Текст книги "Hidden Order: A Thriller"

Автор книги: Brad Thor

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

CHAPTER 56

Cordero’s partner arrived at the staging area about ten minutes after she and Harvath got there. The SWAT team already had surveillance on the warehouse and were putting together their entry plan in consultation with the FBI. A restaurant supply company had been kind enough to allow them to pull their vehicles inside its building in order to avoid detection.

Mixed in with the uniformed SWAT team members were a handful of plainclothes operatives. With their short haircuts and muscled builds, none of these guys looked like run-of-the-mill folks from the neighborhood. None of them would be able to walk up to the warehouse. They’d have to hit it fast and hard before anyone inside knew what was happening.

If the men inside were the caliber of professional that Harvath suspected they might be, they were going to put up one hell of a fight. The SWAT team needed to know what they were potentially going up against.

Harvath took advantage of a break in their briefing to pull the team commander aside and share his concerns. The man listened to what he had to say, thanked him, and then updated his officers.

As they continued with their planning, one of their spotters radioed in. So far, the warehouse was dead. They had even managed to get an operator up on the roof near the skylights where the metal thief had allegedly seen everything, and there was still no sign of activity inside. It was too quiet. Either the thief had lied, or somehow the men inside knew they were coming.

The SWAT team’s greatest concern was the safety of the hostages. Not knowing where they were being held made the officers’ job incredibly difficult. The moment the team made entry into the warehouse, if they didn’t move fast enough, it was a very real possibility that the kidnappers would kill the hostages. Balancing officer safety against the two innocent lives they believed might be inside was like dancing on a knife blade. There was only one good outcome and no shortage of bad ones.

The commander was meticulous and refused to rush anything. He called in additional assets and did everything he could to maximize their surveillance. Finally, he made the call. It was time to hit the warehouse.

After one last check of their radios, weapons, and equipment, the SWAT team mounted up.

The owner of the restaurant supply company offered the plainclothesmen use of one of his vans. The fact that it belonged to a local business so close by would hopefully divert any suspicion away from it. This of course was based on a dangerous assumption—that the men inside the warehouse hadn’t already noticed they were under surveillance and were not waiting to engage any threat, plainclothes or otherwise, foolish enough to enter the structure.

Harvath had been on enough building takedowns to know that while time would slow down for the men on the team, for everyone else things were going to happen very rapidly. He told Cordero and her partner to get ready to move.

They exited the restaurant supply company and decided to drive Sal’s Crown Victoria to the warehouse. He had two Rubbermaid bins on the backseat filled with gear, one of which he moved onto the floor to give Harvath a place to sit. Cordero climbed in front. As soon as the FBI agents were in place and the SWAT team had departed the restaurant supply company, they followed.

Sal turned up his radio so they could listen to the takedown in real time. When he was half a block away from the warehouse and had it in sight, he pulled to the curb. This was close enough. If bullets started flying, they’d be sitting ducks out front.

“Keep it running,” said Harvath, as he noticed the man reaching for his ignition.

Sal nodded and they stayed glued to the radio.

The team practiced excellent communications discipline. Messages were transmitted via predetermined brevity codes. Finally, the warehouse doors and windows were breached, flash-bangs were tossed inside, and the SWAT team members made their rapid entry.

Harvath’s entire body was keyed up. Was this it? Had they tracked down the Sons of Liberty?

He hated being outside in a car, half a block away. He wished he was on the entry team, hell, he wished he was leading the entry team into the warehouse.

After what seemed like an eternity, more thorough communications started crackling across the radio as room after room of the warehouse was searched and found to be empty.

With the raid and then the secondary sweep of the warehouse complete, the team leader relayed the message “The building is secure.”

Sal put his vehicle in gear and they drove up to the front of the warehouse as a handful of SWAT operatives came out the front door. The FBI agents on scene had already begun going in.

Harvath looked at one of the SWAT team members as he passed and the officer shook his head. “No HUTS,” he said, which Harvath knew stood for no hostages, no unknowns, no tangos, and no shooters. The raid had been a bust.

The team leader met them inside. “The crates are here,” he stated, “but that’s it.”

“Where are the crates?” Cordero asked. The man pointed the trio to the back of the building.

The crates had been collapsed and leaned against the wall, as if someone was considering taking them along but then had second thoughts. In another room, where a length of chain hung from the wall, one of the FBI agents had found a woman’s blouse. It smelled terrible and was spattered with blood.

“Do you have Betsy Mitchell’s blood type in your file?” the female detective asked.

