Agent Vasquez met them and took the bags before ushering him into the same conference room he’d been in last time. He wondered if they did that on purpose, assuming the less he knew about the office, the less of a threat he could be later. But building blueprints existed everywhere. He could probably find something if he needed it. All anyone could do was make crime harder. You could never stop it.
Walter nodded a hello at him but went back to tapping on a tablet she held. She’d gotten new digs and cool new toys these last days. If he didn’t just like her as a person so damn much, he’d be very suspicious of her motives. But Walter was a soldier still, fighting the good fight.
He wished he could say that about himself. His own fight had turned very ugly.
She was showing him satellite shots of the compound they’d passed when they followed the coupe, and she was circling an outbuilding. Walter was getting ready to tell him something when Agents Heath and Eames walked into the room.
They’d showered, too.
“Hello.” Eames greeted them, her soft smile an odd mix of exotically beautiful and all business. She looked like someone had mixed up their crayons when they colored her, but that someone had a real eye for the tones.
Cooper barely finished nodding when Eames shot her first volley. “You sent us the phone with the pictures on it. Why?”
She wasn’t asking about the first part.
“You needed records. You could do facial recognition that I didn’t have the capacity to do.” He shrugged.
“But you would never get that information back from us. So it was a gift?” She stared at him. She still didn’t trust him, and he still didn’t really trust any of them. Not to let him do what he needed.
“No, it needed to be done. That’s all.” He returned the volley. “You put the tracker on my phone.”
She shrugged. “You found it inside a day. So I’m sure you didn’t take it with you everywhere.”
As though the fact that he’d found it made it okay that they’d done it. “I could have been killed if the cell had found it.”
“Were you?” She let her face go blank at the ridiculous question and the point she was trying to make.
Cooper didn’t answer. Then he opened with his disturbing truth. “I’m fucked now, you know.”
She nodded, her face softer. “Yeah, I’m sorry. You could have gotten away doing work with Walter, couldn’t you? But after this morning it might be all over.”
“Probably.” He shrugged. “I guess the question is just how badly they still need a blond-and-blue.”
Heath looked at him this time. “You knew that?”
“It’s a Muslim group with almost exclusively middle-eastern members.” Cooper spoke the words as though that explained everything.
Heath seemed to disagree. “You were in the Middle East a long time. You had a traumatic encounter—at least one that we know of, maybe more. You could have easily converted to any god that made more sense to you. As an American soldier, you’re the perfect plant.”
Cooper nodded. “I just hope I still am. If there’s any chance at all. I can’t stay long and I can’t stay in touch. Ask me the most important thing and let me go. . . . Please.”
Heath looked to Eames who was already looking to him. They nodded in sync as though they realized they were thinking the same thing, but the question still surprised him.
“What happened that last day in Fallujah?”
Cooper heard the buzzing in his ears.
Not again. Not another one so soon.
It came, but the sound stayed in the background. As he talked he could see it all again.
Cooper once again felt the arm slide under his chin. An excellent tactical move as there weren’t that many places to attack a soldier in gear. He didn’t even try an evasive move—it might be expected. Instead he used the butt of his rifle and swung backwards, successfully making contact with something that made the guy let him go. He saw his teammate slide to the ground and he saw the red starting to form at the temple exposed by his turned away face.
Unsure what to do, or who was on what side, Cooper leaned down to check on the fallen man.
When he did, a bullet cracked the air right where he’d been standing.
Though he always thought he heard it—and he must have heard something—it was the spray of bark from the tree it hit that really told him he’d been aimed at.
Cooper checked the spot even as his heart double-teamed and he rolled away. Large caliber. Rifle, not handgun. Coming from the forest.
From his own men.
He scrambled to his feet, staying low, running down the list of everyone on this mission. Who could he turn to? Which direction should he go?
The answers were no one and nowhere. He’d been in the middle of the pack. The insurgent family was in front of him, his own traitorous men on either side and most likely behind. He’d heard more than one set of footsteps running that way. But were they fleeing or positioning themselves to clean up anyone who tried?
“Rollins.” The word hissed out of the trees and he turned in search of a friendly voice. What he found was the barrel of a gun. In his haze, at close range, from this angle he couldn’t identify the gun. Why that was so important he couldn’t say. If he could ID the exact gun, could he ID the man behind it?
The man’s face stayed hidden as he aimed at Cooper’s head. Not his body, there was armor there. Whether it would do its full job against that caliber at this range was a crapshoot, but a headshot was certain.
Cooper took one last breath. He smelled forest, the burn of fired weapons, food from the nearby house, blood. He saw sunlight through the trees and the open yard with the sheets still swaying in the wind. One had a bright red splatter on it, and he thought he could see the blood still dripping.
He blinked.
In that moment, the man holding the gun on him jerked, his arms coming up with the impact to his torso. His head flung back, eyes wide, glazed. Jones. He’d been the last addition to the unit. Self-sure and able to defuse anything. Almost as good at building IEDs as Kellen.
