by Brad Thor
“Good to go,” he said, flashing her the thumbs-up.
They drove out of the woods and toward the highway just as the van exploded in a billowing fireball. When they arrived at the junction where the dirt road ended and the pavement began, he stopped and asked, “Okay. Which way? South or north?”
They both knew that neither of them could go home. They had to go to ground, someplace safe; someplace where they could assess and plan their next move.
Ryan removed the atlas wedged next to her seat and studied it for a moment. Finally she said, “South.”
McGee accelerated and turned onto the pavement. “Where are we headed?”
“How long will it take us to get to Fort Belvoir from here?”
“About twenty minutes, why? What’s at Belvoir?”
Ryan looked over at him and replied, “For the moment, sanctuary.”
“What do you mean, sanctuary?”
“I mean, Belvoir has one of the last rocks in the world Durkin would ever think of looking under.”
“Knowing Durkin,” McGee countered, “he’s going to be looking under every rock.”
“Not this one,” Ryan said. “Trust me.”
CHAPTER 25
BOSTON
MASSACHUSETTS
The four-story redbrick office building was a block east of Boston Common at the corner of Washington and Essex streets. On its ground floor was an entrance to the subway station and a smattering of retail space, including a Dunkin’ Donuts. On the fourth floor was the killer’s destination, a Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles office.
Keys, as well as the building’s layout and the RMV’s alarm code, had already been provided for him. He kept a silenced semi-automatic beneath his coveralls, but it had not proved necessary. It was the middle of the night and the building was vacant. No one would have any idea he was there. All he needed to focus on was his assignment.
Using the service elevator, he brought all of his equipment, including the man inside the commercial-grade rolling trash can whom he had drugged with the same paralytic he had used on the woman in Georgia, to the fourth floor. Once he had ascertained where he needed to set up, he positioned all of his gear and began to unpack.
He wasn’t a fan of the coarse hemp rope. It was thick and difficult to deal with. He would have preferred to use a modern climbing rope, but the instructions had been explicit.
Cautious not to be seen from the street, he used his small flashlight sparingly and never near the windows. Even at this hour, there were still people on the street stopping and looking up at the building’s faïade. Most would be armed with cell phone cameras and some might even be disposed to take a picture or two. He couldn’t afford to be caught in anyone’s casual photos. Within a few hours, everyone was going to be talking about this building and anyone who had passed by and snapped a picture was going to be reviewing their footage to see if they unknowingly caught anything that might have warned of what was to come.
With everything staged, he attached the hoses together and ran the end with the rubber faucet adapter to the restroom. Even though the trash can had wheels, it would be difficult to move. He preferred to position it and then fill it in place. Things would be much easier that way.
As the water sloshed into the trash can, he looked at his watch and measured the rate of flow. He had planned for every eventuality: a late office worker, a random security patrol, being accosted by another cleaning company, anything that might have delayed his assignment. For every possible contingency, he knew how much water he would need.
He doubted his figures were absolutely precise, but they didn’t have to be. All that mattered was that his work be done before the first person entered the Registry of Motor Vehicles in the morning. If anyone came in before, everything would be ruined.
He had been told not to get violent with the prisoner unless absolutely necessary. Of course, being told he couldn’t do it had only made him want to do it even more. It was yet another wave added to the tumultuous sea of whitecaps roiling inside him. He tried to focus on the minutiae of his assignment; the importance of completing the job properly and not leaving behind any clues.
The distraction worked at first, but its force soon began to wane. He was tempted, so tempted, to abuse the man; to break him mentally and emotionally, to have him weep and beg for his life. He positioned himself so that the man could watch him knotting the heavy rope and made sure he could also see the backboard that had been prepared specially for him.
He wanted to ask the man if he had ever heard of an engineer named Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, or simply Rube Goldberg for short. He wanted to share how Mr. Goldberg had inspired the contraption he had built and lay everything out for the man so he could watch the already intense fear in his eyes build to an even greater degree. He knew, though, that if he toyed with the mouse, he might very well end up eating it and that was strictly forbidden. Everything had to be done according to the instructions. Any deviation and everything would be ruined.
He tried to take his mind off the man in front of him. His thoughts wandered to the woman he had taken from Sea Island, how powerful he had felt with her life in his hands, and what it was like extinguishing her. It was like the final wisp of smoke rising from a candlewick. One moment there was pain and fear and death in her eyes, then release as everything just slipped away. But he hadn’t been able to savor it. He had wanted to take more time, especially with her ears, but his schedule meant that he had to keep moving.
That woman, and the one in the cemetery, made two back to back now who had gotten him significantly aroused without his being able to do anything about it. Tonight, after his work here was complete, he would find a way to change that. He deserved a reward. The mere thought of taking a woman shortly sent a pulse of excitement racing through his body. He now had the perfect goal to get him through what he had to finish and he focused on his task like a laser.
He finished his knots, placed everything just so, and even went back and rechecked his calculations for a fifth time. Once he was confident he had everything all set up exactly as it needed to be, he removed his cordless drill and selected a drill bit.
