Текст книги "The End Game"

Автор книги: Catherine Coulter

Соавторы: J. T. Ellison
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ALSO BY CATHERINE COULTER

THE FBI THRILLERS

Nemesis (2015)

Power Play (2014)

Bombshell (2013)

Backfire (2012)

Split Second (2011)

Twice Dead: Riptide and Hemlock Bay (2011)

Whiplash (2010)

KnockOut (2009)

TailSpin (2008)

Double Jeopardy (2008): The Target and The Edge

Double Take (2007)

The Beginning (2005): The Cove and The Maze

Point Blank (2005)

Blowout (2004)

Blindside (2003)

Eleventh Hour (2002)

Hemlock Bay (2001)

Riptide (2000)

The Edge (1999)

The Target (1998)

The Maze (1997)

The Cove (1996)

A BRIT IN THE FBI THRILLERS (WITH J. T. ELLISON)

The Lost Key (2014)

The Final Cut (2013)

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

Publishers Since 1838

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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New York, New York 10014

Copyright © 2015 by Catherine Coulter

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coulter, Catherine.

  The end game / Catherine Coulter and J. T. Ellison.

  p.      cm. – (A Brit in the FBI ; 3)

  ISBN 978-0-698-18931-7

  1. United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation—Fiction.  2. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction.

  3. Intelligence officers—Fiction.  I. Ellison, J. T., author.  II. Title.

  PS3553.O843E54    2015            2015024632

  813'.54—dc23

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

Contents

Also by Catherine Coulter

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Prologue

1: Knight to F3

Monday: 11 p.m.–4 a.m.

2: Knight to F6

3: Pawn to C4

4: Pawn to G6

5: Knight to C3

6: Bishop to G7

7: Pawn to D4

8: Castles

9: Bishop to F4

10: Pawn to D5

11: Queen to B3

12: Pawn takes C4

13: Queen takes C4

14: Pawn to C6

15: Pawn to E4

16: Knight on B to D7

17: Rook to D1

18: Knight to B6

19: Queen to C5

20: Bishop to G4

21: Bishop to G5

22: Knight to A4

23: Queen to A3

Tuesday: 7 a.m.–2 p.m.

24: Knight takes C3

25: Pawn takes C3

26: Knight takes E4

27: Bishop takes E7

28: Queen to B6

29: Bishop to C4

30: Knight takes C3

31: Bishop to C5

32: Rook on F to E8 CHECK

33: King to F1

34: Bishop to E6

35: Bishop takes B6

36: Bishop takes C4 CHECK

37: King to G1

38: Knight to E2 CHECK

39: King to F1

40: Knight takes D4 CHECK

41: King to G1

42: Knight to E2 CHECK

43: King to F1

44: Knight to C3 CHECK

45: King to G1

46: Pawn takes B6

47: Queen to B4

48: Rook to A4

Tuesday: 2 p.m.–6 p.m.

49: Queen takes B6

50: Knight takes D1

51: Pawn to H3

52: Rook takes A2

53: King to H2

54: Knight takes F2

55: Rook to E1

56: Rook takes E1

Tuesday: 6 p.m.–Midnight

57: Queen to D8 CHECK

58: Bishop to F8

59: Knight takes E1

60: Bishop to D5

61: Knight to F3

62: Knight to E4

63: Queen to B8

64: Pawn to B5

Wednesday: 6 a.m.–Noon

65: Pawn to H4

66: Pawn to H5

67: Knight to E5

68: King to G7

69: King to G1

Wednesday: Noon–4 p.m.

70: Bishop to C5 CHECK

71: King to F1

72: Knight to G3 CHECK

73: King to E1

74: Bishop to B4 CHECK

Wednesday: 4 p.m.–Midnight

75: King to D1

76: Bishop to B3 CHECK

77: King to C1

78: Knight to E2 CHECK

79: King to B1

80: Knight to C3 CHECK

81: King to C1

Friday: 8 a.m.

82: Rook to C2 CHECKMATE

Epilogue

Author’s Note

J.T.—

May our upcoming adventures in Italy prove as spectacular as the wild roller coaster in The End Game.

It’s wonderful to know that our two writer brains will always find a way.

—Catherine

For Laura Benedict and Ariel Lawhon. You know why.

