Thirst for Justice

by David R. Boyd

  “Say those names again.”

  Michael repeated the three names.

  “You better not be fucking with me. You’d regret that more than death by drowning, I assure you.”

  Chapter 28

  Carter used a satellite phone to call his boss in Langley, Virginia. It was the middle of the night there, but everyone was pinned to their desks, waiting for the word from Africa.

  “Stryder.”

  “Carter.”

  “Go.”

  “The Big Apple is on deck.”

  “Fuck! New York City?”

  “Yeah. And I have three names. Co-conspirators.”

  “Give them to me.”

  “Dave Fleming, Erik Hanson, and Chris Bosio. Ring any bells?”

  “A couple seem familiar, but I can’t place them.” Stryder was already entering the names into the National Criminal Information System, looking for prior arrests, convictions, and addresses or other contact information.

  “Did he disclose this information willingly?”

  “No, sir. This guy is almost as tough as a Navy Seal. He put up a hell of a fight.”

  “Any connections to ISIS, the Earth Liberation Army, or any other radical terrorist organization?”

  “No. Nothing like that.”

  “Are you 110 percent certain about the information he gave you?”

  “With respect sir, 110 percent certainty is mathematically impossible. Nothing’s ever certain. But 99 percent confident, sure.”

  “You better be right. We can’t afford to blow this one. A city other than New York gets hit and we’re both going to be washing latrines at Guantanamo with our tongues.”

  “Well, this guy won’t be out poisoning watersheds any time soon.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Air Force transport will get him back on American soil within in a few hours.”

  “Good work, Carter.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Lie low for a while.”

  Stryder’s search of national criminal databases came up empty for two of the three names, Fleming and Bosio. These bastards were flying below the radar. It seemed odd, but then Michael MacDougall had a clean rap sheet. There were lots of hits for Eric/Erik Hanson/Hansen. It would take time to sort out which was the right one. They’d have to focus their initial search for the trio in the Seattle and New York areas and work outward from there. There would have to be a massive effort to ramp up security in the Big Apple. It would be a nightmare, but New Yorkers would just carry on. Stryder wondered why anyone still lived in the cursed metropolis, besieged by one disaster after another.

  He arranged an immediate conference call to explain MacDougall’s confession. It was the middle of the night but no one on the task force was sleeping.

  “Mr. President, we apprehended our prime suspect at 0900 local time in Goma. That’s two a.m. Washington time. He was immediately interrogated and freely confessed to having carried out the attack on Seattle. He initially claimed to be operating alone and denied plans for a second watershed attack.”

  “But?”

  “In the course of sustained questioning, he admitted that there was a second target, and that there were other persons involved.”

  “What’s the target?”

  “New York City, sir.”

  The president closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands. “Oh no.”

  “The suspect identified three men—Dave Fleming, Erik Hanson, and Chris Bosio—as his co-conspirators. Two of the three names garnered no relevant hits on the national crime or terror databases, and we’re checking out a handful of Erik Hansons.”

  It was Cassie’s turn to frown. She stood up from her hotel room desk and began pacing. This information didn’t fit the picture she’d developed of Dr. Michael MacDougall. Based on MacDougall’s profile, the information that Dom had provided, and the physical evidence regarding the contamination of the Chester Morse Reservoir, Cassie believed that the doctor was working alone, and bluffing about subsequent attacks.

  The president drew a deep breath, as he prepared to issue orders for shutting down the largest city in the country. Law enforcement agencies would basically be imposing martial law in an effort to prevent the attack.

  On an impulse, Cassie sat down and entered the three co-conspirators’ names together into Google. She got 315 results, and as she scanned the summaries of the first ten, she clapped a hand over her mouth. All of the results were about the same subject: the Seattle Mariners baseball team of the early 1990s. Dave Fleming, Erik Hanson, and Chris Bosio were pitchers on the same baseball team. Was there any possibility that three retired baseball players were co-conspirators in a plot to poison New York City’s drinking water? It was completely implausible. MacDougall must have lied. Why? Duress, Cassie guessed. And the CIA had swallowed the misinformation hook, line, and sinker.

  She smiled and suppressed a laugh. “I have some urgent information on the three so-called co-conspirators.” Silence. “Obviously there are no baseball fans here.” Someone on the line cleared his throat but no one spoke. “Dr. MacDougall lied about having accomplices, meaning he probably also lied about targeting New York City for a second attack.”

  “What are you talking about?” Stryder asked. Noise bubbled up in the background.

  “Dave Fleming, Erik Hanson, and Chris Bosio. Do I have those names right?” Cassie asked.

  “Yes. What about them?” Stryder again.

  “They played baseball together in the American League.”

  “They’re relatively common names. Must be a coincidence.” Cassie could tell that Stryder was reeling. She had more. “They all played for the Seattle Mariners for a number of years in the early 1990s. By my calculation, Dr. Michael MacDougall would have been a teenager at that time, and my guess is that he was a big Mariners fan.”

  “Maybe it proves that our suspects knew each other.” Stryder was grasping at straws.

