Hard Target

by Alan Jacobson

  “I’m sorry about Alec,” Uzi said.

  “He was only twenty-six,” Jiri said, his Czech accent thicker than Uzi had noticed in the past. “Always on time, always did good job.” He closed his eyes. “These terrorists are, what do you say, pigs?”

  Uzi had other words for them. He placed a reassuring hand on Jiri’s shoulder. “I’ll make you a promise, okay? We’ll catch the person who killed Alec. You have my word.”

  Jiri tilted his head in confusion. “You’ll catch...?”

  “I’m with the FBI.”

  Jiri nodded. “Miss Harel, she took hard drive for the camera. She said they may show person who planted bomb.” He shook his head. “I know her a year and didn’t know she was part of FBI.”

  Uzi didn’t bother correcting the concierge. He looked above Jiri’s head at the two black-and-white monitors, one of which was trained on the curbside of the Hamilton House’s entrance. If Leila took the digital recording, she was probably going to erase it using Department of Defense secure deletion algorithms. It was taking a big risk, though, because the responding Metro cops—or someone else from the Bureau—should have inquired about the recording, too. “Anyone else ask you about the surveillance—about the cameras?”

  Jiri nodded. “I told them I already give them to Miss Harel. That’s okay, what I said?”

  Uzi forced a smile. “Yeah, that was good.” He glanced back at the security monitors.

  “Are you okay?” Jiri asked. “I got you away from the fire best I could. Tried to find Alec, but—”

  “That was you who pulled me away from the car?” Uzi noted a muted nod from the Czech. “I owe you, man. You ever need help with anything, let me know.” He faked a wide yawn. “Meantime, I’m gonna head upstairs and get some sleep. Can I get the key?”

  Jiri lifted his thick body from the stool and reached beneath the desk. He pulled Leila’s apartment key from a drawer and handed it to Uzi.

  “Thanks, man. Take some time off. Go for a drive. Clear your head.”

  Jiri checked his watch. “Someone supposed to come soon. I go home.”

  He gave Jiri’s shoulder a gentle pat, and then headed for the elevator.

  THE DOORS PARTED on the eighth floor. Uzi stepped onto the thick carpet and strode slowly toward Leila’s apartment. At three-thirty in the morning, nearly everyone on the floor was asleep. He put his ear to her door and listened. Quiet.

  He inserted the key, gave it a slow turn, and then stepped inside. His main objective was to secure a number of items that would contain Leila’s fingerprints—and preferably some DNA—without her becoming suspicious. One of the wine glasses they’d used should contain at least an index or thumb print and saliva. But reaching the kitchen meant crossing in front of the bedroom.

  He slowed his breathing and waited until his eyesight had accommodated to the darkness. A moment later, he began inching along the wall, focusing his hearing, keying in on movement.

  The bedroom door was open. He stood beside it, listening, trying to see as much of the interior without revealing himself—in case she was lying awake in bed. If she startled, he would merely explain that DeSantos had insisted he be examined by the Bureau emergency room doc, and that he was returning to get some sleep. He didn’t want to go back to his place because if he was the target of the car bomb, it was no longer safe. And he didn’t want to be alone. Coming back to be with her after a life-threatening event would be consistent with his recent behavior.

  As he stood outside her door, he realized he had left his Puma and Tanto knives somewhere in the apartment. He remembered taking them off—but when? Probably when they started undressing one another. Where? In the bedroom. No—the bathroom.

  He still had his boot knife, but a weapon in hand would blow his cover story.

  Uzi waited by the door but heard nothing. He knelt down and peered around the jamb at the bed. The side where he had been sleeping looked unchanged: the comforter was drawn to the side just as he had left it. His eyes trailed over to Leila’s side, and the covers there, too, appeared to be folded back. He could not see her body. He decided to walk in, as if returning to her after meeting with DeSantos. It would make his job more difficult but not impossible: he would have to resort to his backup plan—use the bathroom and quietly search her medicine cabinet and drawers for items that might contain her prints. He rose from his crouch and walked into the bedroom.

  It was empty. Uzi stood there, considering his options. Best to know if she was in the apartment before he started snooping around.