And for my Randy. You know why, too.

—J.T.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As always, to Karen Evans, my partner in synergy, always there at my side, at my back, always supportive, helpful, always positive. Thank you.

To my sweetheart of a husband, always ready to brainstorm, to throw around ideas, to be the rock.

And to my wonderful household: Lesley DeLone, Catherine Lyons Labate, and Yngrid Bejarano. Thank you for all you do—your energy, your positiveness, your laughter, your steady hands on the rudder.

Thank you all,

Catherine Coulter

What a fun, glorious ride this collaboration has turned out to be. I have to thank Catherine first and foremost, for bringing me on board, for constant laughter and fun, and always challenging me to be the very best writer I can be. We make one helluva team, lady, and I can’t wait to see what we cook up next!

And to the usual suspects: I couldn’t do it without you. This means you Scott Miller, Chris Pepe, Laura Benedict, Ariel Lawhon, Sherrie Saint, Karen Evans, Amy Kerr, Jeff Abbott, and darling husband. And for my parents, for listening, and listening, and listening.

—J. T. Ellison

PROLOGUE

United States–Mexico Border

Three Months Ago

Zahir Damari watched the coyote turn to face the ragged band of Hondurans on the sloping Texas side of the Rio Grande. As the last Honduran climbed up the bank, pulled up by his father, Zahir saw hope now dawning on the dirty faces, saw the relief in their tired eyes at surviving the nightmare trip. They’d made it; they were in America.

The coyote, Miguel Gonzales, eyed them with contempt—nothing new in that, he’d treated this group with unveiled scorn since the beginning of their trek eight days before. Gonzales stuck out his hand to the leader of the group, an older man, a father of two younger sons. He waggled his fingers.

“Pagenme porque ustedes son unos miserables.”

He wanted the other half of the money owed. No, the thieving scum wanted more. Gonzales had upped the payoff. Zahir saw the Hondurans’ shock, their fear, saw them talking among themselves, voices rising.

Gonzales pulled a pistol, aimed it at the group, and held out his hand again.

Zahir smiled at Miguel Gonzales, a brutal man with stained teeth and black eyes that reflected Hell. He walked up to him, his hand outstretched with bills, and as the coyote grabbed them, Zahir stepped in quickly and gently slipped his stiletto into Gonzales’s filthy shirt. Gonzales didn’t make a sound because Zahir’s knife was always true. It slid under the breastbone, directly into the coyote’s heart. Gonzales simply looked up into Zahir’s face, dropped the pistol, fell on his side, and died in a mess of dry shrubs.

The Hondurans were frozen in place, too terrified and shocked to move. Zahir leaned down, pulled out his stiletto, cleaned it on Miguel’s filthy jeans. He calmly went through Miguel’s pockets, pulled out a big wad of bills, handed them to the young woman closest to him, and smiled.

“Buena suerte”—good luck—and he gave them a salute and walked away, toward El Paso, only three miles to the north.

The day was brutally hot, but he didn’t mind since he’d been raised in the worst desert heat imaginable.

In his shirt pocket was a small notebook filled with information and strategy from Hezbollah’s top enforcer, Hasan Hadawi, the Hammer, about a brilliant young scientist named Matthew Spenser, and how Zahir could use him to help him cut off two heads of the hydra. It made Zahir’s heart speed up to think about the actual doing of it, the awesome pleasure that would course through him when he’d succeeded.

Zahir knew most of the intel and strategy was from Hadawi’s Iranian master, Colonel Vahid Rahbar, openly committed to the obliteration of anyone who wasn’t a Shia, which would leave a small world population indeed.

Zahir knew Spenser and his small group were hiding near Lake Tahoe. Spenser, according to the Hammer, had gone off the rails years before when his family had been killed in London’s terrorist subway bombing in 2005. Now he led a small group called Celebrants of Earth, or COE, their goal to eliminate oil imports from the Middle East, but no murder, no casualties. The idiot ideologues. Until recently, Zahir knew the group had operated in Britain and Europe, blowing up only mid-sized oil refineries, small crap. But now they were here, in America, their message to the media after each bombing always the same:

No more oil from terrorist countries or you will pay the price.

