I hung up with the distinct feeling I’d jumped in way over my head. But into what? I wished to heck I knew!
I left the detachment with boarding pass in hand and less than two hours to rush back to my apartment, change into my service uniform, throw some things in an overnight bag, and heavy-foot it to the airport.
I called my office on the way to my apartment. My team has come to expect the unexpected these days, but this abrupt departure for Washington took them by as much surprise as it had me. Mentally crossing my fingers, I left Rocky in charge.
I had to scramble to put my service dress uniform together. I don’t wear the dark blue jacket, slacks, and light blue blouse all that often. I fixed the U.S. insignias on the collar tabs okay and centered the nickel-plated name tag. My skimpy, single row of ribbons gave me grief but I finally got it straight and pinned my DARPA badge right above. Cramming my feet into low-heeled black pumps and my flight cap with its shiny gold lieutenant’s bar over my clipped-up French braid, I grabbed my purse and the overnighter and hit the door running.
I made it to the airport and through security with all of ten minutes to spare. Just long enough to grab a burrito and Coke on my way to the gate. The burrito was Tex-Mex at its best. Loaded with onions and super-hot chili sauce. Tasted fabulous going down. Not so good as I tried to smother burps all the way across country.
The Delta flight made a short stop in Houston and landed at Reagan National at 7:10. It was already dark. And chilly! February in D.C. is considerably colder than in El Paso. Wishing I’d thought to bring my Air Force overcoat, I shivered my way across the street and up the parking ramp to the rental car section.
Agent Blue Eyes had reserved a compact sedan in my name. Pretty boring after my sporty Sebring convertible, but its heater worked very nicely. Now all I had to do was battle my way south to Fort Belvoir.
I’ve only been to D.C. three times. Once with my high school pom squad to march in the capital’s Fourth of July parade, twice to visit DARPA headquarters. Each time I’d gazed in awe at the monuments and gawked at the bumper-to-bumper gridlock otherwise known as rush hour. To my infinite relief, I caught the tail end of the mass exodus out of the city. I moved along at a decent clip while the NAVSTAR directional system in the rental sang out directions.
Once past the Beltway, the suburban sprawl of shopping malls, office buildings, and town house complexes thinned out. I drove through rolling Virginia hills studded with centuries-old oaks lifting still-leafless branches to the night sky. This was tobacco country, or used to be back in the days when huge plantations dominated historic Fairfax and Prince William counties.
I flashed my AF ID at the visitors’ entrance to Fort Belvoir, but still had to go inside and get a temporary pass for the rental. The center boasted a gallery of framed photos showing the post’s evolution from a pre-WWI training camp for Army engineers to its current role as a major military complex. Anxious to get to my destination, I gave the pictorial display only a cursory look-see.
After fixing the pass to my windshield, I circled a moonlit golf course and promptly got lost in the maze of facilities that comprise the South Post. I finally pulled into a huge parking lot across the street from several floodlit brick buildings. A boldly lettered sign indicated one of the buildings housed JPPSOWA, whatever that was.
Another sign announced the home of the Institute of Heraldry. For those of you who don’t know, the institute has to put their chop on all the badges and insignia worn by the U.S. military. I know this because my team and I designed a patch for FST-3. We thought it was pretty cool and descriptive of our mission. It featured one of the items we’d tested—an ergonomic exoskeleton—wearing an Air Force flight cap, a Good Conduct Medal, and a diabolical smirk. The institute disapproved of it. In somewhat less than polite terms, I might add.
I directed a disdainful sniff at the institute and hurried up the walk leading to CID headquarters. Like the other buildings, this one was redbrick with white pillars framing the door. Legacy of the area’s southern heritage, I surmised as I buzzed for entry. I had to pass through two security checkpoints and clip on a badge encoded with my digitized image before Special Agent Sinclair showed up to escort me to the inner sanctum.
“Sorry for pulling you in with such short notice, Lieutenant.”
“Not a problem.”
