Smokescreen

by Meredith Fletcher; Vicki Hinze Doranna Durgin

  “Who are you?” the man demanded.

  “Special Agent Chace of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Christie tapped the photo ID hanging from a stainless steel necklace around her neck. She didn’t lower the shotgun. She wore camel-colored slacks, boots and a Kelly green poplin blouse. Her shoulder holster showed prominently because she’d left her jacket in the car outside. She’d pulled her hair back in a twist. Wraparound sunglasses hid and protected her eyes but didn’t interfere with her Enhanced vision. “I’ve got a warrant for Sammy Bao. That’s him sitting at the table you just left.”

  At the table, Sammy Bao showed no sign of being concerned. He had jet-black hair and a matching gun-fighter mustache. According to his file, he was in his late twenties and was suspected of several heinous crimes in addition to nine unsolved murders. No witnesses had ever shown up to testify against him. He wore a neon-blue jacket over a black turtleneck, black slacks and shiny black shoes. He steepled his hands in front of him. A casual observer might have thought he was praying. Christie knew that he was bored. The sleeve fell down enough to reveal the gold Rolex on his left wrist.

  “Nonsense,” the fat man said. “This kind of thing is not done here.”

  “It is today,” Christie told him.

  “I am Wo Fat, the owner of this place. I will allow no disrespect to be shown to any of my guests. We have an agreement with—”

  “You don’t have an agreement with me,” Christie said.

  The man barked commands in Chinese. “Do not allow this to happen in my place of business. I will not tolerate this insult.”

  Half a dozen men at the back of the restaurant stood up. Sammy Bao remained seated, smiling slightly in amusement.

  From the cut of their jackets, Christie knew the men were armed.

  Wo Fat faced her and smiled unpleasantly. “As you can see, Special Agent Chace, you are not welcome here. Now you need to leave before—”

  Moving with Enhanced speed, Christie shifted the shotgun up and planted the muzzle over Wo Fat’s nose while she grabbed the man’s shirtfront with her free hand. She’d spent last night and most of the morning and afternoon talking with the husbands, wives and significant others of those of her team who had been killed last night. And she’d been racking her brain trying to find a way to track down the man with sea-green eyes and commando moves.

  “Sammy Bao is coming with me,” Christie said in Chinese. “That’s nonnegotiable. If you do one more thing to stop me, I’ll arrest you for interference. Do you understand?”

  The fat man’s eyes narrowed in anger, but there was a lot of fear in there, too. “You are making a big mistake.” His flat eyes cut to her ID. “Special Agent Christina Chace.”

  “If your little entourage doesn’t take their seats,” Christie said in a cool voice, “it’ll be the last mistake you get to watch me make.”

  “You would shoot me?” Surprise sent Wo Fat’s eyebrows climbing and his mouth made a shocked O. Maybe his position in the Bronze Tigers meant he hadn’t been personally threatened in so long he’d forgotten what the experience was like.

  “In a heartbeat,” Christie said, never taking her eyes off the man. She told herself the situation was different than the one No-Face acted on. Wo Fat wasn’t unconscious, and he was definitely a threat.

  “Stay!” Wo Fat barked, throwing out a hand to the advancing men.

  His men froze.

  Christie showed him a cold smile even though her stomach was queasy. In less than twenty-four hours, she’d stepped into two life-threatening situations.

  “You’ve got them trained well,” Christie said. “Now tell them to sit.”

  Wo Fat issued the command. The men returned to their seats.

  “Sammy Bao,” Christie called.

  Bao laughed and applauded. He got up from his seat and walked over to her. “It’s all right,” he told Wo Fat. “Please keep my meal warm. I won’t be long.”

  “Hands,” Christie ordered.

  Bao thrust his hands out. Christie had one of the agents cuff Bao’s hands behind his back. A quick frisk turned up two 9 mm pistols in a double shoulder rig under the neon-blue jacket.

  “Do you have a permit for these?” Christie asked.

  Bao smiled confidently at her. “Sure. My mother said I could bring them.”

