Inside Out

“That has been done. Now, what the hell is this, Massey?” he demanded.

  “A corpse,” Winter said.

  “Does the corpse have a name?”

  “We weren't formally introduced.”

  Reed stared hard at Winter, the two men studying each other across the wet tarpaulin. “In my experience, having a bunch of heavily armed individuals come onto a radar station in peacetime and wipe out six sailors and your partner in such a senseless and brutal manner is hardly a normal event. I'm sure as hell not going to stand here and listen to you making flip remarks.”

  The man's words made Winter feel like an ass. Sean sat staring down at her lap.

  “I understand the seriousness of this,” Winter said evenly. “They were doing their damnedest to add us to their tally.”

  “Can you tell me why this man and three of his pals killed six unarmed sailors and that female deputy over at the house?”

  “Angela Martinez,” Sean said abruptly. “Her name was Angela Martinez.”

  Reed kept his eyes locked on Winter.

  “No, sir,” Winter said.

  “You mean to tell me you don't know?”

  “I can't tell you what their motive was.”

  Reed laughed disdainfully in total disbelief.

  “This is an official United States Justice Department operation. Only the attorney general of the United States can release me to give you that information.”

  “What about Ms. Devlin?” Reed countered.

  Winter gritted his teeth. They had obviously searched the house and found Sean's identification.

  “Classified.”

  “And what exactly can you share with me, Marshal?”

  “I'll be happy to tell you what happened after they killed Deputy Martinez.”

  Fletcher Reed seemed to be chewing that over. Reaching a decision, he nodded. “Barnett, take notes.”

  As Winter went through the story detail by detail, the young ensign scribbled notes. Although Winter had just been trying to keep Sean alive, he had wanted nothing worse than to escape the killers. Killing the men in black had been necessary. He didn't tell Reed this. Instead, he told him how he had hidden Sean in the storage cabinet, climbed up onto the girders in the radio shack from the ruined console, dropped down and broken the assailant's neck, then taken his clothes. He didn't mention the fact that the man under the tarp had called him by name. Neither of those facts was relevant to Reed's investigation.

  Reed turned to his assistant. “You get all that?”

  “Yes, sir.” The SP closed the notebook and slipped it into his breast pocket.

  “Best get you two back over to the house,” Reed said, smiling for the first time. “Sounds to me like you've earned yourself a rest, Massey.”

  Winter knew that Reed's smile, which looked genuine, was designed to make Winter confident that Reed was giving up on pumping him further, which was crap. The officer was going to keep right on trying to slip around the classified wall Winter was standing behind. For Reed, and men like him, the ability to classify information was the sole providence of the armed forces.

  Winter figured the contest between them, as long as it was allowed to continue, would be an entertaining one. And anything that took his mind off the gruesome event was welcome.

  “One more thing,” Reed said, like it was an afterthought. “I'd like for you to take a good look at your attackers without their masks. In case you do know who they are.”

  “I'd be happy to,” Winter replied.

  “You, too,” Reed added, nodding at Sean.

  The two killers' corpses, along with the radio operator's, were laid out under the awning of the radio shack, covered by opaque plastic sheets. Sean stood beside Reed, across the three bodies from Winter, shivering under the blanket.

  When Reed motioned, the sheet was pulled off the first one. Sean looked away. The body belonged to the man whose neck Winter had broken in the radio shack. He was naked—how Winter had left him—and his hands were at his sides. His head was cocked so that it appeared he was looking at something high over his left shoulder. “No,” Winter said.

  “Have you ever seen this man before, Ms. Devlin? Could you look at his face?”

  Sean glanced down momentarily and shook her head.

  The technician replaced the sheet, moved to the second corpse, and lifted the covering away.

  Sean shut her eyes, took a deep breath, and shook her head. “No.”

