The Permit
Page 40
The Checkmate chief punched the phone's END icon and swore. Mind racing, he sorted through his options to head off yet another Galocci-Greel fiasco. None were good. He couldn't risk blowing a Vegas-based Checkmate operator's cover, by scrambling an on-the-ground agent.
He left the windowless VIP office and headed for the base manager's. If a Gremlin remotely piloted aircraft was configured properly and ready to fly, he might be able to save a valuable asset's life.
* *
LAS VEGAS
Officer Loring Malovic argued long and hard, feigning serious illness, but to no avail. Captain Greel was adamant: "I don't give a rat's ass, if you're half dead, kid. Get your puny butt over to the Red Rocks Casino parking lot ASAP.
"This is a high-priority mission, and I'm suddenly short of Ravens. You're elected. Be there in thirty minutes!"
The captain's order was in character—cold and nasty. No sympathy for a deathly ill fellow officer. Vader hadn't bought the got-a-super-bad-case-of-flu excuse.
Malovic shivered. He considered not showing up, but quickly discarded that idea as a non-starter. Greel would simply hunt him down.
If he and Sandy were going to escape Vegas, he had to buy time, until the FBI could get its act together. Better go along with Vader tonight and, hopefully, get off the captain's radar.
Malovic changed into stone-washed jeans, a dark-gray T-shirt, beat-up hiking boots, and a faded orange-and-blue Broncos ball cap. He scribbled a note to Sandy, explaining that he, too, had been called in for "special duty," and headed for the garage.
Damn it!
He ran back in the house and grabbed his nine-millimeter Glock. Vader would boot his tail all over the Red Rocks parking lot, if he showed up without it.
Clipping a Blackhawk pancake holster onto his waistband, Malovic tugged the T-shirt over the handgun. He also rubbed face cream and a dab of Sandy's lipstick into his forehead, cheeks and neck. Maybe the shine and reddish tint would bolster his tale of running a flu-induced fever.
* *
Greel was waiting in a tinted-windowed Suburban, when Malovic whipped into the Red Rocks Casino lot.
"'Bout time! Let's go," the homicide chief snarled.
Malovic climbed into the passenger seat, noting a black body bag was in the cargo area.
Although the Sun slipped behind jagged, treeless mountains, the sky was still bright, when Vader turned onto a familiar double-rut trail. They were headed for the abandoned mine used on Malovic's first Raven excursion.
Back when Krupa and Akaka were still alive.
Malovic had pulled Raven duty only in the wee hours of moonless nights. Dumping a body in the evening, before dark, made no sense. Sidelong glances at Vader, though, silenced any queries. Greel was tight-lipped, hunched over the steering wheel.
Malovic was astonished at how much weight the once-portly captain had lost. Ashen skin stretched over prominent cheekbones framed bulging eyeballs, giving Greel a crazed, Charles Manson appearance. The officer also radiated a sickly, pungent odor, as if coming off a week-long binge of hard drinking. The guy could have passed for a wasted alcoholic or a Stage-4 cancer patient in his final days.
Greel jerked the wheel back and forth, cursing potholes deep enough to guarantee a front-end realignment. The kidney-pounding ride finally ended at the abandoned mine. Silhouetted in the fading light, a rusting gantry straddled the vertical shaft. A frayed, greasy cable looped over a twelve-inch pulley swayed in the breeze.
"Get the bitch out and carry her over there," Greel ordered, pointing. "She's not heavy."
He slammed the SUV's door and shuffled toward the yawning pit. Malovic walked to the back and opened the Suburban's double doors.
'She's not heavy?' Then why am I here?
Keeping a wary eye on the Metro captain, Malovic tossed the body bag over a shoulder and hefted it again for better balance. The victim was slight, maybe seventy pounds, and barely five feet tall. Not stiff. The poor girl had expired recently.
Malovic carried her to the mine's gaping entrance, whispering a quick prayer. He asked the Lord to embrace and care for the soul of the diminutive woman draped over his shoulder.
"Put 'er down," Greel snapped. "I'll take the feet. You grab her shoulders."