  “Leila?” he called into the darkness. He walked into the kitchen, then moved into the living room. “Leila?”

  He returned to the bedroom to find his knives—but they were not there. He searched his mind, replaying the evening. He remembered getting up around 11:30 and realizing he’d left the phone in his car. Did I take the knives with me? No, I was just going out to the car to get my phone.

  He unsuccessfully searched the room again. Uzi bit his bottom lip, craving a toothpick like a smoker craves a cigarette. Did Leila take my knives? Did she know I wasn’t coming back because her group planted the bomb?

  There were no answers, not yet.

  He stepped into the bathroom, his eyes scanning the surfaces, the floor—and then he remembered. The countertop, under the gold towels they had thrown on the vanity after getting out of the bath. He grabbed a handful of fine Egyptian terrycloth and tossed it aside—exposing his knives, right where he’d left them. Cool.

  He slipped the Tanto around his neck and clipped the Puma to the inside of his pocket, and then moved back to the kitchen, resuming his primary task. But the dinner glasses they’d used were no longer in the sink. And the dishwasher was empty.

  Beside the stove was a ceramic container filled with multicolored toothpicks. He grabbed one and stuck it in his mouth. He still needed to find something with a liftable set of fingerprints. Back in the living room, he noticed two DVDs on the end table beside a small briefcase. He rummaged through the soft-sided leather attaché, but other than various books on counterterrorism and a blank notepad, he found nothing of value. But the DVDs...

  He handled them by their edges and flipped them over. They had the purplish hue of “burned,” or homemade, discs—as well as smudges, which looked like two partial prints. Without proper lighting and equipment, it was hard to tell with certainty. But even if there weren’t any usable latents, the discs might contain incriminating data.

  He walked back into the bathroom and slid open the drawers. He pulled several strands of hair from her brush, a few of which contained follicles—and DNA. As he turned to leave, a small makeup mirror caught his eye. He huffed on the surface, and a number of fingerprints appeared. Gotcha. He took it back into the kitchen, grabbed a couple of Ziplocs, and placed the mirror, hair strands, and DVDs in their own bags.

  Now he had to get them to the lab.

  4:30 AM

  9 hours 30 minutes remaining

  UZI CAUGHT A CAB and arrived at the Hoover Building at 4:30 in the morning, time melting away like an ice cube on a Phoenix street in August. He was greeted by the stout FBI policeman who had owned the lobby’s graveyard shift the past two decades.

  “Anyone in the lab?” Uzi asked.

  The man snorted. “Hang out for a few hours and you’ll have your pick of whoever you want.”

  “I don’t have a few hours.” Uzi went behind the security desk and lifted the receiver. He dialed the extension and waited. As he was about to hang up, the line was answered. The voice was groggy and raspy.

  “Yeah. Lab.”

  “This is Special Agent Aaron Uzi—”

  “Can you speak up a little?”

  “I’ve got some latents,” Uzi shouted. His voice echoed in the empty glass-enclosed booth. “I need them run through the system. Yesterday.”

  There was a loud groan on the other end of the phone. “Uzi, you’re not really doing this to me, are you? Please tell me this is a dream.”

&
nbsp; “Tim? What the hell are you doing here?”

  “They got me out of that god-awful hospital and wanted to transfer me to another god-awful hospital. Hate those places. Then they said something about a safehouse but I didn’t want any part of that. So I had them bring me here. There’s a cot in the back room. If I’m not safe here—”

  “Jesus, Tim. Okay, listen. I’m serious about these latents. It’s super important.”

  “You know what, Uzi? I’ve never said no to you before, but there’s a first time for everything, right?”

  “Tim—”

  “No, I’m putting my foot down here. I just got my freakin’ butt blown off. Have some compassion.”

  “These prints could be from the person who planted the bomb in your house.”

  There was a pause, then Meadows said, “Bring ’em right up. Let’s get this bastard.”

  UZI STEPPED INTO THE BREAK ROOM and found Meadows reclining on the cot, eyes closed and his right shoulder scrunched against the wall.

  Uzi nudged him in the side. “Sleeping on the job, eh?”

  Meadows opened a lazy eye and groaned. “This is a nightmare, right?”

