by Steven James
“No good. We’re short on staff with this storm, with the search for Kayla, with everything.”
“This man is an escape risk, Sheriff, and we cannot let him get away.”
“We’re stretched thin here, Agent Bowers, you know that.”
“I’m not sure the cells here will hold him.”
He eyed the wall beside me. “I can give you one officer. That’s it.”
“At all times then. But not Burlman. And Chekov stays cuffed, even in the cell.”
“Sure. Okay.” He tapped the edge of his lip with his tongue. “This guy, he killed my deputy.”
“I know this is easier said than done, but you need to set that aside for right now. We just have to make sure Chekov doesn’t slip out of here.”
“Oh, he won’t.” His voice was filled with acid, and I had a feeling I knew what he was thinking.
“Sheriff Tait, two state troopers already beat him with their batons.”
“Yeah, I heard. Kicked the living—” He caught himself, perhaps concerned he shouldn’t be defending police brutality by cussing to an FBI agent. “He was resisting arrest.”
“I know you don’t buy that.” I wasn’t going to play this game. “I’ll be filing a report dealing with their actions later. For now, Alexei stays in his cell, and no one goes in there with him. Mistreating him in any way isn’t going to encourage him to give up anything on Kayla’s location—or help us get a conviction against him for Ellory’s murder.”
A pause. “You gonna interrogate him, then?”
“I am.”
Although I was planning to talk with Alexei, I honestly couldn’t see him giving anything up unless he decided it was in his best interest—and even striking some sort of deal wouldn’t make any substantial difference in the charges that were going to be brought against him.
I looked around.
In the next room over, the 911 dispatch call board was staffed by a bleary-eyed overweight man in his thirties. Some storage rooms, a few offices, two holding cells, restrooms, and a small conference room rounded out the place. The building wasn’t equipped with anything close to a secure interrogation room, and I figured Alexei would do whatever it took to escape and would likely somehow use the transfer to any other room to his advantage, so I decided to leave him in the cell when I spoke with him.
Sheriff Tait was quiet for a moment. “So did he tell you why he killed the Pickrons? What he did with Donnie?”
“I don’t believe he killed the Pickrons.”
“Why’s that?”
“The evidence points in another direction.”
“Oh, I get it.” His tone had turned snide. “Keeping an open mind, huh?”
“Would you suggest we do the opposite?”
“’Course not. It’s just . . . what Burlman told me before he headed to the hospital, and Chekov . . . well, there are two sides to every story, Dr. Bowers.”
“Yes. But there’s only one truth.”
And sometimes neither of the two sides is telling it.
He took a somewhat strained breath. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to him.”
Behind him I saw Alexei sitting placidly on his cot, examining the walls of his cell, his cuffed hands resting on his lap. I wished I could climb inside his head, unravel his thoughts, and study them one by one, not just to find out what he was pondering at the moment but to find out where Kayla was, to discover if she really was okay.
I checked Alexei’s spring-loaded bone injection gun into evidence, then pulled over a chair and took a seat beside his cell.
62
Solstice drew her skis to a stop at the edge of the woods and scanned the barren field stretching before her.
Though not yet dusk, with the thick cloud cover, daylight was already beginning to fade. A bitter wind shrieked around her.
She’d heard the rolling whine of a motor as she approached the field, and now, at last, saw a snowmobile trail groomer about a quarter mile away. She had no idea how long it had been in the area, but it was pressing forward along one of the trails that skirted directly around the old ELF site.
Taking a trail groomer out in weather like this wouldn’t be entirely unheard of, but the all-too-convenient fact that someone was doing it here, today, disturbed her.
At the moment, she and her team were still hidden in the forest, as well as dressed in Marine Corps Disruptive Overwhite snow camouflage so they wouldn’t be visible to the people in the trail groomer, and she took a moment to orient herself and see if there might have been more than one machine out.
To her left, two wide swathes of forest were missing, lonely for the ELF lines that had been removed back in 2004. A few intermittent scraggly grass blades fingered through the snow, breaking up the otherwise pristine snowscape. Only one structure was visible: a windowless thirty-foot-tall sheet-metal maintenance building with six reinforced sliding garage doors.
That was her destination.
No other trail groomers or snowmobiles were visible.
Solstice knew that the forest rangers occasionally used the building to store old vehicles and trail upkeep equipment, but, though the rangers wouldn’t have been privy to it, that wasn’t the only purpose the building served.
Three power lines stretched from a telephone pole to the top of the building. One provided electricity to the building, another was the now-useless phone landline, the third served as the sat comm antennae for the base.
The trail groomer turned south, toward Solstice’s team.
She borrowed Tempest’s semiautomatic AR-15 and sighted through the scope. It took a few moments for her to get it dialed in, but at last she was able to identify three people in the cab. An Asian woman, a Native American man, and a male Cauca—
Wait.
She knew that Asian lady from a previous encounter, the same one in which she’d met Agent Bowers last year. Jiang. She was an FBI agent as well.