Sinclair was as short and tough as I remembered from our meeting out at the test site, with the same electric blue eyes. Only now they were rimmed with red and his formerly crisp khakis sported almost as many wrinkles as O’Reilly’s.
“What’s this all about?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity.
“Let’s go to the conference room. We’ll brief you there.”
We? I tasted spicy burrito again. Whatever I’d gotten involved in was obviously big.
Even this late in the evening, CID headquarters hummed with activity. Not surprising, I guess, for an agency charged with investigating fraud, computer crimes, and other criminal activity worldwide as well as providing protective services for VIPs who decide to jaunt around to hot spots like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Blue Eyes led me past a brightly lit operations center crammed with computer consoles and a wall full of digital clocks showing the time in dozens of different time zones. I got an eyeful before we turned a corner and my escort pushed open a door.
“In here.”
I entered a small conference room containing only a table, black vinyl chairs, and three unsmiling strangers. On the table lay an assortment of printed newspaper articles. The headlines on one caught my instant attention. Would’ve been hard to miss. In two-inch letters, it shouted about a “Local Couple Bludgeoned to Death.” Gulping, I tore my gaze from the headlines while Sinclair made the intros.
“Lieutenant Spade, this is Agent Angela O’Donnell from our ELINT division; Agent Travis MacIntire, who runs our Afghanistan desk, and Tom Devonshire, the State Department’s rep to the president’s Interagency Counter-narcotics Task Force.”
Electronic intelligence? Counter-narcotics?
Feeling as though I’d just stepped onto very treacherous ground, I shook hands with a brisk, businesslike O’Donnell, a thin, almost cadaverous MacIntire, and Devonshire, who looked like he hadn’t slept or shaved in weeks.
“Care for some coffee before we get started?” Blue Eyes asked.
“Yes, please.”
I knew I would need the jolt. If the grim expressions on these characters’ faces were any indication, this was going to be a terse session.
“All right,” Sinclair said when I was duly supplied with a cup of tarry liquid, “please tell the others what you told me. Specifically, why you think Oliver Austin was connected to the murder of Sergeant Diane Roth’s in-laws.”
“I didn’t say he was connected. I said I thought he could be.”
“Why?”
I hesitated, my hands wrapped around the ceramic mug. “You informed them this is all sheer supposition on my part, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
I shot a glance around the table. Looking at those unsmiling and haggard faces, I came close—very close—to wishing I’d kept my mouth shut. Downing a swig of a brew almost as noxious as Pen’s herbal infusions, I started with the shooting.
“Diane told the police responding to the shooting incident that she’d been stationed with Austin in Afghanistan. She said they hung out together occasionally.” I hesitated a moment. “She didn’t say so, but I got the impression they might have been more than friends.”
“They were,” Blue Eyes confirmed. “When we interviewed her, she admitted to a short but intense affair.”
“That’s how she described Austin to the police. Very intense. Too intense for her. She was relieved when he rotated back to the States some months before she did and didn’t reply to his subsequent emails.”
Sinclair kept his expression carefully neutral, but I saw O’Donnell drop her gaze to hide a sudden flicker in her eyes. Which told me Diana had, in f
act, responded to Austin’s emails.
A queasy feeling stirred in the pit of my stomach.
“What else did Sergeant Roth tell you about Oliver Austin?”
“Just what she told the police. That she didn’t learn he’d been diagnosed with PTSD and subsequently separated from the Army until she got back to the States. She said she called the VA hospital where he was being treated, but he’d checked himself out and disappeared. She hadn’t had any contact with him at all until he showed up in El Paso and started shooting.”
No flicker in O’Donnell’s eyes—or anyone else’s—this time.
“So what did Sergeant Roth say,” Sinclair continued, his piercing gaze locked on my face, “that made you think Oliver Austin might have been involved in the deaths of Helen and Peter Roth?”
