Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (273 page)

“Now …” Tony paused, searching the eyes of each of his soldiers in turn. “Does that make sense to you, or do we have a problem we need to iron out? If anyone here does not see the wisdom in what I am saying or disagrees with the direction our operation has taken, now would be the appropriate time to mention that fact. In order for us to be successful, we must all be on the same page, as you Americans like to say.”

He waited. The silence in the garage spoke volumes. “Well?”

No one answered. Each man averted his eyes when the laser gaze of Tony Andretti fell upon him. There was no doubt as to who was in charge. The only member of the team not an American citizen was Tony, a Syrian by birth. The others had graduated from an intense indoctrination program held in a remote training camp located deep in the mountains of Afghanistan. Run by resurgent Taliban and financed by various Middle Eastern governments through dummy organizations and generous individual donations, the camp specialized in training disaffected Westerners. They worked mostly with young white American males, teaching them guerilla tactics and warfare as well as providing an introduction to radical Muslim theology.

The days of using Middle Eastern men to fly airplanes into buildings were over. Forward-thinking terror organizations like the one Tony represented now recognized the value of employing homegrown citizens, who could blend seamlessly into the cultural landscape of the West, to accomplish their goals.

Although born and raised in the West, the graduates of this particular training camp were men who had developed a burning hatred of their countries, usually the United States or Great Britain, and to the guerillas providing the training, that was good enough. Being a true believer in radical Islam would be nice, but was not necessary. All that mattered was that the recruits be willing to sacrifice themselves to their leaders’ bidding at the time and place of their choosing.

The four men currently wilting under Tony’s smoldering glare had been recruited for the Afghanistan program from diverse locations all over the United States. Brian was a native Southern Californian who had attended Stanford University briefly before dropping out, unable to reconcile his anti-American beliefs with the benefits of an elite education.

Jackie Corrigan was a high school dropout and former gangbanger from Brooklyn. Dimitrios Stavros was a second-generation American from Las Vegas who had been born into casino wealth but wanted none of it. And Joe-Bob Warren was ex-military, out of Frankfurt, Kentucky, the recipient of a dishonorable discharge from the United States Army when he was busted for purchasing child pornography while stationed at Fort Hood, Texas.

All of the men were in their twenties, none possessed any loyalty to the ideals of the United States of America, and all had passed the Afghanistan training course with flying colors. They had been sent back to the States more than six months ago with instructions to report to Tony and live their lives in the D.C. area quietly and unobtrusively while awaiting their assignment.

That assignment had come just a few weeks ago, and with the information acquired yesterday from Michaels, the team was ready to proceed.

Tony snapped the briefcase containing the ten thousand dollars shut and smiled. “No one has a problem with my leadership. Very good. I will assume we are all rowing this boat in the same direction. Now, let us discuss the specifics of this operation.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nick hugged his mother tightly and shook his father’s hand as they said their good-byes at the departure gate. Logan Airport was crowded as usual, and Nick was surprised to see that his parents’ plane was scheduled to depart on time. He knew he should be sorry to see them go, but he was still emotionally raw and wrung out.

After watching his mother and father disappear into the boarding area, Nick made his way to one of the airport lounges and ordered a scotch and soda. He knew having a drink before hitting the road for the hour-long drive back to his depressingly empty home wasn’t the best idea, but there wasn’t any point in being careful any more, was there? Nobody was left alive to worry about him. He was alone. Totally alone. That realization shook him more than he had realized until just now.

In a couple of hours, Nick was going to walk through the front door of their little Cape-style home, and Lisa would not be there to carp at him when he tossed his jacket over the kitchen chair or when he kicked off his sneakers and left them lying on the living room floor in front of the television. Sure, she had been gone four days every week during most of their marriage, but the absence had only served to make them appreciate each other that much more when they were together.

Now they never would be again. Nick didn’t know how he would be able to stand it.

He took a sip of his drink, savoring the warm bite of the scotch as it burned down his throat and splashed into his stomach, and let his mind wander to the strange discovery he had made in their walk-in closet. In
his
walk-in closet, he reminded himself. It was now his alone, not his and Lisa’s.

The blue binder had to have been stuffed behind the wedding gown intentionally; it wasn’t the sort of place the thing could have fallen by accident. Clearly it contained information Lisa had not wanted Nick to see.

But what information? Nick knew the binder had to be related somehow to Lisa’s auditing job at the Pentagon, as it contained names and dates and places, all of which seemed random and meant nothing to Nick. But Lisa had always been forthcoming about her work; as far as he knew, she had never kept anything from him. Most of the time—hell, just about all the time—the investigations she found herself involved in at the giant office building had been straightforward. Boring, even.