  Winter studied the man he had shot point-blank with the MP5 as Sean had lain on the ground beneath him. The muzzle blast had scored and burned the skin around the entrance wounds in the upper rear quadrant of his skull. The hydrostatic pressure had caused the eye to bulge from its socket. Where the three-shot burst of 9-mm bullets had exited, the now one-eyed head looked like a poorly scraped out jack-o'-lantern. The missing brain matter and bone fragments had been placed inside a plastic bag, which rested beside the corpse's neck.

  “Him?” Reed asked, staring at Winter.

  “No.”

  Winter felt for Sean. For most, violence was something that happened to unlucky people in some place made fictional by being on their television screens. Winter had never envied that virginal ignorance more than now.

  “According to where your empty brass was, you shot the one at the house from a good thirty feet away,” Reed told Winter.

  “About that,” Winter agreed.

  “All three in the head. Quite a shot, considering you just saw your partner go down.”

  “Your point being?” Winter asked.

  “Under those conditions, most people would have been lucky to have hit the guy with a shotgun, that's all. You went for the head, not the torso.”

  “He was wearing armor.” Winter could not explain how he was able to put his bullets exactly where he wanted them to go. It was an ability that he had discovered while training at Glynco. He didn't know how he did it, he was just glad he could.

  “The men have no identification on them. Their weapons aren't available outside our Special Forces.”

  “Maybe they got them from wherever they got that Navy chopper they flew here in. They look like soldiers to me.”

  “This stinks,” Reed said. “You outwit and kill four men with superior weapons, obviously professionals, without breaking a sweat—”

  “Hey!” Sean yelled, startling the men, who turned to her. Color rose in her cheeks. “I have nothing to add to what Deputy Massey has already said, and I am getting sick of watching you men bump chests.” She pointed a finger at Reed. “Unless you have some new torture to subject me to, I am going to walk back to the house, take a hot shower, and change into some dry clothes.”

  And with that she whirled and strode off toward the trees.

  “She's not accustomed to this,” Winter said, watching her go.

  “Neither am I,” Reed said sourly.

  Winter followed Sean.

  “Marshal!” Reed called out. “I need that suit you're wearing. It's evidence.”

  Winter caught up with Sean. “God in heaven,” she muttered.

  Winter couldn't think of anything to say, so they walked to the safe house together in silence.

  37

  Winter stood for ten minutes in the shower and let the hot water pound him. Then he cut the heat and stood in a chilled stream. Reed and his partner had already opened Winter's drawers and searched everything before he and Sean had reentered the house. The only thing he had come to the assignment with that he cared about taking out again was his life.

  He dressed and went to the kitchen, where Reed was seated at the table reading what appeared to be the preliminary report of the SEAL commander. The younger shore patrolman was standing at the counter reading through his notebook.

  “Feel better?” Reed asked, without looking up.

  “Much,” Winter said, pouring himself a cup of coffee.

  “The men didn't come in on that helicopter. Appears it was for their escape.”

  “Sorry?”


  “We found three chutes near the radio shack, so three of them parachuted in. According to a trace I ran, that chopper was turned into a spare-parts donor due to questionable airworthiness.”

  “Obviously the record is wrong.”

  “A King Air passed by at twenty-five thousand feet,” Reed told him. “The trio jumped from it and sailed four miles using membranes, wings stretched between their ankles and wrists.”

  “HALO jumpers.”

  “The helicopter probably came in below radar after the radio shack was knocked out. The drop plane is in the Caribbean at the moment, on auto pilot. F14s are flying alongside waiting for it to run dry.

  “Massey, we both know those assailants were here because of whatever you people were doing here. You and Martinez, Ms. Devlin, or maybe one of the people who left earlier was their main target.”

  Winter sipped the coffee and grimaced remembering it was stale. “In your place, I would contact Attorney General Katlin to get the information I can't give you without his authorization. You have the guys' fingerprints. The NCIS can find out who they were in a few hours. I can't tell you anything that would be of any help.”

  “Won't tell me.”

  “Won't because I can't. I can't tell the NCIS, either, without the AG's permission.”