“Diane didn’t say anything. In fact, she didn’t even tell me that her in-laws had been murdered. I heard about it from her neighbor, who babysits her kids. But Diane did tell me the Roths had tried to get custody of their grandchildren. She’d had to fight them the whole time she was deployed. So I thought . . . I wondered . . .”
“What?”
“If Austin had become obsessed with her, he might have thought he could help by getting rid of her most pressing fear—losing her children.”
“And you raised this possibility with Diane?”
“I did, but she said he was still in the VA hospital when the murders happened.”
Sinclair leaned forward, his elbows bent and his hands locked on the table. “Until your phone call this morning, we had no knowledge of the Florida murders. The Kissimmee police investigated the crime. They didn’t notify us, as there was no connection to the military, other than the fact the Roths were taking care of their grandchildren while their mother served overseas. We’ve since learned that the Roths didn’t advertise the fact they were suing for custody of their grandchildren, so it never figured as a factor in the investigation.”
“I can understand why they would keep it quiet,” I said around the lump that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in my throat. “Might not play well in the local papers to be going after a single mom serving in a combat zone. Especially after agreeing to take care of her kids while she was deployed.”
Agent O’Donnell spoke up for the first time. “The custody petition had to be filed in the children’s legal state of residence. Sergeant Roth was stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, before she deployed. She gave her in-laws a conditional power of attorney to act on certain matters concerning the children’s health and welfare, but she maintained Georgia as her—and her kids’— residence of record. From what we’ve uncovered in the past six hours, all legal work concerning the custody suit was handled by a Georgia attorney the Roths hired.”
“What about . . . ?” I hated myself for asking, hated the ugly suspicions I’d raised. “What about the Roths’ estate? Diane said they had money. Lots of money. Do you know who inherited?”
“The will is still tied up in probate, but the Kissimmee PD investigator we talked to indicates half the estate goes to various charities. The other half is divided equally between their only living issue—the two grandchildren.”
Oh, Lord! Talk about motive!
“But,” Sinclair continued as I writhed internally,
“aside from a small cash settlement when they graduate from high school and stipulations to cover college costs, the principal would be held in trust until they reach twenty-five.”
So the kids wouldn’t benefit from their grandparents’ death for several decades. Did Diane have prior knowledge of that? I sure hoped so!
I blew out a breath, suddenly impatient to learn just what my role was in all this. “I’ve told you everything I know. Now you tell me. Have you found any evidence, any emails or phone calls or other intelligence, linking Diane Roth or Oliver Austin to the Kissimmee murders?”
“No, nothing.”
A huge boulder seemed to roll off my shoulder. I felt nothing but relief that all my nasty suspicions were just that—unsubstantiated suspicions.
“So why am I here?”
“Before I explain that, would you tell us if Sergeant Roth has ever mentioned someone named Al Sorenson?”
“No.”
“Dino D’Roco?”
“No.”
“Hazra Ali?”
“No. Who are these guys?”
In response, Sinclair clicked a button on a remote. The blank screen at the far end of the conference room glowed, then came alive with the image of a smiling, middle-aged man waving from the cab of a dust-covered truck.
“Al Sorenson was a civilian contractor working at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. He ran the U.S. Materials Recovery and Reclamation Program until his vehicle hit an IED six months ago. Prior to that, we suspect he smuggled somewhere in the vicinity of five million dollars’ worth of heroin back to the States in expended shell casings.”
My momentary relief seeped away like water oozing through my fingers. I got all tense again as Sinclair brought up a tough-looking character in a gray uniform with scarlet tabs on each shoulder.
“Colonel Hazra Ali was deputy director of defense in Kunduz Province, northern Afghanistan. He died in the same blast that killed Sorenson. We now have hard proof he acted as Sorenson’s go-between with the local warlords looking for a market for their opium crop.”
“And Dino D’Roco?”
Sinclair brought up a police mug shot showing a curly-haired wise guy smirking at the camera.
