Crossfire (12 page)

The U.S. Army Night Stalkers might be in charge when the Special Forces were in the air. But since they were all now on the ground, it was the SEALs’ ball game.

‘‘Okay,’’ Zach said. ‘‘This might not be the best day we’ve ever had.’’

‘‘Not the worst, either,’’ Quinn said. ‘‘At least no one’s freaked out.’’

Which was true. Despite the earlier bloodbath, not a single one of the survivors was curled up in a fetal position, crying for his mama.

‘‘We’re risking a court-martial by going into Pakistan,’’ Zach reminded him, as if giving him one more chance to cast a vote against the plan.

‘‘Beats waiting around here for more tangos to show up and start firing off more mortar rounds,’’ Quinn said as they stood there, side by side, staring up at the mountains looming over them. ‘‘If those REMFs hadn’t wanted us to cross the border, they should’ve sent in another bird to evac us out of here.’’

‘‘Roger that,’’ Zach agreed.

They’d managed to get a red rolled-up Sked—which looked like a kid’s sled—for Shane and some stretchers for the injured Marines and Rangers from the Chinook before it had blown.

It wasn’t going to be easy, even with four men assigned to each stretcher. But it wasn’t as if they had a whole lot of choices.

‘‘We’re not going to leave our buddies behind,’’ one of the Rangers said, folding his arms.

The kid didn’t look old enough to drive. Hell, Quinn bet that just a few months ago his biggest problem was what kind of corsage to get his girlfriend for the prom. This was probably his first battle experience that didn’t involve paintballs.

‘‘This is war,’’ Zach reminded the kid. ‘‘And war doesn’t stop just because people die.’’

‘‘We don’t leave our buddies,’’ another baby-faced Ranger said.

Quinn and Zach exchanged a look. A mutiny was all they needed to cap off a really lousy day.

‘‘Look,’’ Quinn said, ‘‘it’s not going to help your buddies if you get blown away by crazy radical terrorists because you didn’t use your Ranger training. CENTCOM’s got our bearings. They’re sending an evac copter as soon as the sun goes down. Hell, your buddies will be back home before you are.’’

Not that they’d know it, being dead and all. But still . . .

Quinn could tell it wasn’t their first choice. But they fell in.

It turned out to be just as difficult as Quinn had figured it would be. They were seemingly taking one step forward only to fall two steps back.

Having trained to plan for the worst, hope for the best, and accept whatever happens, the SEALs had brought along their snowshoes. The Rangers and Marines, who hadn’t, kept sinking into the deep drifts. Sometimes they were reduced to crawling on the icy scree.

But still they continued to move. Doggedly, pausing every hundred meters to allow the slower men to catch up.

‘‘This sure as hell isn’t anyplace a guy’d want to be alone,’’ one of the Marines muttered under his breath as he dragged himself up over an ice-clad boulder nearly as tall as he was.

Quinn wasn’t going to argue that.

Realizing that they looked like a line of ducks in a carnival shooting gallery against the sunlit fields of snow, he also missed his ghillie suit.

The camouflage trick had originated with Scots gamekeepers who’d invented them to make catching poachers easier. Pushing grass and branches from local plants into burlap netting sewn into an old fatigue uniform broke up the human form, helping a sniper to vanish into the background.

Although you could buy them for all seasons, Quinn had made his own winter one with strips of white canvas, which made him invisible by allowing him to blend into the snow. Unfortunately, since this clusterfuck had originally been planned as a night mission and weight had been an issue, he’d left the suit back at the base.

‘‘I’ve never seen snow before,’’ one of the baby-faced Rangers said.

‘‘Well, now you have, son,’’ Quinn said. Personally, if he never saw the damn stuff again, it’d be too soon. ‘‘And, hey, lucky you, soldier, Uncle Sam’s picking up the tab.’’

They’d been trudging along for about an hour, struggling up the steep mountain slope, when one of the Marines stumbled, letting go of his corner of the Sked carrying the Chinook’s wounded pilot.

Which, in turn, caused another Marine to fall.

A third.

Then, shit, the fourth landed on his back, disappearing into a drift.

To Quinn’s horror, the Sked carrying the wounded pilot took off down the mountain, racing like a bobsled down a double diamond run.

