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

by Martin Roy Hill

  Bennett picked up the CD, studied it, and then snapped it in two. He looked at Schag, a cruel smile on his lips.

  "Oops," he said. "So much for your bargaining chip, Agent Schag."

  Schag's Glock was in his fist and aimed at Bennett's head so fast it took Bennett several seconds to register it. The sneer left his face, and his eyes widened with fear. Sweat beaded on his forehead and a muscle twitched at his jaw.

  "I forgot to mention the other part of my deal," Schag said. "You send someone after me like you did Bill, and I'm not settling for taking out one of your minions. I'm coming straight for you. One of your people so much as sneezes in my direction, you're a dead man."

  Schag returned the Glock to its holster, and walked toward the door. Bennett sputtered behind him, struggling to overcome his fear so he could have the last word.

  "Agent, I can have you transferred to the filthiest scow in the American fleet!" he said. "You'll never see land again!"

  Schag paused at the door and turned.

  "As long as I’m not around you and your kind," Schag said without turning, "that's fine with me."

  Schag swung the door open. The members of Bennett's war cabinet were waiting outside, but the two Gideon bodyguards were nowhere in sight. As Schag walked down the hallway, he heard Bennett's voice call out.

  "Gentlemen, Mr. Schag is leaving—finally," he said, recapturing a small amount of his forced bravado. "Let's return to matters and finish this meeting. Tomorrow or the next day, I leave for a much-anticipated cruise up the coast in my yacht, and I still have many preparations to make."

  ☼

  Tom Riley was in fine voice when Schag returned to regional headquarters. Schag could hear him yelling as soon as he walked through the doors of the NCIS offices. He could also hear the name Riley was yelling was his own.

  "Schag!" Riley's face was red and sweat beaded on his forehead. "Get your sorry ass into my office now!"

  Schag walked into Riley's office and shut the door without being told to do so. Riley paced the office, muttering to himself, shaking his head. He looked at Schag, as if surprised he was already standing there.

  "What did you do?" Riley asked, forcing his voice to a normal level. "I just got a call from Charles Bennett saying you disrupted a meeting he was having with some of the most powerful men in government."

  "More like some of the most powerful men behind our government," Schag said.

  "I don't give a damn what you think, you insolent bastard," Riley said, pointing a finger in Schag's face and waving it. "I am sick and tired of your insubordination and disrespect. I'm writing you up this time, Lin. I'm writing you up good."

  Schag shrugged, removed his flight jacket, and placed it over a chair.

  "All we did was discuss our mutual futures," he said. "We agreed to ignore each other for the rest of our lives."

  "Well, he's not ignoring you. He just called me to complain."

  "The last gasps of frustration," Schag said. "He'll get over it."

  "Well, I won't," Riley said. "I'm going to make a decision about your future in the very near future."

  "Sit down, Tom," Schag said. Riley looked at him as if not understanding the command. "I said sit down, damn it!"

  "Who the hell do you—?"

  Schag moved forward quickly and shoved Riley into his chair. Riley's face flushed with rage, but when he tried to stand up, Schag blocked him. Riley's gun hand went to his waist, but found nothing.

  "It's locked in your desk drawer, remember?" Schag said. "Leave it there. We have some talking to do about your future, Tom. And your past."

  "My what?"

  "Your lack of a future here with NCIS," Schag said, "and the very real possibility of you spending the next several years in the federal prison at Leavenworth."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "When Bill Butcher was deployed to Bahrain, he suspected there was a mole in the NCIS organization there, someone who kept tipping off Gideon and other contractors to investigations and raids being planned. You were the supervisory agent there, Tom, and I think the mole was you."

  "That's redicul—"

  "Bill said any time they planned a raid, someone got tipped off. Didn't matter who the subject was. Investigations are compartmentalized. You know that, Tom. Only the primary investigators know all the details —except the supervisory agent. In Bahrain, that was you. You were the only one with knowledge of all the ongoing investigations."

  "You're not making sense," Riley complained. "Why would I—"

  "It happened again, right here," said Schag. "Only three people knew about the cabin Bill's family had in the Cuyamacas. Yolanda told you and me. I took Yolanda to the safe house and you were supposed to notify the sheriff's department. But you called Gideon first, and that allowed them to move in on Bill before the sheriff' could."

  Riley said nothing. He was sweating more, and nervously licking his lips.

  "Then there was the safe house," Schag continued. "Only five people knew where it was—you, me, Yolanda, and the two agents assigned to guard her. Yolanda was kidnapped and the guards killed. That leaves you and me, Tom, and I didn't call Gideon."

