Top Ten (15 page)

There was not much left for them to do in Baton Rouge. They’d come to confirm the obvious. To examine the scene. It had turned out like all the others. Plenty of evidence with connections to no one. Yet. That’s what Jaworski told himself. Had told himself with every new death. And here he did the same. Maybe the forensic team would find something different. Maybe a witness would turn up. Maybe.

But he didn’t think so.

“Damn,” Ariel commented as they rounded the corner of the building and saw the main entrance to Redy Stor. There had been a few reporters there when they’d arrived two hours before. Now there were dozens. Even a truck with a dish.

“Washington wanted to keep this quiet?” Jaworski said as he and Ariel neared the crush of print and electronic media. “Good luck.”

Two police officers lifted the yellow tape at the entrance and let the agents pass into the pack of reporters.

“What’s your name?” one reporter with a mike demanded.

“Is the victim Lee Tran?” another asked. “Sources tell us it’s him? Is he dead?”

Jaworski and Ariel pressed their way through until a quick and determined reporter stepped fast in front of them and put her mike in their faces.

“I’m Stephanie Young, and we’re live on YourNews, could you tell us what’s going on in there?”

They kept moving, hot lights hitting Jaworski now. Hot lights and thoughts of what it would look like to have two agents playing dumb on television. No good. He thought he could say something.

“Nothing we can talk about right now,” he said. Sweat was sprouting on his brow.

“Well then who are you, sir?”

The lights glared at him. Ariel was behind, following, keeping her mouth shut.

“What is your name, sir?” the reporter persisted.

The pack was around them now, moving with them. They wanted something. Jaworski wiped his brow.

“I’m Special Agent Bernard Jaworski, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

The reporter’s free hand went suddenly to her ear. Someone from the station was talking to her. Her eyes brightened fast and she pressed the mike closer to his face.

“Are you the same Bernard Jaworski running the FBI’s Task Force Ten?” she asked. “The one looking for Michaelangelo?”

Jaworski looked back to Ariel as they neared the street. His pale skin was flushing. His look told her the gig was up.

“Does Michaelangelo have something to do with this?” the reporter said.

Another chimed in. “Francis Gunther, the one in Minnesota, was Michaelangelo involved in that? Did he kill Gunther?”

“Is he going after people on the most wanted list?” another shouted.

Ariel and Jaworski got past the pack and to their car at the curb. Questions flew at them even after they were in and driving away, wondering if they’d done more harm than good by coming to Louisiana.

*   *   *

He was down. Safe. On the ground at the end of a little-used unmaintained strip in the south of Georgia. Three shots of chaff had taken care of the Customs plane. It would take more than three shots of something to fix Mills DeVane right then.

He leaned forward after rolling to a bumpy stop. Put his head to the console. Laced his fingers behind his neck. Squeezed hard. And harder. And harder still. Then...

...exploded and sat straight and punched the padded cowling over the console. His fist thudded off of it, aching sharply. He tore the sunglasses from his face and tossed them aside, covering his eyes with his undamaged hand.

“Damn,” he said with surprising softness. “Damn, damn, damn.”

That had been too close. Too close. But for Nico’s little extra he’d be in cuffs right now, his ordeal over, the operation a failure.

People might die because of him.

He shook his head and wished it done. Wished it over and done.

But wishes, he knew, could not overcome the impossible. It they could, he’d have a wife again. Would have her again a thousand times over.

The rap on his side window startled him. Looking in, kneeling on the wing, was Nita Berry. Gareth’s Wagoneer was parked a few yards away with no sign of Gareth.

Mills came out of the cockpit to the rear of the Cessna and opened the bi-fold aft door. He crouched in the opening as Nita slid off the wing and came to him.

“Hey, Millsy, you okay?”

He nodded weakly. “Not a good flight. Customs is getting better at what they do.”

She frowned with concern and glanced up at the sky. The cloud cover was beginning to break. “How close did they get?”

“Close enough to get the tail number and too good of a look.”

She knew what that meant. “We’ll have to burn it.”

Mills nodded. One flight then gone. Gareth was going to love that. Speaking of Gareth...