Jones lifted with the impact, the too-large bore bullet hitting him under the arm on the side of his torso where his gear didn’t provide coverage. Then he crumpled under the gravity of his own weight.
Cooper looked around frantically, but saw no one.
Who’d taken the shot?
He needed to remember to keep his own arms down at his sides.
Staying low, as if that would help, he made his way to the edge of the forest line. Farther west than he’d been the first time, he hoped to stay out of the way. The man he’d cracked with the butt of his rifle was gone. It couldn’t have been three minutes, and yet there was no sign of him. Only a short drag mark where someone had grabbed him and pulled him, and then it looked like he’d gotten up and done the rest himself.
He’d not seen the face, hadn’t seen markings that IDd him. They were there, but it had all happened too fast. The drag marks were important: they meant someone was worth saving. At least two people were in this together.
As he hit the tree line, Cooper saw the man on the ground in the yard, bleeding out. If he was still alive, there was no longer anything that could be done to save him. His daughters returned fire from around the corners of the house. Following their aim, Cooper spotted Benj Freeman, also at the forest line, laying down a blanket of bullets on the girls.
The family was friendlies.
Cooper didn’t understand.
The mission was to check on them. They’d been told there was intel that someone was coming for the family, and the teams protected those who protected them. So why were they all shooting at each other?
Cooper gripped his rifle at the ready and patted his handgun, still in the holster at his side, ready to zip out at a moment’s notice. When he looked again, he saw Benj Freeman’s face explode.
The image burned into Cooper’s brain. The back of Freeman’s skull remained intact.
He’d bee
n shot from the side. By one of their own men.
Cooper looked down the tree line and saw Ken Kellen lower his rifle.
Donovan’s head swam. The burner phone was buzzing, but it was a cheap piece of crap, a sister device to another cheap piece of crap. Too much security and it would be obvious. Too little meant the device was of no importance. It needed to seem to be of no importance.
They’d made Rollins memorize this number, he could delete pics, texts, etc. as he sent them. And he could destroy the sister phone and send from other, new numbers as needed.
As Donovan watched from the couch, Eleri picked up the phone and checked it.
“Anything good?” he asked.
“Not yet.” She held up the tiny screen. “It’s downloading what looks like a bunch of pictures.” Then she turned back to her own phone, a faint smile on her lips. She must be finally communicating with the hockey player. That was good. Anything normal to anchor them was good.
Donovan knew that as an important goal from the psych classes he’d taken in med school. He’d found them all ironic given that, unless one of the bodies sat up on the table and declared themselves not actually dead, he was never going to need it. Still, he got top scores in the two classes.
Ultimately, he’d only memorized content. None of it meant anything to him, until now. Until he realized that his ‘normal’ was the exact opposite of an anchor. All the years of picking up and moving in the middle of the night. The new schools, the superficial friendships and involvements in classes, sports, life. Then he’d gone the other way and anchored everything with his job and his home and nothing else. When the FBI had called, he’d gone nomad again. First to the Academy, then on the road. He’d even gone with Eleri to her beach house the last time they had a break.
He made up his mind to go back to South Carolina the next chance he got.
He also realized that wasn’t enough. He needed something normal here. Something in the midst of all this chaos that would help keep him firmly in reality. And he didn’t have any clue what that might be.
He’d been shocked by Cooper Rollins’ story. The soldier had drawn on his associates. On the very family that had fed him and even hidden him once. But he didn’t know if they’d drawn on him first. He’d watched as Ken Kellen turned and shot Benj Freeman right in the face.
Rollins’ had paused then as though he could still see it. Given the way he’d fuzzed out on them at the question—and how much it looked like the freeway incident from that morning—Donovan was convinced Cooper Rollins was having another episode. Each time, the man had fought to bring himself back to reality. Talk about needing an anchor.
Donovan was developing a grudging respect for the ex-soldier, even if he wasn’t sure he completely believed him.
Even if no one else knew what was going on. L.A. was quietly organizing itself. It could go just as badly as shit had gone down on Rollins. He’d turned and fought Kellen hand-to-hand that day, neither of them getting ahead, only inflicting damage. He’d been grabbed from behind; he’d been shot at by his own teammates. He’d seen the black and green and brown on them. And he’d shot back.
It was the only reason he wasn’t dead. He’d walked back to base beside three men he no longer trusted. He dragged Benj Freeman’s corpse. They’d each dragged a body. And three more men were unaccounted for. One of those had been Ken Kellen.
The man Rollins had KO’d was in the wind now, too. Ken Kellen was the only one of the three missing that Rollins had ever seen again. He’d read in reports that the other two had died that day, but the army had never shipped their bodies home. Location unknown.
Rollins believed there was a hell of a lot more unknown than the army was admitting. Donovan thought Rollins was probably pretty correct on that one.
What Donovan and Eleri had hashed out was that Rollins and Ken had both wound up in the L.A. cell because of their Fallujah connections. Whether or not they’d been on the same side that day, the girls had accepted both men into the group.
