October's Ghost Read online

  Shergin caught the president’s attention with his stare. “I trust that you are right to believe this information. Inoperable radars will do little to protect the Motherland.”

  “As will malfunctioning ones,” the president shot back. “A safer tomorrow will come only from trust today.”

  Interior Minister Bogdanov, in a position of allegiance that was odd considering his seemingly benign place in the government machinery, had to decide whether to report in the positive or the negative to his fellow dissenters back in Moscow. The 106th Airborne Division, a unit that had saved the president once by refusing to participate in a failed effort to unseat him, was poised to move into the capital with just a word from General Shergin, its allegiance this time opposite of the past by way of a new, conversely loyal unit commander. Would Bogdanov set such a thing in motion? Could he?

  “The next two weeks will be somewhat tense,” the interior minister theorized, his decision sure to disappoint many of his political bent. “I hope events bear out your trust in the Americans.”

  “I have no doubts,” the president said confidently. “All will go well.”

  “I hope so,” Bogdanov said. “For the sake of the Motherland.” And for yours.

  * * *

  “Tomás, look. Quick,” Jorge said, the CNN anchor’s words sounding much too awake for such an early hour, then reminded himself that he was on the West Coast. He had been out here too long, he knew. “Turn it up, Tomás. Turn it up.”

  Tomás set down the plastic cassette case and jeweler’s screwdriver and rolled off the motel bed. He twisted the volume knob until the sound came up. No fucking remote, he thought, realizing that fifty-six bucks a night didn’t necessarily guarantee the latest in amenities.

  “Early reports from Havana indicate that the apparent coup has caused widespread disruption of communications systems.” The anchor fiddled with papers that were being fed to him, obviously trying to sort out that which was before him and the flow of words through his earpiece. Fast-breaking news was never as pretty as the produced stuff. “And, uh, we are now getting some confirmation on an earlier report that this may be a very large and a very well organized uprising. Sources at Guantanamo Naval Base near the eastern end of the island are reporting that there is heavy fighting in the nearby city of Guantanamo. Flashes... I am reading this as I receive it, so bear with the roughness of it. Flashes are visible from the north and... If these reports are correct, and we believe they are, then this fighting is hundreds of miles from the initial reports from the area near the country’s capital of Havana. And...”

  Jorge switched the set off. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Shit. No wonder they want this thing out of circulation.” Tomás tightened the last of the small metal screws that held the cassette together. “Does this do anything to us?”

  Jorge’s head shook. “Fee up front, Tomás. We have our money, we do the job.” He looked at the work his partner was finishing up. “How long?”

  “Just...a...there!” Tomás held up the tape. “You should go for the head like me next time.”

  “Like I should have known,” Jorge protested. One of his shots had not only found its mark in the man’s chest, it had also clipped the cassette he was carrying in his shirt pocket, destroying the transfer rollers but sparing the tape itself. That had necessitated a hurried search for the required materials and tools. A cassette of the same type had been purchased, along with the tiny screwdrivers, and was simply dismantled and the undamaged spools of tape inserted. It had taken some time, as Tomás was careful to remove all fragments of the shattered plastic. Thankfully, the tape had been pulled from Portero’s pocket quickly enough, saving it from a drenching in the man’s blood. Liquids, especially thick ones like human blood, were devastating to the thin magnetic tape that depended on stability in its environment for longevity. Anyone who had ever left one exposed on the dash of an automobile on a hot day would understand the fragility completely.

  A thump from outside the door made Jorge turn his head. It had to be the complimentary USA Today, one of the reasons he had chosen this motel. The one extra he wanted, actually needed. It would save him a trip to the liquor store across the street. “Let’s hear it.”

  Tomás reached for the portable cassette player and inserted the tape, pressing Play next. A few seconds went by before there was speaking to be heard. Thank God it...

  “What is this?” Jorge asked. It was not what they had been told to expect.

  “Who is that?” Tomás added another question. “This isn’t the fucking tape! What the fuck is going on!”

