Lincoln Rhyme: The Kill Room Part 56

Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, along with Metzger and the comspec, were in the outer office of NIOS's Ground Control Station trailer, on Rector Street in lower Manhattan. In the parking lot.

Rhyme squinted at the bits of wood and plastic and rocking sheen of oil, which had until thirty seconds ago been the 110-foot Dominican cargo s.h.i.+p that Robert Moreno's friend, Henry Cross, aka Enrico Cruz, had guided toward the Miami Rover, the American Petroleum Drilling and Refining oil rig off the coast of Florida.

The comspec touched her earphones. "Reports of a second detonation, underwater, Director. About eight or nine hundred feet depth."

A moment later, they could see on the high-resolution monitor a slight bubbling up of the water on the surface. That was all. Rhyme supposed that however large the second bomb had been, intended to destroy the rig's wellhead, he guessed, so much water had quite a mitigating effect.

Rhyme looked through the gla.s.s wall dividing the trailer in half: the Kill Room of the GCS. He noted in the dim light the man who had just caused the devastation-and saved the lives of the people on board the rig, as well as much of the east coast of Florida.

Oblivious to those observing him, Barry Shales was at the drone operations station. To Rhyme it seemed like a freestanding airplane c.o.c.kpit. Shales was sitting forward, apparently quite relaxed, in a comfortable tan leather chair, facing five flat-screen monitors.

The NIOS officer's hands gripped joysticks, though he would occasionally twist or tap one of the other hundred or so k.n.o.bs, dials, switches and computer keys.

Rhyme noted that somebody had affixed a seat belt to the chair. It dangled to the floor unlatched. A joke, surely.

Shales was alone in the dim room, which was soundproofed, it seemed, presumably so that he wouldn't be distracted by noises from a.s.sociates-or visitors like Rhyme and Sachs today. Delivering deadly messages from on high undoubtedly required supreme concentration.

The comspec, who also had a live link to the American Petroleum security people on board the oil rig, tapped b.u.t.tons herself, asked some questions and announced to Metzger, Rhyme and Sachs, "Confirm no damage to Miami Rover or blowout preventer. No injuries, except a few earaches."

Not unexpected when a ma.s.sive fertilizer bomb detonates a half mile from you.

As he'd been reviewing the evidence a half hour ago, Rhyme had suddenly realized that some things didn't add up. He'd made a half dozen calls and deduced that an attack might be imminent. He'd contacted Metzger. Feverish debate in Was.h.i.+ngton and at NIOS ensued. Scrambling air force fighters required too much authorization from the Pentagon on up; hours would be wasted getting the approval.

Metzger, of course, had a solution. He'd appealed to Barry Shales, who was en route to headquarters anyway to collect his personal belongings-Metzger explained that the pilot had decided to leave NIOS.

Given the horrific consequences if the pending attack was successful and the approaching deadline-a matter of minutes-the former air force officer had reluctantly agreed to help. He'd flown the drone from Homestead to a spot just over the cargo s.h.i.+p and hovered. The s.h.i.+p was apparently abandoned; they'd seen the crew get into a speedboat and flee. When the radio hails, ordering the cargo s.h.i.+p to come about, were ignored, Shales had launched a h.e.l.lfire, which struck the forward hold, where Rhyme speculated the fertilizer bomb had been placed.

Bull's-eye.

Shales was now turning the drone in a different direction and began following the small boat that contained the crew, who had abandoned the vessel twenty minutes earlier. Into view on the monitor came the black, long-nosed speedboat, cras.h.i.+ng over the waves away from the rig and the explosion.

Rhyme heard Barry Shales's voice over a ceiling-mounted speaker. "UAV Four Eight One to Florida Center. I've got secondary target in range and acquiring lock. Distance from target eighteen hundred yards."

"Copy, Four Eight One. Close DFT to one thousand yards."

"Roger, Florida Center. Four Eight One."

On the monitor, Rhyme could see Henry Cross and the sailors who'd abandoned the vessel and were speeding away to safety. You couldn't quite catch the facial expressions but their body language suggested confusion and concern. They wouldn't have heard the drone or seen the missile, most likely, and would think that some malfunction in the bomb had caused it to detonate prematurely. Perhaps they were thinking, Lord, that could've happened while we were on board.

"Four Eight One to Florida Center. I'm DFT one thousand. Locked on secondary vessel. At their speed they'll be under cover of Harrogate Cay in ten minutes. Please advise."

