by Dan Ames
“Sure. But let me share something else with you.” Pauling led him through the process of how she had originally acquired the files. The arrival of the mysterious package, the reference to Reacher, her discovery of who the original investigator was. “So, ultimately, I connected the dots. I was chosen for a reason. And I think my relationship with Tallon was one of them. And the only thing that connects Tallon with Jessica Halbert is the mission you two shared. So that’s why I’m asking.”
Maitling nodded.
“Fair enough,” he said. He took the smallish paper cup filled with espresso and tossed down the rest of the coffee. “Okay, I can’t really get into too many specifics. All I can tell you is the mission was a classic smash and grab. Smash our way in, grab the guy we needed to, turn him over to an evacuation squad, gather whatever intel we could find, and leave.”
He stopped there.
“Was the mission successful?”
“Of course. We were the best.” He frowned at her like he was insulted by the question.
“Nothing happened with Jessica Halbert?”
“No. She was support at the launch phase. She didn’t even come with us.”
Pauling was puzzled by that response.
“Did anything happen during that phase? Anything out of the ordinary with her?”
“Nothing. Everything was smooth.” Maitling held out a hand and slid it across the table horizontally to emphasize his point.
“How about when you got back?”
He shook his head. “Nope. We got back and it was all done like clockwork. The bad guy was taken away to be interrogated offsite. Evidence had been bagged and tagged. The team there catalogued everything, and we all went our separate ways.”
Pauling studied the man across from her. As an FBI agent, she had interviewed many, many witnesses. She knew he wasn’t lying to her, but she also knew that he wasn’t telling her the whole story. He would be the kind of guy that would tell the truth, but he would put the onus on her to ask the right question.
“The mission itself went smoothly? No surprises?”
For the first time, he hesitated and she knew she’d asked the right question.
“We lost two men.”
“Wait, out of four?”
“Five,” Maitling said. “There were five of us.”
Pauling immediately knew the files had been scrubbed even more thoroughly than she’d thought. Perhaps doctored would be the more appropriate term.
“You lost almost half your team and you called it a success?” Pauling let a tone of exasperation and skepticism creep into her voice.
“The mission was accomplished. Casualties happen.” Maitling shrugged his considerable shoulders.
“How? How did they die?”
Again the hesitation. She was zeroing in on the thing he really didn’t want to discuss.
“One died from gunshot wounds on the helicopter ride back to base. The other never made it out.”
“What do you mean, never made it out?”
“He was captured by the locals.”
“Michael Tallon left someone behind? Alive? I find that hard to believe.”
“We didn’t know he was still alive. We thought he was dead.”
“That’s a pretty big mistake.”
Maitling let out a long, ragged breath. He crumpled the paper coffee cup in his hand and tossed it into a wastebasket a few feet away. When he turned back to Pauling, he leaned forward and put his elbows on the table.
“Zenz told us he was dead and there was no way we could go back and get his body,” he growled at her. “Remember those scenes from Somalia? That’s what it was like. There were hundreds of armed local militia. We barely made it out before air support arrived.”
“Why did Zenz say the fifth man was dead if he wasn’t?”
Maitling looked her directly in the eye. “I can only go so far with this, Ms. Pauling.”
“Lauren.”
“Here’s what I can tell you, and it’s all I can tell you.” He put his phone in his pocket and leaned back in his chair. “Extended time in the bush can do things to a man. Everyone deals with it in their own way. Some guys work out like crazy. Others drink. Others retreat into themselves. Occasionally, some guys will use their time in the field as an escape. Do you know what I mean?”
“No.”
“When you’re an American soldier, backed by the most powerful army in the world, you feel like a god. Some of us accept the responsibility wisely. Others see it as an opportunity to let their basest instincts run wild. Now do you understand?”
Pauling was beginning to. “This fifth man was doing that? How?”
“Let’s just say there was a 12-year-old local girl who lost her chance to be a 13-year-old in the worst way possible.”
Pauling watched the movie play out in her mind. She was still missing something and then it clicked into place. “Zenz tried to stop him,” she stated. “He was shot by the fifth man, and Zenz shot back. He thought he killed him and left him to die. But you guys have drones all over the place. You must have somehow learned he wasn’t dead. The locals got him and discovered what he’d done to the young girl. Maybe even caught him in the act.”
“Like I said,” Maitling replied, holding out his hands in a helpless gesture. “I can only go so far and this is it.”
“What was this man’s name?”
Maitling just shook his head.
“And Jessica Halbert was nowhere near this?”
“No, ma’am.”
It made no sense, Pauling thought.
She was still missing a key piece of the story.
She needed to talk to Michael Tallon.
Chapter Thirty
The man sitting across the street watching Pauling and Maitling couldn’t take his eyes off of the woman.
An older female like this Lauren Pauling was similar to the less desirable cuts of meat on a steer.
Not the filet mignon or the New York strip, but the tougher flank steak.
That’s okay, he thought. Quite a bit could be done to enhance the flavor and perhaps tenderize her a bit.
Who knew, once he sunk his teeth into her he might enjoy the taste.
