I was just clearing the city limits when my cell buzzed. It was Costa. Frankly, I was a little worried he’d be irritated at my assiduousness in contacting his boss’s boss’s boss.
“Before you light into me,” I began, “let me just say in my own defense that I tried to call you directly first.”
Costa laughed.
“No worries,” he said. “You got my SAC off his ass to deliver your message personally. It might be the most useful thing he’s done in weeks.”
I appreciated Costa’s spirit of cooperation.
“So fill me in on this ‘emergent situation’ that requires my immediate involvement.”
“I’ve got a name and address for the black Corolla,” I said. “It’s a car rental place in Bloomington . . . Minnesota, not Illinois. And we’ll need a warrant to grab their rental records.”
“How did you bring that bossy home?” Costa started. “Scratch that. Can you email me the details?”
Bossy? Seriously?
“First of all, don’t pretend to be all bucolic,” I said. “I know you’re a city boy. Second, I’ll contact my computer expert and make sure you get that email. Just give her a couple minutes to get the info packaged for you, okay?”
“Right.”
“And Costa,” I said. “Make sure to call me back this time, ‘cause I’ll be at Quality United in fifty minutes, with or without you. Capiche?”
“Oh,” Costa said. “Please don’t do that.”
CHAPTER 32
Pyongyang, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The Supreme Leader had summoned his generals to the palace for a progress report on the biological attack to which he had assigned the code name “Sleeping Dog.”
The generals had gathered in the presidential conference room, decked out in dress uniforms that dripped with military medals and insignia. The gathering came to attention and snapped salutes as their young leader entered.
The new Supreme Leader had inherited his position, just as his father had before him. It had been less than three years since the current potentate’s rise to power. The generals remained skeptical regarding the new president’s ability to lead the Korean nation, but none had summoned the courage to literally risk life and limb to challenge him.
As the president crossed the room toward an ornate chair at the head of the table, the generals shuffled a silent rotation – still at attention, still in full salute – so they were always facing him. The scene might have appeared comical to an outsider, but the mood inside the room was solemn.
A uniformed aide who had entered with the president now assisted him with the enormous, gilded throne.
Once their diminutive leader sat tucked majestically in his chair behind the dark, burled oak, he scanned the assembly, making eye contact with each of the more than twenty military leaders that lined the ponderous table.
At last he spoke.
“Welcome to my palace.”
At this, the generals dropped their salutes, bringing their white gloved hands together in dignified applause for their leader. The clapping continued for more than a minute before the president motioned them to their seats.
What followed was a bizarre dance consisting of generals popping up and down – reminiscent of a slow motion game of whack-a-mole – interspersed with controlled applause, which always followed the president’s lead.
At the meeting’s conclusion, the final details of operation “Sleeping Dog” had been settled. The Americans would soon learn never again to provoke the sovereign nation of North Korea.
CHAPTER 33
Bloomington, Minnesota.
Quality United Rental consisted of a 1960’s vintage steel commercial building surrounded by a few thousand square feet of paved parking lot. There was room for maybe two dozen vehicles. Whatever rental records they kept inside the glass-fronted offices shouldn’t take long to review.
I swung off American Boulevard into the lot, selecting a parking spot marked for “Customers Only.” There was no evidence of Costa. He hadn’t called me back yet either. I put the Pilot in park and punched up Costa’s cell.
“I am leaving the Federal Courthouse as we speak, warrant in hand,” Costa said, by way of answering the phone.
“I’m parked in the lot at the rental place,” I said, drumming my fingers on the center console beside me.
“Promise me you will wait until I get there.” I may have been imagining things, but Costa sounded a bit . . . I don’t know . . . nervous? Perhaps my reputation as a self-starter wasn’t entirely a good thing.
“Don’t get your undies in a bunch,” I said. “I’ll wait . . . at least for a while.”
“Just . . . wait,” he said. “If you go in there now you are going to eff everthing up. You hear me?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I do. But use your siren or something. Time’s a wastin’.”
Costa ended the call.
* * *
It took Costa twelve minutes to reach my location. Not bad. He had hurried after all. He had also brought with him a spare car, out of which spilled four guys in dark suits and sun glasses. All together, we presented a search force of five jackbooted FBI dudes and li’l old me.
I turned off the Pilot’s engine and stepped out into the summer heat.
“You sure you got enough troops there, Agent?” I asked Costa as I approached him. “There’s no POI here, you know.” I made sure to use correct FBI terminology. “Just some rental clerk with a couple file cabinets.”
“Procedure,” he said. “Shall we?” He motioned me toward the building entrance.
“Maybe I’ll grab a Diet Dew,” I said, indicating the Pepsi machine along one exterior wall. “I bet you’ll have everything searched and seized before I can pop the top.”
“Suit yourself,” Costa said, turning toward the building entrance.
I had managed to consume most of my beverage before the rental office regurgitated the men in black, two of them toting letter-size cardboard banker’s boxes containing what I supposed were rental documents.