He remembered one instance she related to him last year where a very well-respected—and well-compensated—high-level bureaucrat had been caught stealing toilet paper from a Pentagon men’s room. For years the man had been taking a roll every couple of days, stuffing it inside his briefcase and bringing it home with him. The guy had nearly been fired. Over
toilet paper!
As it was, he had earned a three-day suspension without pay and been put on probation. The United States government apparently took their lavatory responsibilities very seriously, Lisa had told him with a straight face, before breaking into hysterical laughter.

The recollection made Nick smile briefly, then it occurred to him he would never again share in his wife’s infectious sense of humor. He finished his drink with one deep swallow and chewed on an ice cube. So why did she hide the blue binder? And why hide it from
him,
of all people? It made no sense.

After finding the binder so cleverly hidden, Nick had expected to find some earth-shattering revelation hidden inside, perhaps somehow involving him, but in reality it hadn’t contained much. There were a list of names and a notation written in block letters that said “
Tucson Bliss?”
Written below that, also in block letters that were barely readable because they had been smudged before the ink was dry, was another notation that might have said
“Stringers”
or
“Stingers”
or maybe even
“Singers.”

The binder contained copies of emails that had obviously been taken off someone’s hard drive, presumably someone who worked at the Pentagon. The emails went back and forth between a guy named Michaels and an unnamed person in a coy, roundabout manner, eventually culminating in an agreement to meet last week at a park in Washington. The name of the park hadn’t been specified in any of the emails, but Nick guessed it would be easy for someone familiar with the area to deduce the location. He had been to Washington only a few times, none recently, so it was all a mystery to him.

And that was it. That was the sum total of the binder’s contents. Nick couldn’t begin to guess what Tucson Bliss might mean or what sort of singers (or maybe stingers or stringers) had been involved in Lisa’s investigation. To the best of his knowledge, Lisa had never been to Tucson in her entire life and would not have considered it blissful even if she had. She hated extreme heat, and for that reason alone Nick couldn’t imagine her ever using the words
Tucson
and
bliss
together in the same sentence.

All of which brought him back to his original question: Why hide the material from him? It was not like he could decipher the meaning of any of it. Besides, what difference could any cloak-and-dagger stuff going on in D.C. possibly make to an air traffic controller living and working in Merrimack, New Hampshire?

Was it possible Lisa had been involved in something illegal? Instead of the binder’s material being part of an investigation she had been working on at the time of her death, could it be that she had hidden the binder in their home, away from his prying eyes and everyone else’s because it contained evidence of her own malfeasance?

Nick felt a ball of unease forming in the pit of his stomach. His beautiful wife of five years, the only woman he had ever really loved, was dead less than a week, and he was entertaining a possibility he would have considered ludicrous before he had discovered the existence of the binder. Guilt gnawed at him for even thinking it. He knew Lisa better than that.

But still, why else would she have hidden it, and in such a perfect spot? Had she not been run down by that goddamned beer truck, he would never have found the material in the first place. He wished to hell he hadn’t.

He laid a ten-dollar bill on the tiny circular table and walked out of the bar and through the terminal, paying little attention to the throngs of travelers jostling him on all sides. It was time to face the long drive back to his empty house. Nick walked slowly to Logan Airport’s Central Parking garage and slid into his car, his mind hundreds of miles away at a Pentagon building he had never set foot inside.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“It is time to discuss the next step.” Tony gazed into the faces of his men, using his intense dark stare to capture and maintain their full attention. “We have been training and preparing for months—years, even decades, in the case of some of us—to ensure our readiness for this moment.

“No doubt you are all wondering what was inside this briefcase that was so important we spent ten thousand dollars of our valuable resources to purchase it.” Tony didn’t bother mentioning the obvious—that he had then murdered the seller and stolen their money back. “I am sure you are familiar with the expression, ‘information is power.’ If that is the case, then the information inside this briefcase has increased our power exponentially.”

He pulled a simple road map out of the case with a flourish and spread it out on the desk in front of them. “What do we have here, Mr. Waterhouse?”

Brian glanced at it. “It’s a map of a driving route between Tucson, Arizona and Fort Bliss, Texas.”

“Exactly. Thank you. Can you tell me what significance Tucson has to us?”

No one answered, so Tony continued. “Tucson is the home base of the company that is contracted with the United States government to produce Stinger shoulder-fired missiles for the U.S. military. These missiles are manufactured at a plant in Tucson, then delivered to bases all over the world, including Fort Bliss, Texas. Currently the missiles are undergoing minor software modifications requested by the U.S. Army. Thursday night a small shipment of these modified Stingers will leave Tucson in an unmarked Army cargo truck, to be delivered to Fort Bliss for inspection and approval before the full-scale manufacturing process resumes.

“Thanks to my contact—excuse me, my now-deceased
ex
-contact—at the Pentagon, Mr. Nelson W. Michaels, we now have in our possession all the information we need to allow us to intercept this delivery. We know when the missiles are being shipped to the base in Texas. We know the exact route to be driven by the truck transporting the missiles. We know how many men will be handling the delivery. We even know their names and ranks and exactly what they look like.”