Trade-Off

by Trade-Off (retail) (epub)

  Morgan rang the bell, which elicited no response, and they tried the doors of the building, but all were locked, and Harris didn’t know the codes required by the touch-pad entry system.

  ‘OK,’ Harris said. ‘Let’s go. There’s nothing inside there we need to see. What we do know is that Evans has left the place, presumably because Hunter spun him some yarn that sounded good. What we have to do now is find them.’

  ‘What do we do about Evans?’ Morgan asked.

  ‘Ketch was quite specific,’ Harris said. ‘Today is the last day of Dr. Evans’s life.’

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Hunter bowed his head and stared down at the list on the table in front of him, his eyes fixed on the name ‘Maria Slade,’ and for a long moment nobody spoke. Then slowly Hunter raised his head and turned to face Evans and Reilly.

  ‘When you called me on the mobile in Helena, Dick,’ he began quietly, his eyes cold and hard and fixed unblinking on Evans’s face, ‘I was on my way to pick up Christy-Lee. We were going to catch a flight and head out to Cedar City, Utah. Her sister, Maria Slade, had vanished after what was supposed to be a routine medical check-up in the local hospital.’

  Hunter stopped for a moment, glanced down at the list, then looked up again at Evans. Despite his icy calm and perfectly controlled speech, both Evans and Reilly could feel the anger growing within him.

  ‘I told her not to worry,’ Hunter continued, still looking straight at Evans but addressing Reilly. ‘I said it was probably just some sort of administrative screw-up. Maybe a problem with her records or something like that. Perhaps a transfer to another unit for further tests.’

  He tapped his forefinger on the list in front of him. ‘I guess I was wrong,’ he said, his voice rising. ‘She was transferred, but not for any kind of tests. She was fed into this fucking programme that you’ve been working in, doctor.’

  The contempt in Hunter’s voice as he spat the title at Evans made the older man flinch. Three of the men at the bar turned and glanced curiously in Hunter’s direction.

  ‘It may not be her,’ Evans said, his voice quavering. ‘Maria Slade’s not that uncommon a name.’

  Hunter gave a brief, dismissive shake of his head, his voice low and controlled. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It is her. Maria Slade, Cedar City, Utah. Nice complete set of data for her – it’s even got her date of birth.’

  ‘Do you know her date of birth?’ Evans asked, clutching at any possibility of a misidentification.

  ‘Yes,’ Hunter said. ‘I’ve got a very good memory for some things, especially numbers and dates.’

  He fell silent and just looked at Evans. The doctor glanced to his right, and met the equally hostile stare of Dick Reilly.

  ‘Is she dead, doc?’ Reilly asked softly.

  Evans reached for the sheets, his hands trembling as he checked dates and times. ‘She – er – she arrived at McCarran early on Thursday morning,’ he said. ‘So she would have flown out to Groom Lake just after my shift ended at lunchtime.’

  Reilly glanced at his watch.

  ‘So that’s only, what, forty-eight or fifty hours ago, so she’s probably still alive, right?’ he demanded.

  Evans looked at him, then back at Hunter, and slowly shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid she isn’t,’ he murmured, his voice barely audible. ‘It’s a very efficient system. She was probably dead within about two or three hours of her arrival.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Hunter said, leaning forward, his voice hard but still level and completely controlled. ‘What in the name of God are those bastards running out at Groom Lake? These subjects – victims is a better word – arrive at the base and they’re dead within two hours? That just makes it an extermination facility. What the hell is the purpose of that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Evans spluttered. ‘I just don’t know. It’s given me nightmares ever since they took me out there and made me watch the processing.’

  ‘Processing? Processing? What the fuck do you mean “processing”?’ Hunter demanded, his right hand clamped painfully around Evans’s left arm. ‘And don’t give me any crap about immunity or what Roland Oliver will do to you if you tell anyone.’ Hunter tightened his grip. ‘If you don’t tell us, right now, what the hell happens out at Groom Lake, we’ll take you outside and I will personally blow your fucking brains out. Is that clear enough for you?’