Together, they swung the bag horizontally, released it, and watched the shrouded corpse spin into the gloom. The sounds of plastic scraping rock, mixed with dislodged dirt and pebbles, were followed by a sickening splat.
Staring into the blackness, Malovic reflected on the broken bodies in that chasm. How many families would never know what had happened to their loved ones?
"Come on. I gotta get back," Greel muttered over his shoulder. He ambled to the SUV, opened the right-rear door and pulled a small case from under the front seat. He flipped its latches, peeled several bills from a wad of American green, and handed them to Malovic. For the first time, he cracked a half-smile.
"A little bonus for ya, rookie."
As Greel turned to close the case, Malovic thumbed the currency in his fist and blinked. At least twenty Ben Franklins, a cool $2,000!
He pivoted and reached for the passenger-side door handle, his back to Greel.
BOOM!
A hollow-point .45-caliber slug slammed into Malovic's skull, just above the top neck vertebra. Fired from less than three feet, the bullet ripped through bone and gray matter, blossomed to several times its original diameter, and exploded out the right-front portion of Malovic's skull.
Greel cursed, as blood and gore splattered back at him.
Malovic was dead, before his face smacked the dirt, arms askew. Vader stood over the corpse, aiming Erik Steele's H&K USP Tactical semiautomatic.
A second bullet to the head was Greel's standard. Not necessary. Half of the rookie's cranium was gone.
Greel slipped the stainless-steel firearm back into the small case and covered it with currency. He skirted a rapidly growing pool of blood, retrieved a clump of $100 bills, and stomped on a breeze-lifted greenback skittering across packed, yellow clay.
He stowed the cash, cocked his head and surveyed the corpse at his feet. Stocky and well-built, Malovic probably weighed 170-180 pounds. The mine's entrance was about twenty feet away.
Surely, Greel could handle that.
Lifting the dead man's legs and hooking a foot under each armpit, the captain grabbed handfuls of denim jeans and walked backwards, dragging the body. Fortunately, the hard clay was covered with thumb-size rocks, which served as ball-bearings. Unfortunately, they also caused Greel to slip and fall several times.
Swearing and sweating, the emaciated homicide chief bent over, hands on knees, gasping for air. A surge of panic seized him.
What if he didn't have enough strength to get Malovic's body into the mine? Another eight or nine feet, and the slope angled down. He could make it that far.
Finally, the bloody corpse was at the cavity's lip. Greel was breathing hard and staggering, near exhaustion. He was too unsteady to chance shoving the bloody remains over the edge. If he slipped, he'd follow Malovic to the bottom.
Greel scrounged a splintered two-by-four from a decrepit shed, behind a cone of ochre tailings. Forcing it under Malovic's body, he pried and pushed, until the carcass slewed into the crater.
Malovic's Broncos ball cap, cell phone and a holstered nine-millimeter Glock littered a bloody streak. The phone was still powered-on. Greel underhanded it into the pit. The red-soaked cap followed.
He'd keep the Glock. File the serial number off, and the compact semiautomatic would become another Metro "throwdown" weapon "found" at a crime scene. Nobody questioned the judgment of an officer, who had to shoot, if a gun were discovered near a perp's corpse. Dozens of Ravens had escaped federal prison, thanks to an untraceable throwdown.
Greel dragged himself into the SUV and rested his head on the steering wheel. He was so damned tired! He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept.
The deadly FFI disease was destroying his body. Soon, the doc said, he
would be unable to walk, then move at all. Slowly, surely, he was dying.
Greel strived to think. Had he left any clues that could link him to Malovic? He didn't have the energy to double check. Too dark anyway.
He turned the key, flipped the headlights on, K-turned the SUV to reverse direction, and eased slowly down the rough track.
* *
Fifteen-hundred feet overhead, a Gremlin unmanned aircraft orbited lazily, the whine of its fan-jet engine carried away on a desert breeze. A dome under its nose slewed smoothly, keeping a flat-surfaced port pointed at a ground target. Behind that transparency, three lenses and a scaled-down radar antenna tracked a Suburban inching down the hillside.
Night-vision electro-optic sensors fed light photons and infrared energy to a signal processor. The electronically scanned array mini-radar fired pulses at its target, captured their reflections, and routed signals to the same chip. Powerful onboard computers fused radar, light and infrared data to create high-resolution images.
