Damage Control (20 page)

“They could be watching us,” one of the other soldiers said. He started sweeping the woods with his rifle, desperate for something to shoot at.

“Raul!” the commander barked. “Settle down. If you see them, shoot them.”

Something flipped in Jonathan’s stomach. “Did I just hear what I think I heard?” Boxers whispered in his earbud.

Jonathan tapped his chest. Just once, which meant yes. There was in fact a kill-on-sight order out for them. Not “arrest on sight,” or “detain on sight.” Shoot on sight meant that a death warrant had been written on them.

“I still can’t see anything,” Boxers whispered, “but say the word, and I can step out into position. I’ll take whatever’s on the left.”

The bad guys were too close for Jonathan to risk answering. Was the shoot-on-sight thing just bold talk, or was it truly the order that had been issued? He needed to be sure before he took action. Once he opened fire on military personnel, he’d set events in motion from which there’d be no recovery. He decided to wait them out a little longer.

While the rest of the soldiers covered him, the point man approached the Pathfinder, his weapon at the ready and trained at the windows. Each step took him closer to Tristan’s hiding place.

Jonathan kept the soldier squarely in his sights every step along the way.

Jonathan tapped his transmit button once, paused, and then twice again. That meant
Stand by
. In his mind, he could see Boxers grinning.

The presumed commander ordered, “Search the jungle.” As he spoke, he started walking directly toward Jonathan.

Scorpion didn’t care about the approaching commander. At least not yet; he was still twenty feet away. Jonathan was way more concerned about the point man, who couldn’t be more than five feet from Tristan’s hiding place.

The soldiers scanned their sectors of the compass with a professionalism that Jonathan hadn’t anticipated. As they swept their weapons from left to right, they showed admirable muzzle discipline, never endangering the soldier next to them. That was good news for their own safety, but not good news for Jonathan’s.

“I’ve got good sight pictures on two,” Boxers whispered.

Jonathan tapped another
Stand by
. He wanted to see how this would play out. Chances were good that Tristan would be discovered, and when that happened, Jonathan wanted—

“Shit!” the point man yelled in Spanish. “You! Stand up! I found one!”

Jonathan slipped his finger into the trigger guard and prepared to fire. The soldier’s posture spoke more of fear than intent, however, so Jonathan gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“Stand up, stand up, stand up! Put your hands up!” The others cut their respective searches short—exactly the wrong thing to do—and turned to confront the threat that their colleague had discovered. That put six guns all trained on Tristan.

Jonathan knew that Boxers must be borderline apoplectic. He understood Spanish at least as well as Jonathan did—in fact the Big Guy was something of a genius with languages—so he knew exactly what was happening. All of their tactical training told them that this was the time to take the bad guys out—while they were out in the open and exposed—but Jonathan wanted to give them a little more rope. If they were truly going to shoot on sight, then Tristan would already be dead. He wanted to see what their plan really was.

He keyed his mike and dared to whisper, “Hold your fire.” He held his aim on the no-reflex zone of the lead soldier’s brain. If Jonathan pulled the trigger, his bullet would unplug his central nervous system in a microsecond. There’d be no twitch of a trigger finger.

Tristan rose from the spot where he’d been hiding, his hands held high over his head. “Please don’t shoot me,” he said, first in English, and then he said it again in Spanish.

“Jesus, Scorpion,” Boxers whispered. “Now’s the time.”

Jonathan let the comment hang in the air.

The point man leveled his rifle at Tristan’s face. “Step out here,” he said. The soldier motioned for Tristan to step out into the roadway.

The boy was only one notch away from panic. His eyes darted from left to right, looking for reinforcements as he stepped free of the undergrowth and into the clearing of the road cut.

“What’s your name?” the solider asked in Spanish.

“Tristan Wagner,” he answered. His eyes never touched his questioner. Instead, they were all about finding Jonathan and Boxers.

“Why are you hiding here?” the soldier asked.

Tristan hesitated. Clearly, he wasn’t sure how to answer or what to do. “I was kidnapped by terrorists,” he said. “My friends and I.”

“Your friends?” the soldier said. “Where are these friends now?”

“Dead,” Tristan said.

The leader stepped forward, moving away from Jonathan’s location and closer to the boy’s. “You killed them,” he said.