  Evans looked at Hunter, and what he saw in the Englishman’s eyes made him drop his gaze almost immediately.

  ‘OK, OK. Look, I’ll tell you what they showed me,’ he began, his voice low and quavering. ‘It’s almost like a conveyor belt.’

  Groom Lake Air Force Base, Nevada

  A telephone rang in the office and Roger Ketch automatically stretched out his arm towards the desk phone, then registered that the ringing tone was different. Beside the desk unit was a mobile phone, with an unlisted number that Ketch had supplied over the last couple of days to an ever-increasing number of people.

  All members of the clean-up team had already been given the numbers of both the classified landline and the mobile, but the mobile’s number was now known, amongst others, to the air traffic control facility at McCarran, the gate guards at the same place, and the Las Vegas police department.

  Ketch had identified himself to the military as a senior USAF officer – and any but the most thorough and detailed check of the relevant records would confirm this identity. As far as the Las Vegas police department was concerned, Ketch was an Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

  He picked up the mobile phone and pressed the green button. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is that Director Ketch?’ the voice asked.

  ‘Yes, officer,’ Ketch responded, immediately aware that the caller had to be from the Las Vegas police department.

  ‘This is Captain Dawson, sir, Las Vegas PD. I’m not sure if this is of interest, but we’ve had a report of a car stolen from the passenger parking area at the North Las Vegas Air Terminal.’

  Ketch had compiled a list of the kind of things he predicted Reilly and Hunter might do in Las Vegas and then requested details of any such events from the Vegas PD. He had already received fifteen similar reports that day, all of which he had dismissed after an initial investigation, and he wasn’t particularly interested in another one unless there was something unusual about it.

  ‘Any special circumstances?’ he asked.

  ‘Kind of. Pretty much in the next bay to where this Ford was taken we found another stolen car. An old Ford pickup.’

  Ketch sat up straight. This could be the break they needed. ‘Where was the other car – the one you found in the next bay – stolen from?’ he demanded.

  He heard the sound of rustling paper as the officer looked through the reports.

  ‘Here we go. The pickup was stolen sometime this morning from a back street in Crystal, right here in Nevada.’

  ‘Right,’ Ketch said, reaching for a pencil. ‘Let me have the details of the car stolen here in Vegas.’

  Two minutes later he put down the mobile and reached for the desk phone.

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  ‘OK,’ Hunter said, leaning back in his seat, his face pale and drawn. Even Reilly’s normally cheerful countenance was clouded and troubled.

  ‘I think,’ Hunter continued, ‘that I’m getting a handle on this now. There’s only one explanation that makes any sense – and at the same time it doesn’t make real sense, because I still can’t see the motive. Or, to be exact, the only motive that fits is so totally repugnant that I simply can’t believe it.

  ‘My partner and I got involved in this,’ he went on, ‘because Sheriff Reilly here had a murder on his patch that couldn’t have been committed except, of course, that it had been. A man out hunting was killed by having a human thighbone – that’s a regular thighbone, not one that had been sharpened or anything – driven vertically downwards through his skull.’

  ‘What?’ Evans demanded. ‘That’s not possible. The force
required is immense. I don’t think any human being could do that – at least, not without using a hammer or something on the other end.’

  ‘We know that,’ Hunter said, wearily. ‘That’s what I meant when I said it was an impossible murder. Anyway, Dick called in the FBI to help handle the investigation, and a couple of things turned up during the autopsy that might help confirm what you’re saying happens to these women at Groom Lake.

  ‘Probably the oddest thing the pathologist found was the fact that the thighbone had two small holes drilled in it, one at each end. And the bone marrow had been sucked out, presumably through these holes. The inside of the bone, he said, was quite dry.

  ‘He also found peculiar marks on both the thighbone and a skull found in the same general area. His opinion was that something – some sort of mechanical device – had left a minute pattern of etching on the bones, which were quite fresh. The only reason he – or we – could come up with for using such a device would be to remove every vestige of flesh from the bones.’