Quinn took off running.

As always, Zach was right with him.

The Somersett resident FBI office didn’t look anything like the headquarters that movie and television viewers were accustomed to. Located in the basement of the courthouse, it resembled Mulder’s office from The X-Files. Though decidedly tidier, which was some small comfort.

Wood-framed photos of the FBI director and the U.S. president shared space with a rogues’ gallery of fugitives—two armed bank robbers, a carjacking murderer, another male wanted for assault and battery with intent to kill, and a pedophile playground recreational director who, so far as they knew, had committed sexual conduct with sixteen minors.

Not that any of those fugitives were guilty until proven so in a court of law.

Yeah, right, Cait thought, hoping they caught up with the pervert before the members of the neighborhood watch group—who were in danger of turning into vigilantes—found him.

Adding to the decor were the United States flag and the blue FBI flag on either side of the president’s photo, plus a pitifully weeping ficus. Cait didn’t need her detective skills to realize that the lack of daylight had more than a little something to do with the leaves scattered all over the industrial blue carpeting.

Before being moved to St. Camillus Hospital, the morgue had been located in this basement. Which explained the lingering odor of formaldehyde.

She’d been keeping in touch with the Columbia field office, and as soon as she’d reported the note Valentine Snow had received, her superior, Special Agent in Charge Brooke Davidson, had instructed her to start setting up the office to make room for a joint task force.

Every available agent in the region had been called in on the case, and they were working the phones and the computers. SAC Davidson had requested assistance from the ATF, who would be arriving first thing in the morning from their nearby office in Florence. Fortunately, while local police might get pissed off about FBI arriving on their crime scenes, there wasn’t a cop in the country who didn’t do a happy dance when told the ATF would be showing up. There flat out wasn’t anybody better than their forensic lab guys when it came to tricky ballistics and multiple shootings.

Not that her own Bureau didn’t have something going for it, Cait thought as she left Angetti—who, when she’d called him at the restaurant, had leaped at the chance to escape his in-laws’ anniversary party— arranging for extra desks, phones, and computers while she drove to the morgue.

The FBI Rapid Start program—occasionally called Rapid Stall by its detractors—had been used in every major investigation from the Oklahoma bombing to the twin towers and Pentagon bombings to the D.C. snipers. It might not be perfect, but the computer system was, hands down, the best computer software program available for managing multiple leads in a complex investigation.

Also a plus for their side was that the medical examiner wasn’t your typical small-town coroner. Son and grandson of plastic surgeons to generations of Southern belles, rather than using his talents with a scalpel to pretty people up, Drew Sloan had sent shock waves through the Sloan family by leveraging his Duke medical degree into a job where he cut up dead people.

His near-genius IQ and his ability to make the complexities of forensic medicine understandable to laymen, along with his movie star looks, had earned him a regular guest spot on Court TV. It had also created a demand for his expert testimony among both prosecutors and defense attorneys.

And if all that weren’t enough, he’d written three books profiling a few of his more gruesome cases, all of which had hit the best-seller lists, which, in turn, explained his designer duds and the Porsche that pulled into the hospital parking lot of St. Camillus right behind hers.

For Dr. Drew Sloan, crime not only paid, it paid handsomely.

‘‘Hey, darlin’,’’ he called out as he climbed out of the Batmobile-like black sports car. ‘‘Fancy meeting you here.’’

She’d caught him on his cell and he’d promised to come right over to the hospital. What she hadn’t realized was that he hadn’t been at home.

‘‘I’m sorry,’’ she said, taking in the tuxedo that fit so fantastically that even Cait, who knew nothing about fashion, guessed it must have been custom tailored. ‘‘I didn’t realize you had something important going.’’

‘‘No big deal.’’ He shrugged. ‘‘I was at the theater.’’

She suspected he wasn’t referring to the Palmetto multiplex down on the harbor.

‘‘What’s playing?’’

‘‘What else?’’ He flashed the dazzling smile that would have undoubtedly, had he followed in his family’s Gucci-clad footsteps, had every woman in the Lowcountry standing in line for Botox, boob jobs, and face-lifts. ‘‘The Pirate Queen.’’

