by Diane Capri
The edge was abrupt. The valley was wide and tree covered. The drop was less than a hundred feet. The slope was soft sandy soil. But none of that made a difference.
The Land Rover lurched over the edge, and both left side wheels dropped like stones.
Chola grabbed his seat.
The Land Rover rolled sideways, pitching Chola onto the roof.
The engine screamed.
He crashed onto the roof as the Rover turned upside down and continued to roll.
The remaining windows smashed, raining broken glass into the passenger compartment.
He screwed his eyes shut as he was alternately pounded between the floor and the roof.
The slope leveled out.
The Defender came to a stop, rocking on its roof.
Chola lay on a carpet of glass.
The engine sputtered and died.
Ephraim’s bloody body lay in the rear of the Rover, one arm twisted unnaturally behind his head.
Chola looked away and swore.
The driver’s side of the vehicle had borne the brunt of the impacts. The roof had caved in, blocking the windshield and driver’s window. Chola’s glasses were caught in a string basket hanging from the back of the driver’s seat. He brushed off shards of glass and put them on.
With a deep breath, he crawled past the still body of his friend, and out the back of the Defender.
His balance swam. He sagged down on his haunches and looked up at the valley edge.
He saw nothing moving along the ridgeline above him.
But the mercenaries would not leave without checking to be sure Chola and Ephraim were dead.
Blood ran down his left arm. He wiped it on his shirt. He hated to leave his friend, but he had to move.
He’d seen several thickets of trees with sprawling undergrowth. The valley floor had access to localized water. He looked at the rear of the Rover. It was the easy way to see inside the vehicle. Logically, the mercenaries would stand there.
He scrabbled inside and found his Hawkeye rifle and the remains of a box of ammunition. Using the side of the Land Rover, he levered himself to his feet.
His head spun. He took a deep breath and moved toward the nearest crop of trees. His legs grew steadier with use, and he jogged the last hundred feet. He dived into the bush and checked the valley ridge. Everything was still.
The trees in the center of the crop were taller with more limbs and foliage. He weaved his way through the weeds, and climbed the first twenty feet up a tree until he found a clear sightline through the foliage to the rear of the Land Rover.
He chambered the first round in his Hawkeye and reloaded the magazine’s empty slot. The gun had been tossed around inside the Defender as it rolled. Any damage to the Hawkeye would be revealed when he tried to fire. He wiped his brow and shoved the thought to the back of his mind.
An engine revved in the distance.
The HiLux was descending the valley side at an angle and a steady speed. The driver was no idiot. Keeping a good distance, the HiLux circled the remains of the Land Rover. Satisfied there was no danger, it closed in, coming to a stop as Chola had predicted, at the rear.
He nestled the Hawkeye in the crook of his shoulder, his face down against the side of the gun, and settled his aim on the driver.
He’d never shot a human being before, but this wasn’t the time to be philosophical.
He breathed out, steadying his aim, and squeezed the trigger.
The Hawkeye boomed.
The recoil hammered his shoulder.
His glasses bounced.
Hot air washed over his cheek and arm.
Cracks radiated out from an inch-sized hole in the middle of the windshield.
The dry earth around the vehicle seemed to leap into life with the shockwave.
Chola kept his eyes on the truck as he cycled the spent cartridge out and a new cartridge in.
The HiLux’s engine roared.
He’d missed.
The driver was still alive.
Chola fired again.
He saw the passenger’s head whip backward.
The HiLux wheeled around, throwing up a storm of dust.
Chola fired his last four shots in quick succession, flipped the rifle over, and reloaded, wedging the rounds into the magazine like his life depended on speed.
The HiLux circled the trees.
The passenger might be down, but the driver had identified Chola’s location.
He shinnied down the tree.
When the mercenary grew tired of searching, he’d hose down the trees with bullets, starting at the top.
The HiLux halted next to a set of trees that formed a natural shield.
Chola moved sideways, keeping the HiLux in view, his gun up, waiting for movement.
He inched around a treeless area. The opening had a view of the sky and three-foot-high undergrowth.
The HiLux was behind. If the driver entered the woods, he would likely reach the edge of the open area, even if he didn’t cross it.
Chola knelt, his gun held at eye-level. Mouth open, breathing steadily, fighting the urge to run.
All he needed was a sign.
A full minute passed. His knees were tightening in his crouch. He adjusted his stance.
Across the opening, the undergrowth rustled.
He whisked his gun around and fired into the vegetation.
He loosed all six rounds spacing them a couple of feet apart.
The leaves and branches danced as the hot metal speared through their tranquil world.
Movement stopped.
No scream.
No cry for help or mercy.
Chola swore to himself and rolled his rifle over to reload. The dappled light of the woods threw his gun into darkness. He turned.
A thick black gun barrel pressed into his face.
He caught a glimpse of the trigger, and a roaring filled his ears.
But only for a second.
* * *
Tebogo lowered his gun. The headless body slumped to the ground.
He turned to one side and spat.
