Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (276 page)

He swung the door open and saw a man and a woman standing on the small stoop outside and almost laughed out loud. The two agents looked like polar opposites. The man was tall and wide like a football player, with thick dark hair and a serious look on his face. The woman was petite and slim, with blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail and a disarming smile lighting up her delicate features. The agent reminded Nick of an Olympic gymnast he had seen on TV as a kid. Her name escaped him, but she had possessed a similar smile that the television cameras loved.

They haven’t even met me yet,
he thought,
and already they’re doing the good-cop/bad-cop thing.
He smiled politely and said, “Hi, I’m Nick Jensen, and you must be the FBI agents I was told to expect. The Merrimack Police said you would be coming at nine.”

“Yes, sir. I’m Special Agent Kristin Cunningham and this is my partner, Special Agent Frank Delaney.” They flashed their government ID’s at exactly the same time in a move that had to have been choreographed. “We were advised by the Merrimack Police Department that you were in possession of information possibly relating to national security. Is that true, Mr. Jensen?

“Not exactly,” Nick answered. “Honestly, I’m not really sure what I have, if anything, but I assume the police must have called you for a reason. Anyway, thank you for stopping by. Please come in, and I’ll let you determine for yourselves if what I’ve found is of any significance or not.”

After going back and forth on the matter for a couple of days, Nick had finally decided to call the police and tell them about the mysterious blue binder and its contents. What he had found was probably nothing, but for Lisa to have stashed away evidence related to an ongoing investigation at the Pentagon—if, in fact, that was what the binder represented—was so unlike her that the discovery gave Nick serious concern.

No sooner had he read the words,
Tucson, Bliss
and
Stingers
to the Merrimack cop on the telephone than the whole tone of the conversation had changed. The cop instantly dropped the casual, almost bored tone he had affected in the beginning and had asked a few more perfunctory questions before telling Nick that he could expect a call from the FBI regarding his unusual discovery. That call had come less than thirty minutes later, and tonight’s meeting had been hastily arranged.

He showed the two agents into the small living room, where they sat side by side on the couch. Nick eased into a stuffed recliner Lisa had placed at an angle facing a wooden coffee table directly across from the couch. She had claimed that the positioning of the furniture increased the “intimacy” of the room—feng shui or some such shit—and promoted good conversation. Nick supposed he was about to find out if that was true.

“Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Tea? A glass of water?”

“Thank you, but we’re fine,” Agent Cunningham said. She appeared to be the designated talker of the pair, which was okay with Nick because the guy didn’t seem to have much personality at all.

“Okay, then.” He picked up the bright blue binder he had placed on the coffee table prior to the arrival of the agents. “I guess we should get right to it. My wife worked at the Pentagon as a civilian auditor prior to her death - ”

“We know,” Agent Cunningham replied softly. “We’re very sorry for your loss.”

Nick sat back, surprised. “Thank you, but how do you know about my wife?”

She smiled. “Just a little quick research before visiting, Mr. Jensen. We like to be prepared.”

“Oh, yeah, of course. And it’s Nick.”

“Nick, then.”

“Anyway,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I found this material very well hidden in a closet after Lisa’s death. I’m assuming it’s something she was working on before she died, but I can’t make heads or tails out of any of it.”

“Okay,” Agent Cunningham answered. “But why call the police?”

“You have to understand something about my wife. She was one of the most straightforward people you could ever hope to meet. Deception wasn’t her thing. If she was stashing this stuff here, I can only assume she was afraid someone in Washington would find it. And if she was being that careful, then that tells me she felt she had stumbled onto something very big, something potentially dangerous, and she was trying to decide what to do with the information. While she made up her mind, she wanted to safeguard the material the only way she could, by hiding it here, hundreds of miles from the Pentagon.”

The two agents shared an uneasy glance that was not lost on Nick. Again Agent Cunningham spoke. “We can’t divulge too much information to you, Mr. Jensen…”

“Nick.”

“Sorry, Nick. We can’t tell you too much other than this: There has been the growing suspicion in Washington that someone inside the Pentagon has been selling classified information regarding United States weaponry to known terrorist organizations, both inside and outside this country. If so, it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened, as I’m sure you are well aware. Aldrich Ames is a good example. He sold secrets to the former Soviet Union for nearly ten years before his eventual arrest in 1994. Any time you combine human beings subject to temptation with knowledge of sensitive material and a willingness to profit illegally off that knowledge, the potential exists for treasonous activity. The lure of easy money becomes too much for some people to resist.

“The word
Stingers
mentioned inside this binder refers to a type of weaponry belonging to the U.S. military. It appears your wife uncovered evidence potentially implicating one or more persons inside the Pentagon in the sale of classified information regarding Stinger shoulder-fired missiles, and the FBI—not to mention the Department of Homeland Security and all law enforcement agencies—takes this very seriously.”

Nick whistled softly. “What happens now?” he asked.

“We will have to seize this binder as well as all the other material you’ve collected. We’ll share it with Homeland Security in an attempt to determine whether your wife may have discovered the identity of the person or persons leaking information from inside the Pentagon. Based on what I see here, it would appear as though she had.”

Nick’s blood ran cold. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to his next question but couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Earlier this evening I was informed by a homicide detective form the Merrimack Police Department that my wife wasn’t killed in a car accident as had been previously assumed. He told me the autopsy showed she probably survived the crash but may have been murdered as she lay helpless in her car. Did she die because of the material inside this binder?”

Agent Cunningham hesitated. She shook her head. “Not necessarily. To my knowledge, the police have not yet developed any working theories regarding your wife’s death. It may well have been unrelated to this information. That assessment could change, of course, pending results of their investigation. But what doesn’t change is the fact that she was working on something with potentially critical implications for national security.

“I have to ask if you would permit us to take your wife’s laptop back to the office for forensic analysis as well. It’s entirely possible, likely even, that there is more information on her computer that could help us discover the identity of the Pentagon leak. We can’t force you to release the computer to us tonight, but it could be crucial to our investigation, and realistically, we’ll be back tomorrow with a warrant anyway. We will provide you with a receipt for it, of course, and will return it to you as soon as we can after it has been examined.”

“Of course you can take it,” Nick said, getting up to retrieve the computer. He wasn’t buying the bullshit story that Lisa’s death had been unrelated to her work at the Pentagon. It would be a coincidence of monumental proportion if that was the case, and Nick wasn’t a big believer in coincidences.

Ultimately, though, it didn’t really matter to Nick. Lisa was dead and she wasn’t coming back. Nothing changed that. The FBI could have her computer forever if they wanted it. They could return it or not; he didn’t care. He certainly wasn’t about to use it or even look at what was on it. At least not now, and maybe not ever. It was just too painful.

Nick excused himself and walked into the master bedroom to retrieve the laptop. He handed it to the two agents, who gathered up everything on the coffee table and headed toward the front door.

Agent Delaney had still not said more than one or two words during the entire interview. Nick decided maybe they weren’t playing good-cop/bad-cop at all, but rather Agent Cunningham was the one with the brains in the partnership, and the man knew it. Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

The pair paused at the front door. “We’ll get everything back to you as soon as we can,” Agent Cunningham said again, almost apologetically. “Thank you for making that call to the police. You did the right thing. Hopefully we can use this information to help avert a serious tragedy before it occurs.”

The FBI agents stepped through the door and into the night.

Nick could hear the lonely sound of crickets chirping in the front yard, and a lump rose in his throat. He was thankful his visitors were on their way out.

“Thanks again, and enjoy the rest of your evening