The Butcher's Bill (The Linus Schag, NCIS, Thrillers Book 2)

by Martin Roy Hill

  "Damn," he muttered.

  CHAPTER 16

  THURSDAY

  Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery

  San Diego, California

  1545 Hours

  KNOWN TODAY FOR ITS NAVAL installations, San Diego's Point Loma peninsula used to be an army fortress. The Spanish built the peninsula's first fort, Fort Guijarros, in the 1790s to guard the entrance to San Diego Bay. The Spaniards only fought one battle in the fort, firing its cannon against an American brig called the Lelia Byrd, which was trying to escape after being caught smuggling furs. The second and last time the Fort Guijarros fired its cannon was also against a fleeing American smuggler, but this time the cannoneers were Mexican soldiers. The fort remained under Mexican control until the USS Cyane sailed into the harbor in 1846 and claimed control of San Diego for the United States.

  In 1873, the U.S. Army started construction on Fort Rosecrans in the same area of Fort Guijarros, and for the same reason—to defend San Diego Bay. Named after a Civil War general, Fort Rosecrans grew to include massive artillery emplacements burrowed into the peninsula's rock face. The emplacements housed large, long-range cannon designed to fight off an invading naval force. Such guns protected the bay through two world wars. Those impregnable warrens are still there today. So, too, are many of the fort's old administration buildings built on Point Loma's bayside. Instead of overlooking artillery, however, those buildings today overlook submarine pens—docks for the Navy's Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarines. The only memory that Point Loma was once an Army fortress is the name of the cemetery that sits atop part of the peninsula looking seaward to the west and bayward to the east: Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery.

  One of the most prominent monuments at the cemetery is the memorial dedicated to the memory of sixty-six sailors who died aboard the USS Bennington on the morning of July 21, 1905. While lying at anchor in San Diego Bay that morning, one of the gunboat's boilers exploded, spewing scalding steam throughout the wrecked ship. Efforts to save the ship and rescue the injured earned eleven members of her crew the Medal of Honor. One crewman aboard the Bennington that morning was John Henry Turpin, a black sailor with the distinction of having survived both the explosion onboard the USS Maine, which led to the Spanish-American War, and the explosion onboard the Bennington.

  The memorial is a sixty-foot obelisk built of unfinished granite blocks. It stands like a rough-hewed Washington Monument overlooking the graves of the Bennington's dead.

  Aidan Black didn't live in San Diego, but he had gotten to know many of its landmarks during the months of regulatory red tape Gideon had gone through to get permission to build its training center in the backcountry. Though a prominent feature of the cemetery, Black knew the Bennington monument stood in one of the graveyard's oldest sections and that the mourners of those buried there had long ago passed away themselves. It was doubtful any mourners would disturb his meeting with Gavin.

  He stood in front of the towering memorial, the winter winds whipping through his dark hair. He buttoned his suit coat more to keep the wind from revealing the pistol in his waistband than from cold. Occasionally, he glanced around, ensuring himself there were no history-minded tourists approaching. A hundred yards downhill, a black SUV parked. Two men got out and walked through the headstones, heads bowed as if looking for a familiar name. They stopped at one marker and stood in silence, heads still bowed. To anyone but Aidan Black, the two men looked like mourners paying their respects to a friend or family member. Black knew, however, they were his men, Gideon operators.

  Black turned at the sound of another vehicle approaching. It steered toward the monument. Black flexed his gun hand nervously, as if warming it up. The sedan stopped, and Gavin climbed out, looking around as he did, and eyeing the two ersatz mourners suspiciously. He shrugged and walked toward Black.

  "Terry!" Black said, sticking out his hand as if greeting an old friend.

  "Aidan," Gavin said dully, and shook the offered hand. "I don't know what you got me into, but those Navy feds have got me nervous. They're saying I'm linked into this Butcher's Bill thing."

  "Not here," Black whispered. He glanced at the two men downhill, as if suspicious of them, causing Gavin to do likewise. Black nodded toward a copse of trees a little farther uphill. They walked in silence, Gavin in the lead. Gavin stopped once and started to turn, but Black urged him on further. When they were deep into the shadows of the trees, Black said, "Okay, Terry, this good."

