There were links to more stories about the problems with agueloquine. Schag clicked on several and read the articles. As Commander Clarke had said, only a small minority of people given the drug ever had adverse effects, while millions died of malaria each year. Still, those who did have problems with the drug found themselves in horrifying real-life nightmares, the worst of which led to violence and murder. Too many of those were veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Despite these stories, Schag found none indicating the nation had paid any real attention. It was as if someone had taken great pains to damp down the bad publicity.
Just as someone had sent a group of psychologists to aid in the manhunt for Bill Butcher, and to deflect any questions about whether agueloquine was responsible for his behavior. Just like someone hired Gavin to discover information to discredit Commander Clarke.
Schag now understood who that was—Gordias and Charles Bennett III.
Something on the television caught Schag's ear. An overly excited reporter said there was breaking news in The Butcher's Bill manhunt. The reporter had no details, but the video feed showed police cars from multiple agencies speeding away, sirens blaring, and red and blue lights flashing.
Schag's Blackberry buzzed. Tom Riley's name flashed on the screen.
"Hey, Tom, what's up?"
"Where the hell are you?" Riley demanded.
"In my room at the Gateway resting my injured shoulder for two days as you ordered," Schag retorted, not liking Riley's tone.
"I don't give a fuck what I said," Riley said. "Get your god damn ass back in the office here. Bill Butcher just kidnapped his wife from the safe house, and killed our agents in the process."
CHAPTER 22
FRIDAY
NCIS Safe House
San Diego, California
1230 Hours
(Two hours earlier)
Yolanda Butcher closed her cell phone and wiped a tear from her eye, careful not to smudge her makeup. She had been speaking with her family—her parents and her kids—and the sound of the children's voices made her terribly homesick. The children knew their father was in trouble, but they had no idea how bad. Yolanda's parents had avoided watching news programs or leaving newspapers lying around that would have alerted them. Likewise, Yolanda avoided discussing Bill with the kids, deflecting any questions they asked by changing the subject. Still, she could hear the worry in their young voices, and that broke her heart.
The doorbell rang and, thinking—hoping—it was Schag, she rushed from the bedroom and down the hallway. She heard one of the bodyguards call out, "Who is it?"
"Pizza delivery," a man replied. "A Tom Riley ordered a pepperoni and sausage pizza for you. He said he called you about it?"
The agent, who had been in the field less than a year, glanced at his partner. The older man shrugged. "Tom's done that kind of thing before when we were on stake outs and such. Can you see the guy?"
The younger agent peered through the peephole and saw a tall man with a red ball cap with the logo of a well-known pizza chain sewn on.
"Looks legit," the agent said.
His hand on his pistol, he cracked the door for a better view. The deliveryman grinned at him and gestured with a large cardboard pizza box he held in both hands, one hand on top, the other on the bottom. The agent could see a pizza delivery van parked at the curb, He relaxed, opened the door wide, and reached for the box. As he did, the deliveryman pulled the trigger on the automatic pistol concealed beneath the box. The impact of the bullet slammed the young agent against the opposite wall, where he collapsed in a heap, blood spilling from a hole in his throat. The blood spread out to mix with pizza slices thrown from the box.
The older agent jumped from the chair he was sitting in, his hand moving swiftly to his weapon. It wasn't fast enough. The gunman stepped through the door and fired twice, hitting the agent in the head. As soon as the gunman was inside the house, a second man rushed inside. Like Bill Butcher, he was tall and husky, with a cleanly shaved head. As the first gunman checked the bodies of the dead agents, the second scanned the living room looking for Yolanda. Not finding her, he started down the hallway where Yolanda stood frozen, her eyes transfixed, lips trembling. At first, she thought the tall, bald gunman silhouetted by the light streaming from the open door was her husband, but that thought was fleeting. As the gunman came toward her, she turned and fled back toward the bedroom.