It was a cold victory.
The wardens were dead, but Kago was too.
He spat again.
If only the damn wardens hadn’t looked under the tarp.
He walked away.
There was no point in hiding the body. His effort would be wasted. He didn’t have time to dig a proper grave, and a shallow grave would be found by animals overnight.
He’d have to depend on Africa’s greatest strength, its size. They were far from the main routes. The chances of someone finding the body were slim.
He walked back to the rolled Land Rover.
A radio was screwed to the dashboard. It buzzed and clicked, but no one responded. With luck, no message went out from here.
He pulled Kago’s dead body from the HiLux, stripped him of any identifying items, and dropped his body in the undergrowth.
With a log and some exertion, he levered the Land Rover upright. Using the gentle incline of the valley floor, he rolled the wrecked vehicle into the bushes.
He found a wad of newspaper and swept the glass from the HiLux.
The truck started immediately.
He took one last look in the direction of Kago’s resting place and started up the valley wall.
Out of the valley, he balanced the GPS on the dashboard and set off for the next location.
Two more monitoring stations to deploy. He would complete the task and collect his money.
Only one good thing came from the encounter. They were mercenaries. One job, one price.
If only one of them came back, so be it.
Kago’s share of the Spaniard’s money now belonged to Tebogo.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tuesday, August 16
4:00 p.m. CDT
Chatham, Iowa
Sally Meacham had waited for Jess as if her job were to make sure every last member of the press followed orders to leave
the building after the press conference. They were the only two remaining in the conference room. “We’d better go.”
“Yes, of course.” Jess followed her out into the corridor and walked with her toward the exit.
“I’ve been an admirer of your work for a long time, Jess. You’re doing a lot of good in the world.” She paused. “And I’m very sorry about your son. I hope you’ll find him soon.”
“Thank you.” Jess nodded. She used her celebrity to keep Peter’s case in the public eye. The best chance she had of finding him now was a tip from an observant reader, like Sally Meacham. She was grateful for each and every one of them.
“I heard you asking Ms. Winter about Debora Elden. I remember her. Pretty smile. Hard worker,” Sally said. “She left Kelso Products about three months ago. We were sorry to see her go.”
Jess raised her eyebrows. “Why did she quit?”
“We stopped funding the research she was working on. We’ve been struggling, financially, as you probably know. It was a costly project we simply couldn’t afford to continue. We’d have been happy to reassign her to a different project, but she wasn’t interested.” Sally walked slowly as if she was in no real hurry to rush Jess out the door. “Some of the scientists are really dedicated like that. The research is more important than specific jobs to them. Or personal lives. Or anything else. Debbie Elden was one of those. She was exceptionally passionate about her work.”
“Where did she go?”
Sally seemed to think about the question. “I’m not sure if she told us. Abroad somewhere, I think.”
“Do you know Alex Cole?”
“Not really.” Sally shook her head. “He kept to himself mostly. I guess that should have been a warning sign, but honestly, a lot of the scientists we’ve had here are like that, too.”
“Don’t worry.” Jess smiled. “If being introverted and solitary was a marker for terrorism, half the people in the country would be locked up.”
Sally grimaced and waved her badge in front of the card reader beside the door to the lobby. The lock clicked open.
“What about Marco Benito?” Jess asked. “Did you know him, too?”
“Horrible man.” Sally shuddered. “We had a lot of complaints. Some personal, some work-related.”
“Such as?”
“I can’t be more specific.” Sally pursed her lips. “Let’s just say he had no respect for his coworkers.”
Jess smiled and nodded. “Really?”
Sally shifted her weight. “With the men, he interfered with their work, and with the women it was…well, more personal.”
“Was there anyone in particular he harassed?”
She shook her head. “He bothered just about everyone he came into contact with, one way or another.”
“I don’t suppose you know where Benito lived back then, or even better, now?”
“I don’t. And I couldn’t tell you if I did. Unless you have a court order, that is.” Sally stopped by the revolving door, her hand out. “Funny you should ask about Debbie Elden, though. When I conducted her exit interview, I cleared her access cards, computer accounts, all that stuff. It’s routine, you know?”
Jess frowned. “Of course. Like locking the doors between tenants in an apartment. Makes total sense.”
Sally nodded. “Right. But the really bizarre thing is that earlier in the day, a couple of hours before the explosion, one of the guys in our IT department discovered her account was active on our servers. Like it had not been deactivated or something.”
Jess widened her eyes. “What does the FBI say about that?”
Sally shook her head. “In the confusion, until you mentioned her, I’d forgotten all about it. I’m on my way to call Agent Remington about the Elden girl now. This is definitely odd.”
“Thank you, Sally. Alex Cole’s getting a raw deal here. I’m not sure what’s going on, exactly. But he didn’t do this. And whoever did this is still out there.” Jess handed her a business card. “Here’s my cell phone number. If you learn anything that might be helpful, please call me.”
