Lincoln Rhyme: The Kill Room Part 39

"This intel's solid. Ras.h.i.+d is guilty as sin. We have a.s.sessments from Langley and the Mossad and the SIS."

"I just meant we don't know how much of the queue got leaked. Maybe it was just Moreno's order; maybe it was more, Ras.h.i.+d's included. His was next on the list, remember? His death'll make the news. Maybe that d.a.m.n prosecutor'll come after us for this one too. We're on thin ice here."

These were all obvious considerations but Metzger had the need inside his gut and, accordingly, was free of the Smoke.

He absolutely didn't want this relief, this sense of comfort, of freedom, to go away.

"And if we don't take him out, you know what Ras.h.i.+d's got planned for Texas or Oklahoma."

"We could call Langley and arrange a rendition."

"Kidnap him? And do what? We don't need information from him, Spencer. All we need from Ras.h.i.+d is no more Ras.h.i.+d."

Boston yielded. "All right. But what about the collateral damage risk? Firing a h.e.l.lfire into a residence with no visual reference?"

Metzger scrolled down the intel a.s.sessment until he found the surveillance report. Current as of ten minutes ago. "Safe house is empty, except for Ras.h.i.+d. The place's been under DEA and Mexican Federales surveillance for a week for suspected mules. n.o.body's gone inside until Ras.h.i.+d this morning. According to the intel, he'll be meeting the cartel man anytime now. Once that guy leaves, we'll blow the place to h.e.l.l."

CHAPTER 63.

AL-BARANI RAs.h.i.+D LOOKED OVER his shoulder a great deal.

Figuratively and literally.

The tall, balding forty-year-old, with a precise goatee, knew he was in danger-from the Mossad, the CIA and that New Yorkbased security outfit, NIOS. Probably some people in China too.

Not to mention more than a few fellow Muslims. He was on record as condemning the fundamentalists of his religion for their intellectual failings by blindly adhering to a medieval philosophy unsustainable in the twenty-first century. (He had also publicly excoriated moderates of the faith for their cowardice in protesting that they were misunderstood, that Islam was basically Presbyterianism with a different holy book. But they simply blogged insults; they weren't going to fatwa him.) Ras.h.i.+d wanted a new order, a complete reimagining of faith and society. If he had any model, it wasn't Zawahiri or Bin Laden. It would be a hybrid of Karl Marx and Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who happened to have attended his own school-the University of Michigan.

But as unpopular as he was, Ras.h.i.+d believed in his heart he was right. Remove the cancer and the world will right itself.

The metastasizing cells were, of course, the United States of America. From the subprime crisis, to Iraq, to the insulting carrot of foreign aid, to the racist diatribes of Christian preachers and politicians, to the deification of consumer goods, the country was a sea anchor on the progress of civilization. He'd left the country after a graduate degree in political science, never to return.

Yes, enemies were eager as wolves to get to him because of his views. Even those countries that didn't like America needed America.

But he felt more or less safe at the moment, presently in a sprawling ranch-style house in Reynosa, Mexico, as he awaited the arrival of an ally.

He couldn't say "friend," of course. His relations.h.i.+p with the slick individuals of the Matamoros Cartel was symbiotic but their motives diverged considerably. Ras.h.i.+d's was ideological, the war against American capitalism and society (and support for Israel, but that went without saying). The cartel's purpose was, in a way, the opposite, making vast sums of money from that very society. But its goals were basically the same. Get as many drugs as you can into the country. And kill those who want to stop you from doing that.

Sipping strong tea, he looked at his watch. One of the cartel bosses was sending his chief bomb maker to see Ras.h.i.+d within the hour. He would provide what Ras.h.i.+d needed to build a particularly smart device, which would, in two days, kill a DEA regional director in Brownsville, Texas, together with her family and however many others happened to be nearby at the picnic.

Ras.h.i.+d was presently sitting at a coffee table, bent over a pad of yellow paper, and clutching a mechanical pencil as he drew engineering diagrams for the IED.

Although Reynosa was a thoroughly unpleasant town, dusty, dun-colored and filled with small, sagging factories, this house was large and quite pleasant. The cartel had put some good money into maintaining it. It had decent air-conditioning, plenty of food and tea and bottled water, comfortable furniture and thick shades on all the windows. Yes, not a bad house at all.

Though occasionally noisy.

He walked to the back bedroom door and knocked, then opened it. One of the enforcers with the cartel, a heavyset unsmiling man named Norzagaray, nodded a greeting.