They spoke the native tongue—well, Rollins spoke enough of it, he’d pointed out. It was a bigger deal than he’d first thought. The girls had lost their father that day. He’d been left for dead on the ground. Their mother had disappeared later that same night when soldiers came. She’d managed to send the girls out the back first and they’d disappeared, defecting to the U.S. on known visas as rebel friends.
What a crock of shit.
Donovan couldn’t wrap his head around much of it. Had Kellen shot Benj Freeman because he knew too much? Had Freeman turned on them? Was Kellen protecting Rollins by killing Freeman and the others? Protecting himself? No one knew.
Donovan turned his attention to the tablet he held. Even as he started working, Eleri came and sat next to him, doing much the same thing on her laptop. “Look.”
She pointed to a satellite picture of the compound the coupe had gone to. “It’s a militia.” She paused for a second. “Damn. I hate this shit.”
“You want a good serial killer next?” He almost grinned at the very morbid thought.
“I would not have thought I’d ever say yes, but yes. Please.” Then she buckled down. “We can pull sat photos of the yellow coupe. Here.” She pointed to another picture she’d downloaded. “There’s Walter and there’s . . .” She scrolled. “Cooper.”
“If we could find photos this easily, so can they. We have to assume they know the coupe was followed.”
She nodded glumly at him. “If they’re any decent at this, and it appears they certainly are, they have cameras on the entry and at various points. Cooper turned around as soon as Walter passed the gate, so they at least saw her, but I’m guessing they got him too. If they ran the plates they figured out the cars are rentals and can’t be tracked back to the owners.”
Donovan filled in. “Two rentals on a nearly deserted road, tailing their guy? That’s bad.”
He looked at her and waited until she glanced up from the screen and caught his eye. “We opened a shitcan of worms today, didn’t we?”
“No. Sarah did that.”
“No, she didn’t. If she’d killed Mrs. Deen, that might have started something between the Jewish cell and the militia where they must have been getting their guns. But us being there, Sarah winding up dead, and Mrs. Deen in Federal custody, that’s not good. We did that.”
She shrugged. “We have a witness. She’s alive.”
“She’s a crap-ass witness.”
“True.” Eleri agreed. The old woman was holding out on them.
Any concern Donovan had about her being poisoned and innocent had flown out the window. She’d come around in the ambulance and bitched about her constitutional rights. She demanded her guns, demanded that she be released—she couldn’t have health care forced on her!—and tried to beat up one of the EMTs. Donovan had pushed on her sternum, a great martial arts move that pinned her down and left her floundering like a bug. And he’d called her a bitch to her face.
Probably inappropriate, that, but he still didn’t care.
There were agents on her at the hospital—it turned out they could force health care on her. She’d given them nothing so far, even as they tried to save her from the Ricin.
“Sounds like the little crappy phone is done.”
Eleri showed him a text first.
— KK vouched for me. I have this now. Don’t come.—
Three pictures popped up next.
A zippered brown backpack was in one.
The same backpack was opened in the second picture. Wires spouted from C4 stuffed in the neck of a bottle with clear liquid. Motherboards and timers protruded. A simple switch showed in one place, a cover protecting it from accidents.
Donovan thought something about it looked familiar, then he caught it. “My money says that’s a Colonel Ratz design. Or at least part of it.”
Eleri’s eyes widened, then she nodded in agreement.
In the third picture, there was a handheld piece.
Donovan
spoke the words out loud though he was sure his partner already understood. “That’s a remote detonator.”
39
It was still dark when the pounding sound woke Eleri from her spot on the couch. She’d curled around the tablet like it was a teddy bear.
The sound came again, only this time she recognized it as knocking. Donovan’s frown turned into acceptance as he, too, uncurled from the other end of the couch. He figured it out before she did. “Vasquez.”
Well, at least she was already dressed.
She checked the clock. Five-thirty a.m. Interesting.
Something must be good for Marina Vasquez to be waking them now. Eleri opened the door to see that Marina didn’t look much better than either of them.
“Sorry.” She said it as she came through the door, though she seemed too busy to actually be sorry. Her usual bag was over her shoulder, her tablet in one hand, a cold can of that weird soda she liked in her other. Eleri wondered how long she’d been pounding the caffeine.
“About what? The time? The case? The universe?” A smile tugged at Eleri’s lips. At least she had good people to work with these days.
At the Behavioral Analysis Unit, the work had been the only real good part. Her fellow agents distrusted her for her instincts. Her boss had even written her up once, causing a bone-deep mortification.
As Donovan had joked before, serial killers were small potatoes compared to a city like L.A. getting attacked by multiple individual but simultaneous terrorist cells. “What do you have?”
“An eight a.m. meeting for all of us. With other FBI agents. I’ll explain. Give me a few minutes.” Marina sat at the table in her usual spot. The fact that she had a usual spot was telling, since they’d only been here a few days.
The small lump under her shirt made Eleri think. “You’re still wearing the grisgris.”
“You’re wearing yours.” Marina pointed out.
“She’s my grandmother. Great-grandmother, but whatever.” She smiled.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2) Page 34