The Tin Man

by Dale Brown

  “They might,” Jon admitted. “They’re voice-actuated, which means they don’t activate unless there’s sound in the room. Most times when security teams sweep a room for bugs, they try not to make any noise, so the bugs should be undetectable, but they do carry a very low power level all the time in standby mode so there’s still a chance a bug sweeper might detect it. The bugs store information in packets, then microburst the packets out in irregular intervals to try to confuse a passive detection system. So it’ll be harder to detect the bugs when they transmit too.”

  Masters paused, then added, “But it’s usually not bug detectors that find the bugs, Patrick. Most times it’s just plain ol’ good counterintelligence work. Someone will eventually realize information is getting out. A local PD might not have sophisticated detection or backtracing gear, but all they need to do is plant false information to try to ferret out a snooper. Once you start using the information you get, your days of bugging offices will be numbered. They’ll just swoop down on you one day and it’ll all be over. Might be hours, might be days.”

  But Patrick wasn’t listening. “Thanks, Jon,” he said. “I’ll start monitoring the taps, and I’ll talk to you after we get some worthwhile information. Once we find out who the enemy is, we’ll plan our next move.”

  Masters nodded. Patrick McLanahan always knew what he was doing. “Wendy called while you were out,” he said. “They’re going to keep her in the hospital for another few days to be safe. They’ll discharge her on the thirtieth.”

  “Good,” Patrick responded.

  Jon was startled. “ ‘Good’?”

  “That’ll give us more time to come up with a plan,” Patrick said. “I want to move before the police do. I want first shot at these dirtbags.”

  “Are you trying to hide this from Wendy?” Jon asked incredulously. “You’re not going to tell her what you’re doing?”

  “Not now,” Patrick said. “Not right away. I want to formulate a plan of action before I tell her. I’m hoping they’ll catch the terrorists before too long, and if I tell Wendy about this, it’ll upset her for no reason.” Jon shook his head at this backward logic, but decided not to argue the point. “I’m off to Mercy San Juan. I’ll be back later.”

  He knows what he’s doing, Jon Masters told himself for the third or fourth time that evening. It’s Patrick McLanahan. He always has a plan. He always knows what he’s doing. Always…

  Special Investigations Division Headquarters,

  Bercut Drive, Sacramento, California

  Monday, 29 December 1997, 0925 PT

  “Here’s what we have so far, Chief,” Captain Tom Chandler began. He was giving an update briefing to the chief of police, Arthur Barona, as well as to the deputy chief of investigations and the deputy chief of operations of the city of Sacramento. “It’s not much:

  “The private security company for the Sacramento Live! complex has still not heard from one of the guards who was on duty the night of the shootout, Joshua Mullins. He’s being sought as a material witness, but we’re looking at him as an accomplice to the robbery. Mullins is ex-Oakland PD, resigned while under suspension. Lived in an apartment downtown, but the place was cleared out. He has some ties to local biker gangs, so we did some interviews in some of his hangouts. No one’s seen him.”

  “I want him,” Barona said. “Send out his description on the wire to all state agencies. He’s probably headed back to the Bay Area.”

  “Already out,” Chandler said. “We’re setting up surveillance on local biker bars-the Bobby John Club, Sutter Walk, Posties, a few others, as much as manpower allows. Sacramento County is cooperating with us in setting up surveillance on biker bars in the county, and we’re working with Yolo, Sutter, Alameda, San Francisco, and Placer County DA’s to gather intelligence on biker bars in their jurisdictions.

  “Our informants are giving us information on a guy that Mullins may have been in contact with who goes by the name of the Major. No information yet on who he is, where he comes from, what he’s up to, or why he might have wanted Mullins. The sergeant in charge at the Sacramento Live! shootout says he thinks he might have heard one of the gunmen shouting in German or some other language after being hit, so we might be looking at a foreign terrorist group. I’ve been in contact with the FBI and Interpol, but we don’t have much to go on except their outfits, weapons, and MO. All of the gunmen hit during the shootout were carried off.”

  Chandler stopped. Barona looked at him in surprise. “That’s it, Chandler? That’s all you have?”

