“So you think it was a setup?”
“I think they knew who Annabelle and Reuben were before they walked in that bar.”
“And they tried to kill them?”
“Operative word, tried. I know Reuben got shot twice, but they were both nonfatal wounds. Deliberately nonfatal, I believe. He’s as brave as they come, but there’s no way you’re overrunning a position fortified with machine guns by charging at them with a pistol. And they would not have retreated. By all combat logic Reuben should be dead.”
“So they let him live, you mean? Why?”
“So Annabelle and Reuben could come back and tell us what they heard. Another red herring, another dead end to run down, wasting time. And then the Latinos end up shot soon thereafter. More smoke and mirrors. More clues to hunt down that will take us farther from the truth.”
“And someone is also cleaning house,” said Chapman. “By killing them.”
“That too.”
“If you’re right, your country is really letting Turkekul have a lot of rope. He might kill everyone before he hangs himself.”
“Maybe.”
“So now Sykes?” said Chapman.
“Yes. Now Sykes.”
CHAPTER 69
ONLY THEY COULDN’T FIND SYKES. He had not returned from the break and none of his crew knew where he was. They searched the park and the adjacent areas.
Stone got on his cell phone and reported this to Ashburn, along with what they had found out from Judy Donohue.
Ashburn said, “I’ll get a BOLO out on him ASAP. He couldn’t have gotten far.”
Stone put his phone away and looked at Chapman. “I don’t like how this is shaking out.”
“Meaning they always seem to be one step ahead?”
“Meaning I’m feeling manipulated again.”
“He might have seen Donohue slip away to come and talk to us and panicked. Why don’t we get in the car and start doing a grid search? Maybe he’s somewhere hoofing it on foot.”
They drove out and turned onto Pennsylvania Avenue on the east side of the White House. They had gone two blocks when it happened.
The sound of the shot wasn’t muffled. It could be heard clearly above the ordinary sounds of the city. People in the streets started running for cover and screaming.
The traffic stopped and horns started blaring.
Stone and Chapman jumped from the car and raced forward.
They heard a siren drawing near.
They ran from car to car, peering inside.
The siren grew louder. Then another one joined it.
Chapman looked behind her. Two cop cars were cutting through the traffic heading their way. Stone saw this too and picked up his pace. He reached in his jacket for his gun. Chapman accelerated on the other side of the line of stalled traffic and mimicked his movements. They finally reached the obstacle in the road—two cars in a fender bender that Stone sensed was much more. An older man was leaning against the car in front looking very shaken and scared. As Stone looked down he could see the man had vomited on the street.
As he approached, Stone held up his badge and called out, “Sir, what’s wrong?”
The older man pointed at the car behind his, where the two bumpers were locked together. Stone checked the license plate of this car. Government issue. His spirits sank. He peered inside the car. “Damn.”
Chapman was looking in from the passenger window. “Good God.”
The two cop cars screeched to a stop and men in blue jumped out. They saw Stone and Chapman holding their weapons and pulled their own.
“Police!” they cried out, their guns aimed at the pair.
Stone and Chapman held up their badges high so the cops could see them.
Stone barked, “Federal agents. Got a homicide here. FBI just put a BOLO out on this guy. But somebody got to him first.”
The cops crept forward, checked Stone’s creds and looked in the car.
Sykes was lying back against the driver’s seat. The windshield was cracked. There was a hole burned into his forehead from the shot. Blood and brain matter were splattered around the car’s interior from the exit wound.
It was no wonder the other driver had thrown up after seeing this, thought Stone.
Chapman saw the cell phone on the front seat. Using a handkerchief, she scooped it up and checked the call log. “He got a call ten minutes ago. From a blocked phone. Maybe the techs can dig it out.”
Stone nodded, looking around. “Right. Okay, he got the call, made a run for it.”
Chapman added, “They set him up. Knew somehow he’d have to take this route. Lined the shot up.”
Stone was now looking straight ahead, searching for where the shot had probably come from.
One of the cops said, “What do you need us to do?”
Stone kept looking while he talked. “Call in backup and secure the crime scene.”
He pulled his phone and called Ashburn, filling her in.
A string of expletives exploded over the phone. Having sufficiently vented, Ashburn said, “I’m sending reinforcements right now. We’ll coordinate with D.C. Metro.”
Stone clicked off. “Cavalry’s coming.”
“How do you want to break down the search?” Chapman asked.
A woman who’d been standing on the sidewalk came running up to them. She was about twenty, with kneeless jeans and an iPhone clutched in her right hand and a shopping bag in her left.
“Sir? Ma’am?”
They turned to her. She pointed to a building farther down the street. “I was looking up at that building as I was walking and I saw a flash of light. Then I heard the car crash. I think that’s where… where it came from.”
Stone said quickly, “Could you tell which floor?”
The woman looked at the building, silently counting. “Sixth. At least I think.”
