He pulled his finger out of the corpse’s stomach and glanced around the valley. Others could be out there. Since the shootout at the peak, he’d counted six operators, which meant sophistication. Which necessitated coordination of movement. All signs were pointing to some form of government involvement. The Jamaican probably made a call to a command center before he grabbed Penny. But when Red had patted him down, he didn’t find any com gear or night optics. So, those items were laying in the dead man’s nest somewhere halfway up the mountainside. The fact Red hadn’t been sniped simply confirmed the Jamaican had been surveying the cottage solo.
He knelt next to Penny and drew her into a hug. She was shivering. The last thing she needed was to be told to suck it up, but they had to get moving. “Did you see where this bad man came from?”
A sniffle. “No.”
“Did he drop anything when he carried you down here?”
She shook her head. “Don’t think so.”
He lifted Lam to his feet. The wounded man’s legs gave way, and he dropped to one knee. “Leave me here,” he whispered. “I won’t last out in the woods. Someone from work’ll come looking for me in the morning. Just get me inside the generator house.” He winced as he held out his good arm. “Gimme that gun the girl used. It’s lucky.”
Fair enough. Red handed over the 1911, and Lam’s fingers closed on the handle as if they knew it well. He straightened, and Red wrapped an arm around his shoulder, adding counterbalance as they hobbled toward a squatty outbuilding close to the water’s edge.
“Who are you? You live here?” Red asked.
Lam winced with every step. “Mechanic. Me and Andi. We take care of the plant.” He stopped and glanced back to his pickup. “Well, took care of it, anyways. Now just me.” He turned back, and his eyes studied the dark, flat parking lot before him, like a child, an orphan, afraid to take another step. A low growl rose from his belly; he winced and started toward the stone building again. As they neared, a high-pitched hum sounded over the blowing wind. The wide door stood ajar: a thick black steel slab, like a smiling mouth leading into a grave. The three hobbled out of the whipping gusts, down into pitch darkness.
Chapter 15
No Rest
Red’s eyes searched the empty darkness inside the small stone building, but found nothing. A loud hum filled the space, like a huge electric motor. One arm still around Lam, he pushed the door closed behind them. The mechanic leaned away. “You OK?” Red asked.
“Just trying to find the switch,” came a hoarse reply.
“Can we take your truck?”
Metal clanked to the floor. “Bullet in the gas tank. You wouldn’t make it far.”
A second later, fluorescents glowed a few feet above their heads. Shielding his eyes, Red recoiled from the brightness, but in a minute the gray and pink earth tones of rock walls came into focus the same colors they’d run across for what seemed like hours above the tree line. Floors were concrete, swept more cleanly than even his OCD father’s garage. Against a far wall stretched two metal workbenches like stainless steel gurneys, above which hung a calendar of a pickup truck with massive black tires crawling out from a muddy ravine. A glossy blue electric generator, at least as tall as he, droned in the middle of the space. A thick cable ran from an open electrical box at the generator’s base, the other end tack welded to the steel door. Another one through exposed rafters to the metal roof. A sweet scent, like gun solvent, hung in the air.
Lam glanced at the same black wires. “Fixed that up this afternoon. Outside, the ground’s always wet, being so close to the lake. I close that switch, and the door gets charged with seven thousand volts. Fry the nuts right off any sonofabitch stupid enough to…” His voice trailed off. Pointing to the polished worktables. “Lay down there, on your stomach.”
Red waved a hand. “You got a phone out here?”
“No,” Lam said.
“Inside the house?”
“No. And the radio’s busted.”
Red pulled out his cell phone along with the larger one from the dead woman in the back of the truck. “Chargers? Anything that could get these things going?”
Lam’s eyes stared at the bigger phone. “Don’t have nothing that’ll bring ’em back to life. I checked for that already inside.” His fist pounded the table. “Now, lay down.”
Red shoved them back into his pocket. “We need to get moving. I’m only here to get you set.”
The man turned with a grimace. “You patched me up, now I’m gonna do you.”
