparently landed while Mr. Jeffers had been up on that temporary platform in front of the embassy's gates.

  From there, a brief introduction and several probing questions later, Regan had the confirmation she needed—and her traitor.

  She shot off a quick text to Tulle to let him know she'd need his services. She was about to place a call to Scott when her phone rang.

  Palisade.

  Damn. The general needed a case update, yes. But he'd want a personal one regarding John, too. An update she didn't have. The lack of which she'd also desperately been trying to keep her mind from dwelling upon while she'd be studying two days' worth of security footage in fast forward. "Agent Chase."

  "How's he doing?"

  "I don't know." Nor could she keep the apprehension from her voice.

  It had been two hours now since Sitara Chaudhry had left her in this room. Surely, there should have been an update by now?

  Or was John experiencing complications?

  Focus.

  She got up from the couch to pace her way across the room as she worked to shove the ugly, thickening fear back down into her gut. "Sir, I haven't heard anything beyond what I was able to give Staff Sergeant Tulle earlier this morning."

  The man's sigh filled the line. "Understood. I'll let you go, so you can—"

  "General?"

  "Yes, Chief?"

  She turned around at the door and headed back toward the hospital bed bisecting the room. "I have another update. I've ID'd our traitor."

  "I thought we already had him."

  So had she. "Sir, Tom Crier was set up. He—"

  "Wrong."

  She spun around, coming face to face with the one man she'd never expected to be paying a supportive sympathy visit. And definitely not to her. Then again, diplomacy was in his blood and, hence, faking it. The latter of which, this man was a master at.

  "Sir, Deputy Chief of Mission Warren Jeffers has just arrived." Along with someone else. She nodded to Scott as he, too, entered the room. Either Jeffers had talked her old MP classmate into tagging along to help to perpetuate his faux sympathies, or Scott was here for another reason. Either way, "May I call you back?"

  "I'll be waiting."

  The moment Palisade severed the call, she tossed her phone onto the foot of the bed and rounded on Jeffers. "I don't appreciate you walking into my room unannounced, let alone interrupting my conversation with my boss."

  "I don't give a shit what you appreciate. Especially since the information you were imparting was dead wrong—literally. Crier was guilty. From what Agent Riyad says, you yourself found that false bottom in the man's desk and the packet of classified information he'd secreted within. And there'
s the note. The bastard asked for forgiveness in own hand."

  "Agreed." But was Crier asking for forgiveness because he'd committed treason, or was he sorry that he'd finally realized there was a traitor in the embassy? A traitor from whom Crier had failed to protect his own child?

  "And those papers you found—"

  "Were planted." She shrugged into the DCM's shock, stalking forward to where he and Scott were standing just inside the door. "And there's the timing of Crier's suicide."

  Not to mention the timing of what she was about to do. She had the man she needed within arms' length. With all that had happened in this country, and still could, she couldn't afford to let him out of her sight. Not when he could easily disappear into Pakistan, never to be seen again…until the next terror plot was due to unfold.

  But could she pull this off with her arm rattling around at her side?

  She could wait for Tulle.

  Except that risked this all going south before the side of beef made his appearance in time to balance things out. The hospital was even more massive than the staff sergeant's shoulders. There was no telling how far away Tulle was from this room.

  She glanced at Scott as she stepped closer to him and Jeffers, hoping Scott would recognize her old look—and the intent behind it.

  From the gleam in Scott's eyes, not to mention that ever-so-slight nod, he did.

  She tipped her head toward the coffee table behind her. "Corporal Vetter was kind enough to email me the video surveillance for the corridor outside Crier's office prior to his suicide. I just finished it. Fascinating viewing. Not only does it show you, Mr. Jeffers, heading in to speak with Crier minutes before you came down to the lobby to find Agent Riyad conversing with me in the waiting area, but you were in Crier's office for a solid ten minutes. And when you came out, you were seriously pissed. Granted, that appears to be your natural state around your co-workers. But this time, your tantrum ended with Crier eating his gun. Just what did you two discuss?"

  "Whatever it was, is none of your damned business—"

  She stepped closer, until she was standing directly in front of Jeffers and Scott. "Oh, but it is. Especially since I also have it on good authority that you used that same desk of Crier's several years earlier when you served as political officer; the first, in fact, to occupy that particular office in the chancery. Hence, you knew about the false bottom in that drawer."

  She slipped her right hand behind her back and wrapped her quaking fingers around the cuffs, praying she could pull this off as she tugged them from her pocket. She stepped sharply to the right, reaching out with her left hand to spin Scott's wiry frame around, slamming her old MP buddy's face into the wall to momentarily stun him as she simultaneously clipped one of the cuffs to his right wrist while jerking Scott's left across his back to secure the second.

  Jeffers was still gaping at her as she reached around into Scott's suit jacket to remove the man's Glock 19 from his shoulder holster.

  She was bending down to remove Scott's backup Glock 26 when Staff Sergeant Tulle pushed the door open and entered the room.

  She tossed both 9mms onto the bed, then nodded to Tulle to take over the search for anything else that might be hidden within those gray pinstripes.

  "What the fuck did you do that for? You can't disarm one of my DSS agents!" Evidently Jeffers had regained use of his tongue.

  Scott, however, hadn't bothered to come to his own defense.

  They both knew why.