"Roger. We're hailing now on general frequencies. No response yet."

Shales replied evenly, "Copy. Four Eight One."

Rhyme now glanced at Sachs, whose face revealed the concern he himself felt. Were they about to witness the summary execution of six people?

They'd been caught in an act of terrorism. But that risk had been neutralized. Besides, Rhyme now thought, were they all terrorists? What if one or two were innocent sailors that had no idea what the cargo and mission were?

Suddenly the conflict between Shreve Metzger and Nance Laurel came into stark, wrenching focus.

"Four Eight One, this is Florida Center. No response to the hail. Payload launch is authorized."

Rhyme could see Barry Shales stiffen.

He sat absolutely still for a moment and reached forward, flipped up the cover of a b.u.t.ton on a panel in front of him.

Shreve Metzger said into a stalk mike on the desk in front of him, "Barry. Fire the rifle across their bow."

Over the speaker Shales said, "UAV Four Eight One to Florida Center. Negative on payload launch. Switching to LRR mode."

"Copy, Four Eight One."

In the Kill Room, Barry Shales juggled a joystick and squinted at the video image of the speeding s.h.i.+p. He touched a black panel in front of him. A brief delay and, in eerie silence, three sequential plumes of water shot into the air a few feet in front of the speeding boat.

The slim vessel kept going, though everyone on board was looking around. Several of the sailors seemed very young, no more than teenagers.

"Florida Center to Four Eight One. We copy no change in target velocity. Payload launch is still authorized."

"Copy. Four Eight One."

Nothing happened for a moment. But then, with a lurch, the speedboat slowed and stopped in the water. Two of the sailors were pointing to the sky, nowhere near the camera, though. They couldn't see the drone but they all now understood where their enemy was.

Almost in unison they raised their hands.

What followed was comical. The water was choppy and the boat small. They were trying to maintain balance but afraid if they lowered their arms, death from on high would find them. Two fell over and scrabbled quickly to their feet, shooting their hands into the air. They seemed like drunks trying to dance.

"Florida Center to UAV Four Eight One. Copy surrender. Navy advises Cyclone-cla.s.s patrol s.h.i.+p, the Firebrand, one mile away, making thirty knots. Keep secondary target dead in the water until it arrives."

"Copy. Four Eight One."

CHAPTER 97.

BARRY SHALES CLOSED THE DOOR to the Kill Room and, ignoring Shreve Metzger, walked to Rhyme and Sachs. He nodded.

The policewoman told him what a good job he'd done at the commands of the drone. "Sorry, I mean UAV."

"Yes, ma'am," he said unemotionally, his bright blue eyes averted. Some of this reserve was perhaps because he was facing two people who'd intended to hang a murder charge on him. On reflection, though, Rhyme thought not. He simply seemed to be a very private person.

Maybe when you have his particular skill you're mentally and emotionally in a different place much of the time.

Shales then turned to Rhyme. "We had to move pretty fast, sir. I never got the chance to ask how you figured it out-that there was going to be an attack on the rig, I mean."

The criminalist said, "There was some evidence unaccounted for."

"Oh, that's right, sir. You're the evidence tsar, someone was saying."

Rhyme decided he liked that pithy phrase quite a bit. He'd remember it. "Specifically paraffin with a branched-chain molecule, an aromatic, a cycloalkane...oh, and some alkenes."

Shales blinked twice.

"Or to put it in more common parlance: crude oil."

"Crude oil?"

"Exactly. Trace amounts were found on Moreno's and his guard's shoes and clothes. They had to pick that up at some point before your attack on May ninth when they were out of the South Cove Inn, at meetings. Now, I didn't think much of it-there are some refineries and oil storage facilities in the Bahamas. But then I realized something else: The morning he died Moreno met with some businesspeople about starting up transportation and agriculture operations there as part of his Local Empowerment Movement. But we'd also learned that fertilizer, diesel oil and nitromethane had been s.h.i.+pped weeks ago to his LEM companies. If those companies hadn't even been formed yet, why buy the chemicals?"

"You put together crude oil and possible bomb."

"We'd known about the rig from the initial intelligence about Moreno's plans for May tenth. Since Moreno was so vocal against American Petroleum Drilling maybe the company was a target, after all-for a real attack, not just a protest. I think on Sunday or Monday he went to meet rig workers-maybe to get up-to-date information about security. Oh, and there was one other thing that didn't make sense. Sachs here figured that out."