It was too late. He was on her in a few steps. She felt his beefy hand grab her shoulder and jerk her backward. She let herself fall onto her back, slapping the floor with her arms to absorb the impact as Bill had taught her. Using the momentum of the fall, she continued to roll as if doing a backward somersault, and slammed her feet into the face of her assailant as he bent over to grab her again. He fell with much less grace. Yolanda jumped to her feet, kicked the man in the face again, and turned to flee.
The sound of the gunshot froze her.
"You fucking bitch," screamed the man on the floor. "You fucking bitch!"
"Shut up, you idiot," growled the man in the pizza hat. "You let her smack you around like that? You're fucking disgusting. Now get up and tie her hands."
The bald man did as told, pulling a set of zip cuffs from his pocket and securing Yolanda's hands behind her back. Faced with a gunman she knew had already killed twice, she didn't struggle. They led her out the front door, without regard to the neighbors peering cautiously out windows in response to the sound of gunfire. Shoving Yolanda into the parked van, the first gunman climbed into the driver's seat and said to his partner, "Now do your act."
The bald gunman turned toward the gawking neighbors and fired his pistol twice into the air.
"Tell them Bill Butcher was here," he yelled. "That's me! The Butcher!"
"That's enough, goddamn it," the driver said. "Get in."
The gunman complied, and the van drove off with a screech of tires.
☼
"It was Butcher," Lieutenant McManus said. The San Diego Police lieutenant was again in charge of the SWAT action, in and around the NCIS safe house. "Two men, one in a red ball cap, the other big and bald. Driving a stolen pizza delivery van. One of our units found the van abandoned about a mile away. Empty."
"How can they be sure it was Bill?" Schag said.
"Big bald guy like they've seen on the news for the past several days," McManus answered. "And he screamed his name out to them." McManus looked at a notebook in his hand. "According to witnesses, he yelled, 'Tell them Bill Butcher was here. That's me. The Butcher.'"
Schag shook his head. "Bill never refers to himself as The Butcher. That's only something our academy classmates called him. Why would he shoot up the neighborhood?
McManus shrugged. "He wanted their attention?"
"What about the second guy?" Schag asked. "Who the hell was the second guy? Bill's on the run alone."
The police lieutenant sighed. "Look, agent, I know is this guy's your friend, but people saw him, the whole fucking block saw him."
"They saw a big bald guy with a gun," Schag retorted. He waved his hand at the police officers and detectives milling around the safe house. Many of them were beefy and sported closely cropped hair or shaved heads. "We already mistakenly identified a big bald guy as Bill. How can we be sure this time?"
"No, you mistakenly identified some big bald guy as Bill," Riley corrected. He held a hand between Schag and McManus to quiet the agent. "Frankly, I really don't care if Santa Claus shot up the neighborhood. Two of my agents are dead and Bill Butcher is the prime suspect. That gives us the nexus to cut in on this thing. I want my own crime scene techs to go over this house, too."
McManus nodded. "Seems we all have jurisdiction now," he said, turning to walk away. "Your dead agents, in my jurisdiction, and Gideon's people in the sheriff's jurisdiction. It's getting pretty damn crowded on that dais during press conferences."
Schag waited until McManus was several yards away before turning to Riley and saying, "None of this makes sense
, Tom."
"Why? Riley said. "Because Bill's your friend?"
Schag bit the inside of his mouth. He was churning inside. He didn't believe for a second Bill Butcher kidnapped Yolanda and killed the agents. Someone else did, someone who had Yolanda. Fear for her safety left a sick ache in his stomach. He wanted to grab Riley by the collar of his expensive suit and shout, No. because I spoke with Bill last night and he was just fine! He knew he couldn't. Instead, he said, "Because Bill would never do anything that would endanger Yolanda."
"You don't know that," Riley said. "You said yourself that medicine maybe made him crazy. No telling what he might do. Besides, who else would do it?"
"What about Gideon?"
Riley looked at Schag curiously. "Why would Gideon want to snatch Butcher's wife?"
