Текст книги "Hidden Order: A Thriller"

Автор книги: Brad Thor

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

CHAPTER 23

Before the effects of the Taser had worn off, Ryan was tossed inside the back of the van, where her hands, feet, and mouth were duct-taped and a black hood was yanked down over her head. As soon as the vehicle started moving, she had her wits about her enough to try to interpret their speed and direction. Every piece of information was vital. Even the smallest data point could mean the difference between life and death.

How could she have been so stupid? She wanted to blame the wine or her jet lag, but she knew that she was ultimately responsible for her predicament right now. She should have never let her guard down.

The only silver lining she could find was that she wasn’t dead, yet. If they had wanted to kill her, they could have put a gun to the base of her skull and pulled the trigger rather than using a Taser on her. But while she saw breathing as a silver lining, she knew that at some point tonight she could end up wishing they had killed her in the parking lot.

She ran through her mind the long list of people around the world she had pissed off badly enough to want to come get her. The fact that the attack had been carried out by two young Caucasians worried the hell out of her, as it could very well be an Islamic operation. As box-of-rocks stupid as so many Muslim foot soldiers were, the men in the organizational structures of the more aggressive terror organizations tended to be rather intelligent. If one of those groups had the wherewithal to track her down like this, they’d never be dumb enough to send a Muslim man, or even a Muslim woman to lure her out of her apartment. The minute she saw either on her doorstep, her antennae would be up. The tipsy blonde with the fender-bender story was the perfect ploy.

Was this about one of the countless harsh interrogations she had conducted? Because if so, there wasn’t a single one that she would go back and change. She believed in the methods the CIA used, including the ones that members of Congress would never know about. They had no idea the type of determined enemy the United States faced. And while she believed in harsh interrogation methods, most of them were tactics that she would never want to be submitted to.

What worried her even more was that boastful lies and one-upmanship were the Muslim terrorist’s stock-in-trade. This went double for stories of capture and interrogation at the hands of the Americans. No matter what had happened in an interrogation, there’d always be one of them quick to jump up and claim they had a worse one. It led to a very perverse view of what Americans actually did in their interrogations.

It was why the thought of being kidnapped by Al-Qaeda or a similar group was something that kept some CIA personnel up at night. They knew that if they ever were grabbed, the interrogation wouldn’t be “harsh,” it would be brutal, and it would definitely be torture.

There was no way Ryan was ever going to submit to that, even if avoiding it meant throwing herself out of a moving vehicle. While she tried to keep track of the movement of the van, she also tried to keep calm as she sought a way to get free. But she was on her stomach, her naked body half exposed beneath her open robe, with her hands and feet bound up hog-tie style. She remembered watching a video once of someone actually getting out of being duct-taped. It involved twisting the hands down and out with a quick pop. It also required that your hands be bound in front, something professionals never did.

Rolling onto her right side, she inched in that direction praying that she’d find a screw or an exposed piece of metal, anything that could be used to cut through the tape and get herself free. There was nothing, so she rolled onto her opposite side and slowly felt her way along the filthy floor in that direction. It was just as fruitless. But then she felt something.

It was a small, narrow strip of metal banding, the kind used to secure loads to a wooden pallet. It was about half an inch wide and only an inch long. It wasn’t exactly sharp, but it had been cut on an angle and therefore had a point. Gripping it as best she could, Ryan ignored the pounding in her chest and went to work on her restraints.

About fifteen minutes later, she felt the van make another turn. Based on the speed and lack of stoplights, she figured they had been on Route 123 headed out of Fairfax. Now they were headed in a new direction. Toward what? A safe house? The forest? She worked harder on the duct tape. It had been wrapped around so many times, Ryan couldn’t tell if she was making any progress at all.

A few minutes later, the vehicle began to slow as if the driver was looking for something, an address or a road sign, maybe. No, she said half to herself, half in prayer. Don’t stop yet. I need more time. Please, I need more time. Frantically, she rubbed and stabbed at the tape with the little piece of banding. She could feel the time on her clock running out.

