Running Blind (17 page)

29

Early Friday afternoon, Mike sat on the other side of Nate Black's desk, frustrated and weary.

Mike needed Coop back, but Nate had just broken the news that he'd had to divert him and Burns to Nevada. The team could use Coop's analytical mind here to deal with the investigation. Burns's, too.

“So how long are they going to be gone?”

“I don't know. I hope no more than a couple extra days. Orders came down straight from the Pentagon. NSA picked up some cyber-chatter with coded references to a high-value facility in the States.”

“Which could be anywhere. Why Nevada?” He'd always figured that top secret testing was still going on at the Roswell facility, but power grids, nuclear plants, and any number of other targets could fall into the high-value category.

“Not sure,” Nate admitted, “but they asked for your team specifically. Cooper and Burns were in the area, so they got elected.”

“They're not going to run into something hot, are they? Coop can handle himself, but this is Burns's first field assignment.”

“No, the threat level is ‘suspected,' not ‘imminent.' Homeland Security's jumpy, waiting to find out when the next shoe's going to fall, and they want to make sure they're ahead of the game on this one. They decided they needed an immediate security threat analysis, and they wanted an out-of-house team.

“I've got more news,” Nate added after a moment, “and it's not good, either. Barry Hill's been cleared. He had nothing to do with Monday's shooting.”

“Bad news seems to be turning up all over.” Discouraged and restless, Mike rose from the chair, tucked his fingers into his back pockets, and walked to the window. Five days ago, his wife had been near death's door, and they still didn't have the bastard who shot her. “We're absolutely certain Hill's not involved?”

They'd found Barry Hill on Wednesday night and had been interrogating him at Langley ever since. This morning, they'd had to let him go.

Behind him, Nate's chair creaked. “Even if his alibi wasn't skintight, he's too stupid to lie his way out of this. Too stupid to hide his amusement when he found out the team was on the ropes. The guys worked him from every angle—his known associates, their whereabouts as well as his. There's just no way to tie him to the shooting.”

Mike shook his head. Hill had been the most logical suspect, and now that lead had gone bust. “What's happening on the La Línea front?”

“Interpol's all over it. Those guys are slick. But I really don't like La Línea for this, anyway. They've got a shitload of trouble right now. Between the arrest of four of their top lieutenants last week and the heat they're getting from DEA, I think their plates are full.”

“So we're dead in the water.”

“Never say never. The teams have been working their asses off, much of it on their own time, trying to get a lead. By the time they let Hill go, they had a whole list of other names they're working on,” Nate said.

“We've got to be missing something. Something that's right in our faces,” Mike insisted. “We're just not seeing it.”

“We're going to get him. It's just going to take longer than we'd like.”

Nate's office door flew open right then, and Carlyle flew in with it. “Mike, you need to get over to the ITAP briefing room right now.”

On full alert, Mike glanced at Nate, then back to Carlyle. “What's up?”

“Package arrived in the morning mail.”

“From?”

“No return address. Postmarked Toronto.”

“What's in it?”

Carlyle shook his head. “No clue. But it's damn clear that it's meant for you.”

Nate was right behind them as they headed out the door. “Clear how?”

“You need to see it.”

•    •    •

All incoming mail was screened for explosives and chemical compounds before it ever made it through the front door; this included X-rays, advanced scanning techniques, and being sniffed by a bomb-­detecting dog.

This particular package had been given special attention, because not a lot of people knew of ITAP's existence. So the fact that the package was addressed to ITAP, at their HQ, no less, had raised scrutiny to the five-alarm-fire level.

Both Nate's and Mike's teams were surrounding the conference table when Mike, Nate, and Carlyle rushed into the briefing room.

Remnants of their lunch had been scooped aside; the package took center stage in the middle of the table.

“The X-ray showed two indistinct metal shapes, and the chemical analysis revealed very slight amounts of burned nitrates, like those used in gunpowder and some explosives,” Carlyle said. “The levels are too minuscule to be an explosive device.”

Mike stared at the package. Wrapped in plain brown paper, it wasn't much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. Carlyle, already wearing latex gloves, picked it up, then turned it over. A jack of hearts with a bullet hole through the middle was taped on the back.

This was meant for him, all right.

Mike slipped on the latex gloves that had been laid out for him—lifting prints was doubtful but still a slim possibility—and fished in his pocket for his knife. Very carefully, he slid the blade beneath the tape, taking care not to do any more damage than necessary.

Long minutes later, the brown paper lay unfolded on the table, and Mike held a plain white jeweler's box in his hand.

He glanced at Nate, who nodded, and then Mike lifted the lid.

Inside, on a bed of white cotton, were two bullets.

One was a .223 Remington—at first glance, identical to the cartridge the team had found with the playing cards left behind by the shooter. The other appeared to be a 9mm.

“What the hell?” Taggart muttered as Mike set the box on the table so everyone could get a look.

“Somebody's playing games,” Gabe Jones said, sounding grim.

“We need to get this over to ballistics right now.” Mike looked at his team. “Carlyle, seems you've got your running shoes on today.”

“On it, boss.”

“Tell them to drop whatever they're doing and get us the specifics on both bullets within the hour.”

“And make sure they know who's asking,” Nate added, “so they'll know who's coming after them if they don't follow through.”

•    •    •

Exactly forty-two minutes later, the ballistics report was hand-delivered.

“As we figured, the .223 is a match to the bullets found at the restaurant and at the shooter's hide,” Mike told the team.

“And the other one?” Nate asked.