Red grabbed the first aid kit from Penny’s quivering grasp and opened the top, snatching a fistful of alcohol wipes. “Thanks. But no time.” He stepped toward the door.
Lam’s voice hardened. “That wasn’t a request.” He jabbed a finger at stainless steel. “Lay your carcass on that table. If you’re going to run around in those woods, you’ll be a lot faster without a chunk of metal in your ass.”
“We gotta go.” Anyone could’ve heard the gunshots. The Jamaican no doubt had called his team before he moved to pick up Penny. It wouldn’t be long till someone showed up, and no amount of wiring would keep a trained operator from breaching the door.
Lam pointed to Penny. “She’ll have a better chance if your wound ain’t on fire from an infection setting in.”
The man had a point. Red held up fingers. “Three minutes.” He unzipped his pants and pointed to Penny with a twirling motion. She turned around, and he pulled them down past the wound. Laying his belly upon the table, cold steel ice his testicles. He stretched his arms out front, gripping his pistol, and heaved a sigh. The day couldn’t get any worse, could it?
* * * *
Penny turned back around when the man with the arm sling placed a hand upon her shoulder. His voice was soft. Kind. What had Dad called him? Lam. “I’m going to need your help, darlin’.”
He pointed to a hole in Dad’s butt, smeared with blood, surrounded by a huge purple bruise. Dark-stained paper towels were in a heap next to him. A bright red drop rolled down his cheek, but Lam quickly wiped it away. Alcohol scented the air now, like when Mommy would pull out splinters. Daddy’s face was pale. Lam held up a slender pair of shiny pliers with a small chunk of metal in their teeth. “I got the bullet out, but we need to check for frags.”
“We’ll do that later,” Dad said with a frog in his throat.
Lam rested his hand upon Daddy’s back. “It’ll only take a second.”
Dad didn’t protest. He looked so…exposed. Weak. But, he was the one that always made everything OK. Last winter, he’d killed those guys in the parking lot who had tried to rob them. And tonight he’d attacked that mean man twice his size. But now, he looked like he was about to pass out.
Lam look her hand, tore open a white packet, and rubbed it down with a cold wet-wipe. “I found the bullet about two inches in,” he said, pointing to her second knuckle. “That’s a little more than this deep.”
“She can’t do this,” Dad said. “You check, then we gotta go.”
Lam held up his pointer, as thick as a tree branch. “I’d tear you a new asshole. She’s got skinny fingers. Plus, there ain’t nobody else close out there or they’d have come after us already.”
Penny wasn’t going to stand frozen like a bunny rabbit any longer. She’d held still when that big man came looking for her, just like Dad had said. But he still found her. If she’d run that guy never would have caught her. That’s what Mommy would have done. What would she say now? “I’ll do it, Daddy.” She stared at Lam. “What’s a frag?”
“Stick your finger in that hole and twist around a little. If you touch anything like metal, let me know where.”
She pointed at the bloody, scab-crusted wound. “You want me to put my finger in there?”
“You don’t need to do it, sweetheart,” Daddy said.
Lam lifted his voice. “Shut up.
She’d already be done if you’d clamp it!”
Penny glanced at her father. His eyes were pink, but he nodded and looked straight ahead.
“There you go, darlin’.” Lam pulled her toward the table.
She stuck her finger out like she was pointing. When she touched the edge of the hole, Daddy’s cheek tensed, and he grunted.
“Go ahead,” Lam said. “Your daddy’s a tough man. This’ll help him.”
She slid her finger in to the first knuckle. The scab scratched at her skin and crumbled a little as she twisted. She looked away and spotted a picture on a wooden shelf of Lam with a woman and little girl a few years younger than Penny, all standing next to Mickey Mouse. She stared at Mickey, pretending she was seven again at her birthday party when she’d stuck her finger into a warm blueberry pie to find the ring Daddy said he’d hidden in there. There hadn’t been any ring.
“Is that the bottom?” Lam asked.
