Blood List (22 page)

The figure on the beach re-positioned the tube. His head burst like a melon hit with a sledgehammer. Carl's whoop of excitement came over the COM a split second before the rifle report hit Gene's ears. As the headless man crumpled, the RPG fired into the air, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake. It crashed back down into the water a few seconds later. The explosion ignited the gasoline from the ruptured motor.

As fire rippled across the water, men panicked. Most dove under the water to escape the spreading flame. The man clutching his face didn't. He flailed as the flames reached him. The grenades on his bandolier detonated. Shrapnel killed two men who had survived the gasoline fire and shredded the legs and back of a man on the beach. The others threw down their weapons and put their hands in the air. Gene tried again.

"FBI! STAND DOWN AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS!" The men on land dropped to their knees and folded their hands on their heads. In the water, men struggled to avoid the double danger of sharp rocks and burning gasoline. Marty lay in the snow and stared down the rifle scope. He swept it back and forth across the beach, searching for active hostiles.

Gasping for breath, his heart racing, Gene took stock. "Status," he said over the COM. The replies were immediate, breathless.

"Brent. I'm okay."

"Goldman, five by five."

"Bates, okay."

"Palomini, okey-dokey."

"Renner, still on the couch."

"All right," Gene said, "let's go get them. Marty, Doug, secure the suspects and check the injured. Carl and I will cover you. Jerri, you've got Renner duty. Be careful, everybody."

Nobody said anything as the team got moving. After a few seconds, Marty spoke.

"Fuckin' A, Gene."

"Yeah," Gene replied.

February 2nd, 3:54 AM EST; Summer home of Dr. Abraham Lefkowitz; Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Twenty minutes later the scene flickered with red and blue lights, the product of one police car, one fire truck, and two ambulances, the entire emergency response force of the town of Aquinnah. A coroner had been called for the four dead and would arrive shortly from Boston.

Both of the injured men were in critical condition, one with a thigh that had been obliterated by Marty's .50 cal, and the other with shrapnel embedded in his back and legs. Four had extreme hypothermia, despite their wet-suits. Soon they would all be evacuated to Boston via ambulance boats due to arrive at any time at the main dock in Aquinnah.

The men wore government-issue, SWAT-style personal body armor, ski masks, gloves, and night-vision goggles. Gene's team recovered nine AK-47s, six pistols of Eastern European make, two bandoliers of grenades, and one tube RPG launcher. The weapons charges alone were enough to put these men away forever. None had identification, so the living and deceased alike had their fingertips scanned into Gene's PDA and uploaded to Sam.

They had laid the bodies out on the beach above the tide line. The ruined rafts were still tangled in the rocks. The survivors sat at the top of the cliff, wrapped in blankets taken from the house to protect them from the frigid wind. Carl stood watch over the prisoners. Gene, Marty, and Doug stood off to the side, their voices low but hostile.

Paul sat on the couch with his eyes closed, Jerri standing behind him on guard duty. The COM ear-bead he had been issued by Sam Greene was silent. It was also in his pocket. The one he had found near Gene Palomini's unconscious body almost a month before was in his ear. The encryption needed to break the lock on the COM had been pretty complex, but no encryption is unbreakable for someone with the right connections.

Marty's voice was pissed-off, as usual. "We can just fucking grab him, Gene. He's got nothing more to offer us. Nothing. Put him in a fucking box and deal with him later."

"Now's the time, boss," Doug said. "We won't get a better chance. He's got to know he's about out of usefulness."

"I gave him my word, Doug," Gene said.

"Yeah, but you never intended to keep it," Marty said.

"Right," said Gene, "but as long as he doesn't know that, as long as he thinks we can lead him to whoever sent an assassin after him, he'll stick close by. It'll be a lot safer to grab him once we're back at HQ."

"Goddamn it, boss, you're a fucking idiot sometimes," Marty said. "What's the difference between now and then, besides a little time?"

Gene looked his brother in the eyes. "I'd rather take him down in a secure facility, with no civilians around, surrounded by half the Bureau."

"Gene—" Marty said.

Gene held up his hand. "Just wait a minute, Marty." Marty rolled his eyes as Gene pulled Doug off to the side and muted his COM.