Mike handed him the report. “The 9mm is also an exotic designer bullet—blended metal, armor-­piercing, and very antipersonnel.”

“You want a quick and devastating short-range kill,” Gabe said, “that's your ammo.”

“It was also hand-loaded, like the .223, but that's where the similarities end.” Nate handed Mike back the report.

Mike picked up the 9mm cartridge. Too many weapons to count fired 9mms. But this designer bullet would be easy to track if the shooter was in the database. Contract killers were very particular about their ammo.

“Nate, can we get B.J. on this? Though we came up blank on the designer .223, let's have her check for known shooters who may have used this particular type of load in hits within the last two to three years.”

“Sure thing. Carlyle—”

“Already on the way.” Carlyle lifted the report out of Mike's hands and sprinted away.

•    •    •

A former DIA field agent, B.J. Mendoza had resources and assets worldwide. Only a few minutes later, the petite, pretty blonde walked into the conference room. “I got a match. There's a file an inch thick on this shooter. Loves his hand-loaded nines; it's definitely his signature. At least two dozen kills in the last seven years.”

“We got a name?”

“Can't name a ghost,” B.J. said apologetically. “But his mark is on hits all over the globe. No one's ever lived to ID him, but one victim lived long enough to give a fuzzy description.” She referred to her tablet and the report. “Short and slight, wearing black and a hood that covered his face. That's it for physical details. But he ID'd the weapon as an H&K MP5K.”

“Nasty bit of work, that,” Taggart said.

“No question that it was an H&K?” Mike asked, getting a sick feeling in his gut.

B.J. tucked a long corkscrew ringlet behind her ear and consulted her tablet again. “Yup. The flutes burned onto the brass from the chamber show that it's from an H&K, and from there, we give it a very high probability that it's from an MP5K, based on extractor marks and ejection pattern. That's apparently the shooter's weapon of choice.”

“Is either team tied to any of those hits?” Nate wanted to know.

“Nope,” she said. “The hits are a mix of good guys and bad guys. Looks mostly political, cartel, and mafia-­related. Pick a country, he's done their dirty work.”

Mike kept thinking about the MP5K. “How long has it been since he's made a hit?”

B.J. scanned her tablet again. “A couple of years.”

“What?” Taggart asked, watching Mike closely.

Mike shook his head. “I don't know. Something. Maybe nothing.”
Maybe everything
. “I want to check something out. Where's Peter?”

“In his office,” Santos said. “Want me to call him in?”

“No. I'll go to him.”

Mike knew they were all watching him as he rushed out of the conference room, but he wasn't willing to share his hunch just yet.

In the first place, he had to be wrong. In second and third place, he had to be crazy and desperate, because what he was thinking couldn't possibly be right.

But he
was
desperate, and with Eva's life on the line, he was going to explore every possible lead until he was 1,000 percent sure it was a dead end.

“Peter.”

He startled his operations manager so badly he spilled his coffee. Peter Davis spun his wheelchair around, dabbing at the front of his shirt. “What's up?”

“I need you to do something for me.”

“Name it.”

If Peter questioned Mike's request, he didn't say a word. He just nodded. “I'll get right on it.”

“I'm heading for the hospital. Let me know the second you hear back.”

“Will do.”

“I need this yesterday. And Peter—for now, this stays between us.”

•    •    •

Mike was at Eva's bedside when Peter called only two hours after what he'd thought would be an impossible task.

“I've got your intel,” Peter said, then gave him the information Mike had both wanted and dreaded hearing.

Turned out he hadn't been wrong or crazy. Because they
had
been trying to find a ghost.

Feeling Eva's gaze on him, he turned to her. She knew him so well. Just by looking in his eyes, she knew that something big had broken on the case.

“Go do what you have to do,” she whispered.

He leaned down to kiss her. “Count on it.”

•    •    •

“When Eva found me in Lima,” Mike told his and Nate's teams in the briefing room a short while later, “a shooter came after us in a hotel room on Calle San Ramón.
A shooter wielding an H&K MP5K. She emptied the clip on us. Hit us with everything she had, but we nailed her—at least, we thought we had. Somehow, she got away.”

“Wait.” Gabe Jones held up a hand. “She? You said
she
?”

“That's what I said. When B.J. dug up the shooter whose MO was a designer 9mm bullet fired from an H&K, I asked Peter to contact one of our assets in Lima. He went to the hotel, and, as I'd hoped, not much had changed in that pit. There were still bullets embedded in the wall and the floor behind the bed in room two-oh-five.”

Peter handed out hard copies of the photographs their contact had e-mailed, photos of the bullets he'd dug out of the floor in room 205 earlier today.

Mike picked up the 9mm cartridge that had arrived in today's mail. “Exact same bullets.”

“Wait.” Taggart looked as if a ghost had just stepped on his grave. “The shooter in Lima. Wasn't she Brewster's psycho girlfriend?”

“Yeah,” Mike said grimly. “She was.”

Not only had Brewster betrayed Mike, Taggart, and Cooper during Operation Slam Dunk in Afghanistan ten years ago, he had also tried to kill them at the UWD compound in Idaho two years ago.

“But she was with Brewster in Idaho. She was on the helipad when it blew.” Taggart appeared more rattled than Mike had ever seen him. “I saw it blow up.
You
saw it blow up. Everyone on that pad died. She can't be our shooter, because she can't be alive.”

“I promise you that she is.” Mike set the photos in the middle of the table. “Those were bullets from her HP5K.” Then he placed the full cartridge on top of the stack. “And this is a match to those bullets. She's alive—and she wants us to know it.”