  “This was a WITSEC operation.”

  “If you say so.”

  “There's six dead kids whose families are going to ask who killed them, why, and what we're doing about it.”

  “I understand.”

  “Why did Jet Washington leave this morning?”

  “Her cat died,” Sean said from the doorway.

  Sean's eyes met Winter's, and he tried to communicate that she had said the wrong thing. It was a small thing, a throwaway piece of information, but it was from before Martinez was shot and opened a line of questioning.

  “Her cat died? From what?”

  Sean sat down, crossed her legs at the ankles, and shrugged. “I'm not a veterinarian.”

  Winter watched Sean tell that fib. She had a face so beautiful and innocent that it would be impossible to imagine her being untruthful. She lied so effectively that Reed didn't even pursue it.

  As a civilian, Sean could say whatever she liked, but Winter needed her to keep quiet, to speak only to the right people when the time came.

  “This is my job,” Reed reminded them silkily.

  “Never said otherwise,” Winter replied. They both knew that the Naval Criminal Investigative Service would look into the incident, as they did all military homicides. Reed, despite his understandable desire to collect the information, was just a traffic cop, a military flatfoot who busted drunk sailors, escorted prisoners from one brig to another, and filed reports on petty crime.

  A strange buzz filled the air in the kitchen. Reed pulled a cell phone from his coat pocket.

  “Reed.”

  He listened with a bored expression that was quickly displaced by one of intense interest and concentration.

  “Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. At once, sir.”

  Reed dropped the phone back into his pocket. He went to the counter, opened a briefcase, and removed Winter's gun and magazine—both in clear plastic bags. He placed them on the table before Winter. His face had turned red, his lips pressed tightly together.

  “You can hand your weapon over to the FBI for comparison purposes, Deputy.” Reed turned to his partner. “We are to turn over all evidence gathered so far to the FBI.”

  “What's going on?” Winter asked.

  “Classified,” Reed snapped triumphantly. He left the kitchen through the screen door, letting it slam shut behind him.

  Winter followed him.

  Quartz halogen lights on telescoping stands made it daytime on the front porch. Reed stood in the gazebo area at the railing like a ship's captain watching the lifeboats being lowered. He slipped a set of fingerprint cards into his shirt pocket as Winter approached.

  Martinez's body and that of the first man Winter had shot were covered by sheets and enclosed in a rectangle of crime scene tape.

  “I've seen the admiral who called me on only one previous occasion. He was at Norfolk to attend the dedication of a new building named for him. He called me to tell me to stop what I was doing—the FBI is handling this investigation.”

  “The Bureau taking over the investigation isn't unusual,” Winter replied evenly.

  “The FBI comes in after NCIS has investigated and requested their help. The point is that it didn't take an admiral to give me the command. It's like sending the president of a power company to read an electrical meter. I don't have a problem handing this over to the FBI, but this one is queer. Maybe because of you,” he said, looking him straight in the eye.

  “This had nothing whatsoever to do with me.”

  “Before I joined the Navy, I was a rookie on a small police force in Georgia. One night I pulled over a car. The kid driving was so drunk he couldn't tell me his name. He blew two point eight. There was a loaded .357 magnum under the seat. A pillowcase packed with marijuana and a bag with over a pound of cocaine and a hundred and thirty grand and change were in his trunk. I arrested the kid as a John Doe, wrote up a report, impounded the car, put the drugs, gun, and money in the evidence vault.”

  Fletcher Reed took a small cigar from his pocket and placed it in his mouth. “The chief was tickled pink. I was a hero. Two months on the job and I had this kid by the balls. I mean it was the biggest drug bust that town had ever seen. I sent the prints off. Next morning I come in and the other cops wouldn't look me in the eye. I ask the chief what's going on, and he calls me into his office and closes the door, says there was no kid, no speeding car, drugs, money, or gun.