Gene leaned in close and kept his voice low. "Look, we're waiting to take him down because I'm protecting Marty, not Paul. He doesn't understand just how dangerous Paul Renner is." Doug raised an eyebrow. "He doesn't. He thinks he can just strong-arm him into submission like a common perp, and it's going to get him hurt. Just side with me on this, will you? It's just a few more hours."

Doug looked over at Marty, clenching and unclenching his gloved fists and swearing under his breath. "All right. I got it."

"Good," Gene said. They walked back over to Marty.

Marty took one look at Doug and snarled. "You're not siding with Gene, are you?"

Doug put his hand on Marty's shoulder. "Yes, I am."

Marty rolled his eyes. "You know what? Fine. But as soon as we're back at Hoover—"

"Yes," Gene said. "As soon as we're back at Hoover, Marty."

"Agent Palomini!" Gene turned around at the voice. The local Sheriff, Josephson, approached at a trot. "Hey! We need to get all these weapons secured. You can't just leave this stuff lying around my beach!"

Gene held up a hand to delay the sheriff and turned to his brother. "Look, we'll talk about this in a few minutes. Just keep your head." He turned back to Josephson, who glared daggers at Gene's upraised hand. "Forensics is en route via chopper. They're going to be here in fifteen minutes. Until they come, nobody touches anything."

Gene, Doug, and Sheriff Josephson walked away toward the beach, leaving Marty glaring at his brother's back.

Marty stepped into the empty living room. He saw no sign of Jerri or Renner. The bathroom door was closed, and he heard water running.

He drew his sidearm and tapped his COM. "Jerri, where are you?"

Marty stepped past the couch to the bathroom door. "Doug, can you get in here?"

"Let me finish this up. I'll be right there," Doug said.

Marty opened his mouth to reply. His breath left him as a knife punched straight through his Kevlar vest and into his back. It hurt, but not as much as it should have.
Oh fuck. I'm already in shock.
His knees buckled, and Renner held him upright against the door. Paul leaned close and plucked the COM bead from his ear, then spoke softly, intimately. "Didn't want to wait until Hoover, eh?" The knife came out with a gush of hot blood. "That was a lung." The knife went in again, lower, and twisted. Marty's legs turned to ice. "That was a kidney." Marty coughed, and blood flecked the white door. He tried to turn, but his body wouldn't respond.

"You think you're such hot shit, Marty? You think you're better than me? You fucking Feds are all alike. Holier than thou, sycophantic little fucks. You're just a bunch of killers.
Underpaid
killers." Marty gasped as the knife went in a third time. This one hurt like hell. "Liver, Marty. Time to quit drinking."

"Here." Paul's bloody hand came around Marty's side and grabbed the doorknob. "I left you a present." He turned the knob. The door opened and Marty fell through. He clumsily broke his fall and landed face-first on the floor. "You should have told her, Marty. Life is too short."

Jerri sat on the toilet, fully clothed, and stared at the ceiling with unblinking eyes. Her throat was an angry yellow bruise, already turning purple. Paul stepped over Marty's fallen body and wiped his hands on Jerri's shirt, then took her sidearm from her holster. Marty lay on the floor, trying to scream, trying to do anything, as the killer disappeared behind him.

Dressed in a heavy winter coat stolen out of the closet, Paul Renner climbed into the back of the ambulance. Two suspects, both critically injured, lay unconscious on their gurneys. A third, shivering despite a heavy blanket, was handcuffed to the door. The EMT changing an IV on the man with the shattered leg looked startled by Paul's sudden appearance.

"Okay, let's go," Paul said, flashing Jerri's badge in the darkness.

"You're coming with us, Agent?"

"Bates. Special Agent Bates. And yes, I'm coming with you. Let's get these three to the boats, pronto."

The driver nodded in the rear-view mirror and, triggering the lights but no siren, headed off toward Aquinnah and the docks that would take the wounded into Boston.

Sherriff Josephson droned on in his ear, and a flash of red lights caught Gene's eye as the first of the ambulances pulled out.
Good
, he thought. He spoke into the COM.