When she’d left, Maitling had waited a few minutes and then gone in the opposite direction, toward home.
The man across the street set aside his fantasies regarding Pauling. He decided first things first. He needed to take care of Maitling, who was a lot more cautious than Doug Franzen.
Maitling had taken care to meet Pauling in a public place, and continued to remain vigilant no matter where or what he was doing.
The man across the street had done his surveillance, however, and it had paid off.
When they’d served together, the man had remembered Maitling’s distaste for doing laundry. Most of them did, but Maitling bitched about the chore constantly.
So now, once he’d started keeping tabs on his old comrade, he’d seen that Maitling always had his clothes laundered, and his shirts and pants dry cleaned.
It was always delivered on the same day at around the same time.
That consistency in a pattern was a sign that Maitling wasn’t quite the soldier he used to be, or it was the one luxury he permitted himself.
In any event, it would be his downfall.
Now the man drove from the coffee shop and arrived at Maitling’s apartment building just as Maitling went inside.
It was an older building from the 50s that had been well-maintained. He imagined the rooms were spacious and affordable for an ex-soldier surviving on a military pension and disability benefits.
He parked the car around the corner, put on surgical gloves, a white baseball cap like the laundry delivery person wore, and pulled two shirts on hangers wrapped in plastic from his trunk. He slid the short-barreled shotgun inside one of the shirts, and held it by the stock with the same hand that held the hangers.
He crossed the street and waited until a resident opened the door to Maitling’s building and went inside.
Maitling lived on the second floor, so the man ducked into the stairwell, climbed the steps and made his way to the apartment with the number 209 marked on the door.
He gave a soft knock.
The man kept his face turned slightly downward so Maitling could see both the baseball cap and the edge of the plastic hangers with the shirts.
He heard footsteps, a pause as the light changed beneath the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. Sounds of two deadbolts being thrown and then the door creaked open.
The man lifted the shirts as if he was worried they were going to touch the floor, and as soon as the edge of Maitling’s body was visible he fired the shotgun.
It was a 12 gauge. A model named the Mossberg Defender and the shells in the magazine were double-aught, designed to cut a man in half, which is what it did with Maitling.
The sound of the shotgun firing was obscenely loud. It sounded more like an explosion than gunfire.
The blast knocked Maitling onto his back, with most of his midsection blown apart. Blood was everywhere.
The man with the shotgun noted that Maitling had come to the door with a gun in his hand, just in case. But even then, he’d not been cautious enough.
Sloppy, he thought.
The man stepped into the apartment and swung the door shut behind him, although it didn’t close correctly as jagged chunks of wood became caught in the doorjamb.
He walked forward and watched as Maitling’s legs twitched and danced. He was trying to crawl away from his attacker, but nothing was working correctly.
The man took off his hat and with one hand, wiped some of the makeup off his face, so Maitling could see the scars.
“Remember me, Matey?” he laughed.
“You…bastard…” Maitling whispered. Blood gushed in a river of red as the dying man’s heart pumped its last few beats.
“The sins of the past,” the man said. He stepped over Maitling, racked the pump of the shotgun and pointed the muzzle at Maitling’s face. “Coming back to haunt you.”
The light dimmed in Maitling’s eyes and the man pulled the trigger, leaning his head slightly away to avoid the blowback.
When he turned to look at the damage, most of Maitling’s head was gone. The stump of a neck oozed blood, chunks of flesh and bone were scattered across the floor.
The man was tempted to take a prize of sorts but realized he didn’t have time, and the idea of framing Maitling for what would soon be Lauren Pauling’s murder wouldn’t make sense. He’d have to try to haul what was left of Maitling’s body to Pauling’s future crime scene, and that would be a mess.
Oh well.
He would leave the shotgun, though. Since it still had four more shells, he pumped it and shot up the remains of Maitling’s body until there was nothing human recognizable and then tossed the shotgun into the middle of the room. The sound of the shotgun blasts echoed throughout the room and the man figured every single person in the building was on the phone calling 9-1-1.
He laid the shirts with their hangers on top of the main pool of blood.
“Now I see why you always hated doing laundry, Matey,” the man said.
He lowered the baseball cap over his eyes and walked out of the dead man’s apartment.
Chapter Thirty-One
In his hotel room in Los Angeles, Tallon read the details of Doug Franzen’s suicide with something akin to disbelief.
Word of Franzen’s untimely death had worked its way through the freelance grapevine eventually landing on Tallon’s phone in the form of a text with a news link.
He’d clicked on it and read the disturbing news that Franzen, or “Franz” as they’d called him, was reported to have killed his girlfriend and then himself. Police had found the bodies in Franzen’s truck. It seemed Franzen had killed his girlfriend in a frenzy, no pun intended, dismembering and mutilating the body.
Tallon had certainly known his fair share of men who’d come back home from the battlefield and been ticking time bombs. Good, brave, decent men who’d nonetheless been traumatized and psychologically damaged by what they’d seen and perhaps done overseas.