  Reilly and Evans were both staring at Hunter with a curious fascination, but something in Evans’s eyes told Hunter that the doctor had already made the connection.

  ‘You mean,’ the doctor began, then stopped, swallowing nervously. ‘You mean like in –’

  Hunter nodded, and pointed a finger at Evans. ‘That’s exactly what I mean. What you’ve been a part of, Doctor Evans, is a human abattoir. How does that make your Hippocratic oath sound now? First, do no harm? Jesus Christ.’

  McCarran Air Force Base, Las Vegas, Nevada

  The two-way radio crackled inside the Lincoln parked close to the McCarran main gates. Templeton reached out a hand to pick it up. ‘Templeton,’ he said, and sat up slightly straighter in the seat.

  ‘We’ve had a break,’ Harris’s voice sounded tense. ‘Ketch believes they’re driving a dark blue Ford compact. It was lifted from the passenger parking lot at the North Vegas Air Terminal sometime today, and right next to it was an old Ford pickup that was reported stolen in Crystal this morning.’

  ‘Crystal? That was pretty much where the duster landed, right?’ Templeton asked.

  ‘You got it,’ Harris said, and passed the registration details of the Ford.

  ‘You want us to stay here?’ Templeton asked, replacing his notepad on the dashboard.

  ‘Yes. Evans may well return to the base once Hunter’s finished talking to him. If he does, or if Hunter and Reilly are with him, follow him inside. You and Grant know what to do then.’

  Templeton nodded. ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘Morgan and I will cruise around and see if we can spot Evans or the two perps – we may just get lucky. There’s an APB out for the Ford and Evans’s Jaguar, so every cop in Vegas will be eyeballing the streets, as well. If either are spotted, we’ll be told immediately, and then we’ll finish this.’

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Jim Reese hadn’t been on the Las Vegas force for very long, but he’d been a cop for over fifteen years. Most of his career had been spent on the streets, riding a cruiser because that was what he enjoyed, but at Vegas he’d made the jump to detective and hung up his dark blues.

  The APB for the Ford compact and Jaguar had come in just before his shift ended and, like everyone else, he’d noted down the registration details just in case. He’d thought at the time that it wouldn’t be that easy to find either vehicle. Fords were ten-a-penny, and there was always plenty of money in Vegas, so Jaguars weren’t exactly uncommon either.

  So he was kind of surprised when he pulled into his usual stop on the way home for a couple of beers to find that he was parking his car directly opposite both suspect vehicles.

  One reason Reese had made detective was that he always kept his head. He recognized the registration on the Jaguar immediately – Evans had a personalized plate – and quickly cross-checked the one on the Ford with the details he’d recorded in his notebook. The APB had said that the two occupants of the Ford were armed and extremely dangerous, so Reese wasn’t about to do anything stupid like burst into the restaurant waving a badge and a gun. There comes a time when you really do have to call the cavalry, and this was definitely one of them.

  Instead, he looked at his watch, as if he were late for some appointment – just in case one of the perps was watching him from a window – then eased his car into reverse and pulled out of the restaurant parking lot and headed back uptown.

  A hundred yards further on he made a turn and parked the car where he could see the restaurant entrance, and only then did he reach for his mobile phone to call in his sighting.

  * * *

  Reilly stepped back from the window. While Hunter had been questioning Evans, he had been watching the restaurant door and keeping an eye on the parking area through the windows. Reilly had seen Reese’s dark grey Lincoln pull into the restaurant parking lot, and he’d stood up and moved over to the window to get a clearer view.

  Neither Reilly nor Hunter expected that details of either of the cars they had stolen would have been promulgated this early, but they weren’t about to start taking any chances.

  When Reese drove away, Reilly walked over to the table. ‘May have a problem, here,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Hunter looked up at him.

  ‘Guy just pulled in, sat in his vehicle for a coupla minutes, then pulled out again.’

  ‘Could be he just changed his mind.’

  ‘Don’t think so,’ Reilly replied. ‘Never even looked at this place, but he did spend a minute or so looking across the parking lot.’