Whatever the driver was looking for, he must have found it, because he made another turn, this time onto a rough, uneven surface. Ryan thought it might be a dirt road of some sort, but after several hundred yards she felt the van make a sharp cut and come to a stop. Was it a turnout or were they in a driveway of some sort?

For several minutes, nothing happened. The van just idled. As best she could tell, no one had gotten out. They were just sitting there. Why? What was going on? Were they waiting for something or someone?

Through the hood, she could hear voices coming from the cab, Chrissie and the boyfriend. It sounded like they were arguing. There was a crescendo as Chrissie, who must have been driving, punctuated her words by throwing the van into reverse and stepping on the accelerator.

The tires spun wildly, before finally biting into the dirt and finding purchase. And that’s when it happened.

Just as the van was beginning to back up, something slammed into it from behind. Hard.

CHAPTER 24

As soon as he saw the van’s reverse lights come on, Bob McGee knew he was going to get blown. He’d never be able to reverse his own vehicle fast enough, much less turn around and find a place to hide. There was only one way he could hope to turn this to his advantage and he took it. Slamming the gas pedal to the floor, he aimed right for it.

The force of the impact sent the van skidding sideways. Before its occupants knew what had happened, McGee was out of his 4Runner, 1911 pistol in hand, rushing the cab.

In the less than three seconds it took him to get there, both the male passenger and female driver had scrambled for their weapons and were about to bring them up high enough to fire at him. Big mistake.

McGee killed them both with two .45-caliber rounds to the chest and one to the head fired in rapid succession. The shots from his 1911 echoed through the wooded area like thunder.

After inserting a fresh magazine he took better cover and yelled, “Lydia! Can you hear me? Lydia!” There was no response. Cautiously, he crept forward and, grasping the handle, slid the door back.

He found her, still hog-tied and up against the side of the van. Taking off her hood, he peeled back the tape from across her mouth as gently as he could.

“Are you okay?” he asked as he pulled out his knife and cut her hands and feet free.

Ryan covered herself with her robe as McGee helped roll her into a sitting position. “I’m okay,” she said, pulling at the tape around her wrists. “What happened? Are they dead?”

“Yeah, they’re dead. Both of them.”

“How’d you find me?”

“They sent a team to my house, too. It’s a good thing I get up every two hours to piss or they might have gotten me also. I tried to call your cell.”

Ryan shook her head. “I needed some sleep. It was turned off.”

“Well, when you didn’t answer I rushed to your place. Got there just as they were loading you into the van.”

“Why didn’t you do something?”

McGee put up his hands. “I needed to make sure there wasn’t a tail-gunner or some sort of support team in a follow car.”

“Why didn’t you PIT them to get them to spin out or run them off the road?”

“And have the van flip over? Something told me they probably didn’t take the time to put a seat belt on you. Listen, I picked my moment. They’re dead and you and I are both alive.”

He was right. “Who the hell are they?”

McGee held up his index finger indicating he’d be right back. Stepping out of the cargo area, he moved back to the cab, and after making sure both of the occupants were dead, he conducted a quick search. He returned to the cargo area with a black duffle bag, which he set on the floor and opened up.

“Two H&K MP5s, two Glock 19s, a couple of Tasers, duct tape, power bars, some water bottles, a cell phone, which is probably a burner and won’t lead anywhere, and enough ammo to take on a small Latin American army.”

“But no ID?” asked Ryan.

“No.”

“So they’re pros.”

McGee nodded.

Ockham’s razor. The simplest explanation was usually correct. They had come after both of them. But before today, there wasn’t anything that she and McGee shared that somebody could want to kill them over. All of that had changed since she had confronted Durkin. This wasn’t a coincidence. This had to be tied to him. She could feel it. “Did you see any books?” she asked.

“Books?”

“A paperback of some sort.”