She’d needed that laugh. Ever since she left Quinn’s house, her mind had been swirling like a leaf caught in a whirlpool. This case was already loaded with potentialproblems. The last thing she’d needed was the former U.S. Navy SEAL entering into the mix.

‘‘Guess it’s bad, huh?’’ Drew asked as they walked toward the sleek modern building located on the verdant banks of the Somersett River.

‘‘Yeah. And I’m afraid it’s going to get worse. Which is why I called.’’

‘‘No problem,’’ he said as the sliding glass doors gave way to a lobby that was both open and inviting.

During the day natural light from the towering windows and glass canopy of the atrium flooded the space. Tonight, glancing up, Cait could see only darkness. Which wasn’t the most promising of metaphors.

‘‘I live to serve,’’ he said with his trademark smile. ‘‘Especially beautiful women.’’

The doctor had always been a charmer. Having worked with him on several homicides over the years, Cait knew Drew was one of those men who truly liked and appreciated women. And, unsurprisingly, women all seemed to like and appreciate him right back.

‘‘I don’t need full service tonight,’’ she said, wondering how on earth all those trees managed to thrive when the poor ficus in her office was in dire need of life support. Maybe she ought to throw it in the SUV and bring it down here for resuscitation. ‘‘I just need you to check out a couple victims. I need to know if their wounds were made from the same weapon.’’

He glanced over at her as they passed the gift shop, its windows filled with bright balloons, stuffed animals, and pyramids of paperback novels with glossy covers featuring vampires, running women in jeopardy, or bloody daggers.

‘‘They’re not from the same incident?’’ he asked.

‘‘No.’’ The cobalt blue elevator doors opened. ‘‘Haven’t you heard the news?’’

‘‘I was at the theater,’’ he reminded her. ‘‘With an early dinner beforehand.’’

‘‘I’ve got two vics,’’ she said as the elevator took them down to the basement morgue.

St. Camillus seemed to have purchased a seventies Muzak disco package, which was annoying enough by itself, but ‘‘Stayin’ Alive’’ playing through the speakers seemed a particularly ironic choice for a hospital.

‘‘Both shot by what I’m ninety-nine-point-ninety-nine percent sure is the same guy,’’ she said. ‘‘A sniper who wrote Valentine Snow a note promising more.’’

‘‘Damn. That’s not good.’’

‘‘You are, yet again, the master of understatement.’’

Icy air blew through the vents of the morgue, making it probably the only place in town that was cold.

When Cait had first joined SPD, the morgue had been a gathering place for cops to hang out. The equivalent of a corner doughnut shop or cop bar where uniforms and detectives all stood around, shooting the breeze, drinking coffee out of 7-Eleven cups, smoking cigarettes, and wolfing down Krispy Kremes.

Then Drew Sloan had come on board with what more than one of the old-timer detractors had regarded as a quaint notion—that people should be accorded the same respect in death as they were entitled to in life.

Quicker than you could say Jack the Ripper, he’d banned the cigarettes, coffee, and doughnuts. And, although there was a lot of grumbling down at the cop shop, he’d gone on to limit witnesses to his autopsies to his assistant, the detectives who’d caught the case, and the occasional street cop who may have worked the scene. The prosecutors were also given an open invitation, though very few ever bothered to show up.

He went into the annex where the bodies of the two former military men had been tucked away in drawers. Rolled up his sleeves and snapped on a pair of latex gloves.

‘‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’’

Less than an hour later, Cait had her answer.

Quinn had been right. Which is exactly what she’d been afraid of.

‘‘Funny choice for a sniper,’’ he murmured. ‘‘Most, at least the ones I’ve read about, go for a bolt-action rifle. Why would he need an automatic, unless . . .’’

Cait had known Drew Sloan for nearly ten years. And he’d always looked as if he’d just stepped off the cover of GQ or returned from sailing off Cape Cod with the Kennedys. Cool and unflappable, he’d never seemed the least bit unnerved about anything.

Until now.

‘‘Unless he’s planning one helluva finale,’’ she answered the dread she viewed in his dark eyes.

A dread that had had its icy fingers wrapped around her own heart ever since Quinn had told her about the weapon’s deadly capabilities.