Solstice took a moment to let things sink in.
Agent Bowers is here. So is Jiang.
She peered through the scope again.
Solstice couldn’t identify the two men with Jiang. One might be a civilian operator, but FBI agents usually work in teams so she went with the most likely assumption that at least one of them was a federal agent as well.
Somehow the FBI knew.
But why only send three or four agents? If they really had intel about what she was up to, they would have certainly sent a larger team—at least a second trail groomer.
They’re just on a fishing expedition.
Immediately, she thought of Chekov. The Bureau had to be getting their information from somewhere, and he was the most likely link.
Perhaps she hadn’t made the right choice in allowing him to live after all.
The only way she was going to get her money or see Terry again was if the mission was successful. This was not the time to make a misstep.
She considered aggressive action, but if these three went missing, it would only draw more attention to the site at a delicate time in her operation. Definitely not something she needed.
Option one: press forward, get her team to the building, deal decisively with the people in the trail groomer.
Option two: retreat to a safe location, monitor the situation, and move in as soon as night fell. Only respond with force if necessary.
Waiting it out in the cold wouldn’t be ideal, but it would be manageable.
So, option two.
Solstice spoke into her mic, ordered everyone over the ridge to the west: “There’s an old hiker’s shelter. We’ll wait there until they’re gone.”
“What about the MA patrol routes?” Cane asked through her earpiece. “The timing?”
“We still have forty minutes or so. If these people aren’t gone by then, we’ll put ’em down and make our move on the base.”
The team skied over the ridge, and as they did the wind pursued them, sending snow quickly scurrying across their path, obscuring their tracks.
/> Forty minutes max.
Then, move on the base.
63
4:06 p.m.
Alexei Chekov still hadn’t told me anything about Kayla Tatum’s location.
From my regular updates with Tait, I knew we still had no idea where she was. Jake and the officer with him had found no sign of Kayla at the hospital or in any of the surrounding homes. However, one of the cars in the hospital parking lot belonged to a nurse who they found tied up in her basement. Kayla’s car was in the woman’s garage, so at least we knew how Alexei had gotten to the hospital.
But that was about all we had.
Alexei still hadn’t asked for a lawyer or made a phone call.
Over the years I’ve learned that during interrogations the best thing is usually just to get people talking, really about anything, and then move to the specific matter at hand. And almost always, the best way to get them to open up is to find out what they’re interested in and then simply ask them about it.
So, over the last half hour, hoping to spark Alexei’s interest, I’d tried mentioning some of the locations where he’d done his work. It hadn’t been especially fruitful, and now, in my search for interests and commonalities, I said, “I heard that during the Cold War, Russians had a saying that the Kremlin was the tallest building in the world.”
“Because you could see Siberia from the basement,” he said, quoting the rest of the axiom. He gave me a wry smile. “Yes. Thankfully, I never had that experience.”
I remembered his wife had been murdered last spring. “I lost my wife about two years ago,” I said. “Breast cancer.”
He told me a little about Tatiana, about arguing with her the day she was murdered and how he had regretted it ever since. After a moment he said, “I have someone to take out my vengeance on; you have only God to blame.”
His words caught me a little off guard. I’d done just what he said for a long time and wasn’t sure how to respond to his comment.
The conversation broke off, and I tried something a little less personal. “One of my friends in the US Air Force used to test our experimental planes. The new designs.”
Alexei looked at me inquisitively. “Do you remember which planes he flew?”
“He wasn’t allowed to tell me. But he mentioned something about aerostatic wing design.”
“Active aeroelastic wing,” Alexei corrected me. “Yes, for smoother roll maneuvering. Which years was he flying?”
“2006 to 2010.”
“Probably the Boeing X-53. NASA worked with your Air Force and private contractors on that one.”
“Did Russia have active aeroelastic wing planes too?”
He shook his head. “A few similar designs, but nothing as advanced.” Then, slowly, he began to open up, telling me about some of the planes he’d flown: the Su-47 Berkut, a forward swept-wing supersonic jet. “The lift to drag ratio is higher,” he explained. “It’s more maneuverable and doesn’t require as long of a runway for takeoff and landing.” The MiG 1.44, which actually never ended up being developed, the Beriev A-60: “They’re comparable to your Boeing YAL-1, equipped with megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine lasers to shoot down missiles, other planes, potentially satellites.”
That sounded like science fiction to me. “A laser-shooting plane that takes out satellites?”
“The laser heats the outer casing, causes structural failure. Given the right conditions, it can be accomplished from over five hundred kilometers away.”
I remembered hearing about China shooting down one of its satellites a few years ago. “Does China have planes like this too?”
“It’s likely, although it hasn’t been confirmed. They’re a bit more clandestine about their experimental aircraft than America is.” He looked past me into the corner of the room. “My favorite plane was perhaps the Sukhoi PAK FA. It can cruise at over forty-five-thousand feet at speeds of over Mach 2. Very enjoyable to fly. I was in on the early development.”