  “ ‘Fraid so, Chief.”

  “Tom, that’s completely unacceptable,” Barona said angrily. “It’s been over a week and we haven’t got an arrest in sight. We need to get some action going on this case or the city’s going to eat all of our lunches for us. Now get me some arrests.” The chief stormed out of the conference room.

  Chandler ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation. “Anything else I can frustrate you gents with today?” he asked.

  “We know you’re stretched to the limit, Tom,” said one of the deputy chiefs. “Put everybody you got on finding this Mullins guy. We’ll see about tossing some uniforms your way to ease the workload. What do you have in mind?”

  “I’ve already wasted the next two months’ overtime budget,” Chandler said. “Any more and I trash the entire next quarter’s budget almost before it starts. I’ve got enough manpower for round-the-clocks at just two places. Posties and Sutter Walk are private clubs; Bobby John’s is public. Mullins’s more likely to turn up at one of the private clubs.”

  “Then put your surveillance units there,” the deputy chief said. “Then as soon as you can, get someone on the Bobby John Club too. We’ll send out a notice to watch sergeants to circulate Mullins’s description to their patrols. But if he has any brains at all, he’s long gone out of this town. We’ll try to juggle some money around for overtime, but don’t count on it. Do the best you can, Tom.”

  “ ‘Do the best you can,’ he says,” Patrick McLanahan mused as the recording fell silent. “How can he? Every one of those cops in the entire division is already working twelve-hour shifts.”

  “Yeah. We’ve heard talk about that ‘Major’ guy before. He’s starting to sound like the mastermind of that robbery.”

  “Sure does,” Patrick agreed. He paused for a moment, then added: “We need to bug the Bobby John Club. No telling how long it’ll take for SID to start up surveillance there.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Masters said. “You know anything about the place?”

  “Just enough to stay away from it,” Patrick replied. “Having a drink or shooting pool with the bikers at the Bobby John Club used to be the cool thing to do in high school, but I never went. They certainly were never any competition for the Sarge’s Place’s business.”

  “Well, Chandler said it was a public bar,” Jon pointed out. “I suppose you have as much right as anyone to go in there. If there’s a million motorcycles parked out front, we’ll just go in another time.”

  Bobby John Club, Del Paso Boulevard,

  North Sacramento, California

  Tuesday, 30 December 1997, 0127 PT

  Bobby John’s had been around a long time in the Del Paso Heights neighborhood of Sacramento. Several big Harleys were parked out front. The wind had kicked up, and it felt raw and blustery, heightening the sudden sense of dread Patrick felt as he opened the door and stepped inside, four surveillance bugs tucked away and ready to go.

  Although his family had run a bar for years, Patrick never liked going into them-especially strange bars, in lousy parts of town, at night, and alone. Even when it’s dark outside, there’s always a time after walking into a bar when your eyes aren’t adjusted to the gloom within. Patrick felt vulnerable: Everyone inside could see him, but he couldn’t see them-or danger coming. Tables and people were shadows. He felt on display, naked, a stranger invading unknown territory-it was like walking into a cave knowing there were bears lurking inside. He co
uld run headlong into the guy he was looking for and never recognize him.

  Patrick decided to withstand the heads turning toward him, the stares, and the muffled comments, and just wait in the doorway until his eyes adapted. If his target tried to leave, at least he’d have a chance to intercept him. Standing there, he realized that to the hostile watchers he must look like some kind of Wild West gunfighter, but there was no other solution.

  As his eyes adjusted, the details of the place grew clearer. It was small and narrow. The bar stretched almost the entire length of the wall to the right. Two pool tables dominated the room to the left, with a few tables and chairs scattered around. At the far side of the bar, a dark hallway led to the back of the building. Patrick could hear loud voices from back there-more patrons, he guessed. A biker was leaning against the hallway wall; he appeared to be guarding a private room. Patrick saw a shaft of light briefly illuminate the hallway and guessed there was a back door at the end leading to the alley-way in the rear.