  “Billy Joe?” The president was apoplectic, shouting instead of speaking. “I’m about to deploy the National Guard to New York City and set a city-wide curfew to prevent a terrorist attack. Law enforcement officials are going to launch a public manhunt of unprecedented scope. Are we seriously looking for a trio of retired baseball players?”

  Cassie jumped in again with the results of her follow-up Googling. “Erik Hanson is a baseball coach with a community college in southern California. Chris Bosio runs a small business in Seattle. Give me a minute and I’ll find out what Dave Fleming is up to these days.”

  The president continued to fume. “If this doctor lied about the identity of his co-conspirators, it’s safe to assume he lied about New York. Agreed?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Cassie. The others mumbled muted agreement.

  “All right. We’ll maintain the red alert for the time being, but I’m not deploying the National Guard or declaring a state of emergency. And I have a question for Billy Joe, Randall, Roger, and Orrin.” The four men braced themselves. “Why does the United States spend tens of billions of dollars a year on intelligence? Since the very beginning, you’ve all pointed the finger at various jihadists, and we’ve gone public with that theory. The perp is a goddamn American citizen. A doctor, no less. How do we spin this without looking like bumbling idiots? What do we do with Dr. MacDougall? I want to send a message to America that you can’t get away with this kind of bullshit.”

  Stryder jumped in with his own spin. “The good news is that we nailed this guy and nailed him fast. We can work with this. He’s the new face of terrorism. Fits with our domestic priority of fighting ecoterrorism. We can spin the ISIS angle as a misdirection that helped our agents close the noose on this guy without letting him know that we were on his trail.”

  Cassie marveled at how plausible Stryder’s scenario sounded. Snatching victory from the jaws of embarrassment.

/>   “As for what we do with the perp, that’s easy,” Tierney chimed in. “Death penalty. Send him to join Timothy McVeigh and bin Laden in hell. Right, Leon?”

  Attorney General Bynum agreed. “Chapter 113B of the U.S. Criminal Code deals with acts of terrorism. One of the specified acts is the use of a chemical weapon. If the use of a chemical weapon causes a death, then the terrorist can be sentenced to death. This guy, this doctor, poisoned millions of people. Surely we can prove that somebody in Seattle died because of this guy’s actions.”

  “The Seattle coroner’s office can provide us with all of the death certificates from the days immediately following the contamination of the reservoir.” Bynum sounded confident. “We’ll have epidemiologists review them to determine whether we can link any deaths to the PCE. We can also pull data from hospitals, emergency rooms, family doctors, and poison control centers to tell us how many people became ill.”

  Cassie interjected, “Getting the death penalty in this case seems unrealistic. The levels of perc involved were insufficient to produce even mild acute or chronic effects. I don’t think you’ll find a credible toxicologist or epidemiologist to substantiate the allegation that the contamination of the reservoir caused anybody’s death.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Bynum replied, his confidence unshaken.

  “Okay, look. I’ve heard enough,” said the president. “The spin we can put on this arrest sounds good to me. I’m going to call a press conference for first thing this morning to announce that we’ve apprehended the main suspect in the Seattle water poisoning. There’ll be no mention of New York City or the so-called co-conspirators. Cassie, I want you to join the press conference via video link so you can describe how the investigation succeeded and help me answer questions. I want more information on the death penalty option. Let’s get this rolling fast.”

  “Sir, my agents made the collar in Africa. I’d like to be at the press conference tomorrow too,” said Stryder.

  “Domestic terrorism is the Bureau’s jurisdiction. We should be there too.” Tierney wasn’t going to pass this up.

  “All right. We’ll meet at eight a.m. to review our messaging.” The president would make Stryder, Tierney, Matthews, and Osborne pay for their myopic incompetence, but not until it was politically expedient. Right now, it was more important to boost public confidence in the beleaguered law enforcement and intelligence communities and his administration’s handling of the war on terror.

  Cassie was staring out the hotel window at office buildings where the only lights were being used by workaholics and cleaners. A series of beeps and clicks signaled people leaving the conference call. Just as she was removing her wireless headset, she heard someone whisper, “Mr. President?”

  “Yes, Billy Joe. Make it quick.”

  “I don’t think we want this case to go to trial, sir. We’d be giving this homegrown terrorist a prime-time platform for spewing his anti-American views. The trial will last for weeks or maybe even months, and he’ll be the headliner, spreading his subversive ideas like a virus. Plus, it’s safe to assume he’ll be a totally different kind of defendant. In contrast to nutcases like the Unabomber, this guy might come across as an intelligent, rational human being.”

  “You’re suggesting that we offer a deal to avoid a public trial?”

  “No, sir. We should never negotiate with this kind of scumbag.”

  “Then what are you suggesting?”

  Cassie was listening, trying not to breathe, not to make a sound.

  “We can make him go away. We already know he’s guilty. He confessed. Why bother with an awkward trial? We could accelerate the death penalty process.”

  “How?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know the details.”

  “Seems risky.”

  “We can minimize the risks. The stakes are so high. This would be a strong, decisive, preemptive move. We’d be in control, which we can’t guarantee if this case goes to trial.”