Both the Colonel and the Hammer believed Spenser was an unsophisticated anti-Muslim zealot, and ripe for manipulation. Over the Hammer’s favorite gin and countless French Gauloises, he’d told Zahir to become Matthew Spenser’s best friend, his mentor, a man he would come to trust implicitly, a man he would follow. “You will gently mold and manipulate this fool’s penny-ante goals until they become your glorious ones”—that is, until Spenser became a murderer. Zahir knew it would be a challenge, but one he would win. He knew he wasn’t as smart as Spenser in science, but he was years beyond Spenser in strategy, planning, execution, and sheer balls. But unlike the bare-fisted Hammer, Zahir was never guilty of underestimating an opponent, or reducing him to faults and weaknesses and strengths. He knew when to use a hammer, when to use a simple lie.

It was over the Hammer’s fourth gin that he’d told Zahir with a snicker that Spenser might have a possible weakness—a woman named Vanessa, a beauty, late twenties, red hair, milk-white skin, and blue eyes, and the Hammer showed him a photo of her. She hardly fit the image of a wacko bomber, but the Hammer assured him she’d been building bombs with an Irish IRA git named Ian McGuire and his faction. Both groups hated what they saw as radical Islam’s encroachment into their world, and according to the Hammer, this common cause united them.

With another snicker, he told Zahir the woman and Spenser were probably lovers and his grin split his mouth wide enough to see the gold filling in his back molar. He suggested Zahir seduce Vanessa away from Spenser, but Zahir couldn’t figure out what that would gain him, certainly not Spenser’s trust and friendship. He would see.

But it was Iranian colonel Vahid Rahbar who’d told him his most important goal: to steal Spenser’s amazing invention, a bomb that looked like a gold fifty-cent piece, no larger, and, according to their sources, would be undetectable. Nearly perfected, they’d heard, and the minute it was perfected, he wanted it. The colonel had rubbed his hands together. “You, my friend, will light the fuse that will begin the war, then we will explode their cities, kill millions, and none of them will even know how it was done. Our casualties—it is nothing compared to what we will gain. When it is all over, we will rule the world.” Unspoken was Shia will arise from the ashes and control the earth’s destiny.

Zahir didn’t really care if Shia ran the world or if Buddha took over. His specialty would always be in demand.

Zahir whistled as he got into another stolen car, lifted from a side street in Reno. He would steal another car in a place named Incline Village, drive into the Sierras, and find Spenser.

He wondered which head of the hydra he’d manipulate Spenser into killing—the president or the vice president.

The game was about to begin.

1

KNIGHT TO F3

Grangemouth Refinery, Scotland

Four Months Ago

Vanessa was crouched down, staring into the night, her muscles tense and cramping in the night chill. It was her first job with Matthew, her first bomb built especially for him. It would work, she knew it would, but deep down she had doubts, and hated it. She shook her head, knowing she’d produce a lovely explosion for him as she watched for Ian and his boys. The Firth of Forth was to her left, salt and brine mingling with the sharp scent of unrefined oil.

The darkness was broken only by the lights of the refinery, always running, even after the sun went down. The lighted metal poles mingled with security lamps and boom lights to halo the bobbing headlamps on the workers’ helmets. The whole scene looked fantastical, a stage setting in an artificial gloom.

Vanessa looked at her watch. Five minutes to go. Ian was placing the bomb, and at his signal she should be the one to detonate it, but not this time. Matthew told her he was going to be the one to blow up the night sky.

Well, let him, if it gave him a kick. Or was it this particular refinery? Even though it was her job, she smiled at him as she handed over the trigger. It didn’t matter, she knew her baby would work just fine.

Vanessa didn’t yet understand him, but it was early days. She recognized his genius, his facility with ideas and each step they had to consider before moving ahead with his selected target. She also knew his amazing bomb wasn’t yet perfected. If it was, surely he’d want to test it.

She looked at her watch again, said aloud to Matthew, “Where is Ian? He should be out by now. The security guard will circle back around in thirty seconds. He’s cutting it too close.”

Matthew Spenser, the Bishop, a moniker he’d been given by Ian a long time before, because, as Ian had explained to her, he’d learned that Matthew existed in a master’s chess realm that was always ten moves ahead of everyone else, and so didn’t he deserve the name? Why not King? she wondered, but didn’t say anything. Matthew was tall, lean, and hyper, sharp as a poised knife, he liked to think. She felt the excitement coming off him in waves. He was about to score another win.