Schag couldn't explain the connection between Gideon and Gordias, and the plot to kill Butcher and make it look like suicide. "They attacked him at the cabin," was his weak answer.
"That was a rogue group of Gideon men out for revenge," Riley said tightly. "Look, Lin, I understand where you're coming from. Bill's your friend. But like you said yourself when I first called you in on this, you're too personally involved. You can't be part of this investigation, especially now that we're part of it. However, you know Bill better than anyone else except his wife, and now she's gone. I still need you close by to bounce stuff off, but you've got to maintain some semblance of objectivity to be of any good to us. You understand?"
Schag's jaw clenched. He was being pushed out of the way, but he knew Riley was right. Even if NCIS had nexus, there was no way he could be an active participant in the investigation. He had to sit it out. His jaw loosened. He nodded.
"Understood," he said.
"Good," said Riley. "Now get back to the office. Take care of some paperwork, whatever. Just keep busy."
Riley turned to leave, but Schag stopped him.
"Tom, assuming it was Bill who did this, how did he know about the safe house? The only people who knew Yolanda was here were you, me, and those two dead agents."
Riley glared at Schag. "How the fuck should I know?" he said. "Maybe someone told him." Riley eyed Schag. "Did you?"
"No, I didn't," Schag said. That much was true. "When could I?"
"Well, neither did I," Riley said. "Maybe his wife called him. Now get back to the office."
Riley walked off. Schag turned and walked to his car. Inside, he started the engine, strapped himself in, and put it in gear. After a moment, he put the car back into park. It wasn't the top of the hour yet, but he pulled out the burner phone and turned it on. There was a message waiting.
"Not me," was all it said.
CHAPTER 23
FRIDAY
Aboard the Tanker Mars Venture
Anchored off the San Diego coast
1745 Hours
"I CAN'T BE HERE WITH that woman," Charles Bennett complained. He paced the captain's cabin of the Mars Venture, which had been his safe house while he hid from Bill Butcher. A sheen of nervous perspiration glinted off his baldpate. He finished the drink in his hand and poured another from the captain's supply. "Why the hell did you bring her here, Aidan? What were you thinking of?"
"We needed a safe house," Black replied. He had his own drink, which he sipped. "Every cop on the Butcher case will be looking for her. We needed to take her some place where she wouldn't be seen."
After abandoning the pizza delivery van, the two Gideon men had put Yolanda into a Ford SUV with darkened windows, and drove her to a rendezvous with two more Gideon operators. Those Gideons had a truck from a local port services company. The company provided food and other supplies to the merchant ships visiting the Port of San Diego, so no one paid any attention when the men unloaded a large container from the truck and placed it aboard a tender boat heading out to the oil tanker anchored offshore. Inside the container, bound, gagged, and sedated, lay Yolanda Butcher. Within an hour, the container was aboard the tanker and Yolanda placed in captivity in the chief engineer's cabin.
"But here?" Bennett paced again, shaking his head. "I don't like this, not at all. I don't like being this close to her. Hell, Aidan, I don't like being this close to you. It's not safe. We've always maintained distance for security. You know that."
"You mean we keep a distance so you can maintain—what do you call it in politics? Plausible deniability."
Bennett stopped his pacing again, turned to face Black, and shook his finger like an angry schoolmaster.
"Don't you get fresh with me, Aidan," he said. "My ability to work inside government is what keeps you and the rest of us in business. It's too damn important for us to get sloppy. We need to keep our distance."
Keep you safe, you mean, Black thought, sipping his drink.
"And what if Butcher comes here looking for his wife? My God, man, I'm trying to keep my distance from him, too. No telling what that crazy man would do to me."
Yep, keep you safe. He took another sip.
"Why would Butcher come here?" Black said. "How the hell would he know about this ship?"
"Who knows how crazy men think?" Bennett said.
"You want to see her?" Black asked, changing the subject.
"See who?"
"The woman. Butcher's wife," Black said, smiling inwardly. "She's quite attractive."
Bennett looked horror-stricken. "Good Christ, no!" he said "Of course not. What have we just been talking about?"