Roughly a hundred miles to the north, Bishop sat behind the Gremlin sensor operator, eyes locked on a large flat-panel screen displaying those images. The mission-control room was hushed.
Gray Manor exuded a calm command presence, but, inside, was shocked, disgusted and dismayed. If only the damned Gremlin had been armed with mini-missiles! Unfortunately, the only armament-capable Gremlin was deployed on another critical mission, unavailable for a quick-reaction strike west of Las Vegas.
And for lack of an armed Gremlin, Loring Malovic was dead. Manor, a handful of Lawhead Corporation engineers and two Gremlin operators had watched, helpless, as Captain Mikey Greel fired a bullet into his fellow Metro officer's brain at point-blank range.
"Keep tracking the SUV," Manor ordered. "I want a full set of close-ups, when that shit-bird climbs out.
"Capture every bit and byte of video, and bring it to the debriefing."
An idea was forming. If his theory was supported by Lawhead's innovative engineers, and the technology developed by America's blackest "black world" team could handle it, Mikey Greel's final days on Earth would not be pleasant.
* *
LAS VEGAS
Sandy Malovic sat cross-legged in her kitchen's bay window, clutching a note. Her husband's scrawled words were blurred by tears.
She had arrived after midnight, read Loring's note and gone straight to bed. Although she was exhausted, a nagging disquiet had precluded sleep. Something untouchable kept swirling away, just beyond her grasp. A sense of foreboding had gripped her all night.
Something was wrong with Mal.
His note was curt and, on the surface, straightforward: Hey Angel. Got called in for special duty. We have to talk SOON! Lot to tell you.
During the wee hours, implications of those final two sentences had tormented her. She was still trying to divine what they meant. Possibilities ranging from divorce to problems with Mal's job had crisscrossed her thoughts.
Now, in the light of day, she was no closer to understanding them, but those few words had grown to ominous significance. She was increasingly worried and scared.
Sandy tightened a thigh-length housecoat around her waist and studied a wall clock. Mal should have been home long ago.
Finally, she called Las Vegas Metro's West Substation, and inquired about her husband. Mal's supervisor, a veteran sergeant, was off duty. Her call was routed to a lieutenant, who claimed Mal had not reported for his scheduled shift that morning. And he knew nothing about the rookie being called in for "special duty."
However, the lieutenant and desk sergeant seemed tense, distracted. Something was going on, something big. The whole West Substation was on edge.
She debated about calling Metro headquarters, but elected to wait. Mal had cautioned that worrywart wives who phoned the head shed could severely harm an officer's career—especially a rookie's.
Meanwhile, she had to get ready for work. Emergency rooms never took a day off, and the hospital's ER was chronically understaffed. Filling in for a no-show nurse the night before didn't excuse Sandy from her normal day shift.
* *
Loring Malovic was never seen again. A few days after her husband failed to come home, Sandy was approached by Captain Michael Greel, the head of Metro Homicide, at the hospital. Swearing her to secrecy, he showed Sandy grisly color photos of two corpses he identified as officers Olek Krupa and Kale Akaka.
Although he exhibited the bedside manner of a silver back gorilla, the captain had given Sandy hope that Mal was alive, a thread that would sustain her for months.
"We did a thorough investigation of your husband's disappearance, and found no evidence of foul play," Greel had assured. "I know it hurts, ma'am, but I suspect Officer Malovic saw what happened to the other brave heroes involved in the Erik Steele shooting, and he panicked.
"You have to accept the possibility that your husband simply ran and is in hiding. If he contacts you, please get in touch with me immediately."
Sandy had stared into the captain's dark eyes, but could read nothing. Those weary, black orbs were devoid of spirit or empathy.
At least Greel had leveled with her… and given her hope.
Although consumed with guilt about how she'd treated her husband, after the Steele shooting, Sandy prayed that God would forgive such selfish transgressions and return Mal to her.
However, except in her dreams, Loring Malovic would never again hold his beautiful wife.
CHAPTER 30
GRAND SLAM
"Revenge is a dish best-served cold."
