“Don’t let your nerves run away with you. It’ll be fine.”
“Again, my ass is on the line.”
“All of our asses are on the line. But what we’re doing is for the greater good. You agree with that, don’t you? National security and all?”
“Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”
“Then we just have to redouble our security efforts and keep our heads down. I can run interference for you in Washington. You have our full backing.”
“And Vector?”
“They do their job and they do it well. Enough said.”
“But what if someone’s found who can, well, blow everything up?”
“It’s true there is not complete alignment on this issue, but I think even if the American people found out they would not be troubled.”
“Jesus, we can’t go take a poll. This is all classified. Maybe the most classified thing I’ve ever been involved in.”
“The same could be said for me, although I’ve been in this business far longer than you. Now, the FBI came to see you with questions?”
“I’m executive-lagging that. And in the end I won’t get back to them. I’ll blame it on DoD security protocols.”
“I think that’s wise. I can help with that as well. I have high-up contacts at the Bureau. Whatever got that tail wagging, I can put the kibosh on it.”
“That would be greatly appreciated.” Sumter paused. “You know we could have just spoken on the phone. These late-night meetings could raise suspicion.”
“No, we could not talk on the phone, no matter how secure it might be. Emails, texts, phone calls, all of that can be captured and then used against someone. These meetings, face-to-face, no record exists.” The man paused. “Except in the memories of each of us.”
Sumter seemed to get the man’s meaning. “I’m never going to talk to anyone about this.”
The man nodded. “Everything else is fine? No concerns?”
“The ones I’ve already told you are concerns enough for me. But the rest of the operation is fine, yes.”
“Good. Well, I will put my efforts into motion and you will do what I have advised. Until next week, then. I’ll let you know where and when.”
Robie retreated to about fifty yards from the house and watched as Sumter came out, climbed into his car, and drove off.
When the other man did not appear, Robie drew closer to the house and waited.
He did not have to wait long.
He fell back and hunched down as the sound of the chopper came closer. He saw the blinking lights from the belly of the aircraft. Next a searchlight flitted over the house and yard as Robie quickly lay flat in the high grass, facedown.
He only lifted his head when he could tell by the sounds of the engine reducing power and the whump-whump of the chopper’s props lessening that the aircraft was landing.
The front door of the house opened up and the older gent came out, crossed the yard quickly, and climbed into a rear door of the chopper. It immediately lifted off, as Robie shot pictures of all of it.
A minute later he was back on his scooter flying down the road toward town. He wanted to report in with Blue Man.
It would prove to be far more difficult than he had thought.
“BUT DOES THAT HAVE anything to do with our case?” asked Jamison as they sat in the hotel lobby late that night.
“It’s not a crime for Hugh Dawson to sell out to Stuart McClellan,” noted Decker. “But to answer your question, I don’t know if there is a connection. Yet.”
“Do you think McClellan is involved in this somehow?”
“If Irene Cramer knew something that was damaging to him, it’s possible. I just don’t know what that might be. But I think the military installation is a more promising suspect. I think that’s why she came up here.”
“There’s clearly something going on over there,” said Jamison. “From what Robie found out and our discussion with his boss.”
“We need to talk to Brad Daniels again.”
“And Robie’s boss seems to think that something is off there. I mean, why have two redundant facilities in North Dakota?”
“So the one here has an ulterior purpose.”
“The guy running away that Robert White saw?” said Decker.
“Yeah?”
“The guy was obviously trying to escape.”
“So you think there’s some sort of prison being operated over there?”
“Maybe.”
“And the ambulances?”
“It seems to be the sort of prison where people suffer injury routinely enough to require medical attention off-site.”
“But if they are operating a prison over there, where would they take the injured prisoners? I mean, if they’re trying to keep it secret, they can’t just drive them to the local hospital.”
“They have a runway. They have choppers coming and going at odd hours.”
Jamison looked at him in alarm. “You think they’re flying these guys out?”
“And maybe they don’t come back.”
“Decker, all of that sounds really illegal. I mean, you can’t hurt prisoners, fly them out, and then they disappear. They have rights.”
“Maybe they’re not ordinary prisoners, Alex.”
She gaped at him. “Meaning what?”
“It’s a military facility. Maybe they’re military prisoners of a sort.”
“But if they are military prisoners, they still have rights.”
“Maybe they’re not members of the military or even American citizens. Remember White said the guy was talking gibberish?”
“He said he thought the guy was nuts or maybe on drugs.”
“Or maybe speaking a foreign language.”
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Maybe they’re running another Guantanamo up here in North Dakota.”
Jamison slumped back in her seat. “Another Gitmo, here?”
“You wouldn’t want to transfer a bunch of enemy combatants or terrorists to New York City or another really populated area. And if this facility is redundant, it would be the perfect place.”
“Right. And then Vector is brought in to handle security.”
