Ten Two Jack

by Diane Capri

  Her cell phone rang as she was rushing toward the plane. She reached into her pocket. Gaspar calling. The Boss must have contacted him. She skipped along to the jet’s door and slipped inside. The flight attendant closed and snugged the door behind her.

  All in one continuous motion, she flopped into seat 3C on the aisle, slipped her bag under the seat, snapped her seatbelt into place, and answered the phone on the tenth ring, breathing heavily. “Otto.”

  “Are you on board, Sunshine?” Gaspar said.

  Trying to catch her breath, she replied, “Just barely. Where are you?”

  He paused a moment too long. “Houston. And I can’t get a flight out until tomorrow. I’m sorry that I won’t be there to back you up.”

  “No problem.” She heard something in his tone that she didn’t like, but nothing she could do about it now. “Why are you in Houston?”

  “Long story. I’ll tell you when I see you. Meanwhile, I’m reading these files we got from the Boss. I’ll do what work I can from here.”

  The flight attendant was demonstrating the safety features of the aircraft. As soon as she finished, she would be coming by to make sure seatbacks were up, tray tables were locked, carryon bags were stowed, and no one was talking on the phone.

  “We’ll be taking off shortly. I’ll review the files during the flight, too. We can talk when I land. Anything, in particular, I should look for in this stuff?”

  “The files on these subjects are almost as thin as Reacher’s. I haven’t had a chance to do much with what we have. All I know so far is that you’re on your way to St. Louis to interview Bramall and investigate a storage unit. The Boss says something is going on there.”

  “A storage unit?” The flight attendant placed a hand on Otto’s shoulder and gave her a pointed look along with a spinning index finger gesture to wrap up her call. “We’re number one for takeoff. I’ve got to go.”

  “Okay. Call me when you land. I’ll be done with these files and have some follow up intel by then.”

  “Will do,” she said.

  The flight attendant glared again as she hurried past on her way to the jump seat. Otto disconnected and dropped the phone into the seat back pocket. The engines revved up for takeoff. Otto closed her eyes and gripped the armrests as tightly as possible, praying for the best. Or at least not to explode on the tarmac, as the 727 raced forward and lifted off the runway.

  She breathed easier after the jet was airborne. The actual flying was generally okay. After all, the number of bombs likely to make it onto the plane were limited, given modern security methods.

  Once the autopilot was engaged, the plane would pretty much stay up without human intervention. It was the takeoffs and landings that worried her. At takeoff and landing, the potential for human error was enhanced beyond her maximum tolerance level.

  Otto wasn’t afraid of flying. Not at all. She simply knew too much about commercial air travel. She wasn’t the least bit comfortable in a steel projectile filled with high octane, flammable jet fuel, and combustible materials, traveling 30,000 feet in the air at speeds faster than God ever intended humans to move.

  Once the flight was airborne, she released her death grip on the armrests and opened her eyes. She ordered black coffee when the flight attendant asked. She lifted the lid on her laptop, opened the Boss’s files, and began to read. She had ninety-seven minutes to absorb the contents, which shouldn’t be difficult at all.

  She finished the first read-through in no time. As Gaspar had said, the files were thin. There wasn’t much to read.

  The summary of the earlier investigation by the team Noble worked on was succinct and straightforward. DEA and other law enforcement agencies had been conducting similar investigations around the country at the same time. The opioid crisis, as it had been dubbed, was like a hydra with multiple heads and countless arms operating in hamlets and rugged locations, as well as urban areas. In short, the crisis seemed to permeate everywhere.

  The resources consumed by those investigations had been substantial. So much so that agency budgets had been cut back in other areas, like organized crime, which was Otto’s normal beat.

  The massive effort had the opioid crisis on the run. Suicides and accidental overdoses had declined. The naloxone drug was something close to Kryptonite for opioids. Sort of like a defibrillator, it revived people so they could live long enough to get treatment. First responders carried naloxone everywhere. Countless lives had been saved. And the profiteering had been squelched.