  Gavin stopped, but before he could turn, Black jammed the barrel of his 9mm hard into the base of the detective's neck, using his other hand to pull the detective into the gun, and squeezed the trigger. It was a technique he perfected in Iraq to dispose of troublesome business associates—corrupt Iraqi government officials, greedy insurgent leaders, even a British army officer on the take. Gavin's own head muffled the gunshot. The bullet tore through the cervical spine, destroying the spinal cord, and dropping the victim like a marionette with its strings cut. Fragments of the bullet and shattered bone shredded the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls the autonomous nervous system, stopping the victim's breathing and heartbeat.

  Black let Gavin's body drop. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wrapped the pistol in it before placing it back in his waistband. He looked quickly around, saw no one nearby, and walked from under the trees to his car.

  ☼

  Schag parked the car a hundred yards from where Gavin parked, and watched him walk uphill to the monument, where he met a man in a black suit. At that distance, neither he nor Parker could see the other man clearly. Schag had a pair of binoculars in his go bag in the trunk, but he didn't want to draw attention by retrieving them. Instead, the two agents milled about the headstones, blending in with the two mourners they saw. They walked through the graves, meandering but always working themselves closer toward the monument and the trees beyond, where Gavin and the other man had disappeared. Then they heard the pop of a muffled gunshot. The other two in the cemetery either did not hear it or took no notice. To trained agents, however, the noise was unmistakable.

  Schag and Parker exchanged glances and sidestepped away from each other, expanding the tactical distance between them so a shooter couldn't hit both with a quick double shot. As they walked, their hands went to the automatics at their waists. Their pace quickened. Weapons still in their holsters, they stepped past the two mourners. Up ahead, they saw a man in a black suit step away from the trees. It was the same man who greeted Gavin, but he was still too far away to identify. Schag reached for his Glock. At the same time, he yanked the badge off his belt to show the man as they approached him.

  Schag was never sure which his brain processed first, the gunshots or the bullet slamming into his back. He was aware he was thrown forward and of intense pain in the right shoulder. He lay on the ground, his face buried in grass, unable to move. To his right, where Parker had been, he heard a scream followed by car doors slamming, an engine roaring to life, and tires screeching on pavement.

  It seemed like minutes before he could move his body again, but it was only seconds. He rolled onto his left side and looked about. The two mourners were gone and so was their car. He heard a groan and a whimper, turned and saw Parker ten feet away, writhing on the ground. His right pant leg was dark with blood. Schag crawled to the agent, the ten feet feeling like a trek through the desert, and saw bright-red blood jetting from Parker's thigh. Schag pulled his necktie loose and wrapped it twice around Parker's thigh, tied a half hitch in it, then fumbled in his leather jacket for his pen. This he placed in the center of the half hitch, and tied a knot over it. He twisted the pen until the blood stopped pumping out of Parker's leg. Parker screamed in agony. Schag wrapped the remaining loose ends of the tie around the pen and secured it in place.

  Somewhere in the distance, people were yelling. Schag tried to sit up and look around, but the pain in his back shot through him like an electrical shock. He fell backward, the sky swirling around him. Hitting th
e ground again repeated the shocking pain. Schag closed his eyes, and all around him went dark and quiet.

  CHAPTER 17

  THURSDAY

  Aboard the Coronado Ferry

  San Diego Bay

  1715 Hours

  AIDAN BLACK PARKED HIS SEDAN on the street near the Star of India, an iron-hulled ship that sailed the seas in the 1800s, before becoming a maritime museum piece. Tourists milled about the harbor front, exploring the Star and her historic sister ships, or waited in line for a table at one of the waterfront restaurants. Black quickly buried himself in the crowd and made his way to the docks, where tour boats tied up. He bought a ticket for the ferry to Coronado Island and boarded, finding a place to stand near the stern. Then he waited.

