Bio-Strike pp-4

by Tom Clancy

  But his contorted features and hand signified that his death had been neither peaceful nor painless.

  Ricci’s frown grew. So far, the picture wasn’t coming together for him.

  He looked around the room. The two windows to the left of the bed were closed. On the right wall was what looked like a vintage baseball-dugout clock, the Brooklyn Dodgers logo on it. Quite a collector’s item. The rest of the sparse furnishings were contrastingly unremarkable. A television on the small dresser opposite the foot of the bed. A desk with one of those inexpensive fabric office chairs pushed underneath it. Next to the desk, a computer printer on a wheeled stand. All he could see on the desktop was a small stack of billing statements clipped to their payment envelopes, a few pens and pencils in a souvenir coffee cup, and a box of facial tissues. Its surface was otherwise bare.

  Ricci stepped over to the desk and rolled back the chair, then crouched to look into the kneehole.

  The two bidirectional data cables on the floor weren’t attached to anything at his end. One had a parallel port connector, the other a phone-style plug-in jack. Ricci’s eyes traced the first cable to the back of the printer. The other cable went to a LAN modem on the carpet about four feet away. The network modem’s power light was glowing green to indicate it was turned on. From there another cable ran along the edge of the carpet toward the bed and then behind the headboard to a small metal plate below the windowsill. Yet another led from the same plate to the television set.

  Palardy had a high-speed cable Internet connection. Made sense. It was probably on the corporate tab.

  Ricci rose and turned toward the entrance. Perez was already putting away his phone.

  “I talk to your friend,” the building manager told him. “Says he gonna call police right away. Says you should stay and meet them.”

  Ricci nodded.

  “I want to look around some more, anyway,” he said through his mask. “You still feel like keeping an eye on me, that’s fine. But I figure you might rather wait outside.”

  Perez glanced over at the corpse, then back at Ricci.

  “Yes,” he said. “Maybe outside.”

  Ricci nodded again.

  “One question,” he said. “Do you know if Palardy owned a computer? Ever notice a machine on his desk when you were doing repairs, or anything like that?”

  Perez shrugged.

  “Can’t remember. I come inside here maybe two, three times before today, that’s it,” he said. “Why you ask?”

  Ricci grunted and shook his head.

  “Just curious,” he said.

  * * *

  Ashley Gordian was alone with her husband. Such a basic thing. So fundamental. A woman and the man she loved, the man with whom she’d shared a thousand intimacies, together. But she’d had to battle a small army of doctors, plow through their unanimous objections, to make it happen. She understood their reasons, of course. Their fiduciary responsibilities, their obligation to prevent the transference of his infection, their genuine concern for her welfare. And she’d agreed to abide by their restrictions when they finally relented and allowed her into the room into which Roger had been moved, a room in isolation from the rest of the hospital… what she’d overheard one of them refer to as a “warm zone.” She had put on protective attire. Let herself be wrapped from head to toe. A cap, mask, and gloves. A smock over her outer clothes. Booties over her shoes. There could be no part of her that was left exposed. No direct contact with him for the fifteen minutes they’d reluctantly given her. Her flesh could not touch his flesh.

  Married three decades, and their flesh could not touch.

  She looked down at his unconscious form, a large, fit man rendered so fragile in so incredibly short a time, tubes running into his nose from a mechanical ventilator, the pressurized air flowing into his lungs to keep them open, to force oxygen into them, prevent them from drowning in this body’s own fluids as he lay there, unable to breathe for himself.

  She looked down at him now, looked down at him and wanted more than anything to remove the gloves from her hands, tear them off and soothe his brow, and knew she couldn‘t, couldn’t peel away the layers of plastic and rubber and synthetic fabric separating them.

  But their hearts…

  She inhaled through her mask and stepped closer to the bed.

  Their hearts, she thought, would not be unjoined.