Then he gave a nostalgic sigh and shook his head. “Our two countries. Your president slashes NASA’s budget in order to buy car companies and socialize your health care; mine sells our military secrets to Iran for money to build caviar-producing fish farms. America turns Marxist, Russia dabbles in capitalism. What has happened to us in the last thirty years?”
As interesting as all of this was, I was more concerned with getting him to feel at ease enough with me to share something actionable regarding Kayla.
Move to the case, Pat. Press him a bit.
“Earlier today,” I said, “you were anxious to go look for the people who killed the Pickrons. What’s changed? Do you think they left the area?”
He didn’t answer me.
I didn’t like how he was carefully appraising me, and I took my turn to look him over once again. He wore boots, jeans, a neatly pressed oxford, bloodied somewhat from when he was attacked. When Burlman processed him, he’d taken his belt so that he wouldn’t have a way to kill himself—something that in this case I didn’t think was very likely.
Alexei certainly didn’t look threatening.
Looks can be deceiving.
I asked him one last time about Kayla, and when he didn’t answer, I thought, Enough of this. You need to get to your notes, find a way to locate her.
My computer was back at the motel and so were Tessa and Natasha. In addition, Lien-hua would be returning there after searching the site of the old ELF station. Honestly, sitting here talking with Alexei was getting us nowhere.
“We’ll talk more later.” I rose. “Or I need you to tell me something specific related to Kayla’s whereabouts now.”
“Eco-Tech hasn’t done what they came here to do, or else you would’ve heard about it and asked me about that instead of Kayla.”
“And what did they come to do?”
“I’m not certain.”
Getting very irritated now. “Alexei, I don’t like these games. If you have something to tell me, tell me. Otherwise I’m leaving to find Kayla.”
“You won’t find her unless I inform you where she is.”
I felt a surge of anger, partly because I believed him, but I tried not to telegraph my feelings. I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I turned toward the door, then heard him say, “In 2009, Canadian scientists found that the Chinese had hacked into 1,300 computers at embassies around the world.”
Now he had my attention. I faced him one last time.
“The malware they used would turn on the computer’s camera and microphone without letting the user know that they were on, and then it would send the audio and video feeds back to China. The machines had been sending sensitive data back to China for twenty-two months before the researchers uncovered it.”
“So that’s how you did it?”
“Yes.”
I held out Lien-hua’s cell phone. “Both the mic and the camera?”
“Yes.”
That means he had a computer or phone somewhere in the area, a way to receive and view the signal that was sent during the briefing at the motel.
I stepped closer to the bars. “How did you get my email address?”
“I have people that I know.”
Another answer that didn’t answer anything.
I could sense that this interchange was just becoming more and more of a power play to him.
“If you make your phone call in the next half hour,” I said, “use Agent Jiang’s number. Otherwise, call my cell. Do you need the number?”
“No, I’ve got it.”
“I thought you might.” I headed for the door. “Good night, Alexei.”
“I’ll call you on my way out,” he said.
His words gave me pause. After passing Burlman in the hall on his way to the dispatch room, I found Tait at his desk. “Have your officers keep a close eye on him.”
“We will. He’s not going anywhere.”
“And I don’t want Burlman watching him.”
Silence. “Gotcha.”
&
nbsp; I had no idea when I would get a chance to go out to the river to retrieve my SIG from the snowbank, so before leaving the sheriff’s department I signed out a Glock from the gun vault. I also stocked up on a few extra magazines for the gun, some plastic cuffs and requisitioned a GPS ankle bracelet. I had a feeling I might be needing them later in the evening.
Procuring one of the cruisers, I left the sheriff’s department to return to the motel to get to my computer, regroup with my team, and evaluate what to do next.
Tessa’s ringing phone woke her up. Lien-hua’s ring tone.
She sat up and fished out her cell. “Hey.”
“It’s me. Patrick.”
“Huh?” It took her a moment to shake the sleep from her head. “Where are you?”
“On my way back over there. Sorry things were rocky between us when I left earlier this afternoon. You doing all right?”
“Yeah.” She held back a residual nap-yawn. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No.” A pause. “I’ll see you in a little bit, all right?”
“Sure.”
The brief call ended, and she figured she’d go back to Amber’s room to hang out until Patrick arrived. As she was straightening the bedsheets she noticed a crumpled-up sheet of paper next to the trash can beside the desk.
No surprise there—the room was pretty much a mess.
But the way the page was balled up allowed the girlish handwriting to be visible even from where Tessa stood.
Considering the fact that Agent Jiang had a key to Patrick’s room, Tessa thought at first that the note was probably from her, maybe a love note? But then why would he be throwing it away?
No, Tessa had seen Agent Jiang’s notes to Patrick lots of times, and even from where she stood she could tell this wasn’t Lien-hua’s handwriting.
Whatever. Don’t worry about it. Just go see what’s up with Amber.
She was halfway to the door when it struck her that while they were making up fantasy names, Amber kept mentioning Patrick first, instead of her husband.
Huh.
Naw. It couldn’t be.