  As Noble had said, heroin addiction had returned to its roots. But due to the lack of law enforcement resources applied to other cases over those years, organized crime was stronger than it had been in decades. New gangs, organized mobs, and old mafia families thrived again in every city, town, and village.

  Reacher’s name, of course, was not included in any of the original opioid crisis files, according to the Boss. Which was probably why he had had no idea Reacher was within a thousand miles of that case before Noble approached her a few hours ago.

  In addition to the concise summary of the old case, the Boss had sent files on three subjects.

  The most interesting of these was Terrence “Terry” Bramall, retired FBI Special Agent from the Chicago Field Office. Now, a high-end, expensive licensed private investigator in Illinois, Bramall’s file was straightforward. It contained a headshot from his FBI personnel file showing an ordinary man who might have been an actor in a television drama.

  Bramall’s life had been devoted to his job. He retired to care for his wife and was widowed when she died of cancer three years ago. He had no children. His personnel file was a textbook example of what every FBI agent’s should be. Commendations, successful cases, medals and awards, a steady rise through the ranks, no blemishes at all, and retirement with a full pension. In short, nothing even remotely odd about this guy.

  The other two files were labeled Tiffany Jane (Sanderson) Mackenzie and Serena Rose Sanderson. Twin sisters. Jane and Rose, as they were called. Otto stared at the photos. They were flat-out stunning. Not merely attractive, but the kind of surreal beauty Otto had rarely seen outside of supermodels and starlets.

  They grew up in Wyoming, the files said, and parted ways when Rose attended West Point, like Reacher. After West Point, Rose was in the infantry. Iraq and Afghanistan. Bronze Star, Purple Heart. Which meant she’d been injured at some point, but her injuries were not detailed in the files. Terminal at major, like Reacher.

  Sanderson was younger than Reacher, though. So they didn’t attend West Point or serve in the Army at the same time. If Reacher knew her at all, the connection between them must have been something else.

  The sister chose a more domestic path. Jane was a housewife. Junior League, charitable activities, tennis, and golf at the club. Old-fashioned pearls and twinset sweaters making a comeback among the preppy crowd. That sort. Met and married her husband, Theodore Rex Mackenzie, while Rose was deployed in Iraq.

  The husband, called Rex, was a wealthy businessman in Chicago, and the couple lived in Lake Forest. Otto whistled when she saw Mackenzie’s house. A mansion by any standard, it was currently on the market for almost five million dollars. Looked like sister Jane had hit the jackpot while Rose was off doing the grunt work serving her country and getting shot at for her trouble.

  After Rose was injured, she was discharged, and then somehow fell off the radar. Otto’s nerves began to twitch because Rose had disappeared. Just like Reacher.

  Jane hired Bramall to find her sister. When he did, Rose moved in with Jane and her husband, because Rose had nowhere else to go. Her home had been the Army. When her career ended, she had to start over.

  Rose was a bit older than Otto. Coping with a career change like that couldn’t have been easy for her. It definitely wouldn’t have been easy for Otto.

  The sisters were emotionally close, probably. Looked like Jane rescued Rose from whatever issues she had after she was discharged. Since Noble had run across them durin
g the DEA case, it was safe to assume Rose had some connection to illegal opioids.

  Otto stretched and rubbed the back of her neck. The files suggested nothing but career success all around for Rose, and blissful domesticity for the Mackenzies.

  She shook her head. Not likely.

  Reacher was involved with this crowd somehow. Domesticity was the exact opposite of everything Jack Reacher embodied.

  Which meant these files were the tip of the iceberg and only the pretty parts.

  She rang for the flight attendant and requested more coffee. She was running on pure caffeine at this point, but she’d need to find a hotel room and get some sleep soon.

  She turned her attention to the last file, which contained her orders. As Gaspar had said, she was on her way to a storage facility not far from the airport in St. Louis. She was to arrive and be in place before zero five hundred hours. The mission was to intercept Bramall.