They could hear other sirens coming as the backup flew toward them. Stone yelled to the two cops first on the scene to follow him and Chapman. As they ran toward the building he pulled out his phone and let Ashburn know about this development, giving her the address.
Stone put his gun away and ran as fast as he could, his gaze darting up to the sixth floor, waiting for another flash of light to appear.
CHAPTER 70
“YOU DON’T THINK THE SHOOTER is still in the building, do you?” said Chapman as they reached the entrance and ripped the doors open. Stone had ordered one cop to guard the front of the building and the other the rear.
Stone didn’t answer. He held up his badge to the security guard who approached them. “You have a possible sniper in this building. Did you see anyone come in today who looked suspicious or who was carrying an unusually shaped bag?”
The guard shook his head. “No one like that. But I just finished making my rounds, so someone might have slipped in then.”
Stone said, “The FBI is on the way. What other exits do you have here beside the lobby?”
“This way.” He led them to a door off the lobby. “Down that hall and to the right. Takes you to the loading dock in the rear.”
As they started off the man said, “You want me to go with you?”
“No, stay here. There’s a police officer posted out front. Anything happens you get to him.”
“Okay, good luck.”
Stone and Chapman darted through the door and down the hall. They had only gone about twenty feet when she grabbed his arm.
“What?” he said.
“That security guard?”
“What about him?”
“Do they normally wear gloves?”
Stone flinched, wheeled around and sprinted back the way they had come.
The door was locked now. Chapman shot the handle off and kicked it open. They rushed back into the lobby. There was no sign of the guard.
Outside the cop told them that the man had come out and headed into the alley.
“He said you told him to help secure the rear of the building and—”
<
br /> Chapman and Stone ran off before he finished.
They found the security guard’s uniform next to a Dumpster. Stone and Chapman peered around.
“He can’t be more than a few seconds ahead of us,” she whispered.
“Thanks to you,” said Stone. “If you hadn’t figured out—”
She hit him hard, knocking him down an instant before the round slammed into the side of the Dumpster at the spot where Stone’s head had just been. Chapman rolled, took aim and fired. Her shots chipped concrete off the side of the building, but the shooter was already gone.
Stone had rolled over on his belly and had his gun aimed at the same spot.
“See anything?” he hissed.
She shook her head. “He’s gone.”
The cop from the front, obviously having heard the shots, came running.
“Stay down,” exclaimed Chapman, and the cop went to his knees and then scuttled forward until he was behind the Dumpster too.
“Backup’s here,” he said. “You guys okay?”
Stone sat up and looked at Chapman. “Thanks to her I am.”
Chapman shrugged. “More luck than skill, really.”
“I’ll take it. That slug was going right for my head.”
The three of them made their way cautiously down the alley. They picked up their pace when they heard the car race off. By the time they got to the next intersection, there was no sign of a vehicle or the shooter. Stone and Chapman ran down the alley and then slowly jogged back.
They both stopped when they reached the cop.
He was squatting over his partner, who was lying behind some trash cans with his throat slit, his eyes staring blankly up.
As they knelt over the body, Chapman said, “There must have been more than one guy. He wouldn’t have had time to shoot at us and then do this.”
“He had backup of his own,” said Stone quietly, as the cop sat on his haunches wiping tears from his eyes over the death of his partner.
“These guys are unbelievably organized,” said Chapman. “I mean, who the hell are they?”
Stone put a hand on the shoulder of the cop. “I’m sorry.”
The officer glanced up and nodded and then returned to staring at his dead colleague.
Stone straightened, turned and walked back down the alley as the wail of sirens reached fever pitch.
George Sykes, a D.C. police officer and a security guard were dead. They’d found the real security guard in a storage room of the lobby with a single gunshot wound burned into his forehead.
The sniper had disappeared.
Stone had given descriptions of him to Ashburn and a BOLO had gone out, but none of them were holding out much hope. The consensus was that the killer was either laying low or already on private wings heading out of the country.
Stone and Chapman were now in a car sitting outside the modest residence of George Sykes, located in Silver Spring, Maryland. It was in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood with kids on bikes, moms talking in front yards and dads cutting the grass. Or it would have been if the street hadn’t been evacuated and then shut down by the FBI.
Agent Ashburn was in the front passenger seat while another agent was at the wheel.
“What do we know about him?” Stone asked.
“Wife died three years ago. Kids all grown and gone. Been with the National Park Service his entire career. No problems.”
“And six grandchildren,” said Stone. He glanced down at the man’s file. “He’s not much older than me. He must have started early.”
“Money problems?” Chapman asked.
Ashburn nodded. “That was one of the first things we looked at. Didn’t find anything there. But we dug a little deeper and shook out an account that was tied to Sykes. Recent deposit of a hundred thou.”
“So someone paid him off to play along.”
Stone said, “What exactly did they pay him for?”
Ashburn answered. “Bomb in the root ball. What if someone started to poke around there? He would steer them clear. Make sure wherever the bomb was in the dirt that no one got close to it.”