Jonathan shifted his aim from the point man to the leader, whose back was now turned to him. He settled the sight on the base of his skull, right where the spinal cord joined the brain.

“I didn’t kill anybody,” Tristan said. “The terrorists killed them.”

“Are you one of the Yankee missionaries?” the leader asked.

An invisible hand pulled Jonathan’s spine.

Tristan hesitated. He was close to breaking. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re American,” the leader said.

“Yes, sir.”

“And you are here from Scottsdale, Arizona.”

This time, Tristan’s hesitation was the loudest confession Jonathan had ever heard.

“I thought so,” the leader said. He raised his pistol.

Jonathan squeezed his trigger, and the MP7 roared. His first two bullets shredded the leader’s head, and his second two did the same for the point man. Ahead and to his left, Boxers’ rifle discharged what sounded to be a half-mag of 7.62-millimeter bullets. Three more dropped, and Jonathan took out a guy who just looked confused.

The gunfight lasted less than a second and a half. When it was done, Jonathan and Boxers had fired twenty-five rounds between them, and all six soldiers were dead, their bodies dropped like so many sacks of manure.

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN

O
ne day, Gail would learn that people’s names rarely matched the pictures those names evoked in her mind. She’d expected Harriett Burke to be a mousy sixty-something in a print dress and gray hair pulled back in a bun. She’d smile sweetly and say God-loving things.

Instead, she was a sturdy thirty-something with shoulders that were broader than most men’s. Smart money said her résumé included time on a roller derby team. Where the sweet smile should have been, there was instead a set jaw and firmly pressed lips. Clearly, her buddy Volpe from downstairs had called upstairs.

As the elevator doors opened on the opulent fourteenth floor, she was right there, doing her best to block the path down the hallway. “Reverend Mitchell doesn’t have time to meet with you,” she said.

Gail stepped into the elevator lobby. “And I don’t have the inclination to put you in handcuffs,” she said, and she skirted the human roadblock.

Tried to, anyway. Harriett grabbed Gail’s sleeve. “You may not go in there.”

Gail drew her badge as if it were a gun and pointed it at Harriett’s forehead. “This is your moment to make careful choices,” she said, startling herself by the ease with which she slid back into her old role.

“Do you have a warrant?” Harriett said. The badge and the speed with which it appeared had startled her.

“I’ll get one for your arrest if you don’t let go of my sleeve.”

Harriett pulled her had away as if it had touched a hot stove. “Sorry,” she said.

“Good for you. Where will I find Reverend Mitchell?”

“I’m sorry, Officer ...”

“It’s sheriff. Sheriff McLain.”

“Sheriff McLain, Dr. Mitchell left very specific orders not to be disturbed today.”

“I’m guessing she didn’t anticipate my visit when she said that.”

“I could get fired.”

Now they were squarely in territory where Gail had stopped caring. “If she fired you for this, then you probably should consider working somewhere else.”

The elevator dinged, and Volpe joined them. Harriett looked genuinely relieved until the guard rested his hand on the revolver he wore on his hip.

Gail hated rent-a-cops. She pulled back her suit jacket to reveal the grip of her Glock. “I’ve got one, too,” she said. “And I’ll bet you a million dollars that I’m better with mine than you are with yours.”

Volpe lifted his hand from his weapon and ostentatiously splayed his fingers. “I wasn’t threatening you,” he said. His voice cracked a little.

“That’s exactly what you were doing,” Gail countered. “And I guarantee that I am threatening you. Will I find Dr. Mitchell’s office down this hallway?”

Volpe looked to Harriett, who said, “Yes. I’ll take you there.”

Something clicked in Gail’s head. That was a big change of heart in a very short time. Was Harriett looking for a reason to be alone with Gail? If so, was that good news or bad news? The most dangerous threats are the ones you don’t anticipate.

“She’s not going to be happy,” Volpe said.

Gail was about to say that she’d be a lot happier than these two would be if she arrested them, but she caught a look from Harriett that made her swallow the words. Besides, she didn’t have the power to arrest anyone.

“I’ve got this, Paul,” Harriett said. “You can go back downstairs.”

Volpe didn’t like it. “You sure?”

