“We’ll consider it,” Darby said with a nod toward Knowlton as his number two. “Meanwhile, somebody want to order lunch delivery? Just off the top, I’m thinking Mexican.”
“I’ve got the number for Tortacos, however you say it,” Moseley offered. “Love me some of those tortas, tacos and burritos.”
“You have the menu memorized?” Menendez teased.
“It’s pretty close,” Moseley admitted.
“Save the call then,” Darby ordered. “Make a pickup run to go. No point in giving an address to strangers.”
“Right,” Moseley agreed.
“Switch out the Chevy Niva’s plates before you go, and keep it casual.”
“As cool as cool can get, sir.” Moseley rose, Menendez following, and went to change plates on the mini SUV from their stockpile.
“Anybody else wants to chill out for now, have at it,” Darby told the rest. “I need to have a word with Colonel Knowlton while we’re waiting on the food.”
Chairs slid back from the table, Darby rising for an exit to one of the small apartment’s bedrooms.
Knowlton trailed him, shut the door behind him and said, “About last night?”
“You said it went okay,” Darby reminded him.
“No hiccups. I dressed street, with an old hoodie. Used a suppressor as agreed, cleaned up the brass and pitched them into the Passaic River from the Lincoln Highway Bridge. They’re deep into the muck by now, no sweat.”
“It hasn’t made the news yet,” Darby told him.
“Black kid in a ghetto neighborhood, no witnesses, no noise. I could’ve tossed him off the roof, but that goes back to Locard’s exchange principle.”
Darby got the reference to French Dr. Edmond Locard, whose basic principle declared that every contact left a trace. Touching the kid last night would have left something for police to poke and peer at, whereas now they’d only have ballistics markings on two slugs matching a gun they’d never find, unless the whole thing fell apart and went to hell.
In which case, they were dead already and it wouldn’t mean a thing.
“You plan on telling Tyrone?” Knowlton asked.
“No point. We’d have to put him and the others in on all the rest of it.”
The colonel nodded. “And what about Tanner’s old man?”
“Too late on that, I think. If he knew something, he’d have spilled it, just like Junior said. Good thing they hadn’t been in touch for years. He’ll have a sour memory and have to live with it.”
“Suits me,” Knowlton replied. “That only leaves the fiancée.”
“Seems like it,” Darby granted. “But we can’t pass that one off as gang-related or whatever. It’s too much of a coincidence.”
“A staged sex crime?” Knowlton suggested.
“Brings us right back to Dr. Locard,” Darby reminded him.
“Maybe an accident? We’d have to sacrifice one of the cars.”
“Or she could disappear after her night shift at that coffee shop.”
“It’s doable.”
“Let’s get to work on details, then. Ernesto doesn’t need to know.”
“Should I take somebody else along?”
“We’re getting too close to payday. Someone you can trust to help you?”
“Anyone but Ernie, I suppose. And Tyrone’s out, of course. The brother. Speaking of Tyrone, what did you think about his New York scheme?”
“The Central Park thing’s actually a fairly good idea. Send him to handle it. Maybe Menendez, too. We need to get the girl squared away first, though.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“What time’s she start her shift again?” Darby inquired.
“Clocks in at 4:00 p.m. and stays around to close at midnight with a cook, maybe another waitress. Any preference, before or after?”
“Suit yourself.”
“I’m thinking pick her up before her shift. Maybe the boss will call, or maybe not. Another flaky waitress in the wind, and by the time they notice otherwise...”
“Your call,” Darby agreed.
“Okay.”
“Hang in and get some food first, though. No point in working on an empty stomach if you can avoid it.”
“Sounds good. We’ll have ample time to grab her, either way.”
“No witnesses.”
“I hear you.”
“And I believe I hear that lunch delivery,” Darby replied.
* * *
The takeout food was good, though Major Darby barely tasted it, with so much on his mind. He’d known as soon as Moseley and Menendez had returned that there’d been nothing on the radio about Tyrone’s late brother dropping overnight. Why would there be, from Newark, with its inner city high crime rates? Police claimed that the numbers were declining steadily, but still, not long ago, Newark had claimed America’s third highest murder rate, according to the FBI.
It paid to know such things when plotting an elimination. Even if the media got hold of Jesse Moseley in another day or two, they’d run it as a “human interest” piece, all sympathy about the rare black kid who kept his nose clean, planned a future for himself and couldn’t beat the odds regardless.
By that time, brother Tyron would be far past caring, anyway.
As Darby watched the others eat and make small talk, he reflected on how difficult running a double blind could be. Among them, only he and Andy Knowlton knew exactly what was going on. Their partners knew the broad outlines, but thought they would be drawing equal shares and scattering around the world when it was done, leaving confusion in their wake and holing up in countries lacking extradition treaties with the States—seventy-four in all, surprisingly, among the world’s nearly two hundred independent states.
Nearly forty percent, he thought. Imagine that.
Of course, when Uncle Sam was after someone, rules often went out the window. Washington could always send a drone and make excuses later—some kind of mistake, an oversight, a glitch in targeting—or ship a team of specialists to make a midnight snatch, maybe assassinate a target, haul him off and dump his ass at sea. That way, no one could prove they didn’t get him, and the bad guy’s followers had no martyr’s remains to moan and wail over, getting themselves worked up to strike again.
