Wrong Town: A Mark Landry Novel (34 page)

One hundred eighteen

Mark turned onto Chestnut Lane just after 1:00 a.m. But instead of taking his foot off the gas and letting gravity deliver him to the bottom of the hill as usual, he pushed the dark blue Ford Explorer as quickly as he could until he had reached Kenny’s driveway.

He knocked twice on the front door with his knuckles and reached for the knob. Before he could twist it, the door flew open. “Follow me,” Kenny said, turning around and heading to his office in the spare bedroom, where he dropped himself into the chair and started typing furiously. Mark stood behind him and scanned his setup. It did not seem very impressive.

“So this is your command center?” Mark asked.

“If you must know, this is connected to a hell of a lot more firepower in a climate-controlled room in the attic,” he replied, sensing the hint of sarcasm in his neighbor’s voice. “Give me another minute and then we can look behind the curtain.”

Mark pulled his smartphone from his pocket and checked for new messages. On the way out of Luci’s hospital room, he had given the number to the uniformed officer who was assigned to her as a security precaution. It was the same young officer who had briefly questioned Mark at the police station before Doc liberated him.

“Call me or text me if anything changes. If she asks about me, tell her I got called away by work but will be back as soon as I can, okay?” Mark had requested.

“No problem, sir. And here’s my number in case you need me for anything. Don’t hesitate.”

Kenny stopped typing for several moments and focused on a blizzard of numbers, letters, and symbols that decorated his monitor. He scribbled several notes on a small pad of paper and pointed to the wall opposite his workstation. “Mark, turn around and pull the curtain to the side, please. This will be easier for both of us if we use the big screen.”

Mark slowly opened the large black curtain, exposing a six-by-four-foot HD monitor.

“Hit the switch on the right side, please,” Kenny added.

“Done.”

“Then give me your attention over here for a minute.” Kenny spun around in his chair and started the briefing. “Okay. Here’s where we are. Earlier I helped Frank get from his front yard to his kitchen where we talked. To put it bluntly, he’s fucked.”

“How so?” Mark asked. 

“Let me back up. First, he said he was able to verify beyond any doubt that the guns used in the attack came from his bust last month. No question. Someone inside the bureau actually sold the guns to a criminal, who then slipped away in some kind of sting gone wrong. So Frank spent the day trying to find the guy they sold them to, which apparently included assaulting God knows how many people. Regardless, he was actually able to find the guy to whom the idiot at the bureau had sold the guns originally.”

“Seriously? And did he find out who that guy flipped them to?”

“Not exactly. By his own admission, Frank said things got pretty rough during the questioning. The guy repeated some gibberish a few times but Frank couldn’t make any sense of it. That’s when he lost his cool and unloaded on the guy until he was dead.”

“Get the fuck out of here, Kenny. Did Frank actually tell you that? Did he use those exact words?” Mark asked. “Are you assuming he killed the guy or did he come right out and tell you he killed him?”

Kenny grabbed two bottles of water from the refrigerator next to his desk and handed one to Mark. “He came right out and said it. He told me I was looking at a dead man because his DNA is all over the place so it’s just a matter of time before they come for him, and that his life was over. Those may not have been his exact words, but I believe I’ve captured the spirit of what he said pretty damn well. He was drunk as hell, beat up, and seemed to have his mind made up that it was all over. It wouldn’t surprise me if he just drinks himself to death.”

Mark took a swig of water and screwed the cap back onto the plastic bottle. “Okay. So how did you get from that to locating the fourth shooter?”

“Baba Ghassan’s in New Hampshire,” Kenny said. “That was the so-called gibberish Frank couldn’t make any sense of. But it’s not gibberish. It’s a location—a restaurant, actually. Baba Ghassan’s, which I imagine is supposed to be a takeoff on the Middle Eastern dish baba ghanoush, is less than an hour north of here in New Hampshire. A Lebanese immigrant named Ghassan Massoud owns it. Massoud moved to the U.S. from Beirut in the mid-eighties to get away from the civil war there. He became a citizen and has been here ever since. A couple of months ago, a relative of his, twenty-two-year-old Yasir Qureshi, arrived from Syria on a refugee visa and moved in with him. Here is what they both look like.”

