Immune (6 page)

Mark set down the book and stood up. "What is it?"

"Promise."

"Okay, I promise." Mark folded his arms expectantly.

Jennifer paused before answering. "I've been out jogging."

Mark's snort of laughter brought an angry look to his twin's face.

"I have been," Jennifer snapped.

"Really? You've never jogged a day in your life, much less in the middle of the night."

"I'm worried about my figure?"

"You're kidding, right?"

Jennifer's scowl deepened. "Mark, you better not laugh. Is it that unbelievable?"

"Well, besides the fact you have never cared about boys, you're already skinny."

"That's just it. I don't want to be skinny. I want my legs to look a little more defined. Like Heather's."

Jennifer could not have surprised Mark more if she had slapped him in the face.

“Like Heather? Since when have you wanted to look like Heather?”

“I didn’t say I wanted to look like her. I just want to look a little better.”

“Whatever you say.”

"You'll remember your promise?"

"My lips are sealed. After all, how would it look if it got out that my sister is normal?"

The scowl faded from Jennifer's face. "Thanks."

As she made her way up the stairs, Mark marveled at the fact that she had not noticed his late-night reading binge. Oh well. Mark, Jennifer, and Heather had all been acting a bit strangely lately. If his sister had decided to start exercising, it was hardly weirder than Mark becoming a speed-reader.

Heather was the one who had been worrying him. Her claim that she couldn't remember her dreams bothered him. Mark didn't believe that for a second. Heather didn't want to remember them. Something about the dreams was scaring her so badly that she was suppressing them.

Mark's heart ached at the thought of all that Heather had recently been through. As badly as he wanted to protect her, to make her feel safe, this was something that was beyond him. Since they had found the Second Ship, her premonitions had been uncannily accurate. The thought that these dreams might be another premonition scared the crap out of him.

Ignoring the sudden chill that had crept into the room with Jennifer, Mark resumed his seat in his father's chair. But it was a long while before he regained his former concentration.

"Sergeant Pino?" The redheaded FBI man wound his way through the metal-legged tables in the Pueblo Diner, careful to avoid brushing his dark slacks against the table edges, as if he feared what Rosita might have missed with the wipe-down rag.

Sergeant Jim “Tall Bear” Pino leaned back from the counter, ignoring the proffered hand. His eyes swept over the federal agent in a manner that communicated his annoyance. The agent wore shiny black shoes, somewhat dulled by a thin coating of parking lot dust, dark suit pants, but no jacket. His white shirt had sleeves rolled up to the elbows, intended to show he was willing to get his hands dirty. Tall Bear had seen the type before. An asshole.

"My name is Special Agent Sullivan," the agent said, awkwardly withdrawing his hand and sliding onto a stool at the counter next to Tall Bear.

Tall Bear took a sip of coffee, noting that it was well past time for Rosita to brew a new pot, the dark contents having taken on the awful burnt flavor so adored by all those white yuppies in their latte joints.

"That's nice."

Agent Sullivan's fake smile melted from his face. "I want to ask you some questions."

"Fire away."

"Can we go somewhere more private?"

Tall Bear glanced around the nearly empty diner, shrugged, then reached into his pocket for change. Tossing seventy-five cents on the counter, he led the way out the door, his worn cowboy boots leaving clear imprints in the dust of the parking lot.

Walking around the side of the diner, Tall Bear stopped by his battered Jeep Cherokee squad car. He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a small can of Copenhagen. Tapping it twice against his wrist to settle the tobacco, he twisted off the lid and was rewarded with the familiar pungent smell.

Only when he had finished packing a large pinch firmly into his cheek did he glance up at the FBI man. The sight of the fading wrinkle of repulsion on Agent Sullivan's face gave Tall Bear his first enjoyable moment of the day.

"Well, here we are," Tall Bear said, indicating that the empty dirt parking lot was as private as it was going to get.

Agent Sullivan's eyes acquired an angry glint. "Fine. I'll get started then."

"Please do."

"I'm here to find out what you were doing at the murder scene on Highway 502 before the proper authorities arrived."

Tall Bear adjusted the brim of his hat, enjoying the fact that the New Mexico sun had already brought a sheen of sweat to the face and neck of the federal agent. The tribal policeman had been anticipating a visit like this since the night of the murders.

The only odd thing was that he hadn't already been visited by New Mexico state authorities. If there was one thing that pissed off the New Mexico attorney general's office, it was tribal policemen getting involved with anything on public highways, even if they passed through tribal lands.

Tall Bear spat a thin jet of tobacco between his teeth, hitting the dust close enough to Agent Sullivan's feet to cause the man to glance down. A splatter check.

"Just looking for survivors."

"You know you're required to wait for official permission before getting involved in a crime scene outside your jurisdiction."

"I thought it was an accident scene."

Agent Sullivan frowned, wiping sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. Already, twin damp spots darkened the white shirt at his underarms.

"You didn't call when you saw the murder victims?"

"I told you. I was looking for survivors."

"They had their heads cut off."

"Yeah. But there might have been others."

"Bullshit. You should have made a call as soon as you saw what went down."

"Look, I'm just a tribal cop. We don't get the big-city training."

Agent Sullivan's Irish face had taken on a shade of red too deep to be attributable solely to the high desert sun. He leaned in close.

"Don't fuck with me, Sergeant Pino. This case is under federal jurisdiction, and if I want to, I can get a search warrant that will let me tear your tribal police station apart, along with your house."