“You almost started a gunfight,” Harriett said. “Nobody needs this to escalate. It’s between Sheriff McLain and Dr. Mitchell now. I’m stepping out of the middle.”

Volpe actually looked to Gail for support—an effort that lasted only a second.

“It’s not a security issue, Paul,” Harriett said, sealing the deal. “Let me do my job. You go back downstairs and do yours.”

That final comment felt to Gail like a throw-down, leading her to believe that these two had a past.

No one said anything for about ten seconds as the situation evolved into an uncomfortable standoff. Harriett wouldn’t even give Volpe the tiny victory of walking away from him. Instead, she waited while he rang for the elevator and disappeared behind the closing doors. At least the car came quickly.

When they were alone in the lobby, Harriett turned to Gail. “Okay, what’s going on around here?” Her tone was more plea than demand. “Why is everyone so crazy?”

Gail’s stomach flipped, but she covered it. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a cop,” Harriett said. “And you’re here. Please don’t play games. I’m scared.”

Jonathan Grave often said that life was one big poker game. Now, Gail had to play her hand carefully. “I’m here to help, Ms. Burke. But you must understand that my business is with Reverend Mitchell. I’m happy to listen to you and answer the questions I’m able to, but I can only be but so forthcoming.”

That sounded really good,
she thought.

“Something terrible has happened in Dr. Mitchell’s life,” Harriett said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s affecting everything. She looks terrible. She’s stopped taking any visitors. She’s positively gray.”

“Perhaps it’s the sex scandal,” Gail offered. Cops were all about advocating for the devil.

“No. That was an embarrassment and a distraction. I was here for that. That was never as big a deal as the media made it out to be.”

Gail scowled. She was a minister who had sex with a seventeen-year-old boy. How was it possible to make a big
enough
deal about that?

“Please don’t judge,” Harriett said.

So much for Gail’s poker face.

“You don’t begin to understand the pressures that Reverend Mitchell is under.”

“I’m not here about any of that,” Gail said. Just speaking of this stuff made her feel like she needed a shower.

“I understand,” Harriett said. “This new thing. I have no idea what it’s about but I know it’s bad. It’s tearing her apart.”

Gail’s cell phone rang. She fished it out of her jacket and looked at the number. Fisherman’s Cove. “Excuse me,” she said to Harriett. She turned away and pressed the connect button. “Hello?”

“Are you alone?” It was Venice, and there was urgency in her tone.

“No.”

“Oh.” Disappointment. “If you can extricate yourself from Jackie Mitchell, we have better leads for you to follow.”

“That’s not possible,” Gail spoke harshly, as if confronting a subordinate. She hoped that Venice would be able to read between the lines.

“Quickly, then,” Venice said. She relayed the news about the Georgens and the Cantrells. “We were thinking that it might be better to build from the bottom up instead of starting at the top.”

“I’ve got it,” Gail said. She clicked off, staying in character even as her mind raced for the best way to go. Fact was, she was already here. While a direct confrontation with the head of the snake would likely result in a fusillade of denials, it was sometimes helpful for an adversary to know that you knew they were up to no good.

On the other hand, you only got one shot at a first drink from the well. If Jackie Mitchell outmaneuvered Gail and got the upper hand, Mitchell could get the first shot at the Georgens and Cantrells, causing them to clam up forever.

Gail decided to play the hand she’d been dealt. “Sorry about that,” she said, turning back to Harriett. “What do you suspect the problem with Dr. Mitchell might be?”

“I have no idea.”

“Now who’s playing games?” Gail accused. “You engineered this opportunity to be alone with me. People who ‘have no idea’ don’t do that.”

Harriett took three steps over to the little sofa that sat along the wall opposite the elevator doors and sat down heavily. “I only screen the phone calls, you know? I don’t listen to them.”

Gail sensed that she was supposed to know what Harriett was talking about. “Except sometimes,” she helped.

Harriett tried to look wounded, but in reality looked like she’d been caught in the act.

“You brought it up, Ms. Burke,” Gail said.

Harriett inhaled deeply to prepare herself. “I’ve only done it a couple of times. When I thought that Dr. Mitchell might get taken advantage of. You can tell from the tone in some people’s voices. She can be so trusting sometimes. Naïve, even. That’s actually how she got involved with that boy. He swore to her that he was eighteen.”