06 Double Danger (22 page)

“No kidding,” Drake said, his gaze shooting over to J.J., who was sporting a new bandage. “How’s your arm?”

“Just a scratch,” she replied. “Bullet only nicked me.”

“Whoever these guys are,” Hannah said, “they’re not kidding around. If Avery and company hadn’t arrived when they did, I don’t like thinking about what might have happened.”

“I just can’t believe I missed all of it,” Harrison grumbled, actually sounding disappointed. Which, Simon had to admit, would have been his reaction as well, had he been stuck in a storage unit while everyone else was off fighting the good fight. It wasn’t the most rational of thoughts, but there you had it.

“Well, I’m glad you weren’t there,” Hannah interjected, her tone fierce.

“Actually, he was sitting on a different disaster,” Tyler said, walking into the room with another filament-encrusted plastic box. “One of my techs found this in the storage unit, sitting in a back corner behind a crate.” She held up an evidence bag containing what was clearly another bomb. “Same setup as the other three smaller bombs. Only this one didn’t go off. The timer malfunctioned.”

“And if it had gone off?” Drake asked with a frown.

“In close quarters like that,” she said, dropping down into a chair, placing the bag on the table, “it would have incinerated anyone in the room.”

“Yeesh, now I really wish I’d gone with them to the warehouse.” Harrison pulled a face, his gaze dropping to the bomb. “Is that thing safe?”

“Yeah, I disabled it.”

“Holy shit. So when was it supposed to have gone off?” he asked.

“When the three of you were all still there,” Tyler said. “It was rigged to start the clock when the door was opened. But one of the wires wasn’t fastened right, so even though the circuit was closed, there wasn’t any contact.”

“So we were supposed to have died before we had the chance to find any of the evidence.” Simon sat back with a wince.

“Not necessarily you per se. I’m guessing that the bomb was rigged as a safeguard against anyone who might have stumbled into the unit. It was wired so that it could be disengaged with a remote. Meaning Lester or Isaacs would have been able to enter without triggering anything.”

“But whether or not it was intended for us,” Nash said, “it was another near miss.”

“Looks like it.” Tyler nodded, taking the bomb back from Harrison. “At least now I’ve got a complete bomb. Which means I’ll be able to take it apart and hopefully figure out a hell of a lot more about the person who made it.”

“What about the explosion in the warehouse?” J.J. asked.

She was sitting next to Simon, her hands on the table, her fingers only inches from his. She’d held his hand all the way back to the brownstone, only letting it go when Hannah had insisted J.J. take off her shirt so that she could bandage the wound. He knew it was just a reaction to everything that had just happened. But hell, he was human, and so he couldn’t contain the small blossom of hope.

“You guys were right about the warehouse,” Tyler was saying, “the explosion started with the oil drums. The hostiles must have hit them with a grenade. Either intentionally to try to kill you guys or to destroy evidence. Or maybe it was accidental—just fallout from the firefight.”

“What I don’t understand,” J.J. shook her head, “is why they waited to use the grenade launcher. If all they were trying to do was take us out, it seems like that would have been a hell of a lot faster than a shootout.”

“They had to know that we’d be sending backup,” Nash said. “Maybe they were holding you guys off until the whole party was on the scene. Then they pulled out the big guns.”

“You could be right. Although, as usual, they sadly miscalculated our ability to evade and survive.” Drake grinned, then sobered. “So where did they come from anyway? I didn’t see any other cars.”

“They were in the rear, near the water,” Simon said. “We shot out the lights. Although I never did figure how they got them back there.”

“There weren’t any cars.” Tyler shrugged. “They were using boats. We found a mooring rope and some broken glass, along with some paint chips and a hunk of fiberglass on the quay. You evidently hit more than the lights. The water’s only about five feet from the bay doors. I’m guessing that’s how they got in and out so quickly.”

“Well, bottom line, we still got out alive, and we found the weapons,” Simon said. “Along with Isaacs and Lester’s apparent ties to the same munitions. And unless I miss my guess, the Russian guns we found were from the same place as the crate we discovered in Afghanistan.”

“Which does seem to tie the two together,” Nash mused. “Now if only we can run Isaacs to ground.”