  Black stared at the oily water beneath the ferry's stern, his hands gripping the handrail, his teeth clenched as tightly as his hands. Killing Gavin didn't unnerve him. He'd killed before. It was his philosophy that a man had a right to do whatever needed to be done to further his own interests. He had no qualms about lying, cheating, stealing, or even killing. This philosophy served him well as a psychological operations officer in the Army. Many psy-ops officers he served with were uneasy with the deceits their job forced them to embrace. Aidan Black, however, had no such reservations.

  What upset Black at that moment was the need to kill Gavin. The private detective had been a loose end he hadn't counted on, and there had been too many loose ends of late, starting with Bill Butcher. Black blamed himself for that. He had tried to be clever in disposing of the threat Butcher posed to Gideon and the others. Far too clever. He should have taken him out as he had Gavin. Quick and clean. Instead, he worried about the information Butcher had. He felt he needed to discredit Butcher the way he had that Navy doctor. But the whole operation was screwed up from the beginning—from the loss of the two assassins sent after Butcher, to Cavendish's murder, to the loss of the assault team in the cabin explosion. SNAFU, Black thought. Situation Normal—All Fucked Up.

  A flurry of activity on the dock caught Black's attention. Crewmembers cast off mooring lines, and the ferry's engines growled as it pulled away from the dock. As the vessel picked up speed, the cold sea air drove most of the tourists inside the ferry's deck housing. Black turned up his collar, but stayed where he was. The ferry motored across the bay and swung alongside an aircraft carrier tied up at Coronado's North Island Naval Air Station. With the passengers' attention centered on the massive warship, Black slipped the handkerchief-clad pistol from his waistband, gave it one more covert wipe-down, and let it drop into the bay.

  Minutes later, the ferry docked at the Coronado landing. Black walked ashore and found the first restaurant with a bar. He downed two double vodkas on ice, and then took the next ferry back to San Diego.

  ☼

  Bill Butcher sat in his darkened motel room, staring at the luminous glow of his laptop screen. The motel was in a cheap section of town. It had nothing to offer a visitor except the management took payment in cash for a day or a week at a time, and paid little attention to its guests after that. The room was small and crowded by a single twin bed, a small, marred desk, and one chair. Besides the computer, jars of makeup and two wigs—one black, one red—cluttered the desk. An ancient clock radio played an all-news station while Butcher worked at the computer, organizing files, annotating them, and transferring them to a micro-memory card. The news station kept him up-to-date on the renewed manhunt. He finished transferring the last file when the news station broke into its normal broadcasting with a report of the shooting.

  "We now have reports of a shooting at the national cemetery on Point Loma," a female announcer said. "This just coming in, and we don't have any details yet. But it seems three men were gunned down at the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery out there on Point Loma. And …" the announcer paused as if listening to someone. "And we now have reports that at least two of the victims were federal agents. What's that?" Another pause. Butcher, staring at the clock radio, willed her to continue. "Yes, federal agents, members of NCIS. That, you probably know from the popular TV show, stands for Naval Criminal Investigative Service."

  Butcher rolled his eyes and shook his head in disgust.

  "We don't have any information yet on the names of the victims, or who the shooter or shooters may have been," the woman continued. "Police officials are not saying yet if this shooting was the work of the notorious Butcher's Bill killer—that is, William Butcher, the former NCIS agent who has been the subject of a massive local manhunt."

  Butcher slammed his fist on the desk and switched off the radio. He stood in the cramped room, his smooth head drooping, his eyes closed, and sighed. Somehow, he knew one of the shooting victims was Linus Schag. And he knew it was his fault.

  Sitting back at the desk, Butcher removed the small memory card and stared at it before removing the hiking boot from his right foot. He pulled back the padded insert, and placed the card beneath it. He replaced the boot on his foot, tied its laces, and sat back, a hand squeezing his eyes until they hurt.

  In the background, he heard music he knew didn't exist.