Sally took the card and read it before she slipped it into her pocket.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tuesday, August 16
5:15 p.m. CDT
Chatham, Iowa
Jess’s hotel room had two queen beds. She put her overnight bag on the one farthest from the door. She freshened up in the bathroom before setting up her laptop on the room’s small desk. In a moment she was connected to a private wireless network through her portable hotspot and accessed Taboo Magazine’s private, massive databases.
Taboo had been in business a long time and had accumulated a great deal of data, particularly on people who had been or might one day be newsworthy.
Taboo also had connections with many newspaper, magazine, and media organizations around the world.
Educational records, passports, driver’s licenses. You name it, Jess could access it through Taboo’s search engines, given enough time and a few key pieces of information with which to start.
She began with Marco Benito’s name. Several hits came back, but none were scientists.
Five matches in The Journal of the American Biochemical Society were summaries of published research papers, all with long and complicated arcane titles.
She couldn’t access the content without subscribing to the Journal, but she wouldn’t have been able to decipher them, anyway.
Marco Benito’s biography listed his employment at a university in Turin, Italy.
A bespectacled, gray-haired gentleman probably between sixty and seventy smiled in his photograph.
Benito looked nothing like the man Alex Cole described as “acting all cool and everything.” How could this possibly be the same guy?
She spent a few more minutes searching for another, younger, hipper, Italian research scientist named Marco Benito before she gave up. She had a better option and now was the time to use it.
She snagged her phone and selected the name at the top of her list of favorite numbers. She smiled as she listened to his phone ring twice before he answered.
“How’s Iowa?” Henry Morris said.
“Interesting.”
“How long are you staying? A storm is heading your way.”
“Huh?”
“On the radar. There’s a storm coming down from the Dakotas,” Henry explained patiently. “Nasty weather. Tornados are predicted. You’ll want to get out of there while you still can.”
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” Jess barely heard his warnings or her responses. She was focused on something else. “I met Alex Cole today. Talked to him for a while. He’s pretty calm, which could be an indicator of some sort, I guess. But he doesn’t seem to appreciate the extent of the trouble he’s in.”
“I looked at some of his statements. He seems level-headed to me. There’s a psychological evaluation in the files by some head doctor who hasn’t met him personally. I haven’t had time to read it, and—”
“You can’t tell me what’s in it anyway,” she said. “Yeah, I know.”
“Remington’s team has found a lot of records, though. Over several years, Cole’s purchased all sorts of chemicals, equipment, computers.” Henry paused. “But here’s the thing. No proof that he bought the TAPT components used in the Kelso bomb. At least, not yet.”
Jess’s eyebrows shot up, and her mouth dropped open. “But the chemicals were found at his property. Remington released that to the press as one of the justifications for arresting Cole. It’s listed in the arrest warrant.”
“Right. The chemicals were there. But no proof that Cole bought them,” Henry explained. “He might have paid cash. Or he could have stolen them, I guess. Lots of possibilities. Just no purchase records. So far.”
“Presumably, Remington’s team is looking into that, right?”
“A case like this? They’re not going to leave a single loose end.”
“Which brings me to why I called.”
“And here I t
hought you wanted to hear my dulcet tones.”
“Nah.” She grinned. “Your dulcet tones are just a bonus.”
“You’re such a sweet talker.” He laughed and sipped something. Maybe coffee. He was still at work so it wouldn’t be alcohol. “What do you want?”
“A couple of things. First one’s easy. Someone was watching Marcia McAllister today. I’ve got a photo of the license plate. I figured it was Remington’s team.”
“Sounds like a reasonable assumption.”
“But I ran it through our databases and came up empty. If I send you the photo, can you run it for me?”
“Yep,” Henry said. “What else?”
“Alex Cole mentioned an Italian guy named Marco Benito. Called him cool. But the HR director told me he’d been a big problem. She said he didn’t fit in. Caused some trouble, and quit just ahead of the boot on his ass, from what I gathered.”
“Okay.”
“The picture I found in the Journal of the American Biochemical Society doesn’t look like the sort of person Cole would describe as cool.” She blew out a long stream of air. “Not even close.”
“Why is this relevant?” He sipped again, which made her want something stronger than coffee, but she needed clear thinking as much as he did.
“I’m not sure how it’s relevant. I’m trying to figure that out.” She paused, cocked her head, and closed her eyes to think. “Cole said several weird things had been happening at Kelso Products over the past several months. He said stuff was stolen. Someone broke into the main computer room. And this Italian, Benito, was causing a lot of trouble before he left.”
“The investigative file backs that up. Several unsolved break-ins at the Kelso plant are noted. A rash of them four to six months ago. Nothing about any Italian suspects, though.”
Jess nodded. “Here’s another odd thing. Cole was dating a coworker. Debora Elden. She left the company voluntarily, but Kelso’s IT personnel recently discovered her account is still live on their servers.”
“That’s pretty lax security,” Morris said. “But what does it prove?”
“I’m not sure it proves anything. The CEO, Claire Winter, claimed she didn’t know Elden at all, and then called her a girl.”