None of those little games were secret, really, but so what? What country was prepared to challenge the US, aside from empty threats at home or protests lodged with the United Nations?
That was what made Darby’s plan so beautiful. The Feds could chase their tails from now till Doomsday, looking for jihadists with a vague agenda, while the men behind it slipped away.
Or two of them, at least.
Darby was leaning toward the Maldives archipelago, though rising sea levels concerned him, as did earthquakes and tsunamis. On the up side, twenty-six atolls possessed the smallest population of any Asian country, and the sultanate had been discarded forty years ago. A billion dollars, give or take, could stretch a long way in a place like that.
As an alternative, he liked the Marshall Islands, scene of so much history during the last World War and afterward. Located near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, slightly west of the International Date Line, the Marshalls consisted of twenty-nine coral atolls, comprising 1,156 individual islands and islets. Americans had fought and died for some of those, against Japan, and later used a few of them for nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958. Washington had later done some cleanups, and the worst health threat these days was type 2 diabetes, since approximately half the men were grossly overweight. All in all, Darby thought he’d spend the rest of his life there just fine.
The trick, as usual, was getting to the islands alive.
It didn’t thrill him, lying to the others, but a man did what he had to do. They’d mostly go down fighting when the time came, or be taken out and left behind
to pose the Feds another mystery. Some bean counter would ultimately work it out, of course, by which time it would be too late: new names for Darby and Knowlton, a little top-class touch-up on their faces, and they would be in the wind with more cash than a person could spend in five lifetimes.
Which sounded just about perfect.
The major cleared his mind and focused on enjoying what remained of lunch: crispy pork carnitas, marinated al pastor, carne asada, with a hefty side of guacamole, rice and refried beans. He washed it down with two cold bottles of Dos Equis, just enough to clear his palate without slowing down his reflexes.
The hours ahead demanded clarity, his full alertness. If he dropped the ball at any point, it meant a cold hole in the ground or residence in Supermax for life—a “control unit” prison where inmates served most of their time in solitary, showered once a week, and either kept the rule of silence or went bat-shit crazy in their isolation cells.
Could Darby survive it? Sure, as well as anybody else, unless the Pentagon decided he should disappear into a “black prison” somewhere outside the States, where he would likely die screaming after he’d told his captors everything they’d already known before they’d reeled him in.
It was a high-stakes game, and when the final card was dealt, he would have nothing left to lose.
Except the whole damned world.
Chapter Five
Over Trenton, New Jersey
Bolan was airborne, eyeballing the Garden State’s four-hundred-year-old capital below, reflecting on the irony of urban mottoes. This one’s read Trenton Makes, The World Takes. Rather a joke these days, considering the constant storms of controversy over politics and crime, from “Bridgegate” and the Mafia, ballot suppression and the rest of it. He couldn’t hear his cell phone buzzing in the cockpit of Grimaldi’s Bell 205 helicopter, but he recognized Hal Brognola’s call-back number on the screen and patched it through his padded earphones.
“Hal, you’re early in this morning. Jack’s here with me, listening.”
“Saves you repeating it,” Brognola said. “Where are you?”
“On our way to Newark for a sit-down with the brother.”
Nothing was going out over his cell en clair, but all three parties to the conversation understood the subject well enough.
“Too late for that,” Brognola answered, cutting to the chase. “He took a double tap last night. It’s all she wrote.”
Grimaldi muttered, “Jesus!” in the background as Bolan waited for the rest of it.
“I got an early call from NPD Homicide this morning. A guy I know from way back. He agrees with me it was professional—suppressor, and the brass retrieved. We won’t get anything without the gun in hand. Street dicks still want to call it gang-or drug-related, something about ovens.”
“I’ve heard that expression,” Bolan told him. “Never liked it.”
“Same here. Nothing in the kid’s record supports it, and I’m no believer in coincidence.”
“They’re tying off loose ends,” Bolan surmised.
“Makes sense to me. Of course, that also says they’re having doubts about security.”
“The Barclay watchers?” Bolan asked.
“Could be. Maybe you shook them up.”
“Something for all that mess, at least,” the Executioner remarked.
“Hey, things happen. Time to let it go.”
Bolan agreed without responding. He’d never been in any combat situation where a plan proceeded seamlessly, without a hitch, and guessed he never would. Instead he told the big Fed, “We should have some coverage on Senior, just in case they want to try again.”
“He won’t do WITSEC, even in the short term. Damned Medal of Honor heroes, anyway.”
“Thinks he can handle sonny boy or whoever they send around for him next time.”
“That’s my theory,” Brognola said. “I’ve got four members of the US Marshals Special Operations Group on top of him, and he can mutter all he likes. They’re staying.”
Bolan knew the SOG from personnel experience. It was an on-call team created forty-odd years earlier to handle criminal emergencies throughout the States or in its sixteen territories, ranging from Puerto Rico to American Samoa to Wake Island. A full-time operational cadre was stationed at the Marshals Service Tactical Operations Center at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana, where all members trained.