Ras.h.i.+d looked over the cartel's hostages: The husband and wife, both native Mexican and stocky, their teenage son and little girl sat on the floor, in front of a TV. The father's and wife's hands were bound with bell wire, loose enough so they could drink water and eat. Not so loose they could attack their kidnappers.

In Ras.h.i.+d's opinion, they should have bound the wife's more tightly. She was the danger; she had the rage. It was obvious as she comforted her daughter, a slim child whose head was crowned with dark, curly hair. The husband and boy were more frightened.

Ras.h.i.+d had been told by his contacts here that he could use the house but he would have to share it with these hostages, who'd been here for eight or nine days. The man's small business had been spending that time struggling to raise the two million dollars in ransom the drug lords had demanded-because of the man's defiance of the cartel.

Ras.h.i.+d said to Norzagaray, "Could you turn the volume down please?" A nod at the TV, on which a cartoon was playing.

Their guard did so.

"Thank you." He looked the family over carefully now, taking no pleasure in their terror. This was crime for profit; he didn't approve. He regarded the teenager and then a soccer ball in the corner. The colors were those of Club America, the pro team in Mexico City.

"You like football?"

"Yes."

"What do you play?"

"Midfield."

"I did too when I was your age." Ras.h.i.+d didn't smile. He never did but his voice was soft. He looked at them a moment more. Though they did not know it yet, Ras.h.i.+d had been told the negotiations were nearly complete and the family would be released tomorrow. Ras.h.i.+d was pleased at this. These people were not the enemy. The father wasn't working for an American company that was exploitative and amoral. He was just a small businessman who'd fallen on the wrong side of the cartel. Ras.h.i.+d wanted to rea.s.sure them that they would survive the ordeal. But this wasn't his concern.

He closed the door and returned to the diagrams he was working on. He reviewed them for long moments. And finally concluded: First, no one could possibly survive being in the proximity of the device they described. And second-he allowed himself the immodest thought-the drawings were as elegant as the finest zellige terra-cotta tiles, a cornerstone of Moroccan art.

CHAPTER 64.

LINCOLN RHYME WAS SAYING, "And the same evidence we thought exculpated Shales by placing him in New York at the time of the shooting now helps implicate him: the phone calls from his mobile to the South Cove Inn to verify when Moreno was checking in, the metadata that placed him at NIOS headquarters in New York at the time of the death. We'll need more, though. We need to place him at the joystick of the drone. UAV, excuse me, rookie. How can we do that?"

"Air traffic control in Florida and the Bahamas," Sachs said.

"Good."

Sachs called their federal liaison, Fred Dellray, with the request and had a lengthy conversation with him. Finally Sachs disconnected. "Fred's calling the FAA here and the Civil Aviation Department in Na.s.sau. But he gave me another idea." She was typing on her computer.

Rhyme couldn't see clearly. It appeared that she was examining a map. "Well," she whispered.

"What?" Rhyme wondered.

"Fred suggested we ought to try to get a look at the Kill Room itself."

"What?" Sellitto barked. "How?"

Google apparently.

Sachs smiled. She'd called up a satellite image of the block in which NIOS headquarters was located in downtown Manhattan. Behind the building itself was a parking lot, separated from the street with an impressive-looking security fence and overseen by a guard station. In the corner was a large rectangular structure, like a s.h.i.+pping container-the sort you see bolted to decks and cruising down highways behind tractor-trailer semis. Next to it a ten-foot antenna pointed skyward.

"That's the Ground Control Station, Fred told me. GCS. He said most of the UAVs are controlled from portable facilities like that."

"The Kill Room," Mel Cooper said.

"Perfect," Laurel said briskly to Sachs. "Print that out, if you would."

Rhyme could see Sachs bristle, hesitate and then with a thumb and finger-with a dot of dried blood behind the nail-tap hard on the keyboard. A printer began to exhale.

When the doc.u.ment was disgorged, Laurel slipped it from the tray and added it to her files.

Sachs's phone buzzed. "It's Fred again," she announced. She hit speaker.

Rhyme called, "Fred. Don't insult anybody."

"I can hear. Well, well, you all have yourself quite a case here. Good luck on this one. Hey, see any funny-lookin' airplanes hovering outside your windows? Might wanta think about closing the blinds."

This was not as funny as Dellray intended, Rhyme decided, given Barry Shales's skill at firing million-dollar bullets.