She shook her head and pushed to her second knuckle, then a little farther. She twisted it halfway around, and something hard scratched against her finger pad. She yanked out.
Lam quickly wrapped her blood-smeared finger in a wet-wipe and cleaned it off. “You feel anything in there?”
She tried to swallow, but couldn’t. She managed a nod.
“Where was it?”
She pointed to the spot.
“Could it have been bone? You were in there pretty far.”
She patted her own butt. “I don’t think there’s a bone there, Mr. Lam. The bottom was still squishy. This was on the side.”
Lam swung a desk lamp down close to the open wound. “You’re right, darlin’! You moved things around enough I can see a little speck of metal.” He plunged the skinny pliers into the wound and in a snap pulled out a shiny paper-thin square. It looked like a metal sticker. He held it to the light. “What the hell kinda bullet leaves this?”
Daddy glanced back, beads of sweat dripping onto the table. “Gimme that.” He grabbed it from him. “Just pack the wound,” he squawked.
Lam opened a brown bottle and poured it into the hole. Daddy yelled at God and most of the saints, several whose names Penny had never heard. Lam pressed cotton patches over the bubbling froth and taped it down with white strips, then helped Daddy sit upright.
“The only thing we got for the pain is ibuprofen.”
Daddy opened the bottle, dumped several into his hand, then swallowed them dry. Lam tossed him a brown bag and a bottle of water.
“What’s this?” her father asked.
“My lunch. If you’re gonna be runnin’ around them woods, you guys need it.”
Chapter 16
Gone Dark
Carter leaned on the stainless steel handle of the entry to the Det’s foyer, exiting the cramped millimeter wave scanning room. Light spilled in from the bright marble-floored entry. The slam of the door behind them echoed like a gunshot. Grind’s blue Skechers scuffed against the heel of his Guccis. Why did the man insist on walking so close? No concept of personal space.
A thick-armed marine with M4 and full battle rattle nodded as the pair passed. Head down, Carter stepped toward a dark side hall, his temporary office at the end. But as long as this investigation had dragged, the stronger the area’s stale scent of permanence. Glancing at the doorjamb, he noticed a yellow sticky note with Carter written in black Sharpie hanging from an otherwise empty name tag holder. He yanked it down and crumped it into a palm. Grind squeezed by him through the door and plopped into a bright blue executive chair with coffee-stained armrests. Against his orange shirt, he looked ready for a Denver Broncos football game.
From the morning’s shotgun-accompanied introduction to Lori’s supervisor, Stacy, he had grasped one overt takeaway: Find out who had given the order for the op in North Korea and he’d be on the trail of who’d put the contract on Lori. And be one step closer to Moses. Jamison had installed a stealthy keystroke recorder on the senator’s computer and discovered the man frequently utilized TOR, a dark web browser, to converse through anonymous chat rooms. His communications were cryptic, but it appeared he was selling a list of military operators and foreign operatives. US spies. And he had a buyer. The deal would close within a week. If correct, the leak could be the largest intelligence breach in US history. Jamison hadn’t been able to uncover the list on the hard drive yet, and even on the dark web, the senator communicated in ambiguous terms. Lots of people used the dark web, even for legal purposes. Carter needed solid evidence to provide to the appropriate authorities.
Grind scratched on a flaky pastry smear on his pants. “Stacy not sayin’ much carries meaning.”
True. The importance of what was unsaid could eclipse the spoken word. Stacy had embodied confidence, but she couldn’t hide a certain level of tension. Her jittering fingers as she’d loaded the shotgun. The missed targets as they were walking out. And her husband… Come to think of it, Stacy’s file had said she was divorced. A live-in maybe?
Carter rubbed his neck.
“Detective!” came from around a corner, back near the foyer. The purring voice sounded like Grace, Red’s admin. Carter frowned as he remembered it was Saturday afternoon. She didn’t routinely work on weekends, but one tended to work around the needs of the Det. He pointed to Grind, picking at yellow stuffing sticking from a tear in the seat. “Who was that guy with Stacy this morning? She called him her husband, but her file said divorced. Find out if she was married recently. I’ll be back in a few.”