He said to Vanessa, “Ian’s never failed me. He’ll be along. He knows what he’s doing.”

Three minutes now. They couldn’t use comms; radio frequencies could set off the bomb.

She saw movement by the perimeter, and her adrenaline spiked. No, it wasn’t Ian. Where was he? She felt gut-wrenching fear that something had gone wrong, that he’d been caught. Or, almost as bad, that she’d messed up and the bomb was somehow defective. Or, at the very worst, she’d been found out. No, she had to calm herself. Her beautiful, powerful Semtex bomb would work and Ian was a master at this; he’d get it set in place and get himself and their guys out of the plant. All would go well.

She let out her breath. Since her prints were all over the bomb and Ian always wore gloves, the message would be clear and received. Her bosses would know it was her group who’d blown up Grangemouth.

Two minutes.

Matthew squeezed her arm, gave her a quick smile. “Your first bomb for me.” She could only nod. He felt to her like he was ready to jump out of his skin, or his brain, maybe both, but she felt it, too, this manic brew of emotions that roared through both of them. She wondered if in the aftermath of the explosion he would try to get her into bed, to celebrate scoring this victory by scoring her. She’d hold him off, waiting, waiting, trying to judge if she would have to go the sex route to find out what she needed to know.

She took one last look at her watch. “We’re out of time.”

“Vanessa, look there.”

Ian was running across the field toward them, his now-empty backpack flying like wings behind him, a crazy smile stretched across his face, three of their men behind him.

She put in her earplugs.

Matthew was watching her as he stuffed in his own earplugs. Then, without a word, he grinned down at her and handed her back the trigger with a flourish. “Have at it, Vanessa, have at it.”

Why had he changed his mind? What did it prove? Had he planned to see if she’d lose her nerve, not be able to detonate the bomb? Well, it hardly mattered.

Vanessa looked up at him as she depressed the trigger, a button on her cell phone.

A fraction of a second later, she felt the explosion. It started in the soles of her feet, pounded up her legs as the ground began to shake and an earsplitting roar tore through the silence. The night sky became day.

The concussion knocked both of them backward. They landed hard, their breath knocked out of them. When Vanessa managed to pull air into her lungs, she scrambled to her hands and knees, facing the heat of the blaze raging in the refinery. It looked like a bonfire on steroids, much stronger than she’d expected. She saw Ian and his men crouched down behind distant refinery trucks, did a quick head count. Everyone was accounted for.

So fast, all of it, so fast. The bomb had done its job, and she’d been its builder. She’d proven herself, established herself once and for all. Now she would be in with Matthew Spenser; now he had to accept her into his inner circle. After all, she was the one who’d engineered this marvel for him, and he would know there were more marvels to come. He had to trust her now.

He was screaming something at her, his voice wild, filled with alarm.

She couldn’t hear him, pulled out her earplugs, but it didn’t help much. The bomb’s concussion had deafened her.

Then he leaped on her, rolling on top of her, slapping at her head.

“Your hair is on fire!”

Her hair was on fire? She knew she should be panicked, she should freak out, but she didn’t move, and let him worry about it. Matthew jerked off his shirt and smothered her head in it.

When he pulled his shirt off her head, he stared down at her. “It’s only the ends of your hair. Are you all right?”

She stared up at him, smelling her burned hair, listening to the roaring flames, and she started to laugh. She rolled away from him and dropped her singed head to the scrubby, ancient land and laughed and laughed.

Matthew lay beside her, panting, watching her. He rolled up on one arm, raised his hand and fingered the ends of her burned hair. “Vanessa, are you all right?”

“Oh, yes, I’m perfect,” and she laughed again.

Ian, his dark hair coated in ash, his men behind him, appeared to their left. “What a blast that was, Van! Wasn’t expecting it to roar like a dragon. What are you two waiting for? It’s time to go. Coppers will be here in a flash. Van, what’d you do to your hair? I told you never to stand so close, and look what you’ve done.”