  “Shut up!” Jorge said, looking at the walls and hoping they were thick enough to contain his partner’s outburst. He listened for a few minutes to the conversation’s end. “Damn.”

  “Jorge, that is not what we were supposed to find.” Tomás stood from the bed and began to pace.

  “That had to be Portero speaking,” Jorge said. “But the other one?”

  Tomás stopped his stalking, looking directly to his partner. “Jorge, we fucking killed an FBI agent today to get that tape, and it ISN’T EVEN IT!” The news on both radio and TV had spread the word quickly, along with vague descriptions of the pair that, thankfully, weren’t very accurate.

  “But it is something.”

  Tomás, the younger of the two, snorted. “Yeah. A lot of good that’ll do us. Fuck!”

  His partner was right, Jorge knew. They were supposed to get the tape and verify that it was the tape. What they had been briefed to be on the lookout for was definitely not what they had just heard. “You still have that reporter’s name, the one he was supposed to meet with?”

  “Sure do. You think he might have given it to him ahead of time?”

  “It’s possible,” Jorge figured, even though he didn’t see how it could have happened. “But we’re going to make damn sure about it. First we’ve got to report this.”

  “But we’re not supposed to...” His partner’s look convinced him that arguing was not a good idea at the moment. “They’re going to love this.” Tomás watched Jorge go to the door and open it gingerly, peering through the crack into the early-morning darkness before retrieving the paper from just outside.

  “Dial it,” Jorge instructed his partner while he pulled the slip of paper out of his wallet. On it was the number of a phone booth he had selected a few days before. He had selected others and would use each only once. Next he opened the paper to the sports section. It was baseball season, so he found the first story nearest the upper left of the page concerning America’s favorite pastime, ‘Angels Still Alive’, the heading read. Hard to believe, he thought. But his interest was in the body of the story. Just when the team from the land of Disney... He had his key. D.

  “Ringing,” Tomás said.

  A minute later, almost three thousand miles away, ten digits appeared on the screen of a cell phone buzzing inside a man’s pocket. With just a single look, he knew what to do. His USA Today had been finished hours before with his breakfast.

  * * *

  Art Jefferson walked off the elevator on the fourth floor just after sunrise, at a time when the L.A. office would normally be quiet for another two hours. This day, though, there were more than a hundred agents already on duty, more than half there on their day off. That was just the way it was. You didn’t kill an agent without striking a chord in the collective body of the FBI. Art pitied the perps who had robbed Thom Danbrook of his life.

  “Art.” It was Cameron Lowe, the supervising special agent of the L.A. office’s Violent Crimes Section—Art’s boss.

  “Morning, Cam.” Art walked to his desk in the bullpen area of the floor, which was divided into dozens of “rooms” by attractively upholstered shoulder-high dividers. He and Frankie shared one on the north side of the floor, near the row of glass-enclosed offices that housed the supervising agents of the office’s sections. Art had rated one once as head of the OC (Organized Crime) Section. That time was now just a fond, d
etested memory.

  “How’s Aguirre?” Lowe asked, leaning his short frame against the pseudo wall that surrounded Art’s and Frankie’s desks.

  “I made sure Shelley got her home last night.” He slid out of his jacket, hanging it on the single metal hook clipped to the divider’s top edge. “It ain’t easy, Cam. She’s hurting.”

  “Are you going to need someone else to back you up on this? I mean, if she needs some time...”

  Art’s head shook. Frankie had made it clear that she wanted in on this, and Art expected no different. He’d never known an agent to back away from the chance to catch the killers of a fellow agent. The offer had to be made, but... “No. She’ll be in. Is everything squared away with LAPD?”

  “All set.” The LAPD, which had jurisdiction over the area where the murders were committed, had technical authority to be the lead agency on the case. But the fact that a federal officer had been killed in addition to the other victim had prompted the local police to cede the lead to the FBI. Now they had two murders to solve, and that of the other victim presented the best chance at finding the killers. Thom Danbrook had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. “TS figured out what happened with his gun.”