Decker nodded. “They show up here and the Air Force people get kicked out, leaving Sumter as the sole remaining flag bearer to give it a modicum of respect. I think Vector was brought in to watch over the people they’re keeping there. And maybe interrogating them to the point of their being injured.”
“But that’s not allowed anymore.”
“Says who?” replied Decker sharply.
Jamison started to reply but then seemed to think better of it. He eased forward in his chair. “It would also explain why Robie is on the scene.”
“But they told us why. It was because of what happened to Irene Cramer’s mother.”
Decker shook his head. “Robie’s boss struck me as one real heavyweight. And Robie, too. Maybe they’re upset that Cramer got killed after what happened to her mother under their watch, but feeling guilty isn’t a reason to bring those kind of assets up here. There’s something else, another reason why they’re here.”
Jamison snapped her fingers. “Robie’s boss said that some big players may already be on the scene here. And that clearly was a problem.”
“If they’re running a secret prison engaging in illegal interrogation, I think that would qualify as something people would kill to keep quiet about.” He tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. “The only problem is that theory doesn’t square with why Cramer came here in the first place. Daniels told her something about that facility. But that was from a long time ago, long before Vector or any potential prisoners showed up there.”
“So you mean there has to be something else going on? Namely, whatever Daniels told Cramer that compelled her to move here?”
Decker nodded. “But if Cramer came up here to find out something about that facility based on what Daniels told her, and t
hen stumbled onto what they’re doing now?”
“That’s a motive to kill her. But why slice open her stomach and intestines?”
“Her mother was a spy. Maybe she taught her kid to swallow secrets, or she saw her mother do it before. The people who killed Cramer might have somehow known this and cut her open to get it back. Then they tried to hide that by performing a postmortem on her and also blackmailing Walt Southern.”
“But why leave the body out there like that? I mean, they could have buried it somewhere. No one would have found her and we’d never have been called in.”
“Well, one explanation is that they didn’t know about her past. Local murder, local cops working on it, not the FBI. If it came out she was a prostitute the local cops would have chalked it up to that. And if they had blackmailed Southern to mess with the postmortems, the cops probably wouldn’t have even focused on the stomach and intestines. I had to read that report three times to find a reference to it.”
“I’m surprised he even referred to it at all.”
“Guy was covering his ass in case this all came out. He could say, hey, it’s right there, even if I didn’t highlight it or take photos of that specific region. I checked for contraband and found none. And the livor mortis miscue? He could chalk that up to not being a full-time pathologist. No, he was hedging his bets all right.”
“So they would have found her body, done the post, conducted the investigation, and come up with zip.”
“Which is better for them than no one finding her, and the cops keep digging and maybe call in other resources to try to find her. The fact that she was a prostitute, or at least holding herself out as one, would make for an easy answer for the cops. It’s a high-risk profession. Women like that get murdered all the time and their bodies get dumped. Cops poke around and then move on to the next case.”
“That does make sense.”
“Well, that’s something, since nothing else in this damn case makes the least bit of sense,” growled Decker.
ROBIE PARKED THE SCOOTER outside the same abandoned apartment building where he had taken Decker and Jamison to meet Blue Man. His boss wasn’t here, but Robie had secure communications inside the building to contact him. And Robie had also made this derelict place his home base for now.
The sound reached his ears a few seconds before it would have been picked up by anyone not as well trained as he was.
Seconds of warning meant he got to live another day.
Maybe.
He immediately flitted for cover near the building’s front doors and pulled his pistol. There were at least five men that he could see. Where they had come from he couldn’t tell. Most likely they had already been here before he arrived. Which meant his hiding place had been compromised.
In the moonlight he could see that they wore light armor and carried automatic, combat-grade weaponry. They were advancing in a diamond-shaped attack pattern. There was no way he could fire at one without revealing his location. And his cover position could not withstand concentrated counterfire.
This dilemma presented a clear tactical first step. Since his current position was indefensible, he moved. He was through the front doors and up the stairs before any of them could gain a line of sight on him to fire. Any building that Will Robie had ever occupied had been thoroughly researched by him beforehand, and this one was no exception.
He turned left and sprinted down the hall that bisected the main floor. He reached the rear doors, knelt, and peered out. Tac lights and gun muzzles were coming his way. They were smart enough to have cut off his rear exit. This op had involved some planning. He heard the front doors opening. Robie hit the stairwell, running up three flights of stairs, popped through the door, and hustled down the hall to the last room on the left.
He unlocked the door and then bolted it behind him. He raced to the window even as he heard the reverberations of multiple feet pounding up the stairs. He never thought about calling anyone for help because there really wasn’t anyone to call—and even if there were, they would never get here in time. Robie had to rely on himself, which was nothing new for him.