"Hokay, the radar situation. Sentcha screenshots. What we put together is the morning of May nine a small aircraft, no transponder, was tracked heading east over the Atlantic, south of Miami."

"Where Homestead air base is," Sellitto pointed out.

"Right you are. Now, the craft was on visual flight rules, no flight plan. Speed was very slow-about a hundred ten miles an hour. Which is typical drone speed. We all together on that?"

"With you, Fred. Keep going."

"Well, it's about a hundred eighty miles to Na.s.sau from Miami. Exactly one hour and fifty-two minutes later, ATC in Na.s.sau tracked a small aircraft, no transponder, ascend into radar range, about six hundred feet." Dellray paused. "And then it stopped."

"Stopped?"

"They thought it stalled. But it didn't drop off the screen."

"It was hovering," Rhyme said.

"My guess. They figured that with no transponder the plane was an ultralight-one of those homemade gizmos that sometimes just sit like birds in headwinds? It wasn't in controlled airs.p.a.ce so they didn't pay any more mind. The time was eleven oh four a.m."

"Moreno was shot at eleven sixteen," Sachs said.

"And at eleven eighteen it turned around and descended outta radar. Two hours and five minutes later, a small aircraft, no transponder, crossed into U.S. airs.p.a.ce and headed toward South Miami."

"That's our boy," Rhyme said. "Thanks, Fred."

"Gooood luck. And forget you ever knew me."

Click.

Wasn't conclusive but like all elements in a case it was a solid brick in the wall of establis.h.i.+ng a suspect's guilt.

Nance Laurel got a call. While someone else might have nodded or offered some facial clues as to the content she listened without expression; her powdered face was a mask. She disconnected. "There's an issue with another case of mine. I have to go interview a prisoner in detention. It shouldn't be long. I'd like to stay but I have to take care of this."

The prosecutor gathered up her purse and headed out the door.

Sachs too received a call. She listened and jotted a few notes.

Rhyme turned from her and was regarding the charts once again. "But I want more," he griped. "Something to prove that Shales was at the controls of the drone."

"Ask and ye shall receive." This, from Amelia Sachs.

Rhyme lifted an eyebrow.

She said, "We have a lead to the whistleblower. If anybody can place Barry Shales in the Kill Room on May ninth, it's him."

SACHS WAS PLEASED to report that Captain Myers's officers who'd been canva.s.sing the patrons of Java Hut when the whistleblower uploaded the STO had found some witnesses.

Her computer gave a bleat and she looked toward the screen. "Incoming," she said.

Sellitto gave a harsh laugh. "Not a good choice of words in this case, you don't mind."

She opened the attachment. "People buy a lot more with credit or debit cards nowadays. Even if the bill's only three, four dollars. Sure helps us, though. The canva.s.sers talked to everybody who charged something around one p.m. on the eleventh. Mostly a bust but one of them got a picture." She printed out the photo attachments. Not terrible, she decided, but hardly high-def mug shots. "Has to be our man."

She read the officer's memo. "'The photographer was a tourist from Ohio. Shooting pictures of his wife sitting across from him. You can see in the background a man, blurred-because he's turning away fast and raising his hand to cover his face. Asked the tourists if they got a better look at him. They didn't and other patrons and the baristas didn't pay any attention to him.'"

Rhyme looked at the picture. Two tables behind the smiling woman was the presumed whistleblower. White. Solidly built, in a blue suit, an odd color, just shy of navy. He wore a baseball cap-suspicious, given the business attire-but seemed to have light-colored hair. A big laptop sat open before him.

"That's him," Sachs said. "He's got an iBook." She'd downloaded a picture of every model.

The criminalist observed, "Suit doesn't fit well. It's cheap. And see the Splenda packets on the table, along with the stirrer? Confirms he's our man."

"Why?" Sellitto asked. "I use Splenda."

"Not the substance-the fact it's on the table. Most people add sugar or sweetener at the milk station and throw the empty packets out, and the stirrers too. So there's less mess at the table. He's taking his detritus with him. Didn't want to leave friction ridge evidence."

Most objects, even paper, retain very good fingerprints where food is served because of grease from the meals.

"Anything else about him?" Pulaski asked.

"You tell me, rookie."

The young officer said, "Look how he's holding his right hand, palm cupped upward? Maybe he was about to take a pill. Could be a headache, backache. Wait, look, there's a box. Is it? A box at the side of the table?"

It seemed that there was. Blue and gold.