  “Gord,” she said. “It’s me… Ashley…”

  She heard the tremor in her voice and paused to control it. Come on, you can do better. Be strong. For him.

  “I know I look like a wrapped piece of fish, but trust me, I dressed up for you,” she said. “I’m wearing that blouse you always compliment, the blue silk one, underneath this miserable smock.”

  His eyes remained closed. He did not move. The ventilator pumped breath into him.

  “Hannah’s flying in from Connecticut today. I think she’s tired of Julia being the daughter who gets all your attention. Brian, he’s going to stay home from work to take care of the kids while she’s here. You should have trusted me all those years ago when I said he’d make good husband material….”

  She brushed her gloved fingertips lightly over his cheek, a sterile contact that was the closest she could come to feeling him.

  The ventilator pumped.

  “The doctors, they’re really hustling to make you well, and trying to be nice to me in their doctorly way,” she said. “This morning I was introduced to a specialist… Eric Oh. He’s looking into your case, running tests, and thinks he might have an idea what’s wrong with you. He was asking me whether you might have come into contact with rodents lately, of all things. And you know, there I am, worried sick about you, listening to his questions, wanting to do anything I can to help, and all of a sudden I get this crazy urge to lay into him for insinuating we don’t keep a clean house.”

  Another pause.

  “Well, I managed to calm myself without saying anything I’d live to regret, and decided it’s possible some field mice could have nested in our basement… or even been in Julia’s yard when you were working on the dog corral. So now they’re sending teams out to look around both our properties for droppings, I think they said.” She shrugged. “Mouse shit, honey, in my kitchen. Can you believe it? Maybe I should have cracked that doctor one, huh?”

  He did not move.

  Not a flicker under his eyelids.

  She listened to the ventilator pump.

  “Oh, some good news,” she said. Strong, strong. “Everybody’s starting to talk Super Bowl for the Packers. I’ve been hearing it all week on the news. They’re playing at home Sunday, I think it’s that team from Florida you always gripe about. The weather’s been so cold in Wisconsin, they already have snow on the ground, and I know you say that gives your boys the advantage over the competition, that they can take a little nip in the air….”

  She felt a sob well suddenly into her throat and clenched her teeth against it. Pushing it back down inside her. Banishing it.

  “Anyway, back at the ranch, Megan and Pete and the crew are doing some sleuthing of their own. Trying to see if they can find somebody who might have passed you the bug. You know how they are, wanting to make everything right. I swear, they’d go to war with the universe for you. And I know Pete would turn red in the face if he ever heard me say this… Vince, too… oh God, especially Vince… but I think they love you almost as much as I do. Really love you, Gord.”

  She became aware of movement behind her, turned to look over her shoulder.

  A nurse. Signaling her from just inside the door.

  Ashley nodded, held up a finger.

  The nurse returned the nod and withdrew.

  Ashley leaned forward over the bed.

  “I’m getting the hook,” she said in a quiet voice. “They only give me a few minutes at a time. The doctors, that is. You know how they are. So before I forget to give you the best news… aside from the football predictions, naturally… before I forget, I want t
o announce that I’ve decided to lift the ban on flavored coffee. It’s over. Finished. As of today. When you get out of here, it’s hazelnut, French vanilla, mocha java… whatever you want. So you hang in there, okay? You hang in.”

  Ashley wiped her eyes with the back of her arm, breathed, heard the ventilator breathe for her husband.

  Then she became aware of the nurse at the door again.

  In silence, she touched a rubber glove to her heart, gently touched it to his heart, and straightened.

  They can’t be unjoined, she thought.

  And slowly pulled herself away from him and turned to leave the room.

  NINETEEN

  VARIOUS LOCALES NOVEMBER 16, 2001

  Phil Hernandez, the chief countersnoop, was snagged to lead Nimec and Ricci into Palardy’s office minutes after Ricci returned from Sunnydale. Ashley Gordian had called with word of her husband’s rapid downturn and isolation, and the two Sword ops couldn’t afford to lose any time.

