The Queen pbf-5

by Steven James

  She let her gaze drift through the doorway to the living room, toward the muskie hanging on the wall. “I don’t believe in senselessly killing animals.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “All native cultures hunted, fished, lived off the land.”

  She almost said it, almost did: Yeah, but they respected the natural world, they didn’t just shoot things or snag hooks in their mouths to get trophies, but she caught herself. She didn’t even want to be having this conversation with him, not since he’d been so nice to her.

  “I’m all for living in harmony with the natural world,” she said vaguely. “And of course I know that for one thing to live another must die.” She had more to say but left it at that.

  Death.

  Why did they have to be talking about death again?

  You’re a killer yourself, Tessa.

  You took a man’s life.

  Senselessly killing animals.

  No, but it wasn’t senseless, he was Sean saw her look toward the other room again. “It’s not such a simple issue, dealing with the deer,” he said. “The whitetail population.”

  She quietly ate her spaghetti.

  “You probably already know this, but since wolves, the natural predators for whitetail, are so scarce these days-”

  “Only because of human encroachment and habitat destruction. There aren’t enough undeveloped woodlands left for pack displacement and repopulation.”

  Easy, Tessa. You don’t need to be arguing with him.

  Sean didn’t seem surprised by her words. “Yes, but now, as things stand, without hunters, the deer herd in this state would get too large, and eventually disease would ravage their numbers. Is it more compassionate to let thousands of deer die slow and lingering deaths than to put some of them down quickly, preserving as much meat as possible for food?”

  Despite her desire to bow out of the debate, she felt herself getting riled up. “Okay, but you don’t have to mount their heads; celebrate their death.”

  “I celebrate their beauty, their majesty.”

  “Do me a favor and don’t celebrate my beauty when I die.”

  Oh, that was just brilliant, Tessa. Way to go!

  Sean was quiet for a long time.

  At last he pointed to a framed photo that she hadn’t seen before, propped on the countertop by the stove. It was a picture of her at her mom’s wedding. She was laughing, free and easy, and it was hard for her to even remember what that felt like-to be lighthearted, to smile and mean it, to let something beautiful sweep her away.

  “Amber and I already do,” he said.

  His words stunned her. She’d never even met her stepaunt, but the woman cared about her, celebrated her.

  Sean walked to the stove, took the plateful of sausage he’d cooked, and tipped it into a Tupperware container. “This is venison sausage from a doe that ran in front of my truck last month. I didn’t want her life to be wasted.” His voice wasn’t sharp, just authoritative. “Senselessly.”

  Tessa kept quiet. She’d said enough.

  He gestured toward her plate. “Hey, be sure to get plenty to eat. It’ll help keep you warm.”

  “Warm?”

  “We’re going snowmobiling.”

  “Where?”

  “I know you wanted to see Pat. I’m going to make that happen.”

  52

  Cassandra joined her team in the basement of the Schoenberg Inn.

  Becker, Ted, and Millicent were there, along with the seven team members she’d kept hidden from Chekov.

  “As you know,” she began, “the facility has three levels, all underground…”

  It was possible that Lien-hua’s phone had been compromised, so after making sure the room phone wasn’t bugged, I called Sheriff Tait, brought him up to speed concerning the team’s 9:00 briefing. Then, I phoned Callaway, and right after he answered, Jake showed up at my door. I let him in, and he took a seat near the window.

  Callaway hadn’t been able to locate anyone in the area by the name of Kayla Tatum. “I did find out that a Kayla Tatum who lives in Eau Claire didn’t come in for work at the hair salon this morning,” he told me. “Her boss said Miss Tatum didn’t call in sick, just never showed.”

  A deep sinking feeling. “Thanks.”

  Momentarily after I hung up, Lien-hua and Natasha arrived, and I asked Lien-hua if I could hang on to her phone for the time being. “Just until I get mine back from Sean.”

  And until I hear back from Alexei Chekov about a meeting time.