  The walls were covered with posters of naked biker women, motorcycles, and other typical barroom art, plus some not very typical stuff: a collection of Confederate States, Third Reich, neo-Nazi, White Power, and Ku Klux Klan flags and posters. Patrick even recognized several national flags, including Russia, the Afrikaner flag of South Africa, the flags of the old East Germany, the Ukraine, and Belarus. No doubt about the theme of this place.

  Just plant the bugs and get the hell out, Patrick told himself. One at the bar-it should be able to pick up male voices for ten to twenty feet in all directions-one at a pool table, one in the bathroom, and one in the meeting room in back if he could get there.

  There was no place open at the bar, so Patrick stood at the waitresses’ pickup station. The bartender ignored him. He could make out the faces in the bar now. Some glared at him with undisguised hostility. To his surprise, a few others seemed to be looking at him with fear, as if he might be a cop coming to arrest them or a leg-breaker coming to collect a debt. Most paid no attention. It was dim enough for no one to notice as he attached the first listening device under the edge of the counter.

  But his luck didn’t last for long. The huge, fat, bearded biker on the stool nearest him looked up from his beer. “Hey, sweet cheeks, the faggot bar’s down the street,” he growled drunkenly. Patrick ignored him, enraging the biker. He reached out and gave Patrick a shove hard enough to push him back a few feet. “I said, the faggot bar’s down the street, rump ranger. Hit the fucking road.” Patrick decided he’d better move to a table back behind the pool tables, but the biker looked as if he wasn’t going to let him go.

  “Hey, Rod, knock it off,” the bartender ordered. He put another beer in front of the guy, who promptly forgot about McLanahan. The bartender scowled at Patrick. “This ain’t no tourist stop, sport,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Use your bathroom?”

  “The john’s only for paying customers.”

  “I’ll take a beer.”

  “Five dollars.”

  “Five?”

  “You just bought Rod there a beer too.”

  Patrick put a five on the bar. “Where’s your bathroom?”

  “Coffee shop two blocks down,” the bartender snapped. “Now get the fuck out.”

  Patrick tried to keep his voice steady. He had dealt with a few badasses at the Shamrock Pub, mostly college kids after a few too many or lowlifes trying to pick a fight with a cop. He’d thought he could handle this one. Nevertheless, he was already starting to feel events spinning out of control, and he had been here only a few moments. “I’ll take that beer and then hit the road,” Patrick said.

  The bartender reached down to the cooler behind the bar, pulled out a bottle of beer, and put it on the bar. But before Patrick could take it, a gloved hand reached past him and picked it up. Patrick turned and saw a guy not much taller than he was, with long brown hair, a beard, a leather jacket, and dark, dead-looking eyes, standing right beside him. Another biker, this one with a shaved head and a goatee, had crossed behind the guy and was standing to Patrick’s right.

  “Who are you, asshole?” the first guy asked, taking a swig of beer.

  “I’m nobody,” Patrick replied. “Just came in to get a beer and take a piss.”

  As the guy nodded, Patrick’s world exploded right in his face. A boot kicked the side of his left knee, sending him crashing against the bar in pain and buckling him halfway to the floor. He heard the sound of shattering glass, and a second later felt the jagged edge of a broken beer bottle against his throat, drawing blood. A hand with the grip of a steel vise clamped around the back of his neck, hauling him up tightly against the bar. Several more bikers had come over, surrounding them.

  “You know, you’re one stupid motherfucker coming in here like this,” the guy with the beer bottle said. “You think you can just march in here and feed us a line of crap? Who the fuck are you, pretty boy?”

  “I’m nobody,” Patrick repeated. “I came in for a lousy beer!”

  “Fucking liar!” the biker shouted. By now, Patrick was looking for the first opportunity to make a run for the door, but the hand squeezing his neck tightened still more, and he cried out in pain. “Talk!”

  “I’m the brother of one of the cops that got shot downtown,” Patrick said through the sheet of pain slicing through his head.

  “What in hell do you want?” Patrick kept his mouth shut. The grip tightened even more, and he thought he was going to pass out. “You better talk, candy-ass, or I’ll snap your neck in two!”

  “Mullins,” Patrick murmured against the pain and terror. “Mullins set up that robbery. I want him.”