  And then what?

  Her orders didn’t say why Bramall was approaching the facility far from his home base in the wee hours of the morning.

  Nor had the Boss explained who owned the storage unit, why she was being sent there, or what she was supposed to accomplish.

  She shook her head. Par for the course. Could be he didn’t know. More likely, he wanted her to figure it out. Which she would.

  Otto’s experience with everything involved in the Reacher case was that trouble lurked, crouched like a jungle predator ready to attack.

  She spent the rest of the flight reviewing the materials again and programming travel routes into her phone, so she could hit the ground running. Drive time to the storage facility was estimated at twenty-three minutes.

  The flight landed in St. Louis at Lambert International Airport on time and without incident. Otto was among the first to deplane. She pulled her rolling suitcase along the corridors of the deserted airport until she reached the rental lot where her vehicle stood ready.

  A few minutes after that, she was on her way, still wondering what the hell she was doing here. Skies were dark, the air was cold, and an icy rain bounced off the windshield like a hail of bullets.

  She connected her phone to the rental’s speaker system and called Gaspar. He answered immediately, which was no surprise. The guy rarely slept. He was in pain most of the time, and he hadn’t quite recovered from a recent gunshot wound. He never took anything stronger than Tylenol, though she often wondered how he managed. She worried about his liver, too. Tylenol toxicity was no joke.

  “Tell me you’ve acquired more intel,” she said. “The only things in those files that Noble hadn’t already told me were pretty useless.”

  “Not much more, I’m afraid. The obvious connection between all the players is prescription opioids. But I’ve spent the past couple of hours on the phone with my contacts and your Boy Detective, who wasn’t especially helpful.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He was still traveling toward the Mackenzie mansion in Lake Forest, so he didn’t have anything new. He said Reacher wasn’t involved with the earlier opioid investigations case. Their paths crossed, but not because Reacher was a target of the investigation.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I do, actually. Reacher wouldn’t be the first soldier to find himself on the wrong side of drug addiction. It happens. But he’s been out of the Army too long to have been caught in the opioid thing. Besides, if he had addiction issues, we’d have heard about it long before now.”

  “Makes sense,” she said, nodding in the SUV alone in the dark, even if Gaspar couldn’t see her.

  “Noble said the two sisters might have been witnesses to the case against one of the low-level dealers out in Wyoming. He wasn’t sure. But no one had interviewed them at the time because they didn’t need to. DEA was able to make the case without them, and by the time Reacher and the sisters came across the radar, Noble and his team were winding things up.”

  “How about Bramall? Did Noble have anything more to add on that score?”

  “He said he’d tried to call Bramall a couple more times but kept getting voicemail.”

  The icy rain had slicked the roads now. She kept her hands on the wheel and her eyes forward. She’d be arriving at her destination soon.

  “One more thing. Could be nothing.” He paused to be sure she didn’t miss the punch line. “Rex Mackenzie had a mistress.”

  “With a wife as gorgeous as Jane? That’s hard to believe.”

  “Some men are intimidated by wives like that,” Gaspar said.

  She replied snidely, “And some men have their head up their ass.”

  Gaspar chuckled. “Yeah, well, my bet? He’s up to his eyeballs in some kind of mess. His mistress died of an opioid overdose a few weeks back.”

  “You don’t say,” she deadpanned.

  “Be careful, Suzie Wong. A lot of this stuff doesn’t add up yet. But none of this is good news.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she murmured as she slowed to turn.

  CHAPTER 11

  Friday, February 11

  2:25 a.m.

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin

  The area surrounding General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee looked like any other. Fast food joints and cheap chain hotels and litter blown by gusty winds against the fences. At this hour of the morning, traffic was sparse. The airport remained open around the clock, but few flights arrived or landed after midnight.

  Thorn drove a couple of miles past the airport entrance and turned west onto a service road. He pulled up next to the sedan in a dark corner of the remote lot. He handed the keys to Scorpio.