Kenny pulled up U.S. Customs and Immigration photos of both men on his desktop computer.

“Hold on. I’m almost afraid to ask, but where are you getting your information from, Kenny?”

“Reliable sources, Mark. What does it matter?” he quipped.

“It matters. And if you’re accessing government information that you’re not authorized to access, it really matters. How can you be so casual about this, Kenny? You’re doing things that could get you put away for the rest of your life. Do you realize that?”

Kenny sat back, crossed his legs, and shook his head in disbelief. “I haven’t gotten to the best part yet, Mark. But let’s pause for a second, since you brought up this very important topic. You are so arrogant. You know that, Mark? You people run around the globe, shooting your way in and out of countries without giving a flying fuck about international law or sovereignty. You treat the world like it’s your own little playground where you get to make all the rules. Then you have the balls to stand there and lecture me and not even see the irony?”

Mark finished his water and threw it in the wastebasket in the corner of the room. “That’s different. I work a very specific mission and you don’t know what you’re talking about, Kenny.”

“Yeah, I know your mission. Find terrorists and kill them, right? The only problem with that is how we sometimes define terrorists and the lengths that you people are willing to go to kill them once they’re labeled as such! I’m not naïve, Mark. I know what kind of things you’ve done for God and country. But now I’ve found a terrorist who helped to shoot up our hometown and murder my father, and you’re looking down on me from your high horse lecturing me about ethics. I bet if we were in Berlin things might be different. Anything goes, right?”

Kenny’s breathing accelerated and his hands shook as he reached for his water. That last part about Berlin had been over the top and he knew it. He tried to hide his fear as both men stared into each other’s eyes. Landry nodded and his steely glare gave way to a peculiar smile. “Okay, then. Go on. Impress me.”

“Turn around, Mark.”

Landry pivoted to face the opposite wall behind him and was astonished at the glowing image on the big screen. He stepped forward to study it more closely and marveled at what Kenny had pieced together, all based on a few words that an experienced (albeit inebriated) field agent had mistaken for meaningless gibberish.

“This is a live aerial view of Ghassan Massoud’s home, taken from an unarmed MQ-1 Predator. We’ve had eyes on the objective for almost an hour, operating between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand feet.”

“Are you in direct control of the aircraft, Kenny? Or is someone else flying it and sending you the images?”

“I’m receiving the images, but I’m in contact with the person in direct control of the drone.”

“And whose drone is it?”

Kenny hesitated. “Honestly, I’m not one hundred percent sure. There were a number of choices, but I think this one belongs to the Air National Guard or maybe DEA. I called in some favors. This is actually my first drone jack. But I was told that whoever owns it will be looking at a continuous decoy feed and altered location until we give it back.”

“Drone jack? Is that what it’s called?” Mark asked. “So tell me why you think the fourth shooter is in that house.”

Kenny returned to his workstation and typed as he talked. “Thermal imaging suggests there’s only one person in the house. Right before I called you, we saw him exit the building and walk to the truck parked in the tree line. There’s something else next to the truck; judging by the size and shape, it’s another vehicle, but it’s covered with a tarp or something, so we aren’t sure. After that he went deep into the woods. When he returned, it looked like he was carrying an armful of firewood. But when we tightened up the shot, he had what appeared to be assault-style rifles. He put them inside the house, made a second trip to the woods, and returned with more similar-looking items. It’s definitely not Ghassan Massoud or the kid. I’ve been recording the video feed. The images aren’t perfect, but it’s probably good enough for you to make a positive ID or scratch him off the list. I’ll interrupt the live feed and play back the video whenever you’re ready.”

“I’m ready. Let’s see it.”

A blank screen replaced the live transmission for several seconds before the video playback began. The clip opened with a wide view of Ghassan’s cabin and zoomed in tighter as a man emerged from the front door, descended the steps, and paused. He scanned the area for several seconds, then purposefully marched across the open driveway.