“So he betrayed his country for a hundred thousand dollars?” said Stone. “A grandfather of six?”
Ashburn shrugged. “I’ve seen people do it for a lot less. And six grandchildren eat a lot.”
Chapman added, “And that might’ve only been the first payment.”
“Right,” said Ashburn. “And they made sure the only payment. MO is consistent. They’re eliminating their team, closing up the tunnel. So no leads for us.”
“The sniper took a risk by impersonating a guard,” noted Stone. “We saw his face.”
“But like we concluded, the guy is long gone. And six months from now he’ll have a new face.”
“Lot of money behind this,” said Chapman. “That’s clear.”
Ashburn hiked her eyebrows. “Like a country’s treasury at work?”
“Russia,” said Chapman.
“I’ve heard that theory floated around more and more,” said Ashburn. “Cartel and government maybe working hand in hand. Tough competition.”
Stone nodded at Sykes’s house. “So what are we waiting for? We don’t need a warrant. The guy was shot. We can go to his house to investigate. He was a federal employee.”
Ashburn said, “That’s true, but considering that these folks employ bombs, I’ve sent for a bomb detection dog to go in before we do. That’s also why we’ve evacuated the neighborhood.”
The canine unit came and Stone watched as the dog methodically swept the yard and then entered the house through a back door opened by an FBI agent. Ten minutes later the search was complete and the all clear was given.
It didn’t take long to go through the house, but they found very little of help. As they walked back to their car Ashburn said, “We’ll send in a forensics team to give it a scrubdown, but I doubt it will yield much.”
“Still have to do it,” said Stone.
“Still have to,” agreed Ashburn.
“Has his family been notified?” asked Chapman.
“In the process. That’s another place that might get us somewhere.”
“He might have let something slip to a family member, you mean,” said Chapman.
“If we’re real lucky.”
“I’m not feeling that lucky,” said Stone.
Ashburn dropped them back at their car and they drove off. Chapman was at the wheel while Stone seemed lost in thought.
“What do you think?”
“I’m thinking how much more carnage before they yank Fuat Turkekul and make him talk.”
“So you think he’s really guilty?”
“I don’t have enough information to make that determination. But the status quo is not working for us.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“I haven’t thought of one yet.”
“So who might be the next target in the chain?”
“If Turkekul is involved?” Stone glanced at her.
Chapman said, “That’s what I was thinking too. And I know she’s your friend, but what about—”
“Adelphia is not part of this.”
“Are you really sure? By your admission she’s been out of your life for a while.”
Stone gazed at her and then put a hand on her shoulder. “How do you feel about breaking a few rules?”
“Until I met you, not too keen. But now I think I’m really getting good at it. So we’re going after Turkekul?”
“No,” said Stone.
“Who, then?”
“I can feel the other side leading us around again. They expect us to go left. Instead, this time we’re going to the right.”
CHAPTER 71
STONE MADE ONE STOP to get some information he needed while Chapman waited in the car. When he climbed back in he gave the directions to her.
On the drive over he said, “They talked to one of Sykes’s coworkers. They said when Sykes took the call he got very pale an
d ran to his car.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know exactly, but I have a pretty good idea.”
They reached the address, a townhouse community in Chantilly, Virginia. Chapman parked where Stone told her to, but he didn’t get out of the car.
“We wait,” he said.
A half hour later a truck pulled up to the front of a small town house thirty feet from where they were parked and a woman got out.
Chapman recognized her immediately. “That’s—”
“Yes, it is,” said Stone as he opened the car door.
They reached her front door an instant before she closed it. Stone stuck his foot in the gap. The woman turned around, startled. Stone had his badge out.
“Remember us?”
Judy Donohue, who was still dressed in her National Park Service uniform, looked from him to Chapman. “I… Yes, I do. Are you here about poor Mr. Sykes? I heard about it. It was awful.”
“Can we come in?”
“Um, why?”
“Just to ask a few more questions.”
“But I told you all I know.”
“In light of recent developments other questions have come to mind.” Stone pushed the door all the way open and Donohue was forced to step back as Stone crossed the threshold.
“Hey,” she said angrily. “You can’t do that.”
“I just did,” said Stone. Chapman closed the door behind her and Stone moved farther into the house.
“This is illegal, isn’t it?” said Donohue.
Stone glanced at Chapman and then stared at Donohue. “I don’t think so, but then again, I’m not a lawyer.”
“I’d like you to leave. Right now.”
“Why? Do you have something to hide?”
Donohue looked nervous and said, “Of course not.”
“I found out you’re leaving the Park Service. Why is that? I thought being a girl from the big outdoors that it would be the perfect career for you.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’ve been thinking about it for a few months now. And after everything that happened, and Mr. Sykes being shot. It was just time.”
Stone inched closer to her. “So where’s your plane ticket to? A place that doesn’t have extradition with this country?”
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