Blindside (27 page)

‘He was a platoon sergeant in the Marines. First Recon Division. That’ll mean something to you, Mr Cahill.’

Cahill nodded.

‘Anyway, he was nearing the end of a tour in Afghanistan around two years ago when he was caught in an ambush in Helmand Province. The vehicle he was travelling in was hit by an IED, a mine, and came under heavy fire from entrenched enemy positions.’

Hunter flicked through the file till he found a photograph of Raines. Cahill leaned in and looked at the photo. It showed a man in a typical military pose: upright and composed. He had a cartoonishly square jaw and eyes that were almost black. The tips of tattoos showed on his neck above the collar of his shirt.

‘Casualties?’ Cahill asked, looking at Webb.

‘Four dead including a female British army officer. Multiple wounded.’

‘What about Raines?’

‘He took a round through the leg. Anyway, Raines and one of his men, Matthew Horn, were in a small convoy that had been monitoring the eradication of an opium poppy field and were returning to base when they got hit. It was a fierce encounter according to the official reports. Raines and a British soldier …’ Webb opened another file on the table and ran his finger down a report. ‘Corporal Andrew Johnson of the Royal Military Police, distinguished themselves in the action. Saved a lot of lives according to this. Johnson suffered a gunshot wound to his head. He survived it but had to be discharged from service. He became unstable. Violent. Badly injured a couple of civilians in a fight.’

Webb tapped the report in the file on the table.

‘So what went wrong with Raines?’ Hunter asked.

‘Raines’s man, Matthew Horn, received severe injuries. Double leg amputations. He suffered very badly in hospital when he got back here. Infections and that type of thing. Almost died.’

‘What about Raines’s injuries?’

‘He recovered fairly quickly.’

‘And psychologically?’

‘I guess we wouldn’t be here if the same could be said for his mind.’

‘Tell us the rest.’

‘Okay, so Raines is released from hospital but starts to make some noises about Horn’s treatment. Showed up at the hospital and wrecked the place one time. He got arrested for that. Then he starts writing letters to just about everyone. Around the time Horn was at his worst he started making veiled threats in the letters.’

‘Like what?’

‘How this country wasn’t fulfilling its obligations to its servicemen and that someone would have to pay for that. Nothing too specific.’

‘And this is how you get involved?’

‘Yes,’ Grange said. ‘We take that kind of threat very seriously.’

‘You think the arrest sent him over the edge?’ Cahill asked Grange.

‘Maybe. Who knows.’

Cahill was not warming to Cooper Grange.

‘Anyway,’ Webb went on, ‘we sent a couple of agents to talk to his ex-wife
and to Raines. He didn’t respond to the interview at all. Pretty much ignored them.’

‘And it’s after this that he starts buying up weapons and goes off the grid?’ Cahill asked.

‘Correct. And it looks like he recruited some other like-minded veterans.’

‘So how does Tim Stark get mixed up in all of this? I mean, he was still with the Secret Service.’

Grange leaned forward and spoke.

‘We wanted to infiltrate covertly and we needed a back-story that would stand up to scrutiny. Someone with a tale to tell of anti-government sympathies. Stark had applied to come back to the Agency and with his previous background here it struck us as the perfect opportunity to manufacture him getting sacked and that being the cause of his unhappiness.’

‘Raines never bought it,’ Cahill said. ‘That much is obvious now, right?’

‘We think so,’ Webb said. ‘Tim was using the name John Reece on the flight to Washington. That was a cover identity set up for him so that he could get out quickly and it was supposed to be untraceable.’

‘He never got close enough to know what they were doing?’ Hunter asked.

‘He was doing okay for the first few months,’ Grange said. ‘We got regular reports. Then they got less and less frequent. It was getting risky for him.’

‘Which brings us to you, Detective,’ Webb said to Hunter. ‘What’s the story with your case?’

15

Logan looked at Ruiz and Martinez when his phone rang. He took it from his pocket to turn it off and saw that it was Irvine calling.

‘Hey,’ she said when he answered the phone. ‘It’s me.’

‘Becky? What time is it there?’