“If it’s not,” said Harvath, “they should be able to get it pretty quickly.”

She turned to her partner. “Where’s your camera?”

“Out in the car.”

“I don’t want to wait for the CSTs to get here. I want to get pictures, I want to do our drawings, and then let’s start bagging things up for analysis. Okay?”

“Fine by me,” said Sal. “We’ll need to coordinate the Bureau folks and set up a canvass in case anyone else around here saw anything, plus we should see if we can get a better description of the men the metal thief says he saw.”

“What can I do?” asked Harvath.

“Do you have any forensics experience?”

He shook his head. “Not much.”

“Then I have the perfect job for you,” she replied. “Go out to the car and bring those two Rubbermaid bins in.”

“Then what?”

“Then you’re really going to prove your worth to this investigation.”

“How?” he asked.

“You’re going to find us coffee somewhere in this neighborhood.”

CHAPTER 57

To his credit, Harvath not only didn’t mind going out for coffee, he actually found some and it wasn’t half bad. He returned with three cups in a cardboard tray.

The evidence techs still hadn’t arrived yet, but Cordero had made a significant find.

“Check this out,” she said, holding up a clear plastic bag. Inside, there was a piece of black card stock the size of a business card. On one side, printed in blood red, was a skull and bones with a floating crown. On the other side were the words I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny.

It was followed by the letters S.O.L.

“I think that’s a line from John Hancock,” said Harvath.

Sal held up his smartphone. “Correct. Part of the speech he gave on the fourth anniversary of the Boston Massacre.”

“Why is it printed on a card? And why leave it here?”

“Maybe it was left by accident,” said Cordero.

“Where’d you find it?”

“Behind where the crates were stacked up against the wall.”

She had a point. Maybe it had been left by accident. One thing was for certain, though: finding this warehouse was a huge breakthrough. At least he hoped it would be.

“What else have you been able to find?” he asked.

“Other than that card and the blouse,” replied the female detective, “nothing.”

“There’s got to be something more here. We just haven’t found it yet.”

“You’re welcome to look around,” said the male detective. “If you find anything, just don’t touch it. Call one of us or one of the FBI agents.”

Harvath nodded and went to the other end of the warehouse. He was used to hitting terrorist safe houses where the kind of evidence he was expected to collect were things like thumb drives, CDs, and written documents, not hair and fiber samples.

Finding the card with the Hancock quote, though, had been huge. They were definitely in the right spot. The only question was, had any other clues been left behind?

Once the crime scene techs arrived, they would go through the laborious process of dusting for prints. Undoubtedly, they’d find a ton and he didn’t envy the person or persons who would be charged with having to run all of them down. Considering a building of this size with this many surfaces, the question wasn’t what to dust, but what not to?

He figured they’d do the obvious items like the crates, the chain attached to the wall near where the blouse was found, the door handles, the light switches, and any bathroom surfaces. Other than that, it was anybody’s guess, though he knew there was a strict procedure both the police and FBI followed.

What he was looking for as he walked through was something out of the ordinary, something that didn’t belong or something that was conspicuous because it wasn’t there.

Whoever had been using this location had probably been here since the early hours of Monday morning. That was only two days ago. If they were careless enough to leave one of those cards behind, where else had they screwed up? Was the blouse a mistake? Or was it left on purpose? Or did they simply not care about it?

The fact that the metal thief had seen multiple males in the warehouse backed up the theory that they were dealing with a team. The fact that they were carrying what looked like submachine guns bolstered the hypothesis that they were well trained, possibly even aligned with a military or intelligence organization. Add to that the way in which the victims had been killed, particularly the ear removal of Claire Marcourt and Kelly Davis, and it looked like Bill Wise’s Swim Club was a real potential factor in this entire thing.

As Harvath continued to walk the building, his mind was drawn to the passage on the back of the card from John Hancock. As he had been laying out the time line for Cordero, the Boston Massacre was the next big event he was going to mention before her commander had interrupted them.

What if the killer’s next murder scene wasn’t going to be Boston Common or Faneuil Hall, where the two regiments of British troops had stayed, but the actual site of the Boston Massacre?

The more he thought about it, the more the idea began to crowd out all other possibilities. The line from Hancock had to be tied to where the killer was going to strike next. It had to be.

The only question that remained was whether they should spend any more time at all in the warehouse or turn it over to the evidence techs and try to get a jump on the next location. Actually, there wasn’t any question at all.

Giving up his search, Harvath turned around and walked quickly back to find Cordero. If they did this right, they might be able to set up a trap and have the killer walk right into it.