Vanessa stood, ran a hand over the crispy ends of her hair, brushed the dirt from her jeans. She looked at the two men—one dark, one light, both crazy like foxes, both grinning at her.

“Satisfied, Mr. Spenser?”

Matthew rose slowly, wiped off his hands on his jeans as she had, and smiled down at her. “Oh, yes,” he said, his voice filled with pleasure. “I’m more than satisfied.” And he stared down at her, at her mouth, his eyes hot and manic.

Monday

11 p.m.–4 a.m.

2

KNIGHT TO F6

Bayonne, New Jersey

Present

Monday Evening

FBI Special Agent Michaela Caine drove the black Crown Vic with one hand, tucked a hank of loose hair back into her ponytail with the other, then shoved up her glasses.

It was late and she was tired, ready to go home and crash. But no chance, since they’d gotten a credible tip off the hotline. She looked over at her partner, Special Agent Nicholas Drummond, tapping on a laptop balanced on his knees, doing a background check on their tipster.

She said, “I’m praying with all my might we’re not on a wild-goose chase and this guy isn’t a thrill chaser.”

Nicholas looked up. “I’m inclined to think he isn’t. Ben said the man was convinced he had information on COE, and a possible bombing. At this point, I’m willing to listen to anyone, even if it means missing one of Nigel’s dinners. He called me earlier, said it was prime rib.”

Mike laughed. “Oh, my, that sounds even better than the scrumptious three-day-old chicken salad sandwich I was planning to have at home.” She paused, then sighed. “We’ve been working this case for two weeks now, Nicholas, and gotten nowhere. I hate that. Several oil refineries out west and no leads. I only wish we could keep the frequent-flier miles earned from flying all over the country. And what do we have? This group’s mission statement, over and over, the same thing: No more oil from terrorist countries or you will pay the price.

“And now, out of nowhere, this guy pops up in our own backyard with information on COE? On a possible bombing? Do you really think this Hodges character is for real?”

He looked over at her. “My gut is starting to agree with my brain and say yes. You know what else? I think it’s also about time that we have our turn at bat.”

Baseball metaphor from a Brit? No, he probably meant cricket. Were you at bat in cricket? She didn’t know. She grinned. Either way, he was right, it was their turn, and if Hodges was for real, it was possible they’d have a chance for a home run.

Nicholas looked back at his laptop. “Mr. Hodges appears solid, an accountant for a local Bayonne engineering firm. His wife died three years ago, breast cancer.”

She took a left into an older residential neighborhood, thick with trees and small, well-manicured lawns. Mr. Richard Hodges’s house was on a quiet dead-end cul-de-sac that backed up to the Hudson River. To Nicholas, the block looked like any other older development in a small eastern American town—thirty-year-old single-story house, comfortably settled in with their neighbors. Amazing how quiet it was, considering its proximity to Manhattan. He supposed the lapping water dampened the sound.

They saw the curtains twitch.

Nicholas closed his laptop. “I see we’re expected.”

Mike turned off the engine. “Okay, I’m thinking positively. I’m up at bat and Mr. Hodges is going to give me a perfect pitch.”

The door opened before they had a chance to ring the bell. A man dressed in jeans and a white polo shirt waved them in and closed the door quietly behind them, as if he didn’t want to wake someone. A habit from when his wife was ill?

The interior of Mr. Hodges’s house was neat, looked clean, but it smelled musty, somehow sterile, and Mike doubted there’d been another woman living here since his wife’s death. She didn’t see any photos or knickknacks on any surface, only piles of newspapers and newsmagazines. The house, she realized, was now only a place where a lonely man lived off his memories.

“Mr. Hodges? I’m Agent Caine, and this is Agent Drummond. We were told you have some information about the terrorist group known as Celebrants of Earth, or COE, and a possible bombing.”

Hodges was a smallish man with a bald spot and a heavy five-o’clock shadow. He looked solid, calm, no indication that he was an alarmist or a wild-hair. Maybe they had finally caught their break. She smelled bacon and toast, a single man’s dinner. She felt a punch of pain for him.

“It’s nice to meet you,” he said. “Thank you for coming. Shall we sit? Can I get you coffee? I have some already brewed.”

“We wouldn’t say no to a cup, sir. Thank you.”

He gestured toward the kitchen.