  ‘At where the Ford’s parked?’

  ‘Yup. And he looked down a coupla times. Coulda been lookin’ at a notebook or somethin’.’

  ‘You’re thinking off-duty cop, maybe?’

  ‘Right again. And even if it was just some guy who changed his mind about takin’ a drink here, reckon we’ve been in this bar long enough. Get kinda nervous if we spend too long in one place, ’specially this close to McCarran.’

  * * *

  ‘We’re on,’ Harris said, punching a button on his mobile phone to end the call from Ketch, and tossing the Chevrolet keys to Morgan. ‘Go get the car started.’

  Harris put the phone into his jacket pocket, holstered his pistol, picked up the two-way radio and pressed the transmit button. ‘Templeton – you there?’

  ‘Here,’ the disembodied voice answered.

  ‘Get moving,’ Harris said, ‘and head downtown. We’ve had a sighting at a restaurant and bar. Both cars are outside as of –’ Harris glanced at his watch ‘– four minutes ago.’

  ‘We got lucky. How?’

  ‘You’re right – it was just luck. A cop on his way home pulled in for a beer and saw the two cars parked right in front of him.’

  ‘He still on the scene?’ Templeton demanded, and Harris could hear the increasing sound of the Lincoln’s engine through the radio’s speaker as Grant accelerated away from the curb.

  ‘Nope,’ Harris replied. ‘Cool guy. He ID’d the cars, pulled out of the parking lot and stopped down the road a piece, where he could see the restaurant entrance. Then he called the report into the local PD. They called Ketch, and he called me.’

  ‘OK,’ Templeton said. ‘We’re mobile. Give me the address.’

  * * *

  Lieutenant James Reese, Las Vegas Police Department, sat in his car, watching the driveway which led into the restaurant parking lot, his mobile phone in his left hand. The instructions relayed from Headquarters had been very specific. He was not to approach either the perpetrators or the doctor. He was just to watch and, if the perps drove away, follow them at a distance. If Doctor Evans left, he was simply to let him go.

  * * *

  ‘Three things, Evans,’ Hunter said, as Reilly stood beside the table, ready to go. ‘First, please write an authorization for me, Steven Hunter, to allow me access to the safe deposit box at your bank. We need those records, and I don’t want to have to wait for some court to decide if we’re allowed to ta
ke a look at them.’

  ‘No problem,’ Evans replied. ‘I hate the sight of the things.’ He took out a notebook, wrote a dozen or so words on a page torn from it, signed it with a flourish and gave it to Hunter.

  ‘Next, give me your home address and telephone number, plus the phone number of the Roland Oliver facility at McCarran, plus any other numbers you have for people or places within the organization.’

  Evans wrote quickly, and comparatively legibly for a doctor. ‘That’s all I have. I never call Roland Oliver – somebody there calls me.’

  ‘Suppose something catastrophic happens? The monitoring system fails, or a truck drives into the building?’

  ‘There’s a button,’ Evans said. ‘It’s tested once a week. If you press it, somebody at Groom Lake calls on the telephone.’

  ‘What about the flights that transport the subjects? Who coordinates those?’ Hunter asked.

  ‘Roland Oliver,’ Evans answered promptly. ‘I just receive notification of when the subjects will be collected. About thirty minutes before that time, I go round each casket and switch the monitoring system to internal. Then they’re ready to go.’

  ‘“Casket” is the right word, here, doc,’ Reilly said, sourly.

  Evans shrugged helplessly.

  ‘OK,’ Hunter said. ‘The last thing may not be so easy for you. It’s possible we may have been spotted – at least, that’s what Dick thinks, and I’m not about to take any chances – so we’re not going to be leaving here the same way we arrived. We’ll be taking your Jaguar. If everything works out, we’ll return it to your home when this is all over.’

  Hunter reached into his pocket and took out a single key, which he dropped on the table in front of Evans. ‘It won’t be what you’re used to, doctor, but you’ll be driving away from here in a blue Ford compact.’