  “You know anybody who fraternized with Palardy?” Nimec asked Hernandez. “Buddies from work, outside contacts, girlfriends…?”

  Hernandez shook his head. He was a tautly built man in his late forties with graying hair, skin the color of sun-baked ocher, and intelligent brown eyes.

  “Don kept to himself,” he said. “Didn’t even mention he used to be married till I noticed that snapshot over there and asked him about it.” He tipped his head toward a small picture frame on Palardy’s desk. The photo showed a plump woman with a nice face and lively smile crouched on a beach blanket with two small children. A boy and girl who might have been twins and were certainly very close in age. “Don told me he was divorced a few years ago. Wife took custody of the kids. I think she lives somewhere back East.” Another shake of his head, this time accompanied by a sigh. “Jesus, I suppose I’d better see if I can get her address from personnel, somebody’s got to notify his family.”

  Ricci nodded. “If an asshole named VanDerwort gives you any flak—”

  “VanDerwerf,” Nimec corrected.

  “You let us handle him,” Ricci said.

  Ricci glanced around the room. It was a tiny, windowless cubicle as unremarkable as Palardy’s condominium had been. A computer workstation stood against one wall. On a credenza opposite it were a pair of headphones and some other sweep equipment, mostly minor accessories. Heavy-duty apparatus like the Big Sniffer were kept under electronic lock and key in a secure storage locker elsewhere on the floor.

  Nimec was looking at Hernandez. “Did Palardy’s behavior seem at all unusual lately?”

  “Far as his health?”

  “That, or anything else. In your opinion.”

  Hernandez thought a moment, then shrugged.

  “Nothing stands out in my mind,” he said. “The last time I saw Don must’ve been Friday. Maybe nine o‘clock in the morning, after his sweep. He seemed a little quiet, but that’s how it was with him. I won’t say he got moody. You could ordinarily expect him to be pleasant. He just wasn’t the type to talk about his personal life.”

  * * *

  “So you’ve told us,” Nimec said.

  Hernandez shrugged again.

  “The job’s repetitious. You come in, make your rounds, do your paperwork. Most of the guys walk through the door in the morning, pour their coffees, can’t wait to tell each other whether they had a good night, a lousy one, saw a movie, won at poker, got drunk, got laid, you know. And I encourage that.”

  “Relieves the tedium,” Nimec said.

  A nod. “I’d rather have my people happy than unhappy. The priorities, though, are that they’re reliable and thorough. And Don is. Was. Kept his men on their tiptoes.”

  “In what way?” Ricci said.

  “Every way you’d want from a team leader. Don was tight about his records. A stickler for equipment maintenance. And nobody was more up on the latest antibug technologies. He knew his stuff, was always requisitioning upgrades.”

  “The first time we talked, you acted like it wasn’t anything to set off air-raid sirens about when he stopped calling after Monday. Somebody’s that diligent, how come you didn’t think it was a bigger deal?”

  Hernandez looked abashed.

  “Honestly, I was damn concerned,” he said. “But I figured that whatever could make him act so out of character had to be pretty serious, and I wanted to give him a little slack. In case it was something personal, know what I mean?”

  * * *

  Ricci regarded him steadily. “He’s one of your own, you look out for him.”

  Hernandez nodded.

  “Listen, if you hadn’t beat me to it, I would have headed down to his place tonight myself,” he said. “Been the one to find the poor guy.”

  “Lucky me,” Ricci said. He expelled a sigh. “Palardy’s records… where’d he keep them?”

  Hernandez waved at the computer against the wall.

  “In there. He entered his reports every day, sent copies directly to my terminal at the end of each week. Once a month I’d get his assessment of our surveillance countermeasure protection level, which is standard practice for all team leaders.”

  * * *

  “Sounds like a lot of typing,” Nimec said.