  “We just talked on the phone, you told me to come up.” The dazed look on the tech’s face told Uzi to continue doling out clues. “The latents, the bomber...”

  Meadows groaned again, then licked his lips. “Damn medication. Puts me out. Yeah, okay, fine, the bomber. I remember.” He tried to push himself off the soft cot, but couldn’t get much purchase. “Well, you gonna watch me struggle or you gonna help me up?”

  Uzi grabbed Meadows’s left arm and pulled him off the cot. “You should be in a hospital.”

  Meadows steadied himself against the wall with his right hand. “And when did you get your medical degree? Or are your FBI creds just a cover?”

  Uzi pulled the Ziplocs from his pocket. “I don’t think ‘Doctor Uzi’ would work. Might scare away the patients. Although I once saw a dentist named Payne.” Before Meadows could comment, Uzi held up the bags. “I couldn’t dust them, but I huffed on the mirror and saw a print.”

  Meadows slowly made his way into the adjacent lab. “You did what?”

  “Huffed. You know, blew on it with— Just dust the damn sample.”

  Meadows sat down heavily on a stool and pulled a small kit from a drawer. His movements were clumsy because of the injury to his hands, but Uzi noted the doctor had removed the bandage wraps. Only casts remained, affording him some dexterity with his fingertips. Meadows dipped a wide brush into black powder, then tried to twirl it over the mirror. “Oops.”

  “Oops?”

  He blew away some of the powder. “You try doing precise work with these things on your hands.” He tilted his head to assess his work. “Don’t worry, if there’s something here, I’ll find it.”

  Uzi yawned hard, then shook his head. “Sure hope so.” He took the DVDs and, handling them carefully, slipped them into the drive of a nearby PC. He opened Windows Explorer and browsed them. There were two encrypted files from six months ago.

  “When you’re done with the latents, you’ve got a couple of files to crack.”

  “Oh, goody. You really don’t want me sleeping tonight, do you?”

  Uzi dragged the files onto the PC’s hard drive, then brought the discs back to Meadows and grabbed a stool of his own. The tech looked at Uzi and seemed to appraise him for the first time.

  “You look about as good as I did after the blast.”

  Uzi looked at his reflection in the glass cabinet above the slate work surface. Numerous abrasions covered his face and neck, and a dollop of dried blood was plastered just above his left eye. “Let’s put it this way: you weren’t their only target.”

  Meadows glanced sidewards at Uzi. “No shit?”

  Uzi nodded at Leila’s mirror. “Anything?”

  “Looks like one on the front and another on the back.”

  “Okay. Run them through the system, dust the discs, and see what they show. I’ve also got some DNA. And no, I really don’t want you sleeping tonight.” He rose from the stool. “I’m gonna use the bathroom, clean up and try to make myself look a little less scary.”

  When Uzi returned to the lab, Meadows was asleep in a chair beside a computer monitor where digitized fingerprint images rolled by at astounding speed. Uzi walked down the hall to a vending machine and bought a Coke and a granola bar, both of which he downed in record time.

  He joined Meadows, set another bar in front of the computer, then gently woke the technician. “Tim, time to eat. We’ve got green eggs and ham. Tim...”

  Meadows opened his eyes to half mast, groaned, and then sat up. “I dreamt I was eating breakfast. Eggs and—”

  “No dream.” Uzi nodded at the granola bar. “At least your hearing’s coming back.”

  “What?”

  “Anything on the latents?”

  Meadows looked at the screen, rubbed his eyes with a shirt sleeve, and struck a few keys. “This ain’t easy with freakin’ casts on.” Finally, he leaned back. “Nope. No hits.”

  Uzi stood and leaned over the desk to look at the monitor. “How can that be?”

  “Guess this person wasn’t in the database.”

  “She’s gotta be. Where’d you run it?”

  “Everywhere. Even Interpol.”

  “Call up Batula Hakim.”

  “Hakim, that name rings a bell,” Meadows said as he pecked awkwardly at the keyboard. He hit Enter and seconds later, the fingerprint for Batula Hakim appeared on-screen.

  “Compare it to the ones you just lifted.”

  Meadows created a split screen, and the two prints popped up beside one another.