“Maybe we’ll get a hit off the prints I found in the storage unit. There were three good sets. We’re running them now.”

“So what’s happened with Yusuf?” J.J. asked. “Have you gotten any closer to connecting Joseph Isaacs with an alias of that name?”

“No,” Hannah replied regretfully, “I haven’t even been able to find a Yusuf that ties to any of our players. And I’ve broadened the search as much as I can. But that doesn’t mean I’ve given up.”

“What about MI-6?” Avery asked. “You said they were sending a photograph. Do they have anything else on him?”

“No. He wasn’t even on their radar. Which makes sense if he wasn’t on ours.” Hannah hit a key on her computer, and a photo flashed up on the monitor. “This is his passport picture.”

The man looked older than the original picture Hannah had shown them. Grayer. He was thin, with a narrow chin and full lips. His hair was black, closely cropped, and curly. His eyes were close set and brown, with thick arching eyebrows. And yet, somehow the parts added up to an unremarkable whole. A man whom no one would notice. Someone who could easily blend into the background. It was a good look for an illegal arms dealer—or a terrorist.

“I ran facial recognition,” Hannah continued. “But nothing popped.”

“What about intersection with Lester?” Nash asked. “We know they both traveled a great deal. Anything that would put them in the same place at the same time?”

“Yes, actually, I was able to find some places where their paths seemed to have crossed,” she said. “We know they were both art dealers so I started with conferences.” She pulled up a document to replace the photograph of Isaacs.

“There were two of them,” Harrison said, as usual working in tandem with Hannah. “One in Geneva and the other in San Francisco.”

“Best we can tell, both of them were registered for each conference, and I verified flights for Lester to both Geneva and San Francisco at the appropriate times. But it wasn’t as easy to confirm for Isaacs. Although I do have a record of him entering the country through New York with a continuing flight through to San Francisco for the U.S. conference.”

“When was this?” Avery asked.

“Almost a full year ago, and I have a record of Isaacs leaving the country shortly after the conference had concluded.”

“Anything to indicate that the two of them were together?” Drake asked.

“No. And the same is true for Geneva,” Hannah said. “But I did some more digging using flight and hotel records for both Isaacs and Lester and I found two more intersections. The first a year and a half ago in Jakarta. It looks like both men were there at approximately the same time.”

“Approximately?” Tyler queried.

“They overlap. Lester arriving first, staying for five days, and Isaacs arriving two days later and leaving six days after that.”

“But that puts them in the city together for three whole days,” Nash said.

“And one of the shipments in the storage unit was from
Indonesia,” Simon added. “Does the date on the bill of lading corroborate the timing?”

“It does,” Hannah said. “And a month later, they were both in Nicaragua. In Managua.”

“There was a crate heading there as well,” J.J. said.

“And Emilio Rivon’s cartel operates out of that area.” Nash leaned forward. “Did you find any connection to Rivon?”

“I did,” Hannah said, sending another photograph to the overhead monitor. “And I’ve got pictures. It just so happened that we had a surveillance team in place. The CIA has been keeping tabs on Rivon’s operation for a year or so now. This was from a meeting that went down last August. That’s Rivon in the center.”

The picture showed a group of five men, two of them obviously carrying weapons, sitting at an open-air café in what looked to be a large market in Managua.

“You can see Lester there in the seersucker suit.” Harrison highlighted a man sitting across from Rivon.

“I didn’t know anyone still wore seersucker,” J.J. said. “I had an uncle who practically lived in it, but he was ancient.” She frowned up at the photo. “I don’t see Isaacs.”

“Hold on.” Hannah switched to a second picture. This time the men were standing up as a sixth man joined the group. “That’s him there.” She highlighted the man shaking hands with Rivon. “And you can just make out Lester standing beside him.”

“So we know that the two of them were doing business with Rivon,” Simon said.

“It would certainly appear that way. There are a few more photographs. The meeting lasted maybe twenty minutes. Unfortunately there was no audio, and as far as
the team in Nicaragua was concerned, the meet wasn’t anything to be concerned about.”

“Had they seen Lester or Isaacs before?” Jillian asked.