  She looked at me oddly. “Sure.”

  “All right.” I set her phone on the desk beside me. “What do we know?”

  “You were going to tell us why we were searching the motel for Alexei Chekov,” Jake said pointedly.

  “In a sec.” Although earlier, while I’d been speaking on the phone with Alexei and then typing up the conversation, there hadn’t been much time for them to work, I said, “Quick update. Tell me what you found.” Being evasive like this wasn’t characteristic of me, and by the looks on their faces I could tell they were surprised, but for the time being they didn’t challenge me.

  Natasha went first. “There hasn’t been any chatter regarding terrorist threats concerning our nuclear subs. The DoD is working on the deployment route analysis.”

  Jake spoke up. “The profile on Reiser and Basque doesn’t overlap with what we know about Chekov. Lien-hua concurs. Two completely different behavioral and psychological makeups.”

  Admittedly the connection had been a long shot.

  “We took another look at Reiser’s background, though,” Lien-hua said. “His work history, the locations of the victim residences.” I already knew Reiser had lived in La Crosse, Oshkosh, Superior, and South Chicago before moving to Merrill; some of those locations were near where victims had lived, some were not. She went on, “One of the videos found at his trailer contained news coverage of the murder of Aleste Norkum from WKOW in Madison. But Reiser was living in La Crosse at the time.”

  “And we have newspaper clippings from the Rockford Register Star and the Business Courier,” Jake added.

  Hmm.

  We discussed Reiser briefly, then, switching gears, Lien-hua asked, “Did you set up a visit to the ELF site?”

  “Still a few details to nail down.”

  “So what about the motel search, Pat?” Natasha cut in. “C’mon. What’s going on?”

  It’s time. Let’s see how this goes…

  “Okay. I analyzed the topography and road layout of the area, taking into account the known locations relative to Alexei’s movements: the snowmobile trails he chose on the way to the Chippewa River, the roads that led from the bridge where he killed the truck driver to the parking lot where he left the semi, and-”

  “It showed you his familiarity with the region,” Natasha observed.

  I nodded. “And it gives me an idea of the way he forms cognitive maps of his surroundings. I was also able to use the location on Highway K where State Trooper Wayland pulled him over.”

  All of this was true. However, the data I was working from was by no means comprehensive, and when I’d run the numbers I’d gotten a bimodal result of two likely hot spots. The motel was actually on the fringe of the northeastern one.

  The only real hiccup here was that I’d done the data analysis after, not before, our motel search.

  “Using the same journey-to-crime models I use when I’m tracking serial offenders, I worked backward to identify the most likely places Alexei might be using as his home base while he’s in the region-”

  “And this was one of them,” Jake finished my thought.

  “Yes, and-”

  “Wait a minute, Pat.” It was Lien-hua. “You mentioned a moment ago that Alexei killed the truck driver. That hasn’t been established yet.”

  “I…” Don’t lie, but be careful with the truth. “I was assuming he did.”

  “No,” Jake said, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “You’re the only person I kn
ow who doesn’t assume. Not during an investigation.”

  Lien-hua studied me with her dark, knowing eyes.

  “Call it a working hypothesis,” I said.

  No one looked particularly satisfied with my answer.

  I felt conflicted.

  Of course I wanted to tell them about the phone call from Alexei, but I honestly believed that Kayla Tatum’s life was on the line. Somehow Alexei was monitoring us, and I didn’t feel I could take the chance that he would find out I’d told them and then kill her.

  On the other hand, even though I wanted to buy time until I heard from Alexei about a meeting place, I couldn’t risk progress on the investigation solely on the word of an internationally wanted assassin.

  There was one option that would both give me a little time to see if he’d contact me again and also move the investigation forward.

  “There’s only so much we can do from here,” I said. “We need to get out there to get eyes on the ground at the old ELF site.”

