Any Means Necessary: A Luke Stone Thriller (Book 1) (11 page)

Luke tapped the hard drive with Nassar’s computer files on it. “See if he’s got anything on it in here.”

“Before or after I do the phone?”

“Phone first, but move quickly.”

Swann sighed. “No one at this job has ever told me to move slowly. Relax, Swann. Take your time and do a thorough job. Those are words I never hear.”

“If you want to hear those magic words, I think you better go work in the private sector.”

Swann made a face. “What? And make five times the salary? I won’t hear of it.”

“Luke?” Trudy said.

He turned to her. Her eyes were wide. She held a cell phone out to him.

“It’s Don,” she said. “For you.”

Luke held the phone to his ear and walked out into the hall. The buzz of conversation echoed to him from the main control room. He didn’t want to take this call. Part of the reason was he didn’t want to go home, not now, not after everything that had happened this morning, not when so much was at stake. But there was more to it than that, a lot more.

Luke remembered the day he met Don. Luke was a twenty-seven-year-old Army captain. He had made captain six months before, and he had just been accepted into Delta Force, the Army’s elite special operations and counter-terrorism unit. It was his first day, and Luke was nervous. Don was his new commanding officer. Don was giving him some instructions, as Luke stood at ease in front of Don’s desk.

“Yes sir, Colonel,” Luke said at one point.

Don sighed heavily. “Son, let’s get one thing perfectly clear. You’re not in the regular Army anymore. This is Delta Force. We’re going to live together, we’re going to fight together, and one day we might die together. So you call me Don, or you call me Morris. You can call me fuck-head. I don’t care. But two things you don’t call me are sir and Colonel. You save that for dealing with the other branches of the military. You understand?”

“Yes…” Luke caught himself before he said sir again. “Don.”

Don smiled. “Good. Fuck-head will come in time.”

Years later, when Don left Delta to form the Special Response Team, Luke was among his first employees.

“Don?” he said now.

“Luke. How are you holding up?”

“Good. I’m good. How did the briefing go?”

“It hasn’t gone yet. We just got off the chopper ten minutes ago. It looks like I’m going to be here a while before anything happens. You know how these things go. Hurry up and wait.”

“Right,” Luke said.

“I think they’re going to put me out to pasture,” Don said.

Luke nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

“The Director called me a little while ago. Ron Begley’s boss at Homeland called him. I heard all about the diplomat.”

“Don, I got a little carried away. If you lose SRT over it, I will feel badly about that. But I’m not sorry I did it.”

“Relax, son. Why do you think I called you last night? So you could come in and play by the rules? If that’s what I wanted, I would have let you sleep. We’ve got plenty of those guys in government. More than we need. No, I’m not concerned about that. I wouldn’t have expected any less from you.”

“Begley knew where I was,” Luke said. “He came waltzing in with the city cops.”

“Of course he did. We’ve had an internal leak for a while. Six months, maybe more.”

Luke ran a hand through his hair. A leak was bad news. He looked up and down the hallway. At the end of the hall, near the water foundations, a small knot of intelligence agents were gathered, murmuring quietly. One of them glanced his way, then covered what he was saying with his hand.

Luke was growing tired. He needed to find his bug-out bag. It was almost time for an eye opener.

“Who is it?” he said.

Don seemed reluctant to speak. “Luke…”

“Come on, Don. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”

“I haven’t been able to nail it down. But I have my suspicions. The writing’s been on the wall about SRT for months. We’ve got a couple of people who might be looking to jump ship before we go under.”

“Name one.”

“Trudy Wellington.”

“Don…”

Don cut him off. “Right. I know what you’re going to say. She’s our best intel officer. You’re right about that. And you were sleeping with her for a while. I know all about it. So was I. I regret that now. If Margaret ever found out, I think I would die. But it’s more than that. I told Trudy some things I shouldn’t have. Pillow talk. I assume you know how that goes. I’m afraid I might have made SRT an open book for others to read. Believe me, I feel very foolish.”

Luke didn’t respond. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“Luke, I feel old.”

“Don—”

“There may be others,” Don said. “Besides Trudy. Things have gotten out that even she couldn’t have known. We sweep headquarters for bugs every week. We encrypt all of our communications. Our network is locked down. And still…”

His voice trailed off for a moment.