“No. And they haven’t shown up again either. These pictures were just part of the routine surveillance. They were only flagged when I started digging around about Rivon in connection with Isaacs and Lester.”

“Hang on a minute,” Simon said, still squinting up at the last picture. “Can you close in on the corner of the picture? The guy sitting at the far edge of the shot.”

Hannah hit a couple of buttons, and the area in question was enlarged. And after a couple more keystrokes, the area came into sharper focus.

“Son of a bitch,” Drake said, his chair dropping to all four legs. “That’s Alain DuBois.”

“Who is Alain DuBois?” Jillian asked.

“A man, working for the Consortium, who was involved with trying to get hold of a formula to aerosolize a biotoxin. His principal business was dealing with antiquities and art. He was our only lead into the organization itself. He fell off the grid after one of their operations went sour, but we managed to hunt him down. Unfortunately, before we could apprehend him, he was killed.”

“By his own people,” Harrison added. “Another successful effort to cover their tracks.”

“But you’re sure he was tied to the Consortium?” J.J. prompted.

“Absolutely,” Avery confirmed. “We believe he was included in the upper tiers of the organization.”

“So now we have a definitive tie between the Consortium and Rivon. Not to mention Lester and Isaacs.” Simon was still staring at the photograph.

“Which means finding Rivon is almost as important as finding Isaacs,” Tyler said.

“I’ve already put the word out to bring him in,” Avery said.

“I’m afraid that’s going to be a bit of a problem,” Hannah said, looking up from her computer with a frown. “Rivon is dead.”

“What the hell?”

“I just got a text from our people on the ground in Nicaragua. Looks like someone blew the hell out of the whole compound. Rivon and his second in command were among the casualties identified. According to this, it happened about an hour ago.”

“Who is the report from?” Nash asked, pushing back from the table as Hannah flashed a video of Rivon’s walled retreat. The entire place was lit up like a Christmas tree, fire and smoke billowing from every angle.

“Trevor Billingsly.”

“Good man,” Avery said. “I trust his word. If he says it’s so—it’s so.”

“So what the hell happened?” Drake asked.

“Looks like the place was strafed,” Tyler said. “From the amount of damage, I’d say at least two planes. Or maybe a drone.”

“Well, according to Billingsly, their intel points to a rival cartel.”

“The timing seems a bit suspicious,” J.J. said. “Seems more likely that whoever is pulling the strings in all of this realized we’d discovered the link to Rivon. Which would mean he’d become a liability.”

“Damn it.” Drake pushed to his feet, his obvious
frustration mirroring everyone else’s. “These bastards always seem to be one step ahead of us.”

“All the more reason for us to dig in and figure out the endgame,” Avery said.

“Well whatever it is,” Simon frowned, still staring up at the fiery remains of the compound, “it’s got to be something big.”

J
illian tossed and turned, pounding her pillow into submission as if success would allow her at last to sleep. But she’d spent enough sleepless nights to know that it was probably hopeless. Her arm ached. Her ribs ached. Even her hair seemed to be hurting.

She rolled onto her back, her good arm behind her head as she watched the shadows play across the ceiling. Outside the brownstone window, the street was fairly quiet. But she could hear the sounds of traffic in the distance. Even at this hour, the city was still awake.

After the debriefing in the war room, everyone had headed out to work. Tyler and Nash back to the warehouse. Hannah and Harrison already huddled in the corner of the parlor with their computers, shutting everyone else out. Drake had disappeared down the stairs into his basement bedroom, carrying a large stack of file folders. Simon and Avery had been cloistered in the kitchen, deep in conversation about the attack at the warehouse.

She’d been invited to join in, but had declined, having already relived the incident more than she could ever have imagined. She’d craved the warmth of a shower and the comfort of bed, just for a little while needing to put everything behind her. To pretend, at least for a few hours, that her life wasn’t surrounded with death threats and explosions.

She wondered, not for the first time, if living constantly with this sort of thing was why Ryan had changed so drastically from the man she’d married. Or maybe it had always been there, and the violence he’d seen had just brought it to the forefront. She sighed, listening to the distant wail of a siren. Or maybe she’d just buried the truth—ignored the signs and made excuses so that she could continue to see Ryan as she wanted him to be.