"Marty, which prisoners just left on those ambulances?" Josephson grunted in annoyance, and Gene realized he'd just interrupted him in mid-sentence. He held up a hand for patience.

"Marty, come in please?"

Nothing.

"Hey, Sam, can you check COM status, please?"

"Sure, Gene," Sam said. "Checking your signal." There was a brief pause. "Relays are still working fine, or they seem to be from this end. Carl, can you verify?"

"It'll take me a few minutes," Carl said. "Relay's back at the lighthouse."

"Where are you now, Carl?" Gene asked.

"I'm in the Hummer. I can do diagnostics on the way over."

"Hold on a second," Gene said. "Team, check in," he said.

"Brent here."

"Goldman."

Silence.

"Doug, meet Carl at the Hummer," he said. "Marty's supposed to be with the ambulance crew. Jerri's inside with Paul. Find them, now, and go together." He ran toward the house, leaving Josephson, mouth open, standing on the beach.

Marty took three pints of blood before the helicopter arrived and airlifted him to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Jerri Bates's windpipe had been crushed. Forensics would tell them the murder weapon later, but Gene already knew. Paul Renner had killed her with his bare hands.

They found the ambulance at the Aquinnah docks. The critically injured men were still inside, unconscious. The EMT and driver were both dead, shot at close range with Jerri's sidearm, which Renner had left at the scene. They found no sign of Paul Renner or the uninjured mercenary. Gene put out an APB on the missing speedboat, and Massachusetts State Police found it forty minutes later at a small private dock in Boston Sound.

February 2nd, 8:27 AM EST; J. Edgar Hoover Building, Gene Palomini's Office; Washington D.C.

Doug and Carl made the trip back to Washington in silence. Sam let them. Marty was in ICU, and Gene had stayed with him, almost unresponsive. That left only the two of them and Sam in their heads when they needed her. Missing Jerri's talents already, Sam had brought in an outside team to conduct the interrogation, leaving Doug and Carl with little to do but wait for results.

Sam, unflappable despite her grief, continued to trace down leads on Renner's whereabouts. Acting on the assumption that Renner still hunted the man who had hired Lefkowitz, she focused on the killers from Martha's Vineyard and brought the full might of the Patriot Act to bear.

Airport security cameras had captured the commandos coming off a commercial jet. They picked up another two on Amtrak camera tapes. The plane tickets were purchased by an offshore dummy corporation, the train tickets from a numbered account in the Caymans. Sam started in on the grueling process of following the money trail in the hope of finding Paul Renner's next target.

*   *   *

February 2nd, 3:13 PM PST; Home of Geoffrey MacUther; San Francisco, California.

Geoffrey MacUther was a large, grizzled man with a gray beard and a shaved head. Fifty-six years old, he was in better shape than most twenty-five-year-old athletes. Former Secret Air Service for Her Majesty the Queen, he was highly trained in stealth, surveillance, martial arts, modern weapons, and linguistics. A veteran of the first Gulf War and peacekeeping operations in Serbia, he was intelligent, charismatic, and had retired a highly decorated officer. He was also somewhat paranoid, but not without reason.

Geoffrey MacUther was proud to be known in the right circles for providing the best private security forces that money could buy. Private security forces weren't bodyguards or sentries. They were mercenaries, private armies hired out to the highest bidder.

He lived just north of Daly City, an affluent suburb south of San Francisco, where property values kept most of the riff-raff away. San Francisco wasn't far from Silicon Valley, and he managed much of his small empire from an office he had there. He bought goods coming up from L.A. and across the Pacific Ocean into the Port of San Francisco. He trained his men in the rugged Rockies, in the deserts of Nevada and Utah, and in boarding actions out at sea, all no more than a helicopter ride away.

For the past two years, he'd managed his business and laundered his money through a local startup called SoFiaK, named for his daughter, Sophia Karen MacUther, now Sophia Karen Brown and a proud mother of one. The brilliant thing about startups is that nobody really knew what they did, and everyone assumed that you couldn't talk about it for fear of competitors stealing your ideas. SoFiaK vans came and went from his home and his work at all times of the day or night, and people never got suspicious.