“Dino was a small-time South Jersey thug until he started moving major shipments of heroin. Word on the street is he had a direct source in the person of his brother-in-law.”
Sinclair clicked the remote again. The unshaven thirty-something in a black T-shirt looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him.
“Who’s that?”
“His brother-in-law. Oliver Austin.”
Oooookay.
I took a closer look. Austin looked different without a ski mask pulled up to his forehead. And without the tire tracks! Handsome, in a brooding, George Clooney kind of way. I could sort of see why Diane went for him.
“We had Austin under surveillance for some time,” Sinclair related grimly. “He was just a cog, a minor player who greased the wheel for the big guys. We gave him plenty of rope, hoping he, Sorenson, Ali, and Dino would lead us to those big guys.”
“Both in Afghanistan and here in the U.S.”
That came from Tom whatever his name was. The State Department rep. He scrubbed a hand across his stubbled chin, weariness in every line of his body.
“I’m sure you’ve heard opium production has increased exponentially since the U.S. busted up the Taliban regime, which kept the countryside in a stranglehold. Unfortunately, the present government hasn’t been able to exert the same degree of control. With warlords once again reigning supreme in their private fiefdoms, the drug trade has exploded. Afghanistan now accounts for more than ninety percent of the world’s opium trade and is in danger of becoming a total narco-state.”
This was all making me extremely nervous. It didn’t take Pen’s two PhDs to connect the dots.
Multimillion-dollar international drug deals.
A cog in that disgusting wheel attempting to take out a woman he’d served with in Afghanistan.
The same woman who’d evidently lied about keeping in touch with him.
I clutched my mug of now-cold sludge with both hands. I was pretty sure I knew what was coming but asked anyway. “Why am I here? What do you want me to do?”
Sinclair’s blue eyes lasered into me. “We want you to get close to Sergeant Roth. Very close. Find out what she knew about Austin’s activities in Afghanistan.”
Despite the ice in my veins I felt compelled to insert a caveat. “If she knew about them.”
“If she knew about them,” he echoed. “Become her new best friend. Get her to trust you. When it looks like she might open up to you, we’ll fit you with a wire.”
&
nbsp; I squirmed in my chair, guilt running rampant. I knew in my heart I’d done the right thing by contacting Sinclair but couldn’t help feeling like a real scuzz for prying up the lid on this Pandora’s box. Diane had already been through so much. Her and the kids. Now I could well be adding to their troubles. Some best friend!
CHAPTER TEN
ONCE I’d reluctantly agreed to Agent Sinclair’s plan, he arranged for me to be granted a special security clearance. I then proceeded to learn more about the enormously profitable and extremely dangerous heroin trade than I’d ever wanted to know.
The big question, the one I was supposed to help them answer, was how much, if anything, Diane Roth knew about the operation in Afghanistan.
I’m not sure why Sinclair thought that I, a mere amateur, could squeeze more information out of her than he had. Both he and Comb-Over Guy had grilled her during their investigation into the shooting. What’s more, the hot-dog analysts at HQ had picked through every line of her sworn statements, looking for holes or contradictions concerning her relationship with Oliver Austin. The only inconsistency they’d found until now was the one that had generated that eye flicker.
In her statement to both the El Paso PD and CID investigators, Diane claimed she hadn’t responded to Austin’s emails after he departed Afghanistan. But Sinclair and company found one in a screen of the thousands of communications generated at a computer center set up for the troops to keep in touch with family and friends.
“It doesn’t contain anything incriminating,” Blue Eyes admitted, sliding a copy across the conference table.
“No kidding,” I commented after skimming the brief, single line indicating Diane had heard Austin might have to meet a medical eval board and was worried about him.
“But it does contradict Roth’s statement that she hadn’t kept in touch with Austin.”
“It’s only one email. Maybe she forgot it.”
“Right. Like she forgot to tell you her in-laws had been murdered.”
That shut me up. Blue Eyes gave me a moment to reflect before pushing out a tired sigh.
Now You See Her Page 10