The prisoner’s eyes widened as the killer attached the bit and then gave the power tool’s trigger a quick press to make sure it worked. It did.
Satisfied, the killer closed the box of bits and began walking toward his victim. Before he even reached him, the man started to scream from behind his gag. The killer wasn’t listening. Raising the spinning drill in front of him, he reveled in the high-pitched whine and watched the bit as it was transformed into a blur of sharp gray metal. It was so ingenious, easily one of the cleverest ways ever devised to kill.
CHAPTER 26
Bill Wise had sent Harvath home with a stack of books. The two he wanted him to focus on were The Creature from Jekyll Island and Economics in One Lesson.
The Jekyll Island book, all about the secrets behind the Federal Reserve, was thick enough to be a doorstop. Thankfully, its author encouraged readers to skip around in it and not read it from cover to cover. Harvath loved to read and if he’d had the time, he might have tackled it from front to back. Instead, he followed the author’s advice and read the summaries at the end of each chapter and then dipped into the chapters that interested him the most.
Economics in One Lesson was a sliver of a book in comparison. Like The Creature from Jekyll Island it was well written and easy to read. He was halfway through it before finishing his first cup of coffee. The slim volume had originally caught his eye because its author was the same Henry Hazlitt whose economics quote had been hung around Claire Marcourt’s neck. He was plowing through the book not only in hopes of better understanding the killer’s, or killers’, mind-set, but also because of how interesting it was and how much he was learning.
Despite not having hit the sack until well past midnight, he awoke at 5 A.M. feeling rested and decided to go for a run. Four miles in, he could feel his IT band tightening up. He ha
dn’t stretched as well as he should have and now his body was punishing him for it.
He pushed himself to his five-mile marker and then turned back toward home. It was a cloudy, overcast morning with lots of humidity that hinted at a good rain at some point during the day. It was a good thing he was getting his run in now. As he ran, lots of things passed through his mind, predominantly about the case. He made a mental note to call Bill Wise after breakfast to see if he had made any progress.
Arriving back home, Harvath showered, shaved, and was downstairs with the TV on cooking breakfast when the Old Man called. “You need to get to Boston,” he said without so much as a good morning.
Harvath muted his TV. “What’s going on? What happened?”
“There’s been a second victim.”
“Who?”
“Herman Penning. Boston. I want you to get up there as soon as possible. Lewis says you can use the Fed’s plane. He has it standing by.”
Harvath looked at his watch. “I can be out the door in fifteen minutes.”
“Be out the door in five. I want you there before the trail goes cold or the Boston cops muck it all up. I’ll send what I’ve got to your phone. You can read it on the plane.”
After shoveling his half-cooked eggs into the garbage, he ran upstairs to get dressed. Flying private, he didn’t have to worry about carrying weapons, so he gunned up and grabbed a bunch of extra magazines. He also grabbed his knife, flashlight, a handful of EZ Cuff restraints, his cell phone, charger, and a small digital camera, then laid everything out on the bed.
Studying the items as he hastily tied his tie, he guessed there were probably a bunch of things he was forgetting and would later wish he’d thought to bring, but that was too bad. He had to get moving.
He pulled his ScotteVest trench coat out of the closet, slipped his gear into its multiple pockets, and then, grabbing the overnight bag he always kept ready, headed for the door.
The traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway was lighter than usual. Had he left home even a minute later, he had no doubt that he’d be sitting still right now instead of proceeding apace to Reagan National. He allowed himself to believe that somewhere up there, he was being watched out for. Then four miles from the airport, the rain began to fall and right on cue, the traffic slowed to almost a stop.
He decided to suffer the honks and explosion of one-fingered rush hour salutes by driving up the shoulder. In an attempt to at least make himself look somewhat official in his black Chevy Tahoe, he kept flashing his brights. No one bought it. He could hear people honking and, looking in his rearview mirror, he saw the phalanx of left hands with middle fingers extended pop out of one car window after another. The only good part was that nobody seemed to notice him and what he was doing until he’d already passed. In other words, nobody had been able to move halfway onto the shoulder in front of him in a preemptive block.
The world, unfortunately, was filled with people who felt the rules didn’t apply to them. They were folks who felt entitled to do whatever they wanted and Harvath had no doubt that several of them, late for a flight at Reagan National, likely had attempted this same up-the-shoulder maneuver before. What was even more certain was that a vehicle speeding toward the airport disobeying traffic laws was going to be seen by law enforcement as a threat.
Harvath stayed on the shoulder for as long as he could and then, to an almost choreographed opera of additional horns and middle fingers, he muscled his way back into the creeping flow of traffic and over to the far right lane so he could exit. He parked at the Signature Flight Support FBO, checked in, and was escorted out to the Aerion SBJ. The crew was assembled at the bottom of the air-stairs waiting for him and while he was slightly disappointed that the flight attendant wasn’t Natalie, it was probably a blessing in disguise. He needed to focus on the task at hand.
The crew, as one would expect on such an expensive private aircraft, was exceedingly professional. Harvath, while trying his best to be polite, encouraged them to dispense with the formalities and get off the ground as quickly as possible. He needed to be there yesterday. They all understood.