Mafiosi of Sicily
LAS VEGAS
Clark County's senior Assistant District Attorneys greeted a young hostess by name, then followed her to their usual table. Well removed from the Justice Center Courthouse Cafe's entrance, the booth overlooked a pleasant courtyard.
It was a quiet corner, ensuring ADAs Charles Purvis and Curtis Moore could strategize in private, without being overheard by other patrons—judges, judicial assistants and opposing defense attorneys.
They ordered drinks, salads and sandwiches, then hunkered over the table, talking in hushed tones.
A third man walked up and greeted the pair. Surprised, both lawyers rose to shake hands with the new arrival. Purvis switched sides, which allowed the Assistant DAs to face their boss, Clark County District Attorney Dirwood "Woody" Ryns, who wore a tailored dark-gray suit and solid-red tie.
Rico Rodolfo sat alone at a table for two, roughly eight feet from the DAs' booth. He concentrated on a laptop computer, absently nibbling on a chicken salad sandwich.
Rodolfo glanced up, noted that Ryns had joined the assistant DAs, then retrieved an iPhone from a pocket. He expertly thumb-typed a few lines, ensured the NSA-modified iPhone was in Secure mode, and fired an encrypted message into cyberspace: Bishop: UNEXPECTED OPP. Two primaries joined by head-honcho DA, "Woody." POS ID. In position & armed.—Castle
Ensuring the screen had blanked, Rodolfo laid the smartphone on the table and went back to work. Anybody passing behind the medical-equipment sales representative and glancing at his computer display would see a cutaway of a Cardiac Response Corporation pacemaker.
But the color graphic was only misleading camouflage. Rodolfo selected a box defined by faint red lines in the screen's upper-right corner. He expanded the icon's four borders, until they corralled three figures.
Those were tiny images of three district attorneys in that nearby booth. A minuscule camera lens embedded in the outer frame of a modified Apple MacBook Pro's high-definition, fifteen-inch screen served as an aiming mechanism for a compact, built-in weapon.
Rodolfo carefully adjusted the angle of his laptop's hinged display, ensuring a glowing, translucent Apple logo on the backside was pointed at the three men. The red box's borders flashed, confirming an Auto-Track feature had locked onto the targets.
The iPhone dinged. He swept it off the table and read a curt response:
Castle: Cleared to engage all three. Take 'em out.—Bishop
Rodolfo's lips tightened. He'd been at this threshold numerous times. However, the Checkmate director's "take-'em-out" clearance stirred emotions different than he'd experienced, during previous counterterrorism missions.
These targets had viciously attacked his friend and colleague, spinning lies for perverted reasons—to keep three killer-cops on the streets of Las Vegas, ensure a corrupt sheriff was reelected, and keep the money flowing.
With Erik Steele's grieving family, Rico had endured six gut-wrenching days in a Clark County courtroom, as two of those asses—Charles Purvis and Curtis Moore—trashed Erik's character and fabricated a drugged-up, violent caricature that had never existed.
Rico Rodolfo, aka Castle, harbored a burning hatred for those integrity-devoid lawyers. They and Woody Ryns, their complicit boss, were unscrupulous filth, who routinely orchestrated travesties of justice to protect Metro's killer-cop "enforcers" on behalf of the Cleveland Mob's billionaire puppets. All three DAs were being paid enormous sums to ensure Southern Nevada's Cartel of Corruption retained its iron grip on power.
Castle simultaneously pressed three of the computer's function keys, verified an ARM icon was blinking, then hit RETURN. A fan-shaped beam of invisible, coded pulses were fired from a flat-faced antenna buried behind the MacBook Pro's translucent Apple logo.
Electromagnetic pulses slammed into the torsos and skulls of District Attorney Woody Ryns and his assistants, Purvis and Moore, silently penetrating bone, blood and tissue at the speed of light. A precisely engineered pulse train stimulated irregularities in faint electrical "spiral waves" coursing through the mens' heart muscles, inducing arrhythmia and flutter—uncoordinated contractions of individual fibrils.
In essence, the electromagnetic pulses severely disrupted a bio-mechanism that controlled the electrical functions of each man's heart, precipitating instant cardiac arrest.