“What took you so long?” I said, leaning my back against the Pilot’s rear window, one boot heel hooked atop the bumper.
The other four FBI guys got back in their cars. Costa walked over to me as I took another sip of Dew. He stopped a few feet short of a hug.
“That’s one helluva rental agreement they’ve got at Quality United,” I said. “Two whole boxes.
“You know, Beck,” Costa said, expelling a juicy gob on the asphalt just to my left. “You can be a pain in the ass.”
I surmised that I was now one of those people Costa was comfortable expectorating in front of.
“That all you got?” I asked.
Costa laughed.
He tossed his head at the sedan holding the seized documents.
“Thoroughness,” he said. “Need to make sure we get everything we need the first time. We might not get a second chance.”
Who could argue? Not me.
“So . . .” I said, “What do we know for sure?”
He produced a leather notepad from an inside pocket, flipping open to page one. “On the night in question,” he said, “the Corolla was leased to a company called Park Heating and Cooling. Their offices are not far from here. Will you be joining us?”
He looked like he was working up another gob. I raised an index finger. He stopped swishing.
“Couldn’t lose me if you tried,” I said, bouncing off the tailgate and around to the driver’s door.
“I didn’t think so,” Costa said, mostly to himself.
* * *
Costa had been right . . . Park Heating and Cooling wasn’t far. The two sedans filled with feds pulled to the curb a block short of our destination. I rolled up behind the second car and we all got out.
Without any obvious direction from Costa, the other five agents, now sporting FBI-emblazoned bulletproof vests, fanned out. Costa wore a vest, too. It appeared they had already devised a plan to surround the POI and
his dastardly crew.
“You really think we’re gonna find something here?” I asked, leaning on Costa’s car and squinting against the sun.
Costa cocked his head.
“Hard to say. We are damn well going to look though.”
That’s how people work when they do a good job . . . they make an effort even when there’s no guaranteed payoff.
“I’m with you,” I said. “So what’s the strategy here?” I reached into my shirt pocket, unfolded a pair of Ray Ban Aviators, and hooked them over my ears. Why should I be squinting when everyone else was sporting shades?
Costa cocked his head as though listening to something. I decided he was wearing an earpiece for short range encrypted communication with his team.
“They’re in position,” Costa said. “Now, you and I just stroll up to the front and ask for the manager. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Sometimes the simple plans work best.
As we approached, I could see the lights were off in the office. Costa tried the front door. It was locked.
Sometimes, when employing a simple plan, one must innovate . . . make adjustments on the fly.
“Front is locked,” Costa said, obviously speaking to his guys. “Tighten it up and check alternate entrances.”
Costa stepped back from the building, increasing his view of the scene . . . and his chances of survival should anyone inside start shooting through the door. I moved slightly behind Costa and his bulletproof vest.
“There’s a company panel van parked out back,” Costa reported to me. “But all doors to the building are locked and none of my agents sees any movement inside.”
“What about the van?” I asked.
“Re-establish a safe perimeter,” Costa ordered. “Then two of you guys check out the panel van.”
A few minutes passed in silence . . . at least, it was silence without an earpiece. I had no way to know what chatter the FBI folks might have been exchanging, except for Costa, of course.
After some time, Costa pressed two fingers against his ear radio.
“Repeat that,” he said. “Say again.”
Something was definitely happening.
“Let’s go,” Costa said. “You enter from the back and we’ll cover egress up here.”
I heard the thump-crack of a battering ram as one of the agents forced his way through a rear door. Then there was a lot of yelling and banging around from inside the building.
“FBI. Show yourselves.”
“Clear.”
Clang! A metal door opening?
“Clear.”
“FBI. Police, come out with your hands up.”
“Clear.”
I’m sure the yelling was typical of a police incursion. It sounded just like they do it on TV. Back when I worked for the government, my Team never announced an entry. It would have been suicidal to do so. Circumstances were different in those days, of course. It was, nevertheless, interesting to observe this coordinated entry in progress.
After a short time, the yelling and banging around stopped.
Costa again touched his earpiece.
“Nobody home,” he said to me. “Bad news in the van though.”
We started walking around the side of the building toward the rear.
“What sort of bad news?” I asked. “Half a meteor?”
As we approached the open rear doors of the van, I could see exactly what the bad news was. On the floor, between tool boxes, hanging ladders, and nylon ropes, lay the body of a man. He was oriental and wearing an industrial uniform. The embroidered patch across his back read: “Park Heating and Cooling.”
“Close it up,” Costa ordered. One of his agents swung the rear doors of the van closed, fastening the latch with a firm twist on the door handle.
“Contact HazMat and get a unit out here pronto.” The Agent’s countenance was grim.
CHAPTER 34
Ames, Iowa.
Kent Evans’ distress level was skyrocketing. He’d searched Google so often by this point that all he had to type on his laptop was the “F” to bring up links to “Foot and Mouth Disease.” It had been two days since he’d sent the anonymous email to the County Sheriff, yet the web remained silent concerning the FMD threat.