“Now that you mention it,” said McGee, as he returned to the front of the van.

Ryan could hear him open the cab. “Durkin liked to use them for codes,” she said, loud enough for him to hear. “French lit translated into English. Rousseau or some author like that.”

McGee returned and tossed an aged paperback to her. “Balzac.”

“Damn it. It is Durkin, then.”

“Or,” McGee said, his voice trailing off.

“Or what?”

“Or this is bigger than either of us thought and Johnson is involved, too.”

Ryan looked at him. “The DNI? You’ve got to be joking. I thought he was someone you trusted.”

“At this point, you’re the only one I trust. And until we get to the bottom of this, that’s the way it’s going to stay.”

She winced as she pulled the last piece of duct tape from her arm. “Why’d they drive me all the way out here?”

“It’s as good a place as any to dump a body. Or maybe even two bodies. When I rolled up, they were trying to signal someone with their headlights but I never saw anyone signal back. They waited a while and either got spooked or decided to move to Plan B.”

“Who do you think they were signaling?”

“I don’t know; maybe this was a rendezvous with the team who came gunning for me.”

“Did the men at your house have guns,” Ryan asked, “or Tasers?”

“Both. Why?”

“Because if they’d wanted to kill us, they would’ve. Why bother giving Tasers to a wet-work team?”

“Lots of reasons.”

“No,” she disagreed. “This has to be about the Jordanians. It’s the only reason we’d both be targeted. And I told Durkin everything. There’s nothing he could gain from interrogating me. He knows all of it already.”

“What if he wanted to know who else you might have told about the Jordanians?”

“Then he could have asked me. Listen, the only reason Durkin could possibly have to snatch me alive is that he wanted to kill me someplace else other than my apartment. And apparently, he didn’t want me to die alone, which means he had something cooked up to explain why you and I died out here together in the middle of nowhere.”

“Did you tell Durkin you were going to talk to me?” asked McGee.

“No.”

“Then that would mean he had a tail on you. So, he not only knows that you talked to me, but that we talked to Johnson. How could he hope to get away with killing us?”

“I hate to say it, but either you’re right and Johnson’s involved, or Durkin came up with something so airtight, he was convinced our deaths could be explained away without even the DNI asking any questions. Either way, I don’t think you and I were supposed to walk out of here tonight.”

“I think you’re right. So now what?”

“Now we get the hell out of here,” replied Ryan as she grabbed one of the MP5s from the bag and moved toward the door.

McGee extended her his hand to help her exit, and then gathered up the duffle. “What should we do about the van and the bodies?” he asked.

Ryan looked inside the cab. In addition to the two corpses slumped over in their seats, the cab was splattered with blood and pieces of brain. “If we had enough time to clean it up and make it look like we took their people hostage, I’d say let’s opt for that. But all we’ve got time to do now is burn it. Let’s burn the entire thing.”

McGee nodded and after throwing the duffle in his 4Runner, he backed it a safe distance away. While he got to work on the van and prepared to set it on fire, Ryan walked over to the spot from where he had been shooting. With a flashlight from his glove box, she began looking along the dirt road for the shell casings from his 1911.

It took several minutes, but she was able to locate all six. “Got ’em,” she said as she pocketed the last one. “You ready?”

“Good to go,” he said, flashing her the thumbs-up.

They drove out of the woods and toward the highway just as the van exploded in a billowing fireball. When they arrived at the junction where the dirt road ended and the pavement began, he stopped and asked, “Okay. Which way? South or north?”

They both knew that neither of them could go home. They had to go to ground, someplace safe; someplace where they could assess and plan their next move.

Ryan removed the atlas wedged next to her seat and studied it for a moment. Finally she said, “South.”

McGee accelerated and turned onto the pavement. “Where are we headed?”

“How long will it take us to get to Fort Belvoir from here?”

“About twenty minutes, why? What’s at Belvoir?”