  “Let’s go,” Christie said to the agent holding on to Bao. “Take him. I’ll be right behind you.” Once her team had cleared the restaurant, she walked out backward, keeping Wo Fat at the business end of the shotgun. She’d upped the ante. Now it remained to see how the hand played out.

  After dinner, when the dishes had been washed, dried and put away, and Michael had been sent off to bed, Grace asked Dalton what he wanted to talk about over coffee at the breakfast bar.

  Dalton hesitated. He was about to step onto the most dangerous ground he’d ever been on in his relationship with Grace and Michael. It was a relationship, too. He’d acknowledged that some time ago, though he couldn’t point to a date on a calendar or an hour on a clock.

  “Dalton?” Grace looked at him with concern. She was tired and on edge. She’d been that way for days. Looking back on events, Dalton realized she’d been in that state for longer than he could recall.

  He tried to open his mouth and couldn’t. He took a deep breath instead.

  “Maybe I can make this easier for you,” Grace suggested. “You’ve been here almost three years. That’s a long time. You’re a young man. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. If you’ve been offered another position, or if you just want to move on, trust me when I say that I understand.”

  God, she’s making this hard. Dalton hated what he was about to do.

  Grace hurried on, looking more agitated than before. “After Mac was…” She stopped. “After Mac died, I think we needed each other. Michael needed you, too. Having you here, Dalton, it’s been a godsend. Truly. I don’t know how we would have managed. Every morning when I walk to the lab and I see that baseball field you and Michael built, or I hear about the baseball games you guys have managed to get up with the people here, I realize how much of a difference you’ve made in his life.” She paused. “How much of a difference you’ve made in our lives. But I won’t stop you from getting on with your life. I’ll give you the best recommendation possible and you’ll go with my blessings.”

  “Grace,” Dalton said softly, dreading what he had to do.

  She looked up at him.

  “I’m not leaving,” Dalton said.

  She took a deep breath, appearing confused and relieved all at the same time. “All right.”

  “What do you know about a man named Sammy Bao?” Dalton’s stomach flipped like he’d just stepped off into a free fall. Only he was used to free-falling from Ranger jump school. This was something totally new and it scared the hell out of him.

  Grace’s answer came instantly and with a little puzzlement. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  Dalton opened his phone/PDA, opened the razor-thin leaves that unfolded into an eight-by-ten digital screen and activated the image storage function that pulsed a static charge to smooth the image. Only a fraction of an inch thick, the leaves smoothed out instantly, pixelating into a solid, seamless image with an Atlanta Braves screensaver. He pressed both thumbs against the upper corners of the screen, letting the scan function read his prints. The device was military issue. If anyone got hold of the PDA, no one would guess at the hidden features, and even if someone found them, they couldn’t be reached without Dalton’s permission.

  Or at least both thumbs.

  The device accessed the off-site intel dump he’d set up and brought it forward. He tapped the screen and a picture of Sammy Bao filled the viewing surface. The image was a head and shoulders shot Dalton had gotten from an information source still within the Rangers who had raided the National Crime Information Center for background materials on the man. Katsumi hadn’t been Dalton’s only resource, but she had initially identified the Bronze Tig
er lieutenant.

  “Where did you get that?” Grace demanded.

  Dalton watched her, feeling scared and guilty at the same time. Grace was his friend. She was his best friend’s widow.

  And she was Michael’s mom.

  “This man,” Dalton said, “is a Triad member. Do you know what that is?”

  “Where did you get that?” Grace’s voice turned hard and cold.

  Despite the fearful reluctance that thrummed within him, Dalton pressed on. “Chinese Triads are crime families. This man, Sammy Bao, is one of the most dangerous men working for the Bronze Tigers. He’s a murderer several times over.”

  “Dalton.” Grace slid off her stool and stood facing him, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

  Dalton recognized the tone in her voice immediately. It was the one she used with Michael when she wasn’t about to put up with one more excuse or continued evasion. He tapped the screen again and pulled up another image.