‘Late. Or maybe it’s early. Depends on how you look at it.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing. I can’t sleep. This case I’m working on, you know. So I thought I’d call.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

‘What you up to? Alex keeping you out of trouble?’

‘Uh, not really. Believe it or not I’m sitting in the Denver field office of the FBI.’

‘What?’

‘Long story. And before that we were at the police headquarters.’

‘Sounds like a typical Alex Cahill holiday plan.’

Logan laughed.

‘Tell you about it when I get back. But what’s up with your case?’

‘I don’t know. It was a tough day. We were at a scene. Multiple deaths. One was a boy, just a teenager.’

‘Sounds bad.’

‘It was. I hate this drug stuff. Give me a robbery any day.’

Drug stuff
.

‘But I’m already feeling better,’ Irvine went on. ‘I mean, talking to you.’

Logan was only half listening. The other part of his mind was rewinding to an earlier conversation with her. Something about heroin overdoses that CID was asked to look at. He stood and walked out into the reception area out of earshot of the agents.

‘You said something before,’ he said to her. ‘About drug-related deaths.’

‘Yeah, it’s this case. The thing today. Why?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing, but the reason we’re here, at the FBI, is kind of similar.’

‘What?’

‘I guess I’m not making much sense. Sorry. Must be the jet lag.’

‘Similar to what?’

‘I mean, drug overdoses. They’ve had a few here as well. Seems like there’s something going on with ex-soldiers.’

There was a pause.

‘Becky …’

‘Somebody told me today that there are former soldiers involved in my case. You remember the murder I told you about – the one in the newspapers? Guy got shot dead in a Range Rover. Andrew Johnson. He’s one of them. Not that the guy who told me is all that reliable a source and I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet.’

Logan sat at the receptionist’s chair and grabbed a pen, twisting it in his free hand.

‘You’re jet-lagged and I’m up in the middle of the night,’ Irvine laughed. ‘We’re making a lot of sense.’

Logan put the pen down and ran his hand up, through his hair. He leaned back in the chair as the female agent came out into the reception area. She glanced at him as she walked past and went out to the elevators.

‘Where’s Alex?’ Irvine asked.

‘He’s locked in with the FBI chiefs and the cops right now talking about this stuff.’

‘How come you’re excluded?’

‘Nobody likes lawyers.’

‘I kind of like this one.’

He smiled. ‘Nice of you to say.’

‘Listen, I’m going to go back to bed. See if I can’t get some sleep before the alarm goes off. I expect I’ll be up to my neck in paperwork tomorrow. It’ll be a nightmare.’

‘Okay. I’ll see you when I get back.’

Irvine sat the phone handset down on the kitchen table and sipped at a cup of tea. It was comforting in the middle of the night when the darkest kind of man was still out there.

She thought about Frank Parker and his son. They were so secure in their place in the world. No matter how reasonable Parker seemed, or how desperately he wanted to be considered some kind of old-fashioned gentleman, he still ruled by violence. People died on his say. He sold drugs that ruined lives. And what now?

Soldiers turned drug dealers shot in the head.

People laundering drug money tortured and killed in their own homes.

Parker had shaken her with his visit. No doubt that had been part of his strategy too. Letting her know that it didn’t matter that she was a cop – he could still get to her whenever he wanted to. Business would be done on his terms.

She drained her cup, rinsed it in the sink and went upstairs to her room. She used to love getting into bed and pulling the quilt up to her chin, safe in the womb-like warmth. But tonight she couldn’t get warm, the cold ingrained in her bones.

And when she closed her eyes all she could see were the faces of the dead.

16

Hunter took his time explaining his investigation from start to finish, giving a lot more detail than he had to Cahill and Logan back at the police headquarters building. He spoke in depth about the information that the DEA had shared with him and the intercepted communications.

‘If Tim Stark was here he might be able to tell us if this Mexican had been in touch with Raines,’ Webb said when Hunter was finished.

‘Maybe he heard something and that’s when he put it all together,’ Cahill said. ‘And was going to get in touch with you, Detective Hunter.’

Webb nodded, looking thoughtful.

‘It’s plausible,’ he said. ‘But there’s absolutely nothing concrete to back it up, is there?’