Ryan looked over at him and replied, “For the moment, sanctuary.”

“What do you mean, sanctuary?”

“I mean, Belvoir has one of the last rocks in the world Durkin would ever think of looking under.”

“Knowing Durkin,” McGee countered, “he’s going to be looking under every rock.”

“Not this one,” Ryan said. “Trust me.”

CHAPTER 25

BOSTON

MASSACHUSETTS

The four-story redbrick office building was a block east of Boston Common at the corner of Washington and Essex streets. On its ground floor was an entrance to the subway station and a smattering of retail space, including a Dunkin’ Donuts. On the fourth floor was the killer’s destination, a Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles office.

Keys, as well as the building’s layout and the RMV’s alarm code, had already been provided for him. He kept a silenced semi-automatic beneath his coveralls, but it had not proved necessary. It was the middle of the night and the building was vacant. No one would have any idea he was there. All he needed to focus on was his assignment.

Using the service elevator, he brought all of his equipment, including the man inside the commercial-grade rolling trash can whom he had drugged with the same paralytic he had used on the woman in Georgia, to the fourth floor. Once he had ascertained where he needed to set up, he positioned all of his gear and began to unpack.

He wasn’t a fan of the coarse hemp rope. It was thick and difficult to deal with. He would have preferred to use a modern climbing rope, but the instructions had been explicit.

Cautious not to be seen from the street, he used his small flashlight sparingly and never near the windows. Even at this hour, there were still people on the street stopping and looking up at the building’s faïade. Most would be armed with cell phone cameras and some might even be disposed to take a picture or two. He couldn’t afford to be caught in anyone’s casual photos. Within a few hours, everyone was going to be talking about this building and anyone who had passed by and snapped a picture was going to be reviewing their footage to see if they unknowingly caught anything that might have warned of what was to come.

With everything staged, he attached the hoses together and ran the end with the rubber faucet adapter to the restroom. Even though the trash can had wheels, it would be difficult to move. He preferred to position it and then fill it in place. Things would be much easier that way.

As the water sloshed into the trash can, he looked at his watch and measured the rate of flow. He had planned for every eventuality: a late office worker, a random security patrol, being accosted by another cleaning company, anything that might have delayed his assignment. For every possible contingency, he knew how much water he would need.

He doubted his figures were absolutely precise, but they didn’t have to be. All that mattered was that his work be done before the first person entered the Registry of Motor Vehicles in the morning. If anyone came in before, everything would be ruined.

He had been told not to get violent with the prisoner unless absolutely necessary. Of course, being told he couldn’t do it had only made him want to do it even more. It was yet another wave added to the tumultuous sea of whitecaps roiling inside him. He tried to focus on the minutiae of his assignment; the importance of completing the job properly and not leaving behind any clues.

The distraction worked at first, but its force soon began to wane. He was tempted, so tempted, to abuse the man; to break him mentally and emotionally, to have him weep and beg for his life. He positioned himself so that the man could watch him knotting the heavy rope and made sure he could also see the backboard that had been prepared specially for him.

He wanted to ask the man if he had ever heard of an engineer named Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, or simply Rube Goldberg for short. He wanted to share how Mr. Goldberg had inspired the contraption he had built and lay everything out for the man so he could watch the already intense fear in his eyes build to an even greater degree. He knew, though, that if he toyed with the mouse, he might very well end up eating it and that was strictly forbidden. Everything had to be done according to the instructions. Any deviation and everything would be ruined.

He tried to take his mind off the man in front of him. His thoughts wandered to the woman he had taken from Sea Island, how powerful he had felt with her life in his hands, and what it was like extinguishing her. It was like the final wisp of smoke rising from a candlewick. One moment there was pain and fear and death in her eyes, then release as everything just slipped away. But he hadn’t been able to savor it. He had wanted to take more time, especially with her ears, but his schedule meant that he had to keep moving.