“Where is he?” Mills asked Nita. He handed her one of the two bags from the plane and climbed out with the other one himself.

“He and Lionel are doing something,” Nita said, and heaved the bag away from the Cessna. Mills did the same.

“What kind of something?”

Nita seemed not to want to answer. She jogged back to the Wagoneer and, after a few seconds, returned with a pair of road flares. She lit them both, holding one in each hand.

“Nita...”

“Gareth doesn’t want you to know,” she said, and tossed the flares inside the Cessna’s open cabin. Acrid smoke began to billow out. Mills and Nita grabbed the bags of coke and walked fast toward the Wagoneer.

“What’s he doing?” Mills pressed her, but she wouldn’t say a thing. Not as they tossed the bags in the Wagoneer. Not as they drove off with the Cessna’s fuel tanks cooking off in balls of orange-black flame.

*   *   *

Tommy Manchester had been on the job for one year exactly when the masked man jumped from a car and put a gun to his head. He thought of reaching for his own weapon but the robber’s forceful nudge convinced him otherwise. The next second it mattered not at all as a second man took the revolver from his holster and tossed it to the ground.

“Open it up!” the second man, also masked, demanded as he and his partner dragged the unlucky armored car guard to the front of the vehicle where his partner inside could see him. The driver’s eyes bugged with fright at the sight of his coworker with a pistol to his head. That was the intent.

“Open it the fuck up! Now!” the second man shouted. He adjusted his aim and pressed Tommy Manchester’s face to the bullet-proof side window, just inches from the driver safe inside. “Open it up or I’ll splatter his face all over this window! We’ll see how you sleep with that!”

Tommy Manchester said nothing. He didn’t have to. His eyes said all that was necessary, and his friend gave a quick nod to the demands. The door clicked open. People on the streets in front of the National Trust Bank of Augusta were scattering.

The first man yanked Tommy back from the door as the second man pulled it open and yanked the driver out, disarming him quickly. Both guards were forced to lay face down on the warming asphalt while the second man hit the control to release the back door.

That was when the first man shot both guards in the back. Their bodies jumped. People screamed. Tommy Manchester rolled to his side in a ball and groaned. The first man shot him again and he stopped making sounds.

“Come on,” the second man said, and they went to the back of the armored truck. Each took what they could carry while still holding their pistols. They only had time for one trip. Sirens were rising. They went to the car they’d stopped abruptly aside the armored car and tossed their take the in back seat as they got in the front.

Pulling away they almost ran over Tommy Manchester where he lay dying next to his already dead partner.

Thirteen

Unspoken Actions

Jaworski stood before his assembled task force on Friday the 22
^nd
in Base Ten’s bullpen work area. It had been his newest agent’s suggestion that they brief the task force en masse. Focus them.

Assistant Director Kellerman had called soon after offering a similar viewpoint.

Interesting, Jaworski thought, wondering why Washington would open a back door into his investigation. He also wondered if that was why Grace had been sent to him in the first place.

Either thing might have upset him, but this day it would not. No it would not.

“Task Force Seven has had several reports over the past week and a half that Robert Jack McCormack is in the New Jersey area,” Jaworski told his team, most of whom leaned against desks or stood as they listened. Ariel sat in a chair a few feet from Jaworski. Every so often he’d look down her way. “Sightings have put him in Vineland and Camden. His family and the last public defender to represent him are under surveillance for the purpose of protection. We know how our freak is operating now, going after family and people with ties to the fugitives, so by choking off that avenue we might force little Mikey to make a stupid move. Maybe stupid enough that we can catch him.” Jaworski shot a glance at Ariel. “Agent Grace and I will be taking two teams to New Jersey to back up Task Force Seven. Rudy Kingman runs that show, so we’ll be technically supporting their ops. Unless our freak makes an appearance.” He looked to several points over the room. “Dane, Thomas, Dominic, Zacks, Peck, Romero...you’ll be coming with Grace and I. We leave in two hours. Get your stuff together, and the rest of you move on what you’ve been working on. Move on everything. I want to know what happened to Lee Tran’s lawyer. I want to know how our freak found Deandra Waley. I want to know how he got Francis Gunther into that playground with no one noticing. I want to know why the clerk at the Redy Stor took an extra fifty bucks so Mikey wouldn’t have to fill out any paperwork.” Jaworski stopped for a breath. He was tired, but not spent. There was energy in reserve. None of the agents assembled could remember seeing
that
in a long while. “And the secret’s out after my brilliant performance in Baton Rouge, so no need to hide the fact that our freak is on a very specific hunting expedition now. Some folks won’t be too amenable to stopping him, so just remind them that if he should punch his card all the way to number one, he may just turn back to less
deserving
victims. Are we all clear on that?”