  The grip on his neck didn’t subside, but Patrick was relieved to hear some laughter behind him. “What do you want to do with him?” asked a different voice.

  “I want to question him about the Major, about who staged that robbery,” Patrick gasped out, trying to struggle free. “And then I want to kick his fucking ass.”

  There was another round of laughter. “Hey, pretty boy, that’s good,” the guy with the broken beer bottle said. “But today’s not your lucky day. Because Mullins’s got hold of your neck right now, and in a minute he’s going to take you in back. If you’re lucky, he might just fuck your white-bread ass and carve his initials in your face. But if he takes what you just said personally, you’re going to end up in a garbage truck on your way to the dump.”

  Patrick strained to see over his shoulder. The guy holding his neck was the biker with the shaved head and the goatee. He didn’t look like the police intelligence description at all. Even his eyebrows were different; he had colored them with mascara, like the goatee. “Hey, cop-killer,” Patrick said. “You and me, motherfucker. Let’s see how tough you are without your army.”

  Mullins laughed in his face, then shoved his head down onto the bar. Patrick turned his head just in time to avoid a smashed nose. “Killing those cops was business, asshole,” Mullins said. “But fucking you up is going to be personal.”

  “The cops have this place under surveillance,” Patrick said through clenched teeth, his voice shaking. He couldn’t believe how scared he felt right now. “They’ve photographed everyone coming in and out of this place. If I turn up dead, all of you’ll be murder suspects.”

  “Maybe so, asswipe,” said the guy with the bottle. Patrick felt hands going through his pockets. They took his wallet and some cash, but thankfully missed the tiny quarter-sized listening devices. “But you’ll still be fuckin’ dead. Now you’re going to tell me how you found out about Mullins and the Major, and you’d better talk or I’ll-”

  “Hey! Look at this!” A different biker ripped something from Patrick’s clenched right hand. He held up a tiny object-what looked like a short, thick cylinder, white, with a round rubber tip. Patrick’s arms were twisted behind his back, and his head was jerked upward.

  “What is this, asswipe?” the guy with the beer bottle yelled, holding the object up to Patrick’s face. “Th
is looks like a rubber bullet, or some kind of shotgun shell. You better tell me, asshole, or Mullins there will twist your fucking head off!”

  “Let me go!” Patrick shouted. The tiny shell was his last hope, Patrick thought grimly, his only chance to escape. He had hesitated to use it and he was going to pay for it now. “I’ll get out of here. I won’t come near this place again. Just let me go.”

  The guy with the beer bottle gave Patrick a backhanded swat across the face, drawing blood from a cut lip. “I guess I’m just going to have to beat it out of you, sport…”

  “It’s a nerve-gas grenade!” someone said in a loud voice. They turned to see a figure standing in the doorway in front of the rear hallway. Jon Masters was holding up an object like the one taken from Patrick. “Just like this one. Twenty-five-millimeter cartridge, filled with a half a milliliter of Novichok, a V-class anticholinesterase agent that will paralyze you in about eight seconds. It uses a nitrogen propellant so it will spray the gas through the entire room and easily disable just about everyone here. Here-catch!” And he threw the grenade as hard as he could across the bar and against the wall.

  The grenade burst with a loud pop! and exploded into a thick white cloud of gas that spread throughout the entire room with astonishing speed. It looked like an instant fog. It tasted of acidity, like sulfur, burning the eyes and throat.

  The bikers scattered. Patrick dropped to the floor-but not because of the gas. It burned and it tasted funny, but it wasn’t disabling. He was free! “Jon!”

  “Here, Muck, he-!”

  As Patrick looked up, the biker with the beard ran headlong into Masters coming toward him and grabbed him. The broken beer bottle flashed in the foggy air. “Jon!” Patrick screamed. He struggled to his feet, trying to catch the biker’s arm as it lashed out, but he was far too late. “Jon!” he screamed again.

  Masters’s jacket was ripped open across the chest, and Patrick saw blood spilling out of the wound. Jon’s hands clutched at it ineffectually, blood seeping through his fingers. “Patrick?” he said weakly.