She said, "When Moreno came to New York earlier in the month, the one meeting he had that he didn't invite his interpreter to was with Henry Cross at the Cla.s.srooms for the Americas Foundation. Why not? Most of his meetings were innocent-Moreno wouldn't let her interpret for him if the meeting was about something illegal. But what about the Cross meeting? If it was innocent, what was wrong with Lydia Foster being here, even if she didn't have to interpret? Which told me maybe it wasn't so innocent. And Cross told me about this mysterious blue jet that Moreno kept seeing. Well, we couldn't find anything about any blue jets with travel patterns that seemed to match Moreno's. That was the specific sort of thing somebody would tell a cop to lead them off."

Rhyme picked up again: "Now, Cla.s.srooms for the Americas had offices in Nicaragua-which is where the diesel fuel, fertilizer and nitromethane were s.h.i.+pped from. There was too much to be coincidental. We looked into Cross and found out that he was really Cruz and that he and Moreno had a history together. It was Cruz's brother who was Moreno's best friend, killed in Panama during the invasion. That's what turned him against the United States. We datamined Cruz's travel records and credit cards and found he left New York for Na.s.sau yesterday.

"My contact at the Bahamian police found that he and Moreno had chartered a cargo s.h.i.+p a month ago. It left port this morning. The police raided a warehouse where the s.h.i.+p had been docked and found traces of the explosive chemicals. That was good enough for me. I called Shreve. He called you."

"So, Moreno wasn't innocent after all," Shales whispered, glancing at Metzger.

Sachs said, "No. You took out a bad guy, Airman."

The officer looked at his boss. The expression in his blue eyes was complex. And conflicted. One way to read it was: You were right, Shreve. You were right.

Rhyme added, "And this wasn't going to be his only project." He told both men about the intercept Nance Laurel had read to them in their first meeting on Monday.

I have a lot more messages like this one planned...

"Barry," Metzger said. "I'm going to see our visitors out. Then, could I talk to you in my office? Please."

A pause worthy of Nance Laurel. Finally the airman nodded.

Metzger escorted them to the exit, across the parking lot, thanked them warmly.

Outside the security gate, Rhyme took the accessible cutaway in the sidewalk to cross the street to where the van waited, Thom at the wheel. Sachs stepped off the curb. As she did, Rhyme saw her wince, gasp slightly in pain.

She offered a furtive glance his way, as if to see if he'd caught her frown, and then looked ahead quickly.

This cut him. It was as if she'd just lied to him.

And he lied right back; he pretended he hadn't noticed.

Across the street they continued to the van for a moment. Then Rhyme braked the Merits chair to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

She turned.

"What is it, Rhyme?"

"Sachs, there's something we need to talk about."

CHAPTER 98.

THE PHONE RANG ON SCHEDULE.

Whatever else you could say about him, the Wizard was prompt.

Shreve Metzger, at his desk in a somewhat deserted NIOS this Sat.u.r.day afternoon, looked at the blinking light of his magic red phone and listened attentively to the trill of the ringer, like a bird, he'd decided. He debated about not picking up.

And never taking a call from the man ever again.

"Metzger here."

"Shreve! How are you doing? Heard about those interesting developments up there, I understand. Long Island. I used to belong to Meadowbrook, did you know that? You don't golf, do you?"

"No."

And squashed a "sir" dead.

The voice grew wizardly once again, low, raspy: "We've been talking about charges against Spencer."

Metzger replied, "We could make a case work...if we wanted to." He removed his bland gla.s.ses, polished the lenses and replaced them. Unlike in the United Kingdom, it was not necessarily a crime to release cla.s.sified material in this country, unless you were spying for another nation.

"Yes, well, we'll have to consider our priorities, of course."

The Wizard was referring undoubtedly to the public relations issues. It might make more sense not to pursue the matter, lest the press get their hands on the story.

Yes, well...

Metzger took out the nail clippers. But there was nothing left to clip. He spun them absently on his desktop. Put them back.

"And good job with that incident in Florida. Interesting that that bad intel turned good. Like magic. David Copperfield, Houdini."

"They're in custody, all of them."

"Delighted to hear it." As if he were sharing Hollywood gossip, the Wizard said, "Now I have to tell you something, Shreve. You there?"

How cheerfully he delivers my death sentence.