  “How do you propose we do that?” Jake asked me. “We don’t have any snowmobiles, the roads are still closed, and I can guarantee the national forest service access roads haven’t even been plowed out yet.”

  “When I was at the sawmill I noticed a snowmobile trail groomer. Those things are beasts and can plow through almost anything. There’s probably only room in the cab for two or three of us, but it’s a start. It’ll get us to the site no matter how much snow has drifted across the roads and trails.”

  Nods around the room. “Good idea,” Lien-hua said.

  Natasha flagged my attention. “I still have plenty of work to do processing the physical evidence from the Pickron house and a lot to follow up on with the Lab. If there’s only room for a couple people, I’ll stay here.”

  “Perfect.”

  While it was true that the trail groomer was probably our best bet, it would likely take a while for Windwalker or one of his crew to deliver it here, especially if no one was at the sawmill today, and in this weather, I thought that was a real possibility.

  Hopefully you’ll hear from Alexei by then.

  I looked at my watch. “It’s close to noon. Get whatever you can round up to eat, it might be a long day-Lien-hua, I saw you had some granola bars, maybe we can dive into your supply.”

  “No problem. I brought plenty.”

  None of the people stuck here at the motel had access to food either, and the roads still weren’t open to civilians. “Natasha,” I said, “why don’t you see if you can reach Tait, have him get a snowplow up here to deliver some food to the motel guests. Or at least someone on a snowmobile with a few bags of groceries.”

  “Got it.”

  “Good.” I stood. “Jake, call the sawmill, get the foreman on the line. Just ask for Windwalker. If the place is closed-”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Okay. Let us know as soon as you find out. In the meantime, let’s see how much progress we can make from here.”

  53

  Cassandra gazed at the ten people gathered with her around the dusty pool table in the basement of the Schoenberg Inn: four military-trained operatives, three hackers, and the three Eco-Tech ideologues she’d allowed Chekov to meet.

  Donnie Pickron was still chained to the steel work table in the neighboring room.

  Earlier, Becker, true to his Eco-Tech loyalties, had suggested that the team members choose environmental code names for this mission. It’d seemed a little sophomoric to Cassandra, but she’d finally acquiesced and allowed him to go ahead with the idea.

  So now, she was Solstice, he was Hurricane-wait, Cane for short. Around the table were Tsunami, Eclipse, Cyclone, Equator, Typhoon, Squall, Cirrus, Gale, and Tempest. A little tough to keep straight, but manageable.

  Solstice’s computer sat in the middle of the billiards table.

  She tapped her remote control, and a hologram appeared, hovering about two feet above the table. The light-blue, three-dimensional image showed a labyrinth of tunnels fingering out from a multilevel control center buried deep beneath the earth. Although she was familiar with the location of one entrance to the base, her sources told her that there were two others, miles away from the station itself, connected only through these extensive tunnels. Once inside the base, she would discern which was which. She planned to use one of those to escape when all this was over.

  So far, as much as possible, she’d kept the specifics of the mission to a minimum, on a strict need-to-know basis, and only four members of her team had seen the schematics already.

  “That thing’s a fortress,” one of her men said. He was the hacker who’d chosen to be called Equator. And based on his circumference it was a fitting name.

  “It might look that way at first glance,” Solstice acknowledged, “but as we’ve discussed, it’s only manned by a skeleton crew: four technicians and four Masters-at-Arms, one of whom will be off-duty when we arrive.” She drew her team’s attention to the top level of the hologram, which lay twenty-seven meters below the surface. “One of them will be based here, probably waiting for us when we arrive. We neutralize him and move down. Tempest, he’s yours.”

  “Got it.” He was a former Marine Corps Special Ops unconventional warfare specialist built like a brick wall, and she believed him.

  “The next level is the living quarters: a bunk area, a galley, recreation room, bathrooms, library, fitness center, weight room, showers, storage, conference area.”

  “How do you know all this?” Tsunami asked her. “How did you get these maps?”