CHAPTER 58

A circle of cobblestones with a star carved into the center was all that marked the location of the Boston Massacre. It sat embedded in a downtown sidewalk, almost directly beneath the east balcony of the Old State House. It was one of the least glamorous but most important stops along Boston’s “Freedom Trail,” a two-and-a-half-mile-long red stripe that runs through the city and connects sixteen historically significant sites in the run-up to the Revolutionary War. On that spot, five Bostonians became the first to give up their lives for the cause of American liberty.

Waiting for a group of tourists to pass, he looked at Cordero and her partner and said, “The symbolism here is pitch perfect. Right up their alley. This has got to be where the next one is going to happen.”

“What do you think, Sal?” Cordero asked.

“My smartphone isn’t so smart when it comes to predicting what people are going to do. I don’t know.”

She looked back at Harvath. “Do you think they’d stage something from inside the Old State House? Another hanging maybe? Have the body come out over the balcony?”

Harvath looked up and considered it. “We know they like to operate late at night. It gives them cover. They also like to limit their exposure. That’s why the Liberty Tree and Hutchinson sites were done inside. It’s pretty hard to kill somebody out in public.”

Cordero’s partner looked up at all the office buildings surrounding them. “Maybe not. What if they used a sniper?”

It was a good point. Harvath hadn’t thought of that and now looked up as well. There were plenty of places a sniper could be positioned. It would be dramatic and draw a lot of attention. It also felt like something the people he believed they were dealing with would be capable of.

Playing devil’s advocate, he said, “If they did use a sniper, how would they get the victim to walk right up to where they wanted?”

“If it were me,” Cordero mused, “I’d put a cop there.”

“You would?”

She nodded. “I’d call something into 911, wait until the cop was right where I wanted him, and then I’d turn the victim loose.”

Harvath thought about that. “Make the victim think you were setting him free?”

“Or her free,” she clarified. “Remember, we’ve got one man and one woman who are still missing.”

“That’s correct. So you’d let him or her think they’re being set free, you’d dump them on the street someplace close, and then tell them to run for the cop.”

“Then when they get to the cop,” Sal said, mimicking a sniper with an invisible rifle, “end of story.”

It was an excellent theory, but just that—a theory. He looked up again at the buildings. It was a base worth covering. “How much of a SWAT presence could we get?”

“We can reach out to the state guys to augment what we already have,” said Cordero as her eyes scanned the area. “But not knowing precisely what these people have planned, we also need to flood this entire zone with plainclothes cops. If the victim makes it to that historical marker, it could be too late.”

Harvath agreed. “The Boston Massacre was all about British soldiers mowing innocent people down with muskets, so if they do go the sniper route, they’ll have the victim in the crosshairs the entire time. Nevertheless, we need to cover our other bases.”

“Such as?”

“We definitely want to have officers positioned inside the Old State House,” he said, as his mind sifted through the countless possibilities. When you had a location, particularly one out in the open, you learned how to defend it by envisioning how the bad guys would likely attack it. Looking down at the historical marker, he added, “Is there anything running underneath here? Sewers? The subway system?”

“Probably. Why?”

“Just in case this historical marker isn’t really on the site of the Boston Massacre, but actually above it, we’ll need cops down there covering it as well.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard to find out,” Cordero replied. “What else do we need?”

It was odd to have her suddenly defer to him, and it took a moment for him to realize that the shift had happened. Maybe it was because she knew that he had been a Secret Service agent, though she had no idea it was on the President’s detail, but somehow she sensed that this was in his wheelhouse and was something he was good at.

He thought through all the other things he would like to have, knowing they’d never get there in time, and settled on the one thing they needed more than anything else. “If you can find us a whole busload of luck, that’d be all I’d ask for,” he said, forcing an optimistic laugh.

Harvath heard Cordero’s partner laugh, but as he looked up, he couldn’t tell if the man was laughing with him, or at him.

CHAPTER 59

Betsy Mitchell felt the vehicle, probably a van of some sort based on the sliding sound the door had made once they had gotten into it, bump and jostle along through traffic. She had no idea where they were. Based on the drugs she had been given and all of the takeoffs and landings of the plane she had been on after her abduction, she had no idea if she was even in the United States anymore. She could hear car horns outside, but she couldn’t see anything. A hood had been placed over her head.

Despite a split lip and an eye that felt painfully swollen from the blows she had suffered, the rape Betsy had feared back at the warehouse never happened. After tearing away her blouse, the man in the mask had left the room. He came back with a small camera and microphone combination, a third the size of a lipstick tube, and showed it to her. He then taped it to her chest, and that was when he had placed the hood over her head.