“SRT has become a viper’s nest, Luke. There’s no one I can trust anymore. You know what? Part of why I called you last night was so we could ride together again. I wanted it to feel like old times. Maybe we would fly in and put the smack-down on the bad guys one last time.”

Luke took a deep breath. He felt like this phone call could go on for another hour, and he might not say another word.

“So here’s the part you’ve been waiting for,” Don said. “Know that I have no choice in this whatsoever. It comes from on high.”

Don’s voice changed. Suddenly, he sounded like he was reading from prepared remarks. “Luke, you’re suspected of committing multiple felonies in the course of performing your duties. As such, you are formally relieved of your command at the Special Response Team, effective immediately. You have been placed on administrative suspension pending an investigation into your actions. You may be subpoenaed to testify on your own behalf. Your salary and benefits are intact during this time, but that’s conditional and depends on your full cooperation with the investigation.”

Luke finally found his voice. “I was on a leave of absence,” he said.

“You’ve been the best investigator, the best counter-terrorism agent, and one of the best soldiers I’ve ever worked with,” Don said. “Please surrender your badge and your service firearm to Trudy. Any personal firearms in your possession will require the use of a private concealed carry license, if you have one.”

“I do,” Luke said.

“I’m sorry about this, Luke. I really am.”

The call ended. Seconds later, Luke couldn’t recall how he had signed off. He might have just hung up. He stood in the hallway for a few moments, the phone still pressed to his ear. Then he floated back into the office. He didn’t seem to be in control of his legs. His feet were far away.

Trudy was there. She stared at him.

“What did Don say?”

A war of emotions raged inside him, and he needed to get it under control. He didn’t want to be that person. Jealous. Angry. Hurt. But it was him. He was that person. He was a married man, and yet he felt burned by this woman. He had thought there was something between them. The idea that she was just maneuvering…  The idea that she was also with Don, maybe even at the same time… Who else was she with? Where was she passing agency secrets? He needed time to digest all of this.

Luke faked a smile, and the smile, all by itself, rallied him a little. It almost felt real. “Don said to hang in there and keep plugging. They want to suspend me, but he’s decided to fight it. You know Don. He’s a tough old bird.”

“He did?” she said. “He decided to fight your suspension?”

Reading her face was almost too easy. She didn’t believe a word of it.

“Yeah,” Luke said. “He changed his mind about the whole thing while we were talking. He knows it’s wrong. Don and I go way back, and he’s not just going to let that history drop. So I’m still in the game, at least for now. What do you have for me?”

She hesitated. “Well…”

Luke snapped his fingers. “Trudy, our backs are against the wall. We need to stay sharp. Vans, trucks, what happened with all that?”

She picked up her smartpad. “There’s been movement. The local cops tossed the hot dog truck. You were right. The Russian was operating a full-service restaurant for pimps and prostitutes. Hot dogs, Italian sausages, potato chips, Red Bull, Pepsi, Mountain Dew. Also oxycontin, methamphetamine, ecstasy, tranquilizers, diazepam… you name it. They found him in the back of the truck on a mattress with two prostitutes. Don’t get too excited. All three of them were asleep with their clothes on.”

“What else?”

“The stolen ambulance turned up in the parking lot of a meat warehouse in Newark, New Jersey. The Newark police went in. Ghastly. The warehouse doubled as a storage facility for human organs, mostly livers and kidneys. In a room at the back, they found two sets of lungs being kept alive inside sealed plastic domes. An apparatus forced oxygenated air into the lungs and the lungs were breathing. One cop described it as”—she glanced at her pad—“like giant pink meat wings.”

“What about the laundry truck?”

“Nothing so far. We called the company, Dun-Rite Laundry Services. The owner was there. He went outside and counted his trucks. He said they were all accounted for. Twenty-one trucks. He also said they only use step-up vans—he bought an entire fleet of converted bread trucks. They don’t use small delivery vans like the one we picked up on video. He invited us to send someone out and take a look.”

“Did we?”

She nodded. “An agent is on his way out there now.”

“So someone copied his company logo and put it on their own van.”