  “That’s true,” Hernandez said. “But it’s how we plug holes. And avoid new ones.”

  Ricci was rubbing his chin. “The reports get written up in the building? During business hours?”

  “Depends,” Hernandez said. “Sometimes when they’re making their monthly assessments, the team leaders would rather take the work home with them than park it here.”

  “Palardy, too?”

  “Sure,” Hernandez said. “Detailed as his were, he’d never have left this office otherwise.”

  “He must have had a desktop PC at his condo, then.”

  Hernandez gestured vaguely with both hands.

  “You’re the only person I know who’s seen the inside of the place,” he said. “I can tell you that he brought in a notebook computer every so often.”

  “He ever leave it behind?”

  “I really have no idea. Suppose it’s possible.”

  Ricci glanced around the little room. There was no sign of the notebook and not many spots where it could be. He went over to the workstation, pulled open its drawer. It was filled front to back with carefully labeled file folders. Nothing else. Questions picking at his mind, he recalled the two disconnected cables under Palardy’s bedroom desk.

  He turned to Hernandez.

  “I need to sit down at his computer and check out what’s on Palardy’s hard drive,” he said. “Might take me a while.”

  Hernandez’s expression showed reluctant acceptance.

  “You call the shots,” he said. “If I asked you why, would you tell me?”

  Ricci looked at Nimec, got his nod, looked back at Hernandez.

  “The boss is in bad shape,” he said. “Nobody’s sure what has him down, but we’re afraid it might be the same thing that took out Palardy. And we want to trace Palardy’s contacts. Try to connect the dots before this situation gets any worse.”

  Hernandez stood without saying anything for a moment. Then he stepped over to the computer and turned it on.

  “It’s all yours,” he said. “You need any help, call me in my office. If I’m not there, page me.”

  Ricci nodded. He was thinking Hernandez was okay.

  “Appreciate it,” he said, and sat behind the monitor to see what he could see.

  * * *

  Lucio Salazar met them in Tecate, a small border town and smuggler’s gateway on the Baja Peninsula, about a half hour’s drive east of Tijuana.

  Despite the necessity of the trip, Lucio supposed it was only as his driver pulled over to the drab motel on Avenida Benito Juarez that he altogether believed he was about to arrange for the death of Enrique Quiros, son of his old friend Tomás, with whom he’d pilfered fruit and bread from the outdoor market stands of Tijuana when both were ragged strays without a whole pair
of shoes between them. The prepubescent Lucio already looking after his younger brothers, looking to survive on the street, long years from becoming the clan leader of Los Magos. Just another cast-off son of a whore and some unremembered clench in the night, insignificant as a stain on a dirty sheet. And maybe it wasn’t until he was in the room with the men he’d hired for the job, looking at one of the guns that would be used for the takedown, that his purpose in coming there really sank into his heart.

  He had cause enough to believe things were well beyond any other solution. For openers, Lathrop’s information was always solid, and he had been definite that Quiros meant to put him in the grave. Then, by pure coincidence, the scouts he’d sent to Balboa the night before had spotted a group of Quiros’s men outside the park, skulking around for twenty minutes before they took off. While they could have been there for the same reason as Lucio’s own men, wanting to familiarize themselves with the grounds in case of a double cross, he doubted it, considering what he’d learned of Enrique’s recent maneuvers. And he could not overlook the tunnel raid.

  Even so, Lucio guessed some part of him was still holding onto a shred of hope that violence would be avoided in this instance. That their differences could be reconciled out of respect for Tomás’s memory. But again it came down to a matter of survival. At any cost.

  Now he studied the weapon being exhibited for him like some enticing rarity, a Walther 2000 sniper rifle with a special optical attachment on the scope. After a couple of minutes, he glanced up at the slight, dark-eyed man who’d laid it across the bedspread.

  “Let’s talk money,” he said.

  The little man nodded. “We each take twenty thousand. Half up front. The balance when it’s done.”