He opened the window and pulled out a coil of rope that he had earlier placed behind a piece of furniture. There was also a small duffel with some things that might prove helpful, along with his comm equipment. He slung the duffel over his shoulder and tied the rope to the railing that ran around the small balcony attached to the side of the building. He looked down and now saw no tac lights or other signs of someone being down there. They must have entered the building already.
In the distance he saw the blinking lights of an aircraft as it zipped across the clear sky. The flare lights of the oil fields burned far away, looking like clusters of shiny objects.
He slipped over the side of the balcony and, using his legs around the rope as stabilizers, he methodically made his way down. As soon as his feet touched dirt, he took out his weapon, screwed a suppressor can onto the muzzle, knelt down, took aim, and shot the man who had just come around the corner. The fellow dropped silently to the ground, but the sound of the suppressed round seemed to boom across the flat, dark land like cannon fire.
What was up was now coming down, as from inside the building Robie heard the sounds of feet charging down to the first floor. He sprinted to his left even as gunfire rained down on him from above. They also had the high ground now, which was the best ground to possess. Fired rounds careened off the stucco hide of the building, and shrapnel flew off like little whirlwinds of twisted metal. Robie felt one slice into his arm, but he never slowed until he reached the man he’d killed. In one smooth motion he jerked the man up and used him as a shield while he grabbed the loaded sub gun out of his hands along with three spare thirty-round mags from ammo sleeves in his pants. As rounds slammed into the dead man, Robie waited for a pause in the firing, then dropped the body and sprinted around the corner of the building.
Reaching the front, Robie threw himself forward in a prone position and opened fire right as the group of closely massed men erupted from the front entrance.
Because of the body armor they wore, he employed only head shots, and in short order had taken out all five who had burst into his range. Those not instantly dead moaned, cried, and cursed as Robie rose and sprinted toward his scooter.
He heard another sound that caused him to change direction and then dive down, right as the bullets zipped over him. He rolled right, took aim, and strafed the field in front of him with gunfire. This would give him a few precious seconds to assess the new threat.
It was coming from two directions, ninety and two-seventy on the compass.
Looked to be six men in each group, armed and armored.
Robie felt flattered they had sent basically a platoon to take him out.
He fired off the rest of his mag to keep his enemy at bay for another few seconds, and then slammed in his next-to-last sleeve of ammo.
His scooter was out of the question now. His adversaries owned that ground.
He couldn’t run for it. They would cut him down in a matter of seconds. No help was coming, he was outnumbered ten to one, and he had two thirty-round mags and seven additional shots in his pistol. They probably had thousands of rounds to expend on him. So it was just a war of attrition now with only one clear outcome.
He thought of pulling out his phone and calling Decker, if for no other reason than to tell him what was happening and to take charge of his body. But he decided against that. That was a defeatist attitude, and that was not really in Robie’s DNA.
He looked left and then right, searching for options as the group of men in front of him slowly moved forward. Just to show he wasn’t to be toyed with, he focused on one man, leading the pack on the right. He watched the guy through the scope on his pistol and gauged his diversionary movements for about ten seconds. He discerned the pattern and took aim with his pistol, and when the man stepped to his right, it was the last step of his life.
As the man fell dead, Robie immed
iately rolled to his left and kept going as rounds poured into the location he had just occupied, his shot having given it away.
Then the others ceased firing and hunkered down. Robie could imagine them using their comm packs to assess the situation and arrive at a solution to the little problem represented by him.
Robie didn’t wait to confront the result of this discussion. He rolled to his left and kept rolling until he reached a planting bed that was full of dying flowers and small bushes. Tac lights were flying all over the ground as they searched for him from a safe distance, because there were limits to the accurate range of the sub gun. It was designed to be devastating in close-quarter battle, but it was for shit at long range.
He debated whether to use the tac beams as a convenient target to take out one or two of them. But doing so would only lead to overwhelming firepower directed at him. And he couldn’t keep rolling out of danger. They would figure that out and send fields of fire in every direction he could possibly take. Then it became a numbers game, and one round would eventually find him.
He assessed the situation again. It was a shitshow, to be sure. But Robie had some more cards to play.
He opened the duffel and took out two metal fist-sized canisters and a pair of headphones with a built-in battery. He put on the headphones and powered them up. He punched an engagement switch on each of the metal canisters, tossed one and then the other.
They hit the dirt about two feet from his adversaries.
The blinding flash of light was followed by an avalanche of sound, and, far more lethally, sheets of packed shrapnel traveling at speeds no person could dodge.
Two seconds later, Robie got up and fired through the smoke, emptying his mag. Then he ran to his left toward the road using an evasive zigzag movement.
He heard shots fired in his direction, but none hit their target.
When he looked back, the smoke had cleared, and he was dismayed to see that six men were barreling toward him. They must have anticipated his tactic and had kept low enough to let the shrapnel sail harmlessly over them. He turned and fired his last mag at them. Two went down, but the other four returned fire and kept charging.
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