  "And you think I did?"

  Schag nodded. "There were only two people who knew where I was staying. You had the office here reserve me a room at the Navy Inn at 32nd Street, but I made my own reservation at the sub base Navy Inn and told you so. I never told anyone else. Someone had to tell Gideon where I was staying so they could break into my room and steal my laptop. It had to be you."

  Riley's mouth twisted into a frown. He snorted and the frown became a sardonic grin. He shook his head and chuckled.

  "You are really a piece of work, Schag," he said. "You know that? You go hassle one of the most powerful men in government, then come here and accuse me of being some kind of spy with no proof of anything, only supposition. I don't understand what you're trying to prove."

  Schag opened the office door and glanced out into the squad bay before turning back to Riley.

  "I don't need to prove anything, Tom," he said. He nodded toward the open door. "They do."

  Riley stood and walked to the door. Outside, he saw two men chatting with agents in the squad bay. They were not agents under his supervision, but he recognized them. They were the two internal watchdogs who had been grilling Schag for the last couple of days.

  Schag picked up his flight jacket and slipped it on.

  "They're here to talk to you, Tom," he said. "I told them everything I told you, and they're very interested in hearing what you have to say. They've already checked calls you made on your office phone and your issued Blackberry. They know you were calling Gideon."

  Schag started out the door, but stopped and turned.

  "By the way, I'm taking a week of leave starting—" He glanced at his watch, then back at Riley. His eyebrows arched in amusement. "Now."

  CHAPTER 35

  WEDNESDAY

  Naval Station Point Loma

  1015 Hours

  LINUS SCHAG SAT ON THE outdoor dining patio of the Navy Gateway Inn sipping coffee and staring out at the still-smoldering wreck of the Mars Venture. Four days after the explosion—two since Schag's confrontations with Bennett and Riley—the salvage crews had arrived to start the hard, if not impossible, work of refloating the massive ship or, barring that, to break her apart.

  The day before, Tim Parker had called Schag to tell him that Tom Riley confessed to being Gideon's mole. There had been a woman in Bahrain and photographs of their trysts, photos that would have ruined both his marriage and his career. To save both, he agreed to pass information to Gideon. When Tom returned to the States, he thought his problems with Gideon were over. Then the whole Butcher's Bill thing started and Aidan Black contacted Riley again, reminding him that Gideon still had those photos.

  "Tom said he had no choice but to provide them information again." Parker said. "Word is Washington wants to keep this all quiet, so they're going let Tom resign.
But can you believe he got caught in a honey trap?"

  A honey trap was the oldest of espionage snares, using a woman to get to a man who had information the spies wanted.

  "You know what they always say," Schag said. "Too many men think with the wrong head."

  Since leaving Tom's office, Schag had contemplated his own future. He expected a reprimand or worse, even wrote a letter of resignation to throw on some high official's desk if he considered the rebuke too harsh. He placed the letter along with his NCIS credentials and badge in a locked drawer in his room at the Navy Gateway Inn, and waited.

  Then the unexpected happened.

  That morning he awoke to find an email on his Blackberry from NCIS headquarters in D.C. relieving him from his duties at China Lake and ordering him to report for duty aboard the USS Halsey. Someone in Washington wanted to get Schag as far from Charles Bennett and his associates as possible, and punish him, too. The Halsey, homeported in Sasebo, Japan, was about as far away from D.C. as they could get him. The paper pushers in the Beltway no doubt also thought sending Schag back to sea, to what many in the agency considered an NCIS backwater, would be a punishment. But the Halsey was the assignment Schag wanted.

  Schag's badge sat on the table next to his coffee. Morning sunlight glinted off its gold surface. He picked it up and snapped it into place on his belt, taking comfort in its familiar weight on the left side of his trousers.

  His Blackberry beeped. He looked at the screen. Parker again.

  "Hey, Tim," Schag answered. "What's up?"

  "You been watching the news?" Parker's voice was excited.

  "No. I'm on leave," Schag said. "I try to stay away from that stuff when I'm on vacation. Something big happening?"

  "Bomber Bennett is dead," Parker said.

  Schag straightened in his chair, bumping the table hard and almost knocking it over. He grabbed the table to steady it and asked, "What? How? When?"

  "Sometime last night, they think."

  "Who thinks?"