  CHAPTER 18

  THURSDAY

  Naval Medical Center San Diego

  San Diego, California

  2110 Hours

  SCHAG SAT ON THE EDGE of his hospital bed and rolled his shoulder, testing its range of motion. He had spent the rest of the day and the night at the hospital, under observation for any potential problems arising from the beating his shoulder had taken at the cemetery. The Kevlar vest he wore beneath his shirt and jacket stopped the round that slammed into his back, but the impact had left his shoulder and back sorely bruised. X-rays revealed no bone fractures, but the doctors warned Schag not to overuse his right shoulder and arm. The bullet also had left a thumb-sized hole in the back of his precious leather flight jacket. Schag figured another cruise patch could cover it.

  Tim Parker had not fared so well. The first shot slammed into his lower back. Parker's body armor stopped that one, but a second shot struck him as he fell, punching through his inner thigh back to front, and nicking the femoral artery. The doctors in the emergency room said Parker would have bled to death before reaching the hospital had Schag not jerry-rigged a tourniquet. Parker underwent surgery to repair the blood vessel, and was recuperating in a hospital room.

  Schag may have saved Parker's life, but that didn't make him a hero in Tom Riley's eyes. Just the opposite. The senior agent had barely determined Schag's own condition before unloading a variety of expletives on him.

  "Damn it, Lin, just what the hell were you thinking?" Riley demanded. "I thought you were just going to question this guy Gavin, not get involved in the goddamn gunfight at the O.K. Corral."

  "It was a pretty one-sided gunfight, Tom," Schag protested, as he dressed. He winced as he slipped his injured arm into a shirtsleeve. "We never got a chance to draw our weapons. More of a bush-whacking than a gunfight."

  "I don't give a rat's ass about that," Riley said. "I'm talking about how you got the hell to that cemetery. Why did you decide to tail Gavin? Who gave you permission to do that? What did you think you were doing?"

  "My job," Schag said, buttoning the shirt one-handed. "Gavin impersonated a federal officer and blackmailed an active-duty Navy officer. That gives us jurisdiction."

  "Well, not anymore," Riley said, turning toward the door. "Gavin's murder is now a local crime. It's up to the local cops. Keep your nose out of it."

  "Come off it, Tom." Schag's voice was tight and loud. "Gavin was killed on a federal reservation—a naval reservation. That gives us enough of a nexus to take jurisdiction."

  "No!" Riley spun on his heels, his faced contorted with rage. "Enough of this, Schag. We have enough to keep us busy, especially now you got one of my agents shot. You will stay out of anything that even smells of Bill Butcher or this guy Gavin. No ifs, ands, or buts. You're officially off duty for the next two days. Doctor's orders. Rest that arm. That's official, goddamn it."
>
  Riley turned back to the door, and slammed it on his way out.

  ☼

  Flashing amber traffic lights warned the yellow cab to slow as it neared the main gate of the submarine base. Signs advised the driver to dim his headlights. Two guards in blue-and-black Navy camouflage were huddled in the guard shack. At this time of night, few cars entered the base. On approach of the taxi, however, the guards stepped from the shelter of the shack and stood on either side of the entry lane, ready to challenge the newcomer.

  The cab driver was black, with a headful of dreadlocks that fell to his shoulders. The guards saw him swaying as he approached, as if keeping time to music. He wore dark glasses despite the time. As he got closer, they could hear the driver singing to a reggae rhythm. The guard standing on the left held out his arm. When the car rolled to a stop, the guard leaned down to the driver's window.

  "Hey, mon," the driver said in a Jamaican accent. Besides the dreadlocks, the driver also had a beard. "Me looking for a fare called Mista Schag," the driver said, handing the guard a copy of his cabbie's license. "He be staying at the Gateway." He continued swaying in a rhythmic motion.

  The guard stepped into his hut and consulted a clipboard. "Oh, right. Mr. Schag called and said you were coming," the guard said, handing the license back. "Just stay on this road and take the last left. The Gateway will be on the right."

  "Thank'e, mon," the driver said, bobbing his head. "I am totally overstanding," he added, using the Rastafari lyaric, or dialect, word for understanding. "You've been most upfulness, mon. You enjoy this music?"

  The guard looked puzzled but nodded, and the cabbie drove away. His partner gave him a questioning look.