  This one showed Grace in front of the ice-cream shop down the street from the virtual reality arcade where Michael liked to play games during their monthly sojourn into Roanoke, Virginia. The government contractors provided everything Grace wanted or needed, but she still took Michael into town for a movie and shopping once a month so he wasn’t totally cut off from civilization. Bao stood talking to Grace beside a dark sedan whose license plates had led Dalton to a dead end. Other images followed, showing Grace talking to Bao. She clearly hadn’t been happy about the encounter.

  On that day, Dalton had started down the street, leaving Michael with the secondary security man. By the time Dalton had gotten to where Grace stood, Bao and the sedan had gone. Grace had merely said Bao had been someone asking for directions.

  “Grace,” Dalton said gently. “I need to know what’s going on.”

  “Don’t,” Grace said. She held a hand over her mouth and looked sick.

  “Let me help,” Dalton said. “Please, Grace. Let me help with this.”

  She shook her head, unable to speak for a long time. “You can’t help.”

  “Did Bao threaten you?” Dalton knew that Grace would never sell out her work or her country.

  Tears spilled down Grace’s cheeks. The sight hurt Dalton. It was the first time he’d seen her cry since Mac’s funeral.

  “That man told me that he would…” Grace stopped. Her hands shook as she tried to hold herself.

  “He threatened you?” Dalton asked.

  She shook her head and whispered hoarsely, “Michael! He threatened to hurt my baby!”

  The sick feeling that flooded through Dalton took the edge off his anger. His knees felt weak and he was glad he was sitting. He made himself speak but he hated the strained note in his voice. “They can’t hurt Michael.” He tried to make himself sound confident and knew he was failing. “He’s safe here, Grace. Both of you are safe.”

  She looked at him and the tears stopped. Anger filled her eyes. “This man—Bao, whatever his name is—had pictures. Of you, Dalton. And Michael. In the baseball field. He told me a sniper in the forest could kill my son or leave him paralyzed. Whichever he told them to do.”

  Dalton felt the world tilt. The compound had been designed to keep people out, not as a fortress to keep people inside from being hurt. “That’s not as easy to do as he makes it sound, Grace. Believe me. Michael is—”

  She cut him off angrily. “Damn you! Don’t you dare tell me my son is safe!”

  “We can leave,” Dalton said. “We can go right now.”

  “They have people watching,” Grace moaned. “They have people watching all the time. Even if I left, this man said they would track us down—he insisted they had ways of finding us—and they would kill Michael anyway. He said they had given their word that they would do this.”

  The hopelessness in Grace’s eyes crushed Dalton.

  “You’ve heard me talk about Arturo Gennady?” Grace asked.

  Dalton nodded. Over the past several weeks, Gennady’s work had been showcased in the media. “Yes.” And Dalton knew immediately where she was going.

  “He was killed last night,” Grace said. “Bao and his men, the Bronze Tigers or whatever they are, they killed Arturo because he tried to set them up for the FBI.”

  “You don’t know that.” Dalton knew his argument was weak, but it was all he had. “Bao could have been lying.”

  “He wasn’t lying!” Grace struggled to control herself. “I received digital images of Arturo standing beside his car in Washington, D.C. last night. At the docks where he was killed.”

  “Gennady played it wrong. He shouldn’t have been there. The FBI should never have asked Gennady to be there.” Dalton was angry with the young woman, Special Agent Christina Chace, because her botched operation made convincing Grace even harder now. Gennady shouldn’t have been there, but Dalton also knew it was the only way Chace could have pulled off the sting. “We shouldn’t be talking. We should be getting Michael out to the car and getting the hell out of here.”

  “No.” Grace’s voice was firm. “That man meant what he said—he will have Michael killed or harmed. I can’t bear that. Not after losing Mac.” She shook her head. “I can’t leave. We can’t leave.”

  “That’s not true,” Dalton told her. “Grace, believe me—”

  “Believe you?” Grace stared at him. “You once told me you’d bring my husband back. Don’t you remember that?”