  “I’ll return this vehicle to the car rental and catch a ride back. Probably take me thirty minutes or so,” Thorn said.

  Scorpio struggled out of the back seat, his pockets laden with everything he’d collected from Mackenzie. Once he was upright on the pavement, he leaned his head into the cabin. “I have plenty to do. Don’t worry so much.”

  “Roger that,” Thorn replied.

  Scorpio closed the door and turned his back on further conversation. As Thorn pulled away, Scorpio made his way to the trunk of his sedan. He pushed the button on the key fob to unlock the trunk and all four doors. He retrieved the laptop and slung the cross-body strap over his head. He closed the trunk and shuffled slowly toward the passenger compartment. Every small exertion almost overcame him. By the time he was seated in the back seat, he was winded and perspiring heavily. He flopped his head on the seat back and closed his eyes to rest.

  Exhaustion swallowed him whole and he dozed off. Thorn’s voice from the front seat awakened him thirty minutes later.

  Scorpio felt the engine idling. He cleared his throat, met Thorn’s gaze in the rearview, and asked, “Sorry? I didn’t hear you.”

  “No problem, boss. I asked where you’d like to go?” He paused, glanced at the instrument panel, and returned his gaze to the rearview. “It’s zero-three-thirty-three hours here. Still time to find a bed for the night before we tackle twelve to fourteen hours back to Rapid City if you’d like.”

  Scorpio figured Thorn was merely offering him an opportunity to save face. It was the sort of thing a military officer like Thorn had been trained to do. Scorpio hated it, along with every other form of solicitous behavior foisted upon him these days. One more thing Reacher would pay for soon.

  “You still okay to drive?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Scorpio considered his next move. He wanted to get home, but he had to admit he wasn’t likely to find anything he was looking for there. There was no point in traveling 840 miles home only to turn around and come back.

  “Let’s get a few hours west of here before we stop. Somewhere in Iowa. Not a chain hotel.” Putting a couple of state lines behind them made visceral sense. Scorpio lived by his wits and always had. Jurisdictional boundaries could only help him. Law enforcement agencies were loath to cooperate or even communicate with each other. He had exploited that weakness more than once to
his great advantage. Deploying the tactic here felt like the right thing to do, too.

  “You got it, boss. Copy that,” Thorn replied. He pulled his seatbelt over his shoulder and clicked it into place. Scorpio felt the transmission slide into reverse. Thorn rolled the Lincoln back a few feet before he cut the wheel and engaged the transmission for a slow and easy forward takeoff.

  Scorpio’s patience snapped. “For cripes’ sake, Thorn. I’m not about to fall into the footwell. Just drive the damn car.”

  “Ten-four, boss,” Thorn said, but his heart was not in it. Scorpio could tell. The Lincoln accelerated slowly, made a smooth right turn onto the street, and rolled westward to the expressway entrance ramp.

  Once they were underway, Scorpio extracted the laptop from its case and opened the clamshell. He fished around in his pocket for Mackenzie’s flash drive and inserted it into the laptop’s USB port.

  In the plush silence of the Lincoln’s passenger cabin, Scorpio heard the laptop’s soft whir as it attempted to access the data on the flash drive. Half a moment later, a message popped up on the center of his screen. His nostrils flared. The drive was encrypted and required a specialized thirty-two-character password.

  Sweat trickled down his temples and dropped from his jaw. His body was shaking and felt clammy inside his coat.

  Before his injuries, Scorpio could easily have solved these problems. He’d had appropriate equipment back in his laundromat office. He also possessed the mental capacity to handle much more complicated data tasks. Not tonight. He needed rest.

  He ejected the flash drive and replaced its cap. He closed the laptop and returned it to the case. And then he smiled slightly as understanding dawned. The flash drive needed sophisticated security to protect the contents. Because whatever was stored behind the encryption barriers was worth protecting. He was on the right track. He could feel it.