‘No,’ Hunter said. ‘You’re right.’

‘But you’re going to do something about it, right?’ Cahill asked, feeling a little exasperated.

‘Of course,’ Webb answered. ‘We’re going to treat it as a line of inquiry. Try to find out if there really is a link.’

‘But it’s obvious.’

‘No,’ Hunter said. ‘I know it kind of sounds like it might be, but it’s not. Look at what we have. The only thing actually linking the two investigations is your e-mail. It might have been a reference to me, or it might have been something else altogether.’

‘And because Tim Stark is dead we can’t know for sure,’ Webb added. ‘So we have to treat it like any possible lead. Run it down properly.’

Cahill knew they were right, but still fought against it. He wanted Stark’s death to mean something. To lead somewhere.

‘So what now?’ he said.

Logan’s eyes were starting to close when a phone in the office rang. It pulled him from his near sleep, the ring tone slightly different from the other phones he had heard go off since he had been there.

Martinez got up from his desk and went to a phone on the wall next to the door out to the reception area. He spoke into it for a moment and listened for what seemed like a long time, though it was probably no more than a minute or so.

He hung the phone up without speaking again and went back to his desk. He spoke quietly to his partner, Ruiz, and they both put their suit jackets on and left the office in a hurry. Logan followed them out and saw that they headed up the corridor to where the meeting was.

Webb stood as if to signal that the meeting was over.

‘Let’s speak again in the morning,’ he said to Hunter. ‘Work out where we go from here.’

Hunter nodded.

‘And who does what,’ he said. ‘I mean, we can’t just hand our investigation over to you guys. You know that, right?’

‘Of course.’

There was a knock at the door. Agent Martinez opened it and walked in, followed by Ruiz.

‘What is it?’ Grange asked.

‘There’s a man downstairs says he needs to speak to the agent in charge.’

Everyone looked at Webb. He was impassive.

‘Well,’ Webb said. ‘Is that all the information he gave you? Because I’ll tell you right now, it’s not much to go on.’

The more he saw of Webb, the more Cahill liked the man.

‘Uh, sorry,’ Ruiz said. ‘He says his name is Matt Horn and he has information about Seth Raines and Tim Stark.’

17

Raines knew straight away what Horn was doing at the building on Stout Street. Knew that the FBI had their office here. He wanted to feel something about it. Felt nothing. He looked again at the gun sitting on the passenger seat beside him.

Raines watched as Horn climbed out of the back of the cab and went to the intercom at the side of the main entrance to the building. The place was locked up tight at this time of night, but there was a security guard inside in case anyone came around. He guessed that happened a lot. Given the FBI’s line of business.

The cab pulled away, leaving Horn alone with one hand pressed on the glass of the building’s door while he leaned in to speak to the guard through the intercom.

Raines grabbed his gun, opened the door of the car and stepped out. He walked around to the front of the car leaving the door open. He stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, thought about running over there and taking both of them out in an instant. No witnesses.

Horn leaned back from the intercom and Raines saw the guard inside get up from his desk. He looked like a retired cop. Carried himself that way.

Raines took a step forward into the road.

He tightened his grip on the pistol.

But the moment passed as the guard opened the door and ushered Horn inside. The guard looked over at Raines before turning to go inside the building.

Raines went to the car, sat inside and dropped the gun on the seat.

He picked up his mobile and dialled the number for the compound.

‘Change of plan for tomorrow morning,’ he said when his call was answered. ‘Bring everyone.’

Part Nine:

Grace

1

Logan was alone in the main part of the office when Cahill came in through the door from the reception area. Cahill walked over and sat on the edge of the desk beside him.

‘What’s up?’ Logan asked. ‘Looked like something was causing excitement.’

‘Yeah, you could say that. One of the soldiers in the group showed up. Guy called Matt Horn.’

‘Seriously?’

Cahill gave him a look.

‘What are you, a sixteen-year-old girl?’

‘What?’

‘
Seriously
,’ Cahill repeated, shaking his head.

Logan stood and went to the window. He looked down on to the street and saw a car parked on the other side of the road. He watched it for a moment before it drove away, then turned to Cahill.