"Then what are you going to do, Mr. Bennett?"
Bennett thought for a moment, looking around the cabin.
"I’m getting the hell off this ship," he said.
☼
Black watched the running lights of the tender boat disappear amid the myriad of lights speckling the shore. Bennett didn't lose a second escaping from the tanker. He tossed what few personal items he had aboard into a suitcase. Black laughed inwardly at the sight of the powerful businessman and politician scuttling about the cabin, checking drawers and under the furniture for anything linked to him. My God, the man even used a handkerchief to wipe off fingerprints from items he may have touched!
Like rats leaving a sinking ship.
Yes, a sinking ship. That's what everything was becoming. A fucking ship of fools foundering in a sea of lies and treachery. He poured himself another drink and sat down. Why the hell couldn't Bennett stay in the shadows? All these years, he had been successful at manipulating the twin worlds of politics and business, pushing malleable politicians into the right positions of power, using them to put into place the right laws and regulations, the right foreign diplomacy, even the right wars to bolster his business profits. Hell, he even pulled off the biggest bank heist in history. And he did it all behind the scenes, hidden in the shadows, the man without a face.
But now? Now the son of a bitch wants to come in from the dark, to show his face in the limelight. Now he wants to be secretary of defense. Why?
On the surface, Bennett said it would allow him to have more direct power over the billions of dollars of contracts the DoD handed out each year, to steer them to Gideon and other Gordias holdings. Black didn't believe that. Bennett could do that without becoming SecDef. No, this was pure ego. Since pulling off the Iraqi heist, Bennett had become too full of himself. He wanted real recognition. Hell, the asshole might even be thinking of running for president.
If it weren't for the nomination, Bennett might have left Butcher alone. Working from the shadows, Bennett could have diffused any scandal that arose from Butcher's allegations. The media wasn't interested in scandals involving second-level bureaucrats. But with him expecting to become defense secretary, Bennett feared any whiff of scandal, and he was enough of a sociopath—or perhaps a psychopath—to demand more extreme measures be taken to protect himself.
Black drained his glass and turned his thoughts to what to do next. Butcher would already know they had his wife. It was all over the networks and newspapers, and even though they made the media and the cops think Butcher was the kidnap
per—Black congratulated himself on that neat touch—Butcher would know damn well it was Gideon.
Black needed a way to contact Butcher, to dangle the bait and lure him into a trap. But how? And where to lure him to, where to set up the ambush? Black hadn't had time to figure that out. Bennett wanted the woman as bait, and Black's men went and got her. Perhaps, he could use that agent named Schag? They were close friends. Butcher demanded he be brought into this mix, demanded it in Cavendish's blood. Perhaps the two were in secret contact. If they were, Black thought, maybe he could make Schag lure Butcher into the ambush.
Black stood, yawning, and decided to check on the woman. Maybe he could learn something from her. Maybe she knew how to contact her husband? He'd have to be careful with her, try to manipulate her. It wouldn't do any good getting rough with her. She was no shrinking violet, that was for sure. From what he heard, she'd put up quite a fight. He'd have to make certain his men were guarding her properly.
☼
As Black neared the chief engineer's cabin, he could see something was wrong. The two men posted there—Gott and Kasitz, the same two he'd called in for backup at the cemetery—were arguing. Gott held a hand to one eye. Kasitz was nursing a bloody nose, the blood matting his thin moustache.
"What the hell happened to you two?" Black demanded.
The two guards straightened themselves as Black approached. Despite the gesture, neither could retain much dignity. Gott lowered his hand and revealed a massive shiner beneath his left eye. Kasitz kept snorting blood onto the deck.
"The bitch tried to escape," Gott said.
"He let her punch him out," Kasitz complained, his voice muffled by his battered nose.
"She asked for water," Gott explained. "When I brought it to her, she blindsided me."
The Butcher's Bill (The Linus Schag, NCIS, Thrillers Book 2) Page 15