Walking to the vestibule, he turned a corner and a tall woman in a black suit with a white collar met him halfway across the hard floor. It was Grace. Jet-black hair, lightly salted, pulled up in a bun. He’d never noticed how long her neck was. A hurried smile. Anxious? Carter had never sensed it in her before. Tautly muscled calves carried her with long strides.
He lifted his chin. “What’re you doing here?”
She waved at him with a follow me, then walked toward her desk at the far end of the entry. As she turned, her dark brown eyes caught his gaze. She possessed a self-confidence he’d rarely seen in anyone working an admin position. Behind her the cubicle village buzzed, a rumble of activity humming from pale blue squares. “Didn’t you notice all the cars in the lot? Something’s come up.”
Must’ve missed it. Walking in, he’d still been musing over the morning’s meeting with Stacy. “And?”
She lowered herself into a small black leather swivel chair behind an L-shaped reception desk, mahogany top matching the foyer’s paneling. “We’re active. A tasking came in.”
Carter rested forearms on the raised counter. “Where to?”
She shrugged, but gave a coy smile. A glance at the Marine guard standing at the far end of the room. Her blouse opened so low he noticed a new freckle amid her cleavage. She leaned forward to whisper.
He held his determination; his eyes stayed locked to hers.
“Don’t know. They’ve been in the command center for hours. You heard from Red?”
Why was she whispering? He shook his head. “No. Still no luck tracking his tag?”
Her smile withered. “No. Ran recordings, but his marker just melts into a big bright blob once they got west of I-95. They could be anywhere along the Front Range.” Her warm breath smelled of peppermint. “You have any other way of contacting him?”
“Me? No.”
“Nothing at all?”
What was she getting at? She was his admin. If anyone had an emergency means of contact, it’d be her.
She leaned back, crossing a leg. “He’s gone dark. I don’t like it.”
“Dark” meaning off duty, or off the grid in this case. “So, you’re telling me the Det has no way to contact its commander?”
She nodded.
Carter knit his fingers together. “Maybe it’s time you stop hoping he wasn’t involved in that shooting on Pikes Peak, and
assume he was. Captain Richards share our concern?”
She snatched up a pencil and tapped the eraser on a notepad. “Not yet. Plus, we’re maxed out right now. He’s planning the op. He’ll be tied up for a few days at least.”
“And in the meantime?”
“Based on what I see on CNN, the FBI has control of the scene in Colorado. If he knew Red was involved, Richards would pull every string in the Hoover Building to get at what he needed. But if not, it’d be detrimental to the mission.”
Right enough. Like most classified organizations, the Det’s modus operandi was to stoop below anyone’s wandering gaze. She bent forward in her chair again, feet flat to the floor, eyes darting across her desk as if deep in thought. What was she hiding? “Something you’re not telling me?”
She leaned close again, left breast brushing against his knuckles as she approached his ear. The lily fragrance of Diorissimo was on her neck. “This is the first op the captain has planned as the lead. Red needs to be here for it.”
Carter stood abruptly, out of the woman’s reach. “I’ve seen the captain work. It’s his time. Plus, you know Red. If he were here, he’d be in the middle of the whole thing, suiting himself up. He needs to back off. It’s better this way.”
She crossed her arms and plopped back. The cushion hissed. Maybe he could use this. “I’ll get Jamison to do some digging. He should be able to get Red’s sister’s cell phone number, the one they’re visiting out there in Colorado. But if I do that, you help me.”
She sat upright. “Now you’re talking my language.”
“How can I find out who authorized last winter’s op to North Korea?”
“Who? You were here when we got that one. Red did. Remember?”
“No. I mean from Higher.”
A coy grin. “For that, you’ll owe me big.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“I don’t care how you see it. I hold the cards. I come out on top.”
Fair enough. “Whatever. I’ll owe you,” he mumbled.
Recon Page 13