  Dalton had. That had been years ago, battles ago. He’d been young and cocky at the time. He didn’t know that Grace had even remembered him promising that. Since Mac had been killed, that promise had haunted him every day.

  “Safe and sound, you said.” Tears flowed down Grace’s cheeks again. “You didn’t.”

  The accusation was damning.

  “You failed me once,” Grace told him. “I won’t let you fail me again.”

  Dalton didn’t know what to say, didn’t even know if he could speak past the lump in his throat. Grace had never before blamed him for Mac’s death in that firefight, never before even questioned why he had lived and Mac hadn’t.

  “You are not going to do anything about this,” Grace told him. “Do you hear me?”

  Dalton nodded.

  Grace took a deep breath. “And if you do anything, anything at all to jeopardize this situation—” She stepped toward him. “—I swear to God that you will never see Michael again. Is that clear?”

  Dalton looked at her. “Yes.” There was no other answer he could give. He knew she meant what she said.

  Without another word, Grace turned and left.

  Sitting at the table, not knowing what he was supposed to do, Dalton felt as hurt and helpless as the night Mac had died in his arms.

  Chapter 7

  Christie stood at the one-way glass in the observation room looking into the interview room she’d taken at Bureau headquarters. A chill filled the dark observation room and the coffee she sipped didn’t relieve much of it.

  On the other side of the one-way mirror, Sammy Bao sat at a small metal table surrounded by blank walls. Digital and audio equipment staggered all around the room recorded everything. He affected a relaxed, even bored, attitude. For all Christie knew, that was how he felt. Sammy Bao was a stone killer, one of the few that Christie had met personally during her time with the FBI.

  D.O. Fielding entered through the side door. He looked at Christie, then at Bao. “Crack him yet?”

  “Haven’t even been in to see him yet,” Christie admitted. “I thought maybe he needed some time alone.”

  “Looks like he’s fine with that.”

  “I know.”

  Bao yawned and went back to staring at the one-way mirror.

  “I’m beginning to think that he likes looking at himself,” Christie said.

  “You didn’t arrest him?”

  “No. Brought him in as a material witness. That’s why he’s not shackled and in an orange jumpsuit.”

  “Material witness for what?”


  “Two of the murders he probably committed crossed state lines. He had connections to the victims. I thought I would explore that with him.”

  “The D.C. district attorney’s office has already explored those murders with him.”

  “The Bureau hasn’t.”

  “We let D.C., Maryland and Texas take the leads on those murders as I recall.”

  Christie knew that Fielding had reviewed Bao’s files before coming down to the observation room. He was thorough. “Yes, sir.”

  “They couldn’t make their murder cases,” Fielding said.

  “No, sir.”

  “Investigating the murders at this point could be construed as harassment if we’re not careful.”

  By we, Christie knew he was talking about her. “Yes, sir. But I’m not investigating the murders.”

  Fielding looked at her.

  “Those two murder victims were transported across state lines against their will,” Christie explained. “That’s kidnapping. Kidnapping is totally within the Bureau’s purview.”

  “Yes,” the D.O. said with a slight smile. “Yes, it is, Agent Chace. And you think Mr. Bao might have some information to share regarding that matter.”

  “I also feel someone might have threatened him. That’s why he’s reticent about coming forward with information about those two murders.”

  “Carry on, Agent Chace. But be warned—Bao’s attorney is cooling his heels in my office right now. You’ve got maybe twenty minutes with Bao before we have to charge him or let him go. As I recall, we don’t have any evidence to hold him.”

  “Yes, sir.” Christie threw her coffee cup in the trash and followed Fielding out into the narrow, sterile hallway. Fielding went left, back toward his office, and Christie nodded to Agent Perez, who was working as her second on the interview.

  Christie led the way into the room. Her shoulder holster hung empty because she’d checked her service pistol as per standard operating procedure. S.O.P. was designed to protect all the agents in the holding area.

  Bao didn’t look up. He stated flatly, “I suppose my attorney is here and this little charade is at an end.”