  “It’s your call. And Billy Joe, this conversation never happened,” said the president, and abruptly hung up.

  Cassie continued holding her breath, standing by the window, terrified that Stryder would realize someone else was still on the line. She tiptoed over to the desk, thankful for the lush carpet in her suite. It silenced her footsteps, and Cassie gently pushed the End Call button.

  She contemplated the conversation she’d just overheard. The CIA wanted to kill MacDougall and avoid the unpredictable publicity of a high-profile trial. And the president basically gave Stryder the green light. Cassie was no longer sure she was on the right side.

  Chapter 29

  Maria was sound asleep at four a.m. when the phone began to ring.

  “Hello?” she croaked.

  “Is this the residence of Dr. Michael MacDougall?” The connection was faint and fuzzy. Maria covered her other ear and struggled to focus.

  “Yes it is, but he’s not—”

  “Yes, I know he’s not at home. My name is Jean-Claude. I work with Michael in the Congo.”

  Maria sat up in the bed. The logistics expert. Michael had spoken warmly of the man he called JC. “Dios mío! Is Michael okay? Did something happen to him?” Maria heard nothing but static. “Hello. Are you still there?”

  “Yes. Hello. Can you still hear me?”

  There was a delay on the line, and Maria wanted to scream. “Yes, please go ahead.”

  “Michael was taken away today by men in a helicopter. They held a gun to his head. We don’t know who they were. It’s dark now. He didn’t return, and we haven’t heard any communication from him or them. I’m terribly sorry.”

  Maria gasped and struggled to hold back tears. She worked with people whose families and friends had been abducted in Latin America. Her own family had suffered abductions in Nicaragua. Los desaparecidos. The disappeared.

  “Have you called the police?” Maria asked, hoping if she sounded calm she would feel that way.

  “Yes, of course. They’ll do what they can. But—”

  “But what?”

  “The police here . . .”

  “What?”

  “The police are neither effective nor trustworthy. I’ve also contacted headquarters. They’ll be in touch with you. But I felt it couldn’t wait. You should contact the American embassy in Kinshasa. They may have greater resources at their disposal.”

  “Do you have any idea who took him? Did they hurt him?”

  “No. There were four uniformed men in an unmarked helicopter. They spoke English and were heavily armed. Michael did not resist them. It would have been futile and might have endangered our patients and staff.”

  “Oh God. Has this ever happened before?”

  “Unfortunately, kidnappings and killings happen far more often than we’d like. I’ll call back if there’s any news. Michael is a wonderful man.” Jean-Claude’s voice broke. “We hope that he will return unharmed. I am so sorry.” The line went dead.

  Maria’s husband was ten thousand miles from home and had been kidnapped by unknown persons for unknown reasons. She realized that despite their deep troubles, she still loved Michael. Part of her always would.

  She wiped the tears from her cheeks, took several deep breaths, and dialed 0. She bounced around from operator to voicemail and back again, navigating the American and African telecom bureaucracies simultaneously. As she repeatedly reached dead ends, her frustration mounted but she pushed it aside, determined to speak to a real person who could help her. Finally, she reached a message at the American consulate in Kinshasa that provided a different phone number for emergencies.

  She dialed the number and was surprised to get an answer right away.

  “American consulate, Quinn speaking.” A gruff voice barked at Maria.

  “My name is Maria Morales. I’m calling from Seattle. My husband is a doctor working
with the International Medical Assistance Foundation near Goma. I was just informed by one of his colleagues that he was kidnapped earlier today.”

  “An American? Kidnapped?”

  “Yes.”

  “First I’ve heard about it. What’s your husband’s name?”

  “Michael MacDougall. Dr. Michael MacDougall.”

  “Hang on a second.”

  The seconds ticked past and turned into minutes. Maria’s teeth shredded what was left of her fingernails. She walked into the kitchen to put the kettle on for some coffee. She poured a heaping bowl of cereal but then only pushed the flakes around in the bowl. She was starting to worry that she’d lost the connection when Quinn returned.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  “We don’t have a file open on this yet. Can you tell me everything you know about your husband’s abduction? I’ll make some inquiries and get back to you as soon as I can. It’s probably just a mix-up of some kind. There’s a lot of fucking mix-ups in this country, if you’ll excuse my French. So start at the beginning.”

  Maria told Quinn what she knew. It wasn’t much. “Okay, I’m going to talk to the ambassador right now and either he or I will get back to you as soon as we have some news about your husband’s situation.”

  “Please call me as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We will.”

  Maria jumped when the phone rang again. She prayed for good news and picked it up.

  A senior vice president with IMAF in Paris was calling to apologize and assure her that the organization would do everything in its power to ensure that Michael returned home safely. Maria thanked him and quickly ended the call.

  One long hour later, the consular official named Quinn called back. “Your husband wasn’t kidnapped. That’s all I’m authorized to tell you.”

  “What do you mean, not kidnapped? His colleagues saw it happen!”

  “Further inquiries can be directed to the ambassador.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”