  Old friend or not, and as much as it pained her so profoundly to admit, "I can when that agent is a traitor."

  25

  "What gave me away, Prez?"

  "Don't 'prez' me." That nickname was for friends alone, and damned good ones at that. A category to which Scott Walburn no longer belonged. As for that critical clue, "You reset the tumbler on my kit. Among other things."

  "Yeah, so?"

  "So I change it—every time I close it. And I'd closed it twice since that old number."

  "Christ. I forgot about that idiot-savant skill of yours."

  Yeah, well, he was the one in cuffs.

  Who was the idiot now?

  Though, granted, she still felt like one. She'd fallen for his psst, Jeffers is an abuser and possibly more bait. Despite the fact that offering that lie had been a solid, obscuring tactic, especially given how Scott had to have known that the DCM's filthy reputation would have come to her attention anyway. It had been a smart move, too, feeding her that obfuscating story while they'd been on their way to the Shifa—and she and her instincts had been distracted by the city's jockeying traffic and the dark.

  And there'd been that clever, seemingly innocuous comment regarding Jeffers' previous stint as Embassy Islamabad's political officer and, hence, Jeffers presupposed use of and familiarity with that desk.

  Plus, "I called Jeffers' wife. That was a nice touch, by the way. Accusing him of adultery—and implying the rest. Especially since you knew Bethany was already on her way out of Pakistan to visit her folks in the States."

  She could hear Jeffers spluttering behind her. "You called my wife?"

  She glanced back to see those meaty lips puckering down and white with fury. "Be grateful. The woman alibied you." God knew why, but Bethany Jeffers also appeared to genuinely love and admire the asshole.

  It took all sorts, didn't it?

  Bethany had also confessed that Warren Jeffers had bragged to anyone who'd listen about the hidden bottom in that drawer during his stint in the political office.

  Meaning Webber probably knew about the drawer.

  At the very least, Scott had.

  "I thought you hadn't had a chance to dust the envelope for prints."

  She hadn't. Nor would she. While she doubted she'd find any prints on it, much less on the papers within—despite their thumbed through appearance—it was probably best to box them up and ship them off to Forensic Documents at the CID lab at Fort Gillem. Given the critical nature of this mission—and the classified content of those pages—she'd prefer that the document experts at the lab did the honors. They'd have a much better shot than she would at culling any available clues from within.

  Of course, that was going to take time.

  Meanwhile, she'd head back to the embassy tomorrow to dust Crier's Glock for prints and wrap up everything else related to the case, including her growing stack of pending reports.

  "Damn it, Agent Chase. I will not just stand here and—"

  "Oh, but you will." This time, she spun all the way around to stare the DCM down. "Make no mistake, Mr. Jeffers. One more word out of your mouth, and I'll arrest you too." Alibi or not. "So do just stand there—and shut up."

  She ignored the flare of pure hatred she received in response and turned back to Scott. To the query he'd made regarding that envelope.

  It was telling.

  Scott wouldn't have had a lot of time to prepare those papers once he'd been tasked with picking her up at the airport—and realized why she was in Islamabad. Given the fear he'd let slip, there was an excellent chance Scott had screwed up and left his prints behind…or someone else's.

  Webber's.

  All the more reason to let the experts at Gillem take first crack.

  Either way, "That's not where I got my confirmation. I lied earlier, Scott. I didn't just go back an hour on the video. I went back a lot further. I found you, going in and out of Crier's office, twice. Roughly twenty minutes before Jeffers arrived and, again, earlier in the day just after you brought me to the embassy and while Crier was still across town in his marathon meeting with locals." And during that first foray in the hours before, Scott'd had an envelope in hand. One that looked exactly like the one she'd pulled out of that hidden compartment in Crier's desk. "You really should've shoved that damning little Easter egg in a briefcase."

  Scott just shrugged those wiry, pinstriped shoulders. "Hindsight's always twenty-twenty."

  That, it was.

  She could only assume Scott had intended to
compromise the surveillance archive—and his suspicious appearances therein—later tonight while everyone was supposed to have been distracted by what he'd clearly hoped would be a full-blown Pakistani coup.

  "That second foray into Crier's office?" The one Crier had actually attended. "You told the man the hospital called, didn't you? And that his son, Danyal, was dead." A death Scott had fully expected to occur within the next few days anyway, since he'd been the one to infect the boy simply to complete the frame he'd perpetuated on Crier.

  "Yeah. But I added on the sweet piece he'd been screwing. I told him Inaya was so grief stricken that she threw herself out of the window before they could stop her. It was the best way to ensure he blew his brains out."

  That would do it.

  And, of course, Scott had known about Crier's 9mm since he'd been in there to plant that envelope. That said, Scott had only been at the embassy for two months. That wasn't long enough to have gathered all the intel he'd had on Tom Crier and put his plans into place. And there was Sergeant Brandt and his secrets. Not to mention obtaining the chimera, those crime scene photos and the McCord DNA report that had been leaked.

  Scott had definitely had help.

  Someone else had to have conducted the advanced reconnaissance. Especially since Scott had been at his desk at the embassy for the past two months, studiously working away on that human trafficking case that she now suspected he'd not only tipped the authorities off to, but had then volunteered to work. Whoever had done the recon had also been the one to go to Al Dhafra to pass off the strychnine to Brandt and infect the Marine with the chimera, thus preserving Scott's cover.