  “What?” It was a subject of interest to the Bureau as a whole, as every agent carried the same Smith & Wesson Model 1076 that had somehow failed at the critical moment. The office’s Technical Services Section had immediately gone to work to determine the cause of the failure.

  “Shooter error,” Lowe explained, pulling his own 1076 out. He removed the magazine and cleared the round in the chamber before proceeding. “Look.” He gripped the weapon in the proper manner, with the off hand supporting the front and underside of the gun hand. “Danbrook had a nasty gash on the skin webbing between the thumb and forefinger of his off hand.”

  Art’s head dropped. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. He held it like a revolver, off hand wrapped over the side with the thumb on top. When he fired his first shot, the slide hit his hand and didn’t travel far enough back to pick up the next round. He reverted to Academy training when the stress kicked in. Unfortunately we were still with revolvers when he went through.” Lowe reloaded and reholstered his weapon. “That’s why the weapon failed, but I don’t know if he could have done anything to change the outcome.”

  It was a cop’s nightmare: walking in on something and having the initiative in the bad guys’ favor.

  “Anything on the getaway vehicle?” Art inquired, sitting down and turning on the ten-cup coffeemaker strategically placed on his side of their area. Frankie had her own on the small credenza, the result of the caf-decaf wars soon after their pairing.

  Lowe had been there all night, giving Art a chance to come down from the adrenaline high and get some sleep. “LASO found it in back of the Pacific Design Center, on fire.” The Los Angeles Sheriffs Office patrolled the nearby city of West Hollywood, just blocks from the site of the murders. “Listed as a stolen out of Culver City.”

  “These guys get around,” Art commented.

  “Listen, I appreciate you taking this on,” Lowe said.

  Art waved off the gratitude. “Cam, it’s no trouble. You knew his folks. You should be there.” Lowe and his boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jerry Donovan, were leaving on a midday flight to St. Louis to deliver condolences to Danbrook’s parents. It was common for ranking members of the office where a fallen agent was assigned to visit the family, and at the request of the San Francisco office, Lowe and Donovan were going to do the duty. It was fitting, as the young agent had spent the majority of his short career in L.A. “How’d Bill take it?”

  “Like a sock in the gut” Lowe answered. Special Agent in Charge William Killeen was at the Bureau’s Quantico, Virginia, academy for a meeting of all fifty-eight SACs to advise the deputy director on budget and manpower needs for the next fiscal year. “He wanted to come back, but I convinced him to stay there. He can’t do anything more than we already are.”

  The machine was only up to cup number two, but Art couldn’t wait. He switched it off and poured himself a cup, then turned it back on. “You want any?”

  “Leaded?”

  “Un,” Art answered, getting a polite shake of the head in response. “Where are we at?”

  “Jacobs is going to bring down an evidence list in a while and anything that might help.” They could use anything at this point.

  “What about the other victim?” Anyone other than the dead agent was an “other.”

  Lowe motioned with his head to the file folder on Art’s desk. “Not much more than last night.”

  Art read through it quickly. “Francisco Portero. Sixty-five. Florida driver’s license.” He looked up. “Miami have anything yet?”

  “Luke Kessler promised it by seven,” Lowe replied.

  “Hmm.” It was the slimmest of the slim. Art was in charge of an investigation without a well-defined starting point. “Witnesses sure aren’t plentiful.”

  “That blond waitress is still in shock. The only thing she gave us was that Portero said he was meeting someone. No descriptions from her, though. Looking at the statements, I’d say your busboy is the best so far. His description matches the one you gave of the van’s driver more closely than any of the others.”

  A sudden hush fell over the room, the silence soon filled by condolences and comforting words as Frankie Aguirre waded through the sea of her fellow agents. She set her purse on the desk and went to the open arms of Cameron Lowe.