He’d even recently read a story where shockwaves from bomb blasts, including roadside bombs, could damage the brain much like the recent diagnosis of CTE, or brain damage, in professional football players. Those injuries had been linked to everything from depression and hallucinations to suicide and murder.
It was part of the unwritten contract of being a member of the military. You had to live what you’d gone through and sometimes, that wasn’t an easy thing to do.
The problem was Tallon wasn’t buying it in Franzen’s case.
For one thing, he knew that physically, Franzen had taken part in a lot of missions and never been seriously injured. Certainly no damage to the head and brain. In fact, after he’d gotten out, Tallon remembered that Franzen joked about how invincible he was to have gone through so many tours of duty without serious injury.
Secondly, at one point Tallon had become Franzen’s commanding officer and read his file. There was no sign of depression or anxiety. Not only was he a stable individual, Franzen had been one of the happiest, most positive and fun-loving members of their team.
Added to the mix was that Tallon had just seen Franzen less than a year ago. They’d gotten together in Virginia for beers and laughs. Franzen had been full of hopes and dreams. He’d met a girl and they were planning a family.
No, this whole thing stunk.
Especially in the context of two men showing up at Tallon’s house to kill him.
Plus, the Halbert email.
And now this.
Doug Franzen.
It angered him. He went to his backpack, found his handgun, a 9mm, and made sure it was loaded. He crossed back to the couch, sat down and drank the rest of his beer.
Someone was going to pay for this.
All of it.
One way or another.
Tallon considered the flow of events. Jessica Halbert had been murdered in southern Turkey. Less than two days ago, someone had sent him a photo of her. Then a pair of hired killers had shown up and tried to murder him. Now here he was in Los Angeles reading about the death of one of the men who’d been with him on the operation that had included Halbert.
He thought long and hard about the plan of action ahead.
He could go back home, slip into a bunker mentality and wait for the next crew to come looking for him.
Kill them all one at a time.
Tallon immediately discarded that notion. It wasn’t his style. He preferred to play offense and drive the action as opposed to adopting a passive approach. Sometimes, the conservative approach was the safer way to go, but in this case, Tallon didn’t think it was.
The other option would be to fly to Virginia and start looking into what happened to Franzen himself. Cops didn’t like civilians nosing around a murder-suicide investigation, but he knew a thing or two about working outside the wire. He could get some information and maybe deliver some justice, too.
He suddenly remembered Lauren Pauling had called him. He wondered what she wanted but instantly knew she was the perfect person to talk to. He could lay out some of what had happened, in general terms, and see what she thought. Maybe bounce a few ideas off her.
Just as he was reaching for his phone, it came to life with a new call.
Tallon glanced at the name.
Lauren Pauling.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jacobs was the first to arrive at the G & E Diversified Holding, Inc. storefront. He unlocked the front door and stepped inside. He went directly to the conference room, turned on the lights and started a pot of coffee. Soon, the aroma of fresh grounds permeated the office and would be the first thing Edgar smelled when he walked in the door. It would be comforting for him as the air outside was chilly, with a cold wind rattling the cheap, commercial-grade windows.
Jacobs waited and saw Edgar arrive first. He was always early to the
meetings. Silvestri was always last. The older black man parked his SUV, locked it and walked to the building.
He opened the door and went straight to the conference room. He entered, nodded briefly to Jacobs and went straight for the coffee pot.
“Thanks for making this, we’re going to need–”
He turned and saw Jacobs holding a gun with a long silencer on the end of it.
It was pointed directly at him.
“You–” Edgar began to say.
Jacobs pulled the trigger and the gun coughed.
A neat hole appeared in the middle of Edgar’s forehead. Jacobs’ gun spat again and Edgar fell backward, the fresh cup of coffee spilling onto his pressed white shirt as he crashed into the wall and slid down to the floor. The expression on his face never changed.
He’d looked disappointed.
Jacobs slid the pistol into the space behind his lower back and stepped out of the conference room, leaving the door slightly ajar.
The front door to the office opened again, and Silvestri stepped inside.
“Jesus, when did this cold front move in?” he asked.
“There’s hot coffee in the room,” Jacobs said. “I need to grab something from my car.”
Silvestri nodded and walked past Jacobs. Jacobs moved like he was going to the front door but just as Silvestri passed him, he turned.
Later, Jacobs would be impressed with the man. Silvestri must have sensed something was wrong, some kind of hardwired soldier’s instinct. Or maybe when he didn’t hear the door opening but instead heard Jacob’s feet pivot, some deep recess in Silvestri’s brain told him something bad was happening.
Silvestri lunged sideways but Jacobs had already drawn his gun and he fired twice.
The hair on the back of Silvestri’s head puffed twice as two bullets entered the base of his skull. It was as if someone had blown two kisses at him, or the wind outside had somehow made its way into the room.
Silvestri continued his move sideways and crashed to the floor, his thick, squat body landing with a thud and a soft bounce.
Jacobs worked quickly and dragged Silvestri into the conference room. He turned off the lights, and shut the door to the room, and then stepped outside, closed the outer door to the office and locked it, also setting the alarm system.