That woman, and the one in the cemetery, made two back to back now who had gotten him significantly aroused without his being able to do anything about it. Tonight, after his work here was complete, he would find a way to change that. He deserved a reward. The mere thought of taking a woman shortly sent a pulse of excitement racing through his body. He now had the perfect goal to get him through what he had to finish and he focused on his task like a laser.

He finished his knots, placed everything just so, and even went back and rechecked his calculations for a fifth time. Once he was confident he had everything all set up exactly as it needed to be, he removed his cordless drill and selected a drill bit.

The prisoner’s eyes widened as the killer attached the bit and then gave the power tool’s trigger a quick press to make sure it worked. It did.

Satisfied, the killer closed the box of bits and began walking toward his victim. Before he even reached him, the man started to scream from behind his gag. The killer wasn’t listening. Raising the spinning drill in front of him, he reveled in the high-pitched whine and watched the bit as it was transformed into a blur of sharp gray metal. It was so ingenious, easily one of the cleverest ways ever devised to kill.

CHAPTER 26

Bill Wise had sent Harvath home with a stack of books. The two he wanted him to focus on were The Creature from Jekyll Island and Economics in One Lesson.

The Jekyll Island book, all about the secrets behind the Federal Reserve, was thick enough to be a doorstop. Thankfully, its author encouraged readers to skip around in it and not read it from cover to cover. Harvath loved to read and if he’d had the time, he might have tackled it from front to back. Instead, he followed the author’s advice and read the summaries at the end of each chapter and then dipped into the chapters that interested him the most.

Economics in One Lesson was a sliver of a book in comparison. Like The Creature from Jekyll Island it was well written and easy to read. He was halfway through it before finishing his first cup of coffee. The slim volume had originally caught his eye because its author was the same Henry Hazlitt whose economics quote had been hung around Claire Marcourt’s neck. He was plowing through the book not only in hopes of better understanding the killer’s, or killers’, mind-set, but also because of how interesting it was and how much he was learning.

Despite not having hit the sack until well past midnight, he awoke at 5 A.M. feeling rested and decided to go for a run. Four miles in, he could feel his IT band tightening up. He hadn’t stretched as well as he should have and now his body was punishing him for it.

He pushed himself to his five-mile marker and then turned back toward home. It was a cloudy, overcast morning with lots of humidity that hinted at a good rain at some point during the day. It was a good thing he was getting his run in now. As he ran, lots of things passed through his mind, predominantly about the case. He made a mental note to call Bill Wise after breakfast to see if he had made any progress.

Arriving back home, Harvath showered, shaved, and was downstairs with the TV on cooking breakfast when the Old Man called. “You need to get to Boston,” he said without so much as a good morning.

Harvath muted his TV. “What’s going on? What happened?”

“There’s been a second victim.”

“Who?”

“Herman Penning. Boston. I want you to get up there as soon as possible. Lewis says you can use the Fed’s plane. He has it standing by.”

Harvath looked at his watch. “I can be out the door in fifteen minutes.”

“Be out the door in five. I want you there before the trail goes cold or the Boston cops muck it all up. I’ll send what I’ve got to your phone. You can read it on the plane.”

After shoveling his half-cooked eggs into the garbage, he ran upstairs to get dressed. Flying private, he didn’t have to worry about carrying weapons, so he gunned up and grabbed a bunch of extra magazines. He also grabbed his knife, flashlight, a handful of EZ Cuff restraints, his cell phone, charger, and a small digital camera, then laid everything out on the bed.

Studying the items as he hastily tied his tie, he guessed there were probably a bunch of things he was forgetting and would later wish he’d thought to bring, but that was too bad. He had to get moving.

He pulled his ScotteVest trench coat out of the closet, slipped his gear into its multiple pockets, and then, grabbing the overnight bag he always kept ready, headed for the door.