  "The Coast Guard," Parker said. "Bennett left yesterday for a cruise up the coast on his yacht, the Free Enterprise. This morning, another boater found debris in the water off Oceanside and called the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard found the debris and confirmed it was Bennett's boat, but they couldn't find any sign of Bennett."

  Schag stared at the wreckage of the Mars Venture and remembered Bill Butcher's last words to him. "I will get him."

  "Lin, do you think Bill was involved somehow?"

  Schag recalled the reported sighting of Butcher at the yacht club. Bill certainly had the training and skills to sink a boat. Could he have planted a bomb with a delayed action fuse on Bennett's yacht?

  "I will get him," Bill had said.

  "Yeah, I do, Tim." Schag finally said. "I think he was."

  "Well, the crap's hitting the fan," Parker continued. "Ever since the news got out that Bennett's dead, people all over the country, in government and out, are calling for an investigation into his business activities. Seems old Bomber made an awful lot of enemies in his time, but he was too powerful to fight. Now they want their revenge. We're getting calls from the FBI, IRS, ATF, and every other alphabet soup agency asking us what we know about the allegations Bill made in his Bill of Demands. It's a shame you gave Bennett that disc with all of Bill's research on it. Probably a lot of people would like to see it now."

  A sad smile crossed Schag's lips. He leaned over, removed his right shoe, and set it on his lap. He reached into the shoe and pulled back the inner sole, removed the micro-disc hidden there, and held it in front of his face.

  "Funny you should mention that, Tim," Schag said.

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  THE BUTCHER'S BILL IS A work of fiction with a plot inspired by historic fact. During the Iraq War, the Bush administration decided to empty frozen Iraqi bank accounts in the U.S. and send the money to Iraq. In a decision that continues to confound observers, the White House chose to send the money in cash. Forty billion dollars in greenbacks was flown to Iraq and handed over to contractors—some say in duffle bags—with no receipts or other forms of accounting. Nearly $9 billion—$8.9 billion to be precise—simply vanished, presumably stolen as part of it was found stashed in a bunker in Lebanon. (Fortunately, the person who discovered it was not killed afterward, as in this book.) To my knowledge, it was largest bank heist in history, and all attempts to investigate the theft were blocked by the White House and its supporters in Congress.

  Operation Iraqi Freedom saw the largest number of private contractors used in a combat zone in history. At one point during the conflict, there were more contractors in Iraq than U.S. troops. The cost of using these contractors was exorbitant, and the financial burden continues to be carried by the taxpayers today. In particular, the use of "security contractors" proved problematic. Many of the security contractors possessed questionable backgrounds; some were even believed to be former members of South American death squads. Not surprisingly, many security contractors were suspected of illegal activities, including the reckless use of force, weapon- and drug-smuggling, black marketeering, and sexual assault. As they were granted immunity from prosecution for most actions, few were ever punished.

  Agueloquine is a fictitious drug. There is, however, a real antimalarial that, during the Iraq War, was linked to psychotic reactions in a very small percentage of people who took it. The tragic incidents Lieutenant Commander Clarke described as linked to Agueloquine psychosis actually occurred. However, as the good doctor told Schag, the number of such incidents is very small. When compared to the millions of lives saved from malarial deaths each year, the math adds up in favor of using the drug. In this book, I use the fictitious Agueloquine simply as a device to explain Bill Butcher's aberrant behavior.

  Gordias is a fictional corporation, but its size, complexity, and shady activities were inspired by several real-life firms. Like Gordias, these multinationals are so powerful they often are involved in deciding when and with whom we go to war. Perhaps, someday, a true-life Bill Butcher will come forth and expose these businesses for what they are—a threat to democracy and world peace.

  And, finally, yes, it is true—there is no NCIS office in Los Angeles.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MARTIN ROY HILL is the author of Duty: Suspense and Mystery Stories from the Cold War and Beyond, the military mystery thriller The Killing Depths, Eden: A Sci-Fi Novella, and the Peter Brandt thrillers, Empty Places, and The Last Refuge. A former journalist and national-award winning investigative reporter for newspapers and magazines, Martin currently works as a military operations analyst. His nonfiction work has appeared in Reader’s Digest, LIFE, Newsweek, Omni, and many others. He has written articles on military history for several publications and web sites. His short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, ALT HIST: The Journal of Historical Fiction and Alternate History, Nebula Rift, Mystery Weekly, Crimson Streets, and others.

  Martin lives in San Diego, California.

  Follow Martin Roy Hill on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/Martin.Roy.Hill, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MartinRoyHill, or visit his web site at https://www.martinroyhill.com.

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