  “If I wasn’t good at what I do, we wouldn’t be here,” she told him bluntly, then indicated toward the hologram again. “Lower level: the generator room, electromagnetic signal production facility, washroom, break room, and the control center. This is where it’s all going to happen. Tsunami, Eclipse, Tempest, you’ll take out the two MAs. Here.” She pointed. “And here.”

  Tsunami slowly rotated the tip of his knife, a seven-inch CRKT Ultima, against the calloused palm of his left hand. “So take ’em out. You’re talking about-”

  “We’ve been over this.”

  Tsunami glanced toward the corner of the room, where the automatic weapons lay. Ordnance canisters containing triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, sat next to them-something she planned to use to destroy the base when everything was finished. Tsunami continued, “I know, I’m just saying-what are the weapons for if we’re not gonna use ’em?”

  “Can anyone please tell Tsunami why we don’t want to kill the three Masters-at-Arms tonight?”

  Eclipse spoke up, “We may need additional information. It’ll be better to keep our options open. We keep people alive as long as they serve a useful purpose.” She smiled, blew Tsunami a kiss.

  He stopped spinning the tip of the knife and laid the blade flat against his hand. Gave her a leering smile. “I can think of a useful purpose for those little lips of yours.”

  “Dream on.”

  “All right,” Solstice reined them in. “The off-duty MA is a wild card. I’m not sure if he’ll be in the crew quarters or one of the tunnels. In either case, we move through the facility, find the men, Tase ’em, cuff ’em, then collect everyone in the rec room.” She nodded toward Eclipse. “You’ll be in charge of watching the hostages.”

  “Guarding a room full of tied-up sailors? I think I can handle that.”

  “Every girl’s dream,” Tsunami said.

  Solstice turned to the woman on her left, the Eco-Tech operative whose real name was Millicent Alman. “Cyclone, are you all set to take out the radio communication?” Although Solstice didn’t know what outside party the people inside the base might try to contact via RF, she did know that they had the capability.

  Cyclone held up the portable tactical radio frequency, or RF, jamming device.

  “You’ve tested it?”

  “Ready to go.” She indicated toward a sprawling coil of thick wire and an electronic relay device near a stack of videotapin
g equipment. “As far as the wireless signal that we’ll need in order to post the video, I should be able to rig the line in the shaft on our way down. I don’t see any trouble with us getting online to monitor JWICS.”

  “Okay.” Solstice turned to address the group as a whole. “Sentries are most alert during the beginning and the end of their shifts. The MA on the top level will be fresh, as well as the one in the comm center. The other one should be in the middle of his rounds when we move in.”

  “Hang on,” Tsunami said.

  She assessed him coolly. “Yes?” She’d never liked this guy’s attitude. Cane had been responsible for recruiting Tsunami, and now Solstice decided she’d made a mistake handing that responsibility over to him.

  “Earlier you mentioned disabling the base’s communication center, but we’re talking about…” He ticked off on his fingers. “A radio base station, a satellite uplink, internet access, telephone landli-”

  “Haven’t you even been listening?” Cane interrupted. “They don’t use the internet in there! That’s the whole purpose behind the station-stay offline so it can’t be hacked into by-”

  “Okay,” Tsunami said sharply. “I get that. But the crew will undoubtably have cell phones.”

  “No mobile devices are allowed at the base,” Solstice told him. “It could give hackers a window to get in.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Tsunami countered.

  “Buy it. I’ve looked into it.”

  “Besides,” said Cane, “this thing was built to withstand a direct nuclear hit. It’s encased in concrete, ninety feet underground. You think a cell phone’s gonna work down there?” His gaze wandered toward Cyclone. “Without that equipment?”

  A stony silence.

  “And as far as satellite communication-” Cane began.

  “I know,” Tsunami cut in, “they need an aboveground antennae, but the power lines leading to the forest service maintenance building? Come on. Really? That’s a stretch. I don’t think any of this was thought through like it should’ve been.”