With the preflight check already complete and the tower ready to bump them to the head of the list as soon as they were ready, Harvath was encouraged to take his seat and buckle up, which he did. Less than fifteen minutes later, they were airborne.
The flight to Boston’s Logan airport was faster than any shuttle flight he had ever experienced from D.C. No sooner had they climbed up and out over the Atlantic, than they had passed New York City and were making their descent and landing. The flight attendant had apologized for not being able to offer him anything more than coffee and Dunkin’ Donuts. They hadn’t received much heads up, either, and there’d been no time to alert the airport catering company.
Harvath told her not to worry. While he wasn’t a donut guy, he did enjoy their coffee and had been glad to have at least gotten something in his system. As he scrolled through the information the Old Man had sent to his phone, Anna the flight attendant kept his cup topped off.
When the sleek Supersonic Business Jet landed at Logan, Harvath was as up-to-speed as he expected to be until he reached the crime scene. Carlton had texted that travel into the city had already been arranged. Harvath assumed that meant someone, though likely not as attractive as Sloane Ashby, was going to meet him at the Logan FBO and drive him in.
After opening the main cabin door and lowering the air-stairs, the flight attendant apologized again for the lack of breakfast. She offered Harvath a couple of donuts for the road if he wanted, but he smiled and said, “No thank you,” as he disembarked.
Stepping onto the tarmac, he noticed a clean-cut man in a navy suit standing next to a plain sedan talking on his cell phone. That must be my ride.
As his passenger approached, the man pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment and asked, “Harvath?”
Harvath nodded and the man ended his call. After sliding the phone back into his pocket, he extended his hand. “I’m Special Agent Montgomery. Boston field office.”
“Short straw, huh?” he said as they shook hands. “Thanks for coming to pick me up.”
“No problem. I was on my way in to work anyway. Besides, this’ll be the first time I’ve used lights and sirens in Boston. Do you need a pit stop before we get on the road?”
He shook his head. “Good to go.”
Montgomery threw his bag in back, and once Harvath was in the passenger seat and buckled up, the agent activated his lights and siren and raced out of the airport, headed for downtown.
CHAPTER 27
Despite the crush of morning traffic, they finally arrived at their destination, 630 Washington Street.
Looking up, Harvath wasn’t surprised to see that the body had been removed. A host of gruesome photos taken by passersby was already making the rounds of the Internet. Interestingly enough, many of the amateur photographers had failed to capture the enormous plaque embedded in the building’s redbrick faïade, commemorating the structure’s significance.
Known as the “Liberty Tree” building, it marked the location of a famous elm tree from which an effigy was hung in protest in 1765. The effigy represented Andrew Oliver, the man Mad King George had appointed to carry out the Stamp Act tax on the American colonies, and it drew a very large crowd — the first of its kind in public against the king. It was considered a seminal moment leading up to the Revolutionary War and the men who had hung Oliver in effigy would go on to call themselves the Sons of Liberty. Harvath wasn’t surprised at all that this location had been chosen for another symbolic murder.
A Boston PD patrolman was blocking the main entrance. As Harvath grabbed his bag out of the back, Montgomery stepped up to the officer and flashed his FBI credentials and told him to let Harvath pass. The young FBI agent had already explained he was working another case and was only functioning as his driver.
Harvath thanked him for the ride as the patrolman said, “Fourth floor,” and
waved him inside.
Harvath rode the elevator upstairs and stepped out into a hive of activity. There were crime scene technicians, uniformed police officers, detectives, and FBI agents. They all had short hair, and while the FBI agents were all trim and in good shape, the cops looked like cops everywhere and represented a wide range of physical fitness levels.
The patrolman downstairs had already radioed up to the officer controlling the inner perimeter of the crime scene and had told him to let Harvath pass. The officer directed Harvath down the hall to where a pair of technicians, who had ostensibly photographed everything, was beginning to disassemble a very odd contraption. There were old-fashioned wooden pulleys, hooks, and lengths of rough, fibrous rope that looked like they were twisted from hemp.
“Can you hold off for a second please, fellas?” he asked the CSTs. “I’d like to take a look at all this.”
“Just what this investigation needs,” one of them said derisively, “another Fed.”
“You picking up the overtime?” his colleague asked.
Apparently, there wasn’t a lot of love lost between the Boston PD and the FBI. Harvath wasn’t surprised. The Boston Homicide Unit had some excellent detectives, but overall a terrible and unfortunately long-standing record when it came to their ability to actually solve murders. On multiple cases, the FBI had been forced to come in and bat cleanup. It was a source of embarrassment for the city and they had been working hard to turn things around. Nevertheless, it didn’t excuse the attitude Harvath was getting.
“No, I’m not picking up your overtime,” he replied. “In fact, I’d be happy to recommend you both for a permanent vacation.”
“And just who the hell are you anyway?” the first CST demanded.
“Wyatt Earp,” Harvath replied, shooting him a very serious, don’t-fuck-with-me look that backed the man down. Smiling, he suggested, “Why don’t you two take a break and get a cup of coffee? I’ll only be a few minutes.”