  “Any matching points at all?”

  Meadows studied the screen, then shook his head. “Not even close. See these whorls here? They’re— Well, look for yourself. It doesn’t take a computer to call this a nonmatch.”

  Uzi fell back onto his stool. Aksel was wrong. He put me through all this for nothing.

  “Sorry. You thought we had something, didn’t you?”

  Uzi rose, nodded absentmindedly, and then turned away.

  A beep sounded, and Meadows rotated his body to check the monitor. “But we do have a match on one of the latents from the DVDs.”

  “Yeah?” Uzi asked impassively. “Whose?”

  “None other than our own Marshall Shepard.”

  “Shep?” Uzi spun around and looked at the screen. “What would his prints be doing on those discs?” Uzi began pacing. On the fifth pass, he mumbled, “I just don’t get it.”

  Uzi looked over and noticed Meadows sleeping again, his head nestled in the fold of his elbow. Uzi guided his friend back to the cot and gently set him down. He then grabbed a backpack and made his way through the many rooms of the lab, helping himself to various supplies and equipment.

  He had the sense that his answers did not reside in a database. For the next few hours, he’d have to figure this out on his own.

  6:01 AM

  7 hours 59 minutes remaining

  Uzi signed out an unmarked Crown Victoria BuCar—Bureau Car—from the FBI motor pool and grabbed a cell phone from the communications center. If he had wanted to replace his Glock, he would have had to do so at the Academy’s armory—and complete paperwork about his prior handgun, which was now evidence in Adams’s murder. But he hadn’t taken the time—and there certainly was no chance to do that now.

  As Uzi headed for Marshall Shepard’s home—where he hoped to obtain answers to at least a few of his questions—he decided he had to make one major assumption: that the DVDs containing the encrypted files were passed from Shepard to Leila. That conclusion seemed logical.

  When Uzi left the Hoover Building, his intention was to confront his boss, ask direct questions, and gauge the honesty of his answers. But as he turned onto his ASAC’s street, he realized that until he knew what was in the encrypted files, he didn’t want to create hard feelings with the man who had done so much for him o
ver the years, someone he considered a close friend. If I’m wrong about all this, I don’t want to throw all that away.

  Uzi parked a block from Shepard’s townhouse in Foggy Bottom and slumped down in his seat. He wished he had his night vision monocle—let alone his Glock—but he had gotten by with far less on missions in the heart of Damascus and Tehran.

  Fifteen minutes passed without activity. He wasn’t even sure his surveillance was going to bear fruit, but the alternative—getting some much-needed sleep—was no longer an option.

  Despite all that he and DeSantos had amassed, it seemed like a nest of disjointed information, fragmented pixels lacking the cohesion that could bring the picture into focus. Another week and he might have most of the answers. He needed at least another week.

  I’ve got less than eight hours.

  As the dashboard clock changed to 6:21, activity stirred near Shepard’s townhouse. The porch light snapped on, and in the dim throws of the bulb’s glow, Uzi recognized his boss’s lumbering gait. Shepard descended the five brick steps that led from his front door to the cement path that ended at the sidewalk. Shepard got into his car and hung a U-turn.

  Uzi followed with his headlights off, keeping at least a block away. He hated being in a BuCar, as the standard issue Crown Victoria was like driving in a red tomato. It stood out to those in the know, particularly criminals—and federal agents.

  But if Shepard had any inkling he was being followed, he never let on. He took a direct route, with minimal turns. Uzi calmed his thoughts, reined in his paranoia.

  His sense of tranquility lasted barely a minute, however, as Shepard headed up 23rd Street and parked near Dupont Circle. Uzi parked, too, taking note that he was less than ten blocks from Leila’s apartment. He watched as his boss walked toward the large central fountain and took a seat on what probably qualified as the world’s longest park bench.

  Shepard sat alone for ten minutes before being joined by a dark figure Uzi would recognize anywhere as Leila Harel. He knew that body. Perhaps too well.

  He watched as Shepard handed her a thick manila envelope; following a moment of dialogue, Leila disappeared into the darkness, dissolving into the surroundings like a practiced spook. Shepard, deskbound and long removed from field work, lumbered back to his car.