This oversight could not be the result of mere incompetence. Someone had definitely discovered the infected herd and orchestrated the fire to squelch the threat, as well as any public disclosure of it.
It had to be the federal government. Local agencies – law enforcement, health officials, emergency management officers – had neither the connections, nor the audacity, to orchestrate a cover-up. The CDC must be involved, he reasoned. Probably the FBI, too. His first email to the Ottawa County Sheriff had, no doubt, been passed along to the FBI, where it was effectively quashed.
He knew the risks of attempting a second communication, but other options seemed even worse. He would try Ottawa County one last time.
Repeating his trip to the Ames Public Library, he once again accessed the internet under the anonymous “Guest” account. He considered using the same fake email account he’d used on his last attempt to warn the Sheriff, but decided a different address – the address of a second concerned citizen – might garner closer scrutiny.
After establishing the new email address, he sent the Ottawa County Sheriff the following message:
Dear Sheriff,
Terrorists have infected your county with the dreaded Foot and Mouth Disease. Washington has actively attempted to conceal this attack, from you and from the public, solely to serve its political purposes.
For the safety of your people, and the preservation of their livelihoods, I urge you to thoroughly investigate the events at Mr. Rodney Holton’s farm. Time is of the essence!
A Concerned Citizen
Was there a way he could make this message more compelling? If there were, he didn’t know how. He’d identified the specific threat and its precise location. And this time, he’d alerted the Sheriff to the dangers of cooperating with the feds. This was the best he could do.
He took a deep breath and hit “Send.”
CHAPTER 35
Park Heating and Cooling. Bloomington, Minnesota.
While we waited for the HazMat Team, a whole new crew of FBI agents arrived dressed in Tyvek protective bio-suits with full-face gas masks and rebreathers. I couldn’t help but notice the rebreathers’ resemblance to elephant trunks that Benny had mentioned at our earlier meeting.
The agents moved quickly to cordon off the area around Park Heating with yellow Crime Scene tape. Local police had also been called in to block traffic for several blocks around what was now being called the “contamination site.”
I was beginning to feel less than confident in the efficacy of the 3M fabric mask Costa had provided for my use. Still, Costa and I had remained in open air for the entire operation. The danger for his fellow agents, who had gone inside to search the building, was much greater. They wore the same mask as I did. It probably wouldn’t make any difference for them. If during their earlier search they’d already been exposed to whatever toxin the meteor/capsule might have contained, only proper medical treatment had a chance to save them.
The real HazMat experts arrived on scene about forty-five minutes after Costa’s call. Most HazMat teams aren’t like firefighters . . . they’re government scientists who work regular jobs until an emergency call comes in. In order for them to get here so quickly, I assumed Costa must have had them on standby for the meteor mission.
The HazMat guys drove two, unmarked, utility vans. They parked one in the lot behind the building, not far from the suspect’s van . . . I mean, the POI’s van. The other remained across the street. I counted twelve yellow suits in all.
The team in the back erected a Tyvek tent with a tunnel-like air lock extending out about ten feet. The tent had its own air circulation and filtration system, as evidenced by a gas powered generator that was now humming away near the containment struc
ture and an industrial fan which was connected to the tent by a yellow accordion tube. The crew had also run water lines to the enclosure – presumably in case anyone might have need of a decon shower.
Every member of the HazMat team had a job to do, and they appeared to be executing flawlessly.
I looked over at Agent Costa, who had taken up a leaning position against the HazMat van in the street. He seemed relaxed – unruffled. He lifted the 3M mask away from his chin and spat on the asphalt, then returned the mask to its usual position.
Maybe I should take up chew. It looks . . . peaceful . . . at least when Costa does it. I pictured a vintage copper spittoon in our living room on Jefferson Avenue. Beth stepped into my mental image, hands on hips, wearing a look of disgust . . . a finger pointing down her throat for emphasis.
Nah. I’ll stick to gum. Beth makes me a better person. She always has.
I strolled over to Costa.
“Bored yet?” I asked through my mask as I assumed a position alongside him, my back resting against the van.
Costa laughed.
“Comes with the territory,” he said, his voice muffled by the fabric mask. “There’s probably nothing to worry about. No blood running out of my ears, anyway.” He leaned his head back against the van and stared up at the thin clouds that had begun to streak the sky.
“That’s comforting,” I said. I didn’t feel comforted. Then again, I wasn’t really worried either.
“The guy in the van might have been strangled,” I offered, “or maybe drowned.”
Costa laughed again.
“Yeah,” he said. “He has a swimming pool in his delivery truck. It just ran dry, so we didn’t notice it.” Costa paused. “Did you notice his mouth?”
“No,” I said. “I couldn’t see it from my angle. Foamy?” Poison victims frequently foam at the mouth.
“Like he’d gone dunking for apples in a tub of Burma Shave.”
“I see,” I said. “Probably not drowning then.” Costa didn’t respond. He didn’t need to.
9 More Killer Thrillers Page 89