The traffic on the George Washington Memorial Parkway was lighter than usual. Had he left home even a minute later, he had no doubt that he’d be sitting still right now instead of proceeding apace to Reagan National. He allowed himself to believe that somewhere up there, he was being watched out for. Then four miles from the airport, the rain began to fall and right on cue, the traffic slowed to almost a stop.

He decided to suffer the honks and explosion of one-fingered rush hour salutes by driving up the shoulder. In an attempt to at least make himself look somewhat official in his black Chevy Tahoe, he kept flashing his brights. No one bought it. He could hear people honking and, looking in his rearview mirror, he saw the phalanx of left hands with middle fingers extended pop out of one car window after another. The only good part was that nobody seemed to notice him and what he was doing until he’d already passed. In other words, nobody had been able to move halfway onto the shoulder in front of him in a preemptive block.

The world, unfortunately, was filled with people who felt the rules didn’t apply to them. They were folks who felt entitled to do whatever they wanted and Harvath had no doubt that several of them, late for a flight at Reagan National, likely had attempted this same up-the-shoulder maneuver before. What was even more certain was that a vehicle speeding toward the airport disobeying traffic laws was going to be seen by law enforcement as a threat.

Harvath stayed on the shoulder for as long as he could and then, to an almost choreographed opera of additional horns and middle fingers, he muscled his way back into the creeping flow of traffic and over to the far right lane so he could exit. He parked at the Signature Flight Support FBO, checked in, and was escorted out to the Aerion SBJ. The crew was assembled at the bottom of the air-stairs waiting for him and while he was slightly disappointed that the flight attendant wasn’t Natalie, it was probably a blessing in disguise. He needed to focus on the task at hand.

The crew, as one would expect on such an expensive private aircraft, was exceedingly professional. Harvath, while trying his best to be polite, encouraged them to dispense with the formalities and get off the ground as quickly as possible. He needed to be there yesterday. They all understood.

With the preflight check already complete and the tower ready to bump them to the head of the list as soon as they were ready, Harvath was encouraged to take his seat and buckle up, which he did. Less than fifteen minutes later, they were airborne.

The flight to Boston’s Logan airport was faster than any shuttle flight he had ever experienced from D.C. No sooner had they climbed up and out over the Atlantic, than they had passed New York City and were making their descent and landing. The flight attendant had apologized for not being able to offer him anything more than coffee and Dunkin’ Donuts. They hadn’t received much heads up, either, and there’d been no time to alert the airport catering company.

Harvath told her not to worry. While he wasn’t a donut guy, he did enjoy their coffee and had been glad to have at least gotten something in his system. As he scrolled through the information the Old Man had sent to his phone, Anna the flight attendant kept his cup topped off.

When the sleek Supersonic Business Jet landed at Logan, Harvath was as up-to-speed as he expected to be until he reached the crime scene. Carlton had texted that travel into the city had already been arranged. Harvath assumed that meant someone, though likely not as attractive as Sloane Ashby, was going to meet him at the Logan FBO and drive him in.

After opening the main cabin door and lowering the air-stairs, the flight attendant apologized again for the lack of breakfast. She offered Harvath a couple of donuts for the road if he wanted, but he smiled and said, “No thank you,” as he disembarked.

Stepping onto the tarmac, he noticed a clean-cut man in a navy suit standing next to a plain sedan talking on his cell phone. That must be my ride.

As his passenger approached, the man pulled the phone away from his ear for a moment and asked, “Harvath?”

Harvath nodded and the man ended his call. After sliding the phone back into his pocket, he extended his hand. “I’m Special Agent Montgomery. Boston field office.”

“Short straw, huh?” he said as they shook hands. “Thanks for coming to pick me up.”

“No problem. I was on my way in to work anyway. Besides, this’ll be the first time I’ve used lights and sirens in Boston. Do you need a pit stop before we get on the road?”

He shook his head. “Good to go.”

Montgomery threw his bag in back, and once Harvath was in the passenger seat and buckled up, the agent activated his lights and siren and raced out of the airport, headed for downtown.