  “I had made two sets of fingerprint cards because the first one wasn't perfect. I ran that second set of prints. Turns out the kid was the governor's stepson. Rich man with businesses that were vital to the economy. Half the county worked for him in some capacity. I left the department and joined the Navy so I could be a cop, thinking it would be cleaner. Less political.”

  “Which do you think is the case here?”

  “Nothing new about bunk buddies swapping hand jobs under the blanket. Only a problem when it's justice that gets kicked out of the bed.”

  “Reed, the oath I took was to uphold the laws of the United States, and I've done that to the best of my ability. Part of my job is to make sure that if men like those four UNSUBs who ended up here ever come along, I make sure they fail. That's all I did—no more, no less.”

  “It seems like armed assassins don't live long when you're around,” Reed commented laconically. “Four here.” He lit the cigar with a kitchen match. “Three in Florida. I found out about your fracas in Tampa seven years back. Wasn't for that report, I'd have thought you were CIA or NSA guarding a defector, not a deputy marshal guarding a killer.”

  Winter was surprised that Reed knew they had been watching a killer but suspected he was still fishing.

  “Sean Devlin drew a blank with NCIS, but there was a hit from New Orleans Homicide on a Dylan Devlin who was caught with two dead bodies three weeks back. And I know about a certain Mafia dinosaur who got himself arrested two days later, which I assumed was connected. I figure Dylan Devlin left Cherry Point earlier this evening and those men you killed came here looking for him. What bothers me is why you stayed here with his wife, or sister, when you should have been where the action would most likely be.”

  Winter was very impressed by this man he thought was just another flatfoot.

  Reed surprised Winter by extending his hand, which Winter tentatively shook. “I'm glad you killed those assholes, Massey. It was justice handed out the only way men like that understand it. Do me one favor?”

  “Keep away from wherever you are?”

  Now Reed did smile. “You are definitely one of those individuals best admired from a distance. After the smoke clears on this mess, look me up and I'll buy the drinks while you tell me what the real deal was.” />
  A roar signaled twin Blackhawks that thundered in and alighted on the beach. As soon as the side doors slid open, figures carrying equipment cases swarmed out and swept toward the house like an invading army.

  “FBI,” Reed muttered.

  The man leading the caravan stomped up the steps to them. “Fred Archer, supervising FBI special agent. I'm the case officer,” he said. “You must be Lieutenant Commander Reed.”

  Reed nodded.

  “You're Massey?” Archer asked.

  “I am,” Winter replied.

  “We'll take over now, Lieutenant Commander,” Archer said. “Deputy Massey, accompany me inside.”

  38

  Winter sat beside Sean on the living room couch while Archer talked with Reed. They watched as FBI technicians wearing white coveralls and blue surgical gloves went over the inside of the Rook Island house as if it were a crime scene, using vacuums and dusting every imaginable surface for prints. Unlike at most crime scenes, they were wiping the surfaces clean afterward.

  “Angela never knew what hit her, did she?” Sean asked him.

  “No,” Winter lied. “I don't believe she did.” He remembered how she was trying to get her gun out of the holster but couldn't. A few seconds had passed from the time she was hit until the second shots ended her life. He didn't want to imagine what thoughts had gone through her mind in those final seconds.

  “I was thinking about her family—how close she was to them. It'll be hard on them.”

  “Yes, it will.”

  His conversation at an end, Fred Archer sat in a wing chair across from the pair. He looked like a forty-something high school football coach straight from 1962 who went through life with a Bible in one hand and a playbook in the other—and often confused them. His hair was perfectly combed and his alert gray eyes would have seemed at home set below an eagle's brow. He wore an FBI windbreaker over his suit coat and tie. Sand filled the ornamental holes in his shiny black wing tips.

  Special Agent Finch, Archer's partner, was a small-framed, pinch-faced man with narrow shoulders and an oddly distended stomach. He had a weak chin, wispy blond hair, and a small pug nose. Archer opened the conversation by clasping his meaty hands in front of him. “Okay, Deputy Massey, tell me everything that happened.”