Lincoln Rhyme: The Kill Room Part 38

Pulaski said, "By the way, Lincoln, they're UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles. Not drones."

"Thank you for the correction. Accuracy is everything. You're a wealth of knowledge."

"Discovery Channel."

Rhyme laughed and continued, "It also reconciles why Mychal Poitier's divers didn't find any spent bra.s.s. It's out to sea. Or maybe the drone retains the spent sh.e.l.ls. Good, good. We're moving ahead."

Cooper said, "And he was a lot closer than two thousand yards. That's why the high velocity of the bullet."

Rhyme said, "I'd guess the UAV couldn't've been any more than two or three hundred yards out, to make an accurate shot like that. It'd be easy for people on the ground to miss it. There would have been camouflage-just like with our chameleons. And the engine would've been small-two-stroke, remember. With a m.u.f.fler you'd never hear it."

"It launched from Walker's airstrip in New Jersey?" Pulaski asked.

Rhyme shook his head. "The airstrip's just for testing the drones, I'm sure. NIOS would launch from a military base and as close to the Bahamas as possible."

Laurel dug through her notes. "There's a NIOS office near Miami." She looked up. "Next to Homestead Air Reserve Base."

Sachs tapped the brochure. "Walker has an office near there. Probably for service and support."

Laurel's crisp voice then added, "And you recall what Lincoln said earlier?" She was speaking to them all.

"Yep," Sellitto said, compulsively stirring his coffee, as if that would make it sweeter; he'd added only half a packet of sugar. "We don't need conspiracy anymore. Barry Shales was in New York City when he pulled the trigger. That means the crime's now murder two. And Metzger's an accessory."

"Very good, Detective, that's correct," Laurel said as if she were a fifth-grade teacher praising a student in cla.s.s.

CHAPTER 62.

SHREVE METZGER TILTED HIS HEAD back so the lower lens of his gla.s.ses brought the words on his magic phone better into focus.

Budgetary meetings proceeding apace. Much back-and-forth. Resolution tomorrow. Can't tell which way the wind is blowing.

He thought to the Wizard, And what the h.e.l.l am I supposed to do with this bit of f.u.c.king non-information? Get my resume in order or not? Tell everybody here that they're about to be punished for being patriots and saying no to the evil that wants to destroy the greatest country on earth? Or not?

Sometimes the Smoke could be light, irritating. Sometimes it could be that inky ma.s.s of cloud, the sort you see rising from plane crashes and chemical plant explosions.

He digitally shredded the message and stalked downstairs to the coffee shop, bought a latte for himself and a soy-laced mochaccino for Ruth. He returned and set hers on her desk, between pictures of soldier husband one and soldier husband two.

"Thank you," the woman said and turned her stunning blue eyes on him. The corners crinkled with a smile. Even in her advanced decade Ruth was attractive in the broadest sense of the word. Metzger did not believe in souls or spirits but, if he did, that would be the part of Ruth that so appealed.

Maybe you could just say she had a good heart.

And here she is working for someone like me...

He brushed aside the Smokey cynicism.

"The appointment went okay," she told him.

Metzger replied, "I was confident. I knew it would. Could you have Spencer come in, please?"

Stepping into his office, he dropped into his chair, sipped the coffee, angry at what he felt was the excessive heat radiating through the cardboard. This reminded him of another incident: A street vendor selling him coffee had been rude. He still fantasized about finding the man's stand and ramming it with his car. The incident was three years ago.

Can't tell which way the wind is blowing.

He blew on the coffee-Smoke exhaling, he imagined.

Let it go.

He began checking emails, extracted from the rabbit hole of encryption. One was troubling: Some disturbing news about the Moreno investigation, a setback. Curiously this just exhausted him, didn't infuriate.

A knock on the jamb. Spencer Boston entered and sat.

"What've you got on our whistleblower?" Metzger asked without a greeting.

"Looks like the first round of polygraphs is negative. That was people actually signing off on or reviewing the STO. There are still hundreds who might've slipped into an office somewhere and gotten their hands on a copy."

"So all the senior people in the command are clear?"

"Right. Here and at the centers."

NIOS had three UAV command centers: Pendleton in California, Fort Hood in Texas and Homestead in Florida. They all would have received a copy of the Moreno STO, even though the UAV launched from Homestead.

"Oh," Boston said. "I pa.s.sed too, by the way."

Metzger gave a smile. "Didn't occur to me." It truthfully hadn't.

"What's good for the a.s.set is good for the agent."

Metzger asked, "And Was.h.i.+ngton?"

At least a dozen people down in the nation's capital knew about the STO. Including, of course, key members of the White House staff.

"That's harder. They're resisting." Boston asked, "Where are they now in the investigation, the cops?"

Metzger felt the Smoke arising. "Apparently that Rhyme managed to get down to the Bahamas after all." He nodded at his phone where certain emails used to reside. "The f.u.c.king sand didn't deter him as much as we'd hoped."

"What?" Boston's eyes, normally shaded by sagging lids, grew wide.

Metzger said judiciously, "There was an accident, it seems. But it didn't stop him."

"An accident?" Boston asked, looking at him closely.

"That's right, Spencer, an accident. And he's back here, going gangbusters. That woman too."

"The prosecutor?"

"Well, yes, her. But I meant that Detective Sachs. She's unstoppable."

"Jesus."

Though his present plans would, in fact, stop her quite efficiently.

Laurel too.

Well, yes, her...