“Yes. And Dun-Rite has a contract at Center. So a van with that logo wouldn’t necessarily arouse suspicion if it was parked at the hospital.”

“We need to find that van,” Luke said.

“We’re looking, Luke.”

“Look harder.”

He walked away from her. The move was abrupt and gave away too much. It told her everything she needed to know. He moved over to Swann’s station. Swann was still working three screens simultaneously.

“What do you got, Swann?”

“The plot thickens,” Swann said. “Ali Nassar has an entire folder in his computer dedicated to drone technology. He’s got PDF files of full-color brochures. He’s got hundreds of photographs and bird’s-eye point-of-view videos. He’s got spreadsheet comparisons of specs, payloads, weaponry, speed, altitude. He’s either been buying drones or writing a term paper on them.”

“How about the phone?”

Swann nodded. “The phone. His call history has been completely wiped. He’s got an app that erases his history automatically as he goes. We can get it back, but we’d have to go to his service provider with a warrant.”

“You can’t hack them?”

“I could, but what’s the point? It would take me twelve hours, and by then whatever’s going to happen will have already happened. Anyway, we’ve got a more pressing matter. Just after midnight last night, Nassar bought a one-way plane ticket to Venezuela. It’s for 2:30 afternoon, JFK nonstop to Caracas, executive class. The boarding pass was on his phone. The receipt and an extra copy of the boarding pass were on his computer hard drive.”

“Venezuela?” Luke said.

Swann shrugged. “We don’t have an extradition treaty with Venezuela.”

“Sure, but why not go home to Iran?”

Swann turned around. His eyes goggled behind his glasses. “What if the attack fails? Last I heard, they still have firing squads in Iran. That gives getting fired for incompetence a whole different meaning.”

“The point is he’s leaving the country,” Luke said.

“Yes he is. Today.”

“And he bought the ticket right around the time someone was stealing the radioactive materials.”

Swann nodded. “My guess is he bought it right after he learned they had successfully pulled off the heist.”

“We got him,” Luke said. He clapped Swann on the shoulder. “Good work.”

Luke turned, and Begley was standing in the doorway. Two large men in suits flanked him. Luke glanced around the room. Ed Newsam stood in a corner by the window, scanning the street below and drinking a bottle of orange juice. Trudy was simultaneously on her pad and her cell phone. A couple of local SRT guys were at desks, pecking away at laptops.

“Stone, why are you here?” Begley said. The room quieted when he spoke. Everyone looked at him.

Luke smiled. “Ron, for once I’m glad to see you. We’ve had a breakthrough. Ali Nassar made a quarter of a million dollar bank transfer from an offshore account to Ken Bryant, the dead janitor at Center. Nassar has been spending millions of dollars on military-grade robotic drones. And last night, while the thieves were hitting Center, he booked a plane ticket to Venezuela for this afternoon.”

Begley shook his head. “None of that impresses me.”

“We need to bring him in, Ron. We can’t let him leave the country. If he makes it to Venezuela, it’s going to be hard to get him back here.”

Begley looked at Ed. “A seizure, Newsam? That’s funny. I had them check your personnel record. You don’t have a seizure disorder. You were never even injured in Afghanistan.”

Ed barely moved. He raised his index finger. “Incorrect. I was injured twice. Cracked ribs, a concussion, and a broken arm one time when our Humvee hit an IED and rolled. The guy next to me lost his leg.” He shrugged. “Shot in the calf the other time. The bullet ripped a nice chunk out. They had to take meat from my ass to rebuild the muscle. To this day, the ass meat is a different shade of brown from the leg meat. You can see the line where they’re attached. You want to look at it?”

Begley said nothing.

“Anyway, those sound like injuries to me. I’ve got two Purple Hearts, so I guess Uncle Sam agrees.”

“I meant you never had a brain injury.”

Ed looked out the window again. “That’s different.”

“Begley, are you listening to me?” Luke said. “We have the man who bankrolled the terror cell. And we know what the delivery system is. It’s a drone attack. And that means there’s a good chance it won’t happen here. There’s no room in Manhattan to fly the kind of drones we’re talking about. We’re looking at a very targeted attack, a dirty bomb delivered to a specific enclosed place by a drone. And the drone will probably fly low, beneath radar detection.”