Tall Bear spit again, this time sending the brown stream much closer to the FBI agent's foot. "You mean my hogan."

Agent Sullivan nodded. "One way or another, you will cooperate."

As the agent turned and walked angrily away, Sergeant Pino called after him. "Bring a four-wheel drive. It's a ways back on the res."

Vice President Gordon didn’t like Garfield Kromly. The old CIA trainer was a uniquely dislikable man, which was precisely the reason why Kromly had been put in charge of new field operatives instead of rising through the ranks. Unlike the military, the CIA had a place for people who would rise no higher than their current station. Kromly might suck at kissing ass, but he was very, very good at everything else.

Besides Kromly, two others sat at the briefing table across from the vice president: Bert Paralto and Bridget Dunn, both senior NSA staffers who had worked closely with Jonathan Riles.

George Gordon leaned back in his chair. “Okay, Kromly. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Kromly clicked a button on the remote control and a list of names appeared on the flat-panel display at the end of the table.

“As you requested, sir, this is a list of all the operatives capable of pulling off the Los Alamos truck hit. On the left is a list of contract mercenaries who could have been in the service of Jonathan Riles, before his unfortunate demise.”

“In other words, you haven’t been able to track down those people’s recent activities,” said Gordon.

“Precisely.”

“And the right column?”

“That’s a list of field operatives who were reported killed in the last five years but we don’t have a body for.”

“Show them to us.”

Kromly pressed another button on the remote and the photograph of a man replaced the list on screen. For the next hour and a half, he presented the photographs, accompanied by a brief biographical description of each. And after each photograph the two NSA people would shake their heads. They had never seen a single person on the live list.

The dead list presented problems. The files of several people on that list contained no photographs.

Having exhausted their usefulness, the vice president released the NSA staffers before turning his attention back to Kromly.

“I want pictures of everyone.”

“We have people working on it.”

George Gordon rose to leave, then looked back at Kromly.

“Jonathan Riles was the best I ever knew at picking his team. Worst-case scenario, who on that list would give us the most trouble?”

Kromly hesitated briefly but did not glance at the list to answer. “No question. That would be the Ripper.”

“I don’t recall that name on the list.”

“Real name’s Jack Gregory. Killed by Al Qaeda in Pakistan in two thousand two.”

“You know that for sure?”

“We don’t have his body.”

“I want a picture.”

As the vice president turned back toward the door, Kromly’s voice stopped him.

“Sir, I hope your intuition is wrong.”

“And why is that?”

“Best to let the nightmare sleep.”

Freddy Hagerman stared out his second-floor window, in what should have been his spare bedroom but was now his home office, watching the first drops from the approaching storm splatter on his driveway. Christ, what a dump. Well, what could he expect? He was a forty-six-year-old, three-time divorcee, ex
New York Times
reporter who now tried to meet his alimony, child support, and rent digging up gossip for the
Kansas City Star
. Funny how the dreams of his youth had faded. And as much as he loved New York, the cost of living had driven him to the Midwest.

Why they called this the Midwest was a mystery. Mid-dead-center would have been more appropriate since the exact center of the country lay near Salinas, Kansas, a good couple of hours to the west of where he now stood. Didn’t really matter. The Mid-fucking-west was where he was stuck.

When the UPS truck pulled into his driveway, Freddy almost didn’t answer the door. Anything someone thought important enough to send to him via a special carrier meant trouble. No doubt one of his ex-wives’ attorneys had found some way to dig deeper into Freddy’s pockets. Legal paperwork was something he expected, things being the way they were.

There was no avoiding it though. If he didn’t answer the door today, they would just come back the next day and the next, finally resorting to delivery by an officer of the law. Best to just get it over with.

As he opened the door, the UPS man handed him a package roughly the size of a shoe box before having him sign his name on the computerized clipboard, which would immediately uplink the delivery status to the World Wide Web. The damn attorneys would probably be smiling before the truck was out of his driveway. Wasn’t technology grand?

Freddy tossed the box on the coffee table in preparation for making his way back upstairs, but it missed. The package caught the edge of the table and then tumbled to the floor. Freddy paused. The sound it made as it bounced off the floor wasn’t right. Certainly not a sound you would expect from a box stuffed with legal forms and documents. And despite that he had been demoted to the role of backwater gossip columnist, Freddy had once been an investigative reporter with instincts second to none. The only thing that had kept him from the acclaim he had thought himself destined to receive was his piss-poor judgment in women. Thrust a couple of nice tits in his face and he thought he was in love. He should have been an ass man.

When he bent down to retrieve the package, Freddy felt the contents shift. Definitely not packed by any legal office. Eschewing the couch, Freddy moved to the kitchen table where the lighting was better. The box was wrapped in plain brown paper. The “From” label on the shipping slip was so sloppily printed that he couldn’t make it out, although his name and address on the “To” label were clearly legible.

Freddy turned the box over, carefully examining every crease and fold in the wrapping. Absolutely nothing unusual about it. So why was he suddenly as nervous as a kitten?

Taking out his pocketknife, Freddy slipped the blade under a fold, slicing a straight, clean cut along the corners of the paper that covered the box. As he pulled the wrapping away, he saw that it did indeed cover a shoe box. Nike. With another couple quick slices, he severed the tape that secured the lid to the shoe box.