The group signed out three unmarked cars and drove to the district where the driver’s vehicle had been spotted, Cruz in the lead, Torres and his men in the other two vehicles. Once near the neighborhood, they divided up the area and performed a methodical grid search, communicating on their earbuds.
As Cruz rounded a corner, Torres’s voice crackled in his ear. “I can make out a silver Dodge Caravan parked in front of an apartment complex. I’ll be past it in ten seconds.”
“Don’t do anything to tip him off, if he’s in the vehicle. Don’t slow, just keep going. Where exactly are you?” Cruz asked.
Torres rattled off the street and address while keeping his speed constant. He avoided glancing at the van, preferring to wait to sneak a look in his rearview mirror, his sunglasses masking the direction of his gaze. He was so occupied he missed the second vehicle on his left, also a van, this one green, whose driver studied him with suspicion.
“There’s a man in the Caravan. Repeat. In the driver’s seat,” Torres reported as he rolled down the block. “Can’t see whether he’s armed.”
“Did he make you?” Cruz asked.
“Negative.”
“How do you want to play this?” Cruz inquired, deferring to Torres’s field expertise.
“Four men from behind him on foot, I box him in with my car so he can’t drive away, and we bag him. Street’s pretty calm. Should be a piece of cake,” Torres said.
“Sounds good. Where do you want to meet?”
“Around the corner. I’ll stay in my car with Carlos. The others can park and then we’ll do this.” Torres hesitated. “Capitan, no offense, but hang back until we’re clear.”
“Sergeant, I appreciate your concern, but I can handle myself.”
“Oh, I’m not questioning that, sir. I just want the situation to keep from getting confused with more bodies than we need to do the job.”
Cruz grudgingly conceded Torres’s point. It was his plan and his ass in the line of fire, so it was up to him to make it work. “Fine. But remember – hold your fire unless he shoots first. We want him unharmed.”
“Of course.”
A thought occurred to Cruz. “What does it look like he’s doing there?”
“Watching the street, best as I can tell.”
Cruz’s pulse quickened. Perhaps Aranas was closer than he’d guessed. He debated calling in backup but decided against it. A small group might get in and out without triggering any alarms. In an impromptu mission like this, bringing in fifty men to search the surroundings would be noticed before they’d disembarked from the personnel carrier.
Torres’s group was ready to move on the van three minutes later. His men were rounding the block, and they agreed that he would wait until they were nearly at the van before Torres would pull alongside the driver from the opposite side of the street, Carlos’s gun leveled at the driver’s head. Even the most hardened cartel toughs would think twice about the business end of an H&K pointed at them at close range, presenting their best odds of taking him before he had a chance to decide to shoot it out.
The four walkers in their civilian garb made their way unhurriedly toward the van, talking among themselves, to untrained eyes just workers on a break. Cruz watched from the corner as they closed on the van, and then he spotted Torres’s car crawling down the street from the far side.
“Five seconds and we have him,” Torres said over the comm line, and Cruz held his breath as his men neared the rear of the van. Torres’s car was about to cut across the lane when the street exploded with automatic rifle fire. Before they had a chance to react, the four plainclothes officers were cut down by a hail of rounds from the windows of the apartment down the block. “Shit–” Torres cried out. Carlos opened up with his weapon from the passenger window, returning fire at the apartment complex as Torres swerved.
Shots rang out from the green van Torres had missed, and his windshield starburst as slugs sprayed across it. Cruz floored the gas and withdrew his pistol from his belt holster, and was closing on Torres’s car when it collided with the Caravan. The driver fired point blank into the police car and the rear windshield went red with splatter. Cruz realized as he was almost at Torres’s sedan that all his men were down and he was seriously outgunned; their stealth approach had suddenly turned into a deadly crossfire from unknown shooters. He slowed as he took his cell from his pocket and speed-dialed dispatch, and then sped up again when chunks of asphalt flew from the street beside him.
Cruz slalomed in a zigzag to the end of the street, his foot floored, and careened around the corner. His tires screeched as rounds ricocheted off the pavement. He ducked down instinctively as several bullets struck the trunk of his car, and then he was clear, heart trip-hammering in his chest as he swore at his phone and the nonexistent signal on it. He hadn’t realized he was close enough to the federal building to not have coverage, and he tossed the cell to the side and switched channels on his radio to issue an emergency call – officers down, hostiles at large.
Up the street from the van, a figure stood at a darkened second-story window with a parabolic antenna in his hand pointed at the departing car. El Maquino’s face was expressionless as he recorded the driver’s Bluetooth signal – the man was no doubt the leader behind the failed attack, his shooters sprawled dead on the sidewalk below.
He turned from the window once the car disappeared from view and moved to a laptop computer. El Maquino didn’t know why the attack had been launched, but figured it had to be because of the boxes. The timing was too close.
The thought of having to leave his workshop, his living space, his beloved drones, induced panic in him, and anger – or more accurately, a desire to make someone pay for the disruption to his peaceful existence. He didn’t want to flee, but he’d always been ready, at Aranas’s urging. In addition to the arrays of cameras and motion detectors and electrified fencing on the roof, he’d long ago rigged the loft so that in the event someone came for him, it could be vaporized, leaving no trace of his work. He kept a dash bag in his bedroom with important documents, several changes of clothes, money and bank tokens, and a handful of specialty tools.