They all were.

“Those of you who are going to New Jersey, we meet out front in two.” Jaworski surveyed the room for questions. There were none. “All right. Back to work. You all look bored when you’re in here.”

The briefing broke up, agents moving quickly to get back to tasks that had been interrupted, or to get on tasks that had just come up. Jaworski left the bullpen and headed for his office.

Ariel caught him in the hall and asked for a minute.

“I’m going to have to catch up with you on Sunday,” she told him.

Jaworski crossed his arms and nodded slowly at her. “Is that so? Something else on your plate. Something for Washington, maybe?”

She began to speak, then stopped, unsure of what to say. Jaworski made saying anything unnecessary, though, in short order.

“Never mind, Agent Grace. It appears to this veteran agent that questions should not be asked about your activities. Am I correct?”

She smiled at him. “Thank you, sir. I’m sorry about the away time.”

“Agent Grace, you couldn’t piss me off today if you tried.”

She looked at him quizzically.

Jaworski chuckled breathily. “The whitecoats yesterday...” He shook his head. “...They think they’re beating it. The damn thing’s almost gone.”

She reached out and touched his arm. “Sir, that’s...”

He nodded. “I know, isn’t it?”

It was good to see someone beat it. It was
damn
good to see someone beat it, Ariel thought. Beat the hell out of it. Especially Jaworski.

Jaworski smiled wide and swallowed hard. “You better get your butt to wherever it’s supposed to be, Grace.”

“Right, sir,” she said, and watched him go. There wasn’t a spring in his step. Not yet, there wasn’t. But she figured there soon would be.

*   *   *

It had been one of the great successes of a failed war.

By the thousands they had been stolen. Pilfered. Copied. Some had been bought with money. Some sex. Some with threats of revelation. Homosexuality. Extramarital dalliances. Drug use. Some had even been handed over willingly by those of an ideological bent conducive to their doing so. Some who had provided these services were dead now. Some in prison. Some living normal lives.

Pavel Yurievich Borotsin sometimes wondered if they felt guilt for what they had done. For what he had been part of making them do.

But that was the past. The cold war was over. One side had won, another had lost. His once beloved KGB was gone now, replaced by an entity of another name whose mission, whose power would never approach, much less equal, what its predecessor had been able to achieve. He looked at the list before him and still he had to marvel at it.

Aubrey Acosta. That was the first name on the list. Thousands more followed it. The list ran several hundred single spaced pages. And for every name there was a file. Duplicates of ones kept in a five sided building in the American capital. One for every pilot in the American Air Force, some past, some present. Men who would have (
might still???
) fly missions against Mother Russia. Their histories, medical and otherwise. Susceptibilities. Strengths. Weaknesses.

Mills DeVane. That name was on the list. Pavel Yurievich had circled it. He circled it again and turned toward the window of his twelfth story office, looking upon the city. There were buildings out there in the heart of Moscow where old documents were kept. Old and still secret documents. Very special archives. Their existence could be embarrassing. Their access was restricted.

But there were two truths Pavel Yurievich had learned in his many years both in and out of government, particularly in matters of intelligence and security: nothing was absolute, and everything was negotiable.

And, very fortunately, his old friend Valentin Yevgenovich had plenty of ‘negotiables’. Pavel knew he could deal with the absolute aspect of access. He still had friends in high places. And such a request as this, to peruse virtually useless files from the war-that-never-happened era, well, a slight bit of
negotiation
on that end might help matters immeasurably.