“Freeze it,” said Mark. “That’s him.”

Kenny looked up at Mark from his keyboard. “There’s more, you know.”

“I know. And I want to see it. But I already know it’s him. Look at the image. Lean. Athletic. See how he moves? Calculated and confident. Somewhere between a swagger and a strut. It’s him. I’m ninety-nine percent sure, but when we factor in the assault rifles hidden in the woods and that this lead came directly from the last guy we know was in control of the weapons, it becomes one hundred. That’s the fourth shooter. Good work, Kenny.”

“I wish I could take all the credit, but I’ve had help. I had to pull a lot of strings and call in a bunch of favors. I would have preferred more time to take a few more security precautions on my end, but this was short notice so I pulled the trigger.”

Mark turned to look at his neighbor. “What about the Lebanese guy and the Syrian kid? What else do we know about them? Any idea where they are?”

“Neither appears on any watch lists. No criminal records. Not even parking tickets. As for their current locations, I was just waiting for that to come up when you arrived. Let me check.” Kenny sat down and entered a few keystrokes on his machine. “My guy is telling me that Ghassan Massoud used his credit card this afternoon at a gas station in Queens. Later on in the evening, he used the same card at a restaurant in Manhattan. That was just a few hours ago. He has a cell phone, but it hasn’t been turned on and connected to the grid in three days. A car registered to the kid, Yasir, is parked at the cabin but we haven’t seen him. No digital trail to follow on him. No bank accounts. I guess it’s possible that he’s in the house, but we haven’t gotten any thermal images from the house that suggest anything other than one occupant.”

“Yeah, but those are easy to trick,” offered Mark. “There could be half a dozen armed men in there, but if they have half a clue on how the technology works, they could easily mask their presence. Then again, from what I’ve personally seen and heard about the guys who hit Founders Field, they weren’t exactly sophisticated professionals, so there’s a good chance number four is the only one in the house.”

“Why do you suppose he was bringing the guns inside?” Kenny asked.

“Maybe he was worried about someone finding his stash. Or depending on how they’ve been stored, he may just want to wipe them down and lubricate them so they’re ready to go and less likely to malfunction when needed. Maybe he’s preparing for another attack. Any number of reasons. Does the cabin have a phone line or Internet connection you can tap? What about local police traffic? What else is going on up there right now?”

“There’s phone and Internet, but nobody’s using either. I’ll know the moment that changes. I have someone monitoring the local first responders up through the New Hampshire State Police and any elements of the federal government that may be active in the area. It’s quiet up there. No chatter whatsoever. He could be lying low for a little while or about to squeal rubber out of town. There’s no way to tell. What does your gut tell you, Mark?”

Mark buried his hands in his front pockets and paced to the window overlooking Kenny’s backyard. He pulled back the curtain, gazed at the full moon, and stood silently as Kenny waited patiently.

“The answer is obvious,” Mark began. “He’s preparing for another mission. That’s why he’s gathering the weapons. And maybe that’s why he ran from the Founders Field attack when the others stayed and died. Maybe he had another battle to get to. Whether the next attack is something complex that requires orchestration and collaboration or something as simple as driving into town and opening fire is anyone’s guess. One thing’s for sure—more people are going to die unless he’s stopped.”

Kenny stood up and joined Mark at the window. “Then who should we tell so they can go bring him in?”

“The attack on Founders Field started with a bomb. If he has more explosives, there’s a chance he’s rigged the cabin so he can blow it up if he feels threatened. If he’s smart, he’s scanning police frequencies for early notice. There’s a good chance he wouldn’t let himself be taken alive, which would deny us any intelligence we could have extracted during an interrogation. Cops and SWAT take time to assemble and have a huge footprint. He’d smell them coming. JTTF has better capabilities, but I’m reluctant to pass information to them right now for reasons I can’t go into. I don’t think we should pass this off to anybody.”