He tapped in a command and waited as the information on the Bluetooth signal converted, and then saved it to a dongle. He looked up at the wall clock and grunted, and then moved to the drone room, whispering to himself, “Time to fly. We’ll see how they like that, won’t we?”
Chapter 33
Westhampton, Long Island, New York
Dr. Helen Garland’s neighborhood looked expensive to El Rey as he walked along the quiet tree-lined lane, the sort of place that CEOs and bankers and white-shoe attorneys fancied away from the madding crowds – the homes not so large or lavish as to be vulgar, but of substantial enough size to convey quiet authority in an area of the world where the population was stacked one atop the other.
He’d had the taxi drop him four blocks from her address and had hoofed it the remainder of the way, partially to get a feel for the surroundings as well as to avoid any connection between the cab’s fare and the doctor’s unfortunate passing.
Her house was atypical in that it was two stories – most of the surrounding homes were one level – and obviously old although carefully maintained, he could see from the gleaming white paint and the emerald green storm shutters that framed the windows. Thankful the lot was large and verdant enough that he had some room to work, he edged onto the property, there being no point in delaying the inevitable. His plane was sitting on the runway, awaiting his return, which would take at least four hours based on his ride from the city.
He crept along a hedge, his senses hyperalert, his footsteps silent on the freshly trimmed grass. The sound of a television drifted from an open window, confirming that the doctor was in – whether alone or not didn’t matter to El Rey, not when he was racing the clock. He made it to the rear of the house and spotted the back entrance – the door was open, a screen closed over the gap to keep insects out.
Getting i
n was childishly easy, and he paused at the kitchen to select a bread knife with a serrated blade before creeping along the wood floor of the hallway toward the living room with the blaring television.
Helen Garland was a handsome woman in her early fifties with a no-nonsense haircut, her skin bronzed from days outdoors – gardening, by the looks of her clothes, he thought as he inched into the room. She took longer than normal to look up and gasp. El Rey took in the bottle of Scotch on the coffee table and the tumbler beside it containing two fingers of amber liquid and understood instantly – the woman was drunk, or at least somewhat inebriated, drinking alone in the late afternoon to CNN’s vapid blather with only her cats for company.
“Who – who are you? How did you get in here?” she demanded, a slight slur to her speech.
“Don’t be alarmed. I won’t hurt you unless I have to. I just need to ask you some questions.”
“I don’t keep much money in the house. No jewelry. But I’ll give you what I have,” she said, eyeing the knife in El Rey’s hand with fear.
“As I said, I have some questions. I don’t want your money. I need information, and I’m afraid I’m in a hurry.”
Her eyes conveyed incomprehension. “Information? What are you talking about?”
El Rey motioned to her cocktail. “Drink that and we’ll have a chat. Good Scotch is a conversational lubricant, is it not?”
She frowned at him in puzzlement. He set the knife on the table and took a seat facing her, smiling as he did so. “There. See? Nice and civilized. Now drink, and then we’ll begin.”
Helen seemed sufficiently unfocused that another jolt of alcohol to her system might make her careless about how she answered, which would save him time. He held her gaze and she nodded and sat forward, reaching for the glass with a delicate hand.
El Rey was surprised when she flung the heavy tumbler at his head and bolted from the sofa toward the kitchen. His reaction time was so compromised from sleeplessness and the effects of the neurotoxin that he barely dodged it as he leapt to his feet. She was halfway to the kitchen when he tackled her, and they both went down hard. Her ribs cracked as his weight on top of her knocked the wind from her, and then he had his hand over her mouth to muffle the scream.
She was no match for his strength, and after a brief struggle, he whispered into her ear, “I’ll cut your tongue out if you keep trying to scream. I mean it.” She stopped struggling. “Here’s how this is going to work. We’re going into your basement, and we’re going to have a civilized discussion. You’re not going to try anything more, or you’re going to get badly hurt. I don’t like to harm women, but I’ll do what I have to in order to get answers, do you understand? Nod if you do.”
Helen nodded, and he relaxed his grip on her. “I’m going to help you stand. I know your ribs must hurt, so I’ll be gentle. Try anything and I’ll beat you bloody, though. That’s your only warning. Do you hear me?”
Another nod. He rose and pulled her to her feet, a grimace of pain flushing her as she faced him. “Who are you?” she hissed.
“I’m a man who’s short on choices, doing what he has to in order to survive. Now let’s go downstairs.”
“I don’t want to. There’s nothing down there.”
His stare hardened. “If you don’t start walking, I’m going to go get your knife, and we’ll start with you eating your nose and ears.”
She gulped and her mouth worked, but no sound came out. He gave her a moment and then took a step toward her. “Move.”
The basement was clammy even in the moist heat of the afternoon. She flicked on a light switch and a single incandescent bulb illuminated overhead. Once they were down the wooden stairs, he made short work of binding her hands, mostly for show – she needed to grasp that she was a captive whose survival depended on her cooperation, and tying someone was an effective way to drill that message home.