Mike and Nicholas took a seat at an ancient table with one leg shorter than the others, held steady with a pile of magazines. Moments later, they both had mugs of coffee and a plate of chocolate-mint Girl Scout Cookies. Nicholas took one to be polite; they’d been floating around the office for the past few weeks and tasted like wax to him.

Nicholas sipped his coffee, then set the cup on the table. “So, Mr. Hodges, tell us what you know.”

Hodges blinked at him. “You’re British? I didn’t know people from England could be in the FBI. Are you some sort of special case?”

Mike nodded, grinning. “Yes, sir, he is indeed a special case.”

Nicholas sat forward. “My mother was American. The story, sir, please.”

Mr. Hodges nodded. “I was at the Dominion Bar tonight, having a drink after work. There was a man there—I don’t know his name, but I’ve seen him around before. He’s works at the Bayway Refinery—doing what, exactly, I don’t know. He’d obviously been drinking a while, looked pretty drunk to me, and I wondered why the bartender, that’s the owner, May Anne, hadn’t cut him off. He was shooting his mouth off, you know the kind of person, they get loud when they’ve had too much to drink and, well, lose all sense. I heard him tell his friend he was celebrating. He’d gotten a big payoff, a lot of money, and more to come, and he was going to retire and move to an island somewhere and have women in bikinis wait on him, and not take his wife and whiny kids with him.

“I thought that was a pretty crappy thing to say—I lost my Miriam three years ago and I miss her every day—and I didn’t want to listen to him, so I tried to tune him out. But he was sitting in the booth directly behind my stool, and I couldn’t help but hear. His friend asked where the money came from, and he shushed him and lowered his voice like drunks do, whispered real loud that he couldn’t tell, it was top secret. But something really big was going to go down, like what had happened to that oil refinery in Scotland a few months ago—Grangemouth, he said.

“His friend asked if he was breaking the law, and he started to laugh, sounded like a hyena, so drunk he couldn’t keep it together. I paid for my drinks and left, but all the way home I couldn’t help thinking about what he said. I knew this group COE claimed responsibility for the Scotland refinery bombing, they’d sent their statement to the news media, and it’s the same as the one they always use here in the U.S. And like I said, I knew this drunk guy worked at Bayway Refinery. That’s why I called your FBI tip line. Thank you for taking me seriously. Do you think this is a real threat?”

Mike felt the surge of adrenaline to her toes. This was it, the break they’d been waiting for. Nicholas was right, this could be their home run.

She knew Nicholas felt the same, but his voice was cool and calm. “If you would, Mr. Hodges, please run through it again for us. Every word you remember the man saying.”

Hodges repeated everything again, then remembered more at their questions, then gave them descriptions of the drunk man and his friend. When they knew the well was dry, Nicholas stood, clapped Hodges on the shoulder, and shook his hand.

“Thank you, sir, for calling us. We’ll let you know.”

Hodges walked them back to the front door. “You think this is serious, don’t you? He wasn’t bragging, he knows something is going to happen?”

Nicholas said, “We’re certainly going to check it out. We’ll know soon enough if it’s serious when we find the guy. So keep thinking about everything you heard and saw, and if you would, please, write it all down. Agent Caine and I will have a visit with the Dominion bartender, see if she knows the customer’s name as well as his friend’s.” He handed Mr. Hodges a card. “And please keep this to yourself.”

“I sure hope nothing happens. It would be a real problem if they blew up Bayway like they did Grangemouth. What would it do? Raise our oil prices some more? Burn down houses? Make the air we breathe toxic for a year?”

“We’ll do our best to see it doesn’t happen, Mr. Hodges,” Mike said. “Good night, and thank you again.”

Mike had her cell to her ear before they got in the Crown Vic. “Ben, we’ve got a real live lead on COE. You need to get a team of agents to Mr. Richard Hodges’s house in Bayonne.” She gave him the address. “I’m also thinking it would be smart to get a sketch artist out here, too, in case we can’t get an ID on the drunk guy from the Dominion’s bartender. But the protection for him is the most important. Just a precaution, but it’d make me feel better.”

Ben was now as hyped as they were. “Come on, Mike, what did the guy tell you?”

“Not good, Ben. There may be a bombing at Bayway.”