  “How’re you doing, little lady?” The senior agent, a father figure in the L.A. office, was entitled to call her that, probably the only guy in the place she’d let get away with it.

  “I’m okay.” Her eyes were a little swollen, but there were no tears. She had cried them all out the previous night.

  “Much sleep, partner?”

  “A few hours,” she answered, stepping back from the security of Lowe’s strong arms. “Enough for now.”

  Lowe reached out and placed his hands on her shoulders, bending his head to look her in the eyes. “You go easy.”

  “This is where I need to be, Cam. I need to help find the guys.” I want them.

  “We will,” Lowe said, bringing his hands away. “I’ve got to run home and get cleaned up before Jerry and I leave. Lou is senior here until Jerry gets back.” Lou Hidalgo was deputy assistant special agent in charge. “He’ll be in about nine, but he’s wrapped up in that investigation group that’s running with ATF.”

  “Right. Pass along my...you know.” Art hated these moments. Death had never been something he’d handled well. When his grandmother, the woman who’d raised him, had passed, he had withdrawn for almost a year, secluding himself in the dorm at the University of Alabama. His grades went up, but A’s and B’s had seemed almost meaningless at the time. Now he knew better. It was what she had wanted, what she had pushed him to do. This death, though, was an aberration. His grandmother’s time had come. Thom Danbrook’s had been chosen by another with no authority to do so. There was only one power in the universe with that authority. The ultimate power. The ultimate protector. The ultimate judge. Thom’s killers would come to know the latter intimately, Art vowed.

  “You want some coffee?” Art asked once Lowe had left.

  “Yeah, I’ll settle for your stuff today.” Frankie slid her empty mug across their adjoining desks, which faced each other. “I don’t need anything wiring me today.” She took the steaming cup and sipped it gingerly for a moment. “A lot of bodies here this morning.”

  “You’ve never seen this before, have you?” She shook her head. Art knew she hadn’t. “It’s terrible when it happens, but it really shows you what people are made of.”

  “I saw a few folks on the way in who rode Thom pretty hard when he was here,” Frankie said, remembering that Thom, the perfect gentleman, had kept his private life just that. But rumors were rumors, and they always found a way of starting. The truth had started the ones circulating
about Thom, first quietly questioning his sexual orientation and later openly attacking it. Still, he hadn’t run away from his life. The request for a transfer to the Bay area had been made when he first arrived in L.A. years before. Frisco was where he had been accepted to law school on a part-time basis. Thom Danbrook, attorney. Frankie wanted to cry at the thought of it never happening.

  “Mortality is a powerful teacher,” Art said. He hoped it would be enough to end the stupid, silent discrimination against those who just wanted to do their job. Thom had drawn his gun and faced down two shooters, for Christ’s sake! Wasn’t that enough? “We’ve got ‘em all at our disposal.”

  “What’s the plan?” Frankie looked at the roster that Art handed her.

  “Omar Espinosa is coordinating the field teams. He’s got three of them over at the other victim’s place.”

  It occurred to Frankie that she had no idea who the man was. “Who was he?”

  Art related the particulars. “He had a little apartment up off of Highland. Manager’s card was in his wallet, which was a break. We wouldn’t have had an address this fast otherwise, ‘cause the DL is out of Florida.

  “The other teams are going to start hitting the areas where the van was stolen from and where it turned up.”

  Either the killers had someone waiting for them, or they had other wheels already procured. That was the way pros would have done it, and these guys were looking like pros, which didn’t bode well for a quick resolution. Still, the agents had learned that all criminals, by way of their choice of profession, had some innate stupidity that, somewhere along the line, would cause a slipup. Catching the mistake was the trick.

  “I’d say we have to find out why these guys wanted to kill Portero,” Frankie suggested.

  “The busboy said one of them...” Art flipped back through his notes. “Medium height, curly black hair, mustache. That one called Portero’s name before they fired. He also saw the other one, the balding guy who shot at me, bend down and take something from Portero’s shirt pocket.”