Boston's concern was evident and the display angered Metzger. He said dismissingly, "I can't imagine Rhyme found anything. The crime scene was a week old, and how competent could the police down there be?"

The memory of the coffee vendor came back, immediate and stark. Instead of ramming the stand, Metzger had thought about pouring hot coffee on himself and calling the police, saying the vendor did it and having him arrested.

The Smoke made you unreasonable.

Boston intruded on the memory. "Do you think you ought to give anybody else a heads-up?"

Heads-up. Metzger hated that expression. When you a.n.a.lyze it, the phrase could only mean that you should glance up in time to say a prayer before something large crushed you to death. A better expression would be "eyes-forward."

"Not at this time."

He looked up and he noted Ruth standing in the doorway.

Why the h.e.l.l hadn't he closed the door? "Yes?"

"Shreve. It's Operations."

A flas.h.i.+ng red LED light on Metzger's phone console.

He hadn't noticed it.

What now?

He held up an index finger to Spencer Boston and answered. "Metzger here."

"Sir, we have Ras.h.i.+d." The OD was younger even than Metzger and his voice revealed that.

Suddenly the Smoke vanished. And so did Nance Laurel, Lincoln Rhyme and virtually every other blot on his life. Ras.h.i.+d was the next man in the Special Task Order queue, after Moreno. Metzger had been after him for a very long time. "Where?"

"He's in Mexico."

"So that's his plan. The p.r.i.c.k got closer than we thought."

"Slippery, sir. Yes. He's in a temporary location, a safe house the Matamoros Cartel has in Reynosa. We have a short window. Should I forward details to the GCS and Texas Center?"

"Yes."

The operations director asked, "Sir, are you aware that the STO has been modified in Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"In what regard?" he asked, troubled.

"The original order provided for minimizing collateral damage but it didn't prohibit CD. This one does. Approval is rescinded if anyone else present is a casualty, even wounded."

Rescinded...

Which means that if anybody is killed with Ras.h.i.+d, even al-Qaeda's second-in-command about to push a nuclear launch b.u.t.ton, I've acted outside the scope of my authority.

And I'm f.u.c.ked.

It didn't matter that a pure a.s.shole died and a thousand innocent people were saved.

Maybe this was part of the "budgetary" meetings.

"Sir?"

"Understood."

He disconnected and told Boston the news. "Ras.h.i.+d? I thought that son of a b.i.t.c.h was going to hide out in San Salvador till the attack. He paid off members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang-aka the MS-13s-for protection. Had some place in District Six, near Soyapango. If you want to get lost to the world, that's the place to do it."

n.o.body knew Central America like Spencer Boston.

A flag arose on his computer. Metzger opened his encrypted emails and read the new STO there, the death warrant for al-Barani Ras.h.i.+d, suitably modified. He read it again and added his electronic signature and PIN number, approving the kill.

The man was, like Moreno, a U.S.-born expatriate, who'd been living in northern Africa and the Gulf states until a few months ago.

He'd been on a watch list for several years but only under informal surveillance, not in any of the active-risk books. He'd never done anything overt that could be proven. But he was as vehemently anti-American as Moreno. And he too had been seen in the company of groups that were actively engaged in terrorist actions.

Metzger scrolled through the intelligence a.n.a.lysis accompanying the revised STO, explaining to Boston the details. Ras.h.i.+d was in the undistinguished town of Reynosa, Mexico, on the Texas border. The U.S. intelligence a.s.sets NIOS was using down there believed Ras.h.i.+d was in town to meet with a senior man in northeastern Mexico's biggest cartel. Terrorists had taken to working closely with the cartels for two reasons: to encourage drug flow into America, which supported their ideology of eroding Western society and inst.i.tutions, and because the cartels were incredibly well equipped.

"We'll have him handle it?"

"Of course." Him. Bruns, that is, Barry Shales. He was the best in the stable. Metzger texted him now and ordered him to report to the Kill Room.

Metzger spun the computer and together he and Boston studied the images, both on-the-ground surveillance and satellite. The safe house in Reynosa was a dusty one-story ranch structure, good-sized, with weathered tan paint and bright green trim. It squatted in the middle of a sandy one-acre lot. All the windows were shaded and barred. The car, if there was one, would be tucked away in the garage.

Metzger a.s.sessed the situation. "We'll have to go with a missile. No visuals to use LRR."

The Long-Range Rifle program, in which a specially built sniper gun was mounted into a drone, had been Metzger's brainchild. LRR was the centerpiece of NIOS. The arrangement served two purposes. It drastically minimized the risk of innocent deaths, which nearly always happened with missiles. And it gave Metzger the chance to kill a lot more enemies; you had to be judicious about launching missiles and there was never much doubt after the fact where the h.e.l.lfire had come from: the U.S. military, CIA or other intelligence service. But a single rifle shot? The shooter could be anybody. Plant a few references to a gunman working for an opposing political party, a terrorist group, or-say-a South American cartel, and the local authorities and the press would tend not to look elsewhere. The victim could even have been shot by a jealous spouse.

But he'd known from the beginning that LRR drones wouldn't always work. For Ras.h.i.+d, with no visible target the only option was a missile, with its twenty-pound high-explosive warhead.

Boston's long face was aimed out the window. He brushed his white hair absently with his fingers and played with a stray thread escaping from a cuff b.u.t.ton. Metzger wondered why he always wore a jacket in the office.

"What, Spencer?"

"Is this a good time for another STO? With the Moreno fallout?"