As he removed the collar from around her neck and began to dress her, he used the digital recorder to relay a message explaining what was about to happen.

Her ransom had been agreed on. Within a matter of hours she would be free, if she did everything she was supposed to do. That was the purpose of the video camera and microphone. Though she couldn’t see it with the hood over her head, she could feel him adjusting her clothes around it. He explained that he would be able to see and hear everything she did. He also explained what would happen if she veered even one inch from her instructions. Her blood froze in her veins. Once she found her voice again, she swore she would do exactly as he asked. She promised them that in no condition would she waver from what she had been told to do.

When the voice on the digital recorder asked her to repeat the rhyme she had been taught, she did, repeating it perfectly, word for word. Once he was satisfied that she was ready, he had loaded her into the vehicle and they departed.

She lost track of how long they had been driving. It could have been an hour. It could have been ten. All she could think about was doing everything he demanded, exactly as he had demanded it. All she wanted was her freedom. All she wanted to do was go home.

The vehicle turned for the umpteenth time, but began to slow and then eventually pulled over to the side and stopped. The man with the mask joined her in the back of the van and removed her hood. His eyes bored into hers for several moments before he produced the digital recorder and pressed PLAY. The words she had first heard it speak poured forth again.

“Please repeat after me. Lucy Lockett lost her pocket, Sally Fisher found it. Not a penny was there in it, just a ribbon ’round it.”

Betsy dutifully complied. The man then rewound the recording and played it again. Betsy repeated the phrase again. In fact, she kept repeating it. It was her mantra. If she said it enough times, she would be free.

The man in the mask produced a knife and cut the nylon EZ Cuffs from her wrists and ankles. Then tapping her chest to remind her of the camera, he slid open the door and gestured for her to step out onto the sidewalk.

Wherever in the world she was, it was evening. That was all she knew. Her instructions had been quite specific. With her hand first in the right pocket of her coat and then the left, she began walking away from the van. As she walked, she continued to repeat the rhyme over and over again, hoping the man in the mask hadn’t lied to her.

“Lucy Lockett lost her pocket, Sally Fisher found it. Not a penny was there in it, just a ribbon ’round it.”

 • • •

“Here you go,” Cordero said, handing Harvath a bottle of water she had just purchased for him. “See anything new?”

Harvath took the water from her and screwed off the cap. “Nothing yet. What did the SWAT commander say?”

“He asked the same thing he did an hour ago. How much longer do we think this is going to go on.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him not to worry. His team will be home for Christmas.”

Harvath smiled. At least she still had her sense of humor, but it was fading. It had taken all day to set the operation up, most of it with the FBI going back and forth with their headquarters in Washington as to how everything should be handled. A lot of time, in Harvath’s opinion, had been wasted on where everyone should be placed, how many Boston PD versus FBI agents should be in plainclothes, et cetera. By the time everything was settled, it was already late afternoon.

“These kinds of ops aren’t easy,” he said, referring to Cordero’s interaction with the SWAT team leader. “Scanning rooftops and windows is mind-numbing work. You can burn out fast and lose your edge. The commander is just looking out for his guys.”

“Like I said, they’ll all be home for Christmas.”

Harvath nodded. Everyone was on edge, their nerves a bit frayed. They were anxious for something to happen. And unlike other types of stakeouts, they had to keep moving.

Cordero’s partner had helped coordinate changes of clothes so she and Harvath could rotate in and out of the area with different appearances. He was also coordinating the plainclothes cops and FBI agents.

There had already been a couple of false alarms as people bearing a similar resemblance to Jonathan Renner or Betsy Mitchell had passed by. It had sent everyone into high-alert mode, only to turn out that it wasn’t the people they were looking for.

As the evening wore on, Harvath could see the fatigue begin to eat away at the corners of Cordero’s mind.

“What if somehow we tipped our hand?” she asked. “What if they figured out we’re here?”

Harvath looked at his watch. “It’s still way too early for you to be going soft on me.”

“I’m not going soft. But what if I’m right?”

“You know, I once lay in a hole, not much bigger than the trunk of a car, for four days waiting for the right guy to go past. I didn’t have a café half a block away with cold sodas and a bathroom so clean, people from the third world would think they were at the Ritz-Carlton.”

“I guess it could be worse,” she admitted.

“Yeah. There could be snakes and truckloads of guys shooting at you.”

Cordero looked at him. “At some point, you and I are going to have a long talk about who you actually are.”