“All right. Sit there, against the wall. Here are the ground rules. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I will ask you questions. You will answer them honestly and completely. If I don’t think you have, I’ll be forced to do things to you that you don’t want to think about. I’ll start by breaking your fingers, and then your hands, then your feet, until you’re crippled for life. I am not exaggerating, and I will not threaten or warn you again. You should know something about me: I do this for a living. So don’t make the mistake of thinking I am bluffing. I do. Not. Bluff. Do you understand?”
She nodded, her eyes now wide with fright.
“Good. First question. What do you do for Brightlabs? Specifically?”
She appeared confused by the question, and then awareness dawned on her and her eyes darted to her left for an instant, signaling to El Rey that she was about to lie. He held up a hand. “Remember that if you don’t tell the truth, the agony you will experience is your doing.” He held her gaze with eyes as dead as a shark’s. “I should tell you I already know the answer to many of the questions I’m going to ask, so I wouldn’t risk it, Doctor.”
That got her attention, and she swallowed hard. “I’m in the product development division.”
“Good. See? That wasn’t so hard. What do you do in that division?”
“Mostly administrate.”
“I can see that. How about your work developing bioweapons? Let’s focus on that, shall we?”
“I…that’s top-secret work. It’s all classified. I can’t discuss it.”
“Yes, I know. But you have to, and you will. I assure you I won’t tell another soul. This is for my consumption only.”
She shook her head and El Rey sighed. He’d have to give her a demonstration.
An hour later, he closed the basement door behind him and wiped the perspiration from his face with the back of his arm as he considered how to terminate her. She hadn’t known anything about his neurotoxin, but he couldn’t take the chance of leaving her alive.
He moved to the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on his face, and dried it while he thought about how best to do it. In the end there was no need to make it painful – after a few digits had been broken, the good doctor had been entirely forthcoming, and he believed she was telling the truth as she’d described her work.
A sound from below drew his attention, and he rushed to the basement door. He threw it open and took the stairs three at a time, just as Helen’s torso disappeared through a hatchway on the far wall near the ceiling. He cursed under his breath – he’d missed it in the gloom – and threw himself at her legs as she squirmed, trying to escape. She’d almost made it when he pulled her back down, slamming her against the ground like a rag doll from the momentum.
Her neck snapped like a dry twig and she spasmed beneath him, her appendages twitching from nerve damage. He didn’t pause to think but grabbed her head in both hands and twisted, ending her life with a single swift motion.
His chest heaved from the exertion of the sudden sprint as he stood and stared down at the doctor’s body, and then he headed back up the stairs to begin cleaning away all traces of his presence. With any luck, she wouldn’t be discovered for some time; at least long enough for him to have concluded his business and be thousands of miles away. He glanced at his watch and did a quick calculation – if traffic was light into the city, he could make it to the airport by nightfall and be in Baltimore in time for a late night visit with the next on his list: Dr. Margaret Hunt.
Chapter 34
Baltimore, Maryland
El Rey sat in a rental car, eyeing the underground parking area of the VA Medical Center, where his target was working a night shift. He’d called her office to confirm her whereabouts after breaking into her condo and finding only her eleven-year-old daughter, whom he’d bound and left with two liters of water – potential leverage on her mother, who he suspected might be reluctant to cooperate.
The terrified girl had informed him that her mother was at the hospital, supervising a clinical trial while making her rounds. He had no idea whether working late i
nto the night was a regular occurrence for a physician who also created doomsday potions for military contractors, but regardless, it meant that his original plan – lying in wait for her at the condo – wouldn’t work with his time constraint.
He studied the dossier that a private investigator he’d hired through a cutout had assembled for him. An intelligent woman with light brown hair and piercing blue eyes framed by soft laugh lines stared back at him from a photograph. That was from a lecture she’d given a year earlier regarding a breakthrough thermal approach to attacking malignant cells with a combination of rare metals. Her specialty wasn’t oncology, but one of her employers was pioneering the technology, and she appeared to be on the cutting edge of a promising new approach to cancer treatment.
Margaret Hunt was forty-four years old, widowed after her husband died in a skiing accident a decade earlier, and lived with her daughter, Courtney. One car, a white BMW 428 coupe. She lived relatively modestly in spite of the income from her consulting work, and seemed to be genuinely decent, continuing to see patients and run trials even now that there was no financial reason not to delegate the work to underlings.
He tried to reconcile the description with someone who could create a toxin that would cause such lingering agony in its victims, and couldn’t. But it didn’t matter. What did was that he would soon know whether she’d authored the agent, and if so, what would be involved in obtaining the antidote.
He looked over at the BMW parked across the aisle in a staff slot and compared the license number to the one in the file for the third time. It was her car. He’d already been in the mammoth facility to look around and had verified that the security was laughable, consisting of a few guards who acted as though they were serving life sentences rather than protecting anything. Not once had he been stopped or asked why he was roaming the halls, but that didn’t surprise him – he’d long ago learned that if he maintained a certain bearing, an innate authority to his stride, few would question him, assuming he knew where he was going and thus belonged there.
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