“That ought to do it,” Bolan said.
“If not, the AWOL gang will have to take him out for nothing, since he wasn’t talking to us anyway.”
“Which leaves us with the fiancée mentioned in Menendez’s workup,” Bolan said.
“Juanita Alvarado,” the big Fed stated. “If she is the fiancée since her beau’s off the grid.”
That would be Sergeant Ernesto Menendez, who, according to a source, had popped the question but hadn’t set a wedding date.
Grimaldi’s voice came through the headphones, audible to Brognola. “Rerouting now. She’s still in Roanoke?”
“Virginia, right,” the Justice honcho said. “Intel says she works the five-to-midnight shift at Tweety Pie’s, a coffee shop along the river. You should have her home address.”
“Affirmative,” Bolan replied.
Grimaldi chimed back in. “Call it three hundred fifty miles, now that we’ve been diverted. Max air speed one-thirty-five, we might make it on fumes to Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport.”
“Don’t take any chances,” Brognola said. “Touch down and top off if you have to. You’ve got ten hours yet, before she has to clock in at the diner.”
“Copy that,” Grimaldi said, and started flipping switches on the Bell’s instrument panel.
Bolan had no more to say and simply told Brognola, “We’re on top of it,”
“Good luck,” the Man from Justice said, and cut the link.
Roanoke, Virginia
At twenty-one years old, Juanita Alvarado lived alone in what she sometimes thought of as her prime, at other times simply “the pits.” She occupied a one-bedroom, walkup apartment in a seedy block that dared to call itself Flame Tree Estates, although she didn’t think it had a single flame tree—whatever that was, maybe something from overseas—on the rundown and poorly maintained property.
Her dream was marrying, then moving up and out, which meant Sergeant Ernesto Menendez. But where in hell was he these days?
They’d been engaged for six months and a couple days, after he’d wandered into Tweety Pie’s one night, liked what he’d seen and asked her out. She’d taken a chance. They’d dated for a month or so, then he’d surprised her with a ring that must have cost him close to two months’ active-duty salary: a brilliant diamond solitaire, keystone cut. Alvarado loved the ring, thought she loved him, and answered, “Sí, sí, sí!”
Then, a week ago, when they’d been about to pick a date, he had dropped out of sight and all contact. He’d stopped answering her anxious calls and texts, as if he’d fallen off the face of the earth.
If he thought he could propose then leave her hanging, he had better damned well think again. And if she’d cried herself to sleep again last night...maybe that was the start of letting go. But still...
Alvarado left another nagging voice mail on his phone—“Ernesto! ¿Que est pasando?”—then thumbed another text and sent it off before she got around to making lunch. There were tamales in the fridge, store bought, and she slipped one into a microwave that had seen many better days. An eight-ounce mini-can of Coke was all Alvarado needed as a beverage. The beer she’d bought for ’Nesto when he still came by to love her up would be there waiting for her when she finished closing Tweety Pie’s at half past twelve that night.
And Mick, her boss—no Tweety Pie, himself, except for the big head with very little hair—might get pissed off if she turned up at five, smelling of alcohol.
The tamale was
good enough, but nothing like her mamacita used to make when she was still around. Now it was just Alvarado, with her frugal cooking skills and shopping list, making it on her own.
Goddamn it, ’Nesto! she thought, angered by his disappearance. Where are you?
Nowhere that she could reach, apparently.
This day she’d take the bus to work, as usual. Keeping a car, even a junker, on the road put too much pressure on her budget, with insurance, registration, license and the plague of ever-rising gas prices. A basic one-way trip cost her $1.50, same thing coming home again, which meant she’d spend the best part of two hours’ pay just riding back and forth to work per week. Mick took his dip from tips—twenty percent because he owned the place—and that cost her an average of $22.50 per night, on a great night. And God help her if she forgot to estimate an hourly $7.25 when she paid off the IRS, their fabricated pretending that she always made the max in tips five nights per week, no matter what she finally took home.
It struck her as being disgraceful, but all too American.
She finished her tamale, then the Coke, crumpled the can up for recycling, washed her little plate and fork, then put them in the rubber drainer on her kitchen counter. The Flame Tree Estates, so-called, didn’t provide dishwashers in its units, and anyway, who needed one?
She was considering the prospect of a nap, setting her small travel alarm clock, when a knock on her door distracted her. Alvarado’s heart leaped to her throat. Ernesto? No, he had a key, or maybe he was worried about simply strolling in, all smiles, after he’d left her hanging so long with no word.
Muttering curses, she moved to the door and pressed one eye against its tiny peephole, then recoiled, not recognizing either of the Anglos in dark suits, crowding her welcome mat. They looked like cops to her. And one thing Juanita Alvarado knew from childhood, growing up—cops never brought good news.
Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport
Loath to fly on fumes, Grimaldi had topped off the Bell chopper’s fuel tanks at Chandelle Estates Airport in Dover, Delaware, still making good time to Roanoke–Blacksburg Regional Airport. Brognola had a Mazda CX-5 crossover waiting for them there, with security clear after Justice called in.
Enemies Within Page 5