Harvath took a sip of his water and screwed the cap back on. “We’ll have to do it over coffee. You’ll need it to keep you awake.”

“Somehow, I doubt that.”

Harvath was just about to change the subject when a voice crackled over their earpieces. It was Sal.

“We just got a heads-up from a patrol officer in the area,” he said.

“What is it?” Cordero asked.

“Seems he found a couple of cards like the one you found in the warehouse.”

“Where is he?”

“Hold on,” said Sal. “I’ll get him on this frequency.”

A moment later, the male detective said, “You’re on with Detective Cordero. Go ahead.”

“Detective Cordero?” a voice said. “This is Officer Kaczynski.”

“What have you got, Kaczynski?”

“We were told to keep our eyes peeled for anything with a skull and crossbones on it with a crown on top. I’ve found several black cards with the skull and bones on one side and the sentence I glory in publicly avowing my eternal enmity to tyranny, followed by the letters S.O.L.”

Harvath tucked his water bottle into his pocket and looked at Cordero.

“What’s your location?” she asked the patrolman.

“I’m headed north on Devonshire, almost at Quaker Lane.”

She looked at Harvath and said, “He’s about half a block south.”

“There’s a whole bunch of these things, like a trail of bread crumbs. I’ve been picking them up in case your guys can get a print off one of them.”

“Officer Kaczynski,” Harvath interrupted. “Leave the rest of them. We need to know who is dropping them.”

“Okay, stand by. Let me see what I can do.”

Cordero started to move in Kaczynski’s direction, but Harvath gently grabbed hold of her arm. “Somebody may be trying to smoke us out. Let’s wait a second.”

“We may not have a second,” she said as she radioed the other teams and told them what was going on and to be ready.

Seconds later, one of the SWAT officers came over the radio and said, “I think we’ve got it. Looks like some kind of a homeless person, possibly female. Brown hair, heavy brown coat, dark pants. She’s dropping something from her pockets.”

“Can you see patrol officer Kaczynski?” Cordero asked.

“Roger that,” the SWAT officer replied. “He’s approximately ten meters behind her.”

“Kaczynski,” Cordero said over her radio. “Do you see a female homeless woman approximately ten meters ahead of you? Brown hair, brown coat?”

“That’s affirmative,” Kaczynski replied. “Not only can I see her, I can smell her. Sweet Jesus, it’s terrible.”

“Do not engage. I repeat. Do not engage. They may be trying to smoke us out,” the female detective ordered as she looked at Harvath. “What the hell is going on?”

“I’ve got no idea,” he said, “but I don’t like it. Something feels very wrong about this.”

Cordero radioed the other team members. “Everybody on your toes. The woman in the coat might be a decoy. Keep your eyes peeled on our other ingress points. If one of our targets is being sent in, we don’t want to miss him or her.”

Harvath’s eyes continued to scan the area. He paid particular attention to the historical marker and kept looking toward Devonshire Street. Suddenly, he saw the woman in the brown coat.

Kaczynski’s voice came back over their earpieces. “This woman is crackers. I can hear her repeating some rhyme about someone called Lucy Lockett or something.”

“Officer Kaczynski,” Cordero warned. “Do not engage her. Is that clear?”

“Ten-four.”

“She’s headed our way,” said Harvath.

The female detective could see her now. The woman’s hair was a rat’s nest. She walked with her head down. Like many homeless people, she was overdressed for the warm weather in a winter coat.

“She’s almost to you,” said Kaczynski.

“We see her,” Cordero replied.

Both she and Harvath could now clearly see her reaching into her pockets, pulling out the black cards and dropping them in her wake.

Harvath’s feelings of unease were continuing to build. His gut was telling him something. He just couldn’t put his finger on it.

The woman walked like she was in a dream, mumbling as she moved forward, placing one foot in front of the next. Harvath had seen this before. Where? Why was it so familiar? The alarm bells were going off full force in his head now.

Cordero took a step in the direction of the woman. Harvath reached out and grabbed her arm again.

They watched as the woman stepped out into the street. As she did, a car speeding through the intersection slammed on its brakes. The woman looked up.

One of the SWAT team members watching through a spotting scope identified her first. “Target A. Target A. The woman in the brown coat is Betsy Mitchell. All teams, the woman in the brown coat is Betsy Mitchell.”

Cordero shook off Harvath’s hand and began running. So did Officer Kaczynski.

Kaczynski got to Betsy Mitchell first, knocking her to the ground and throwing himself on top of her.

Harvath got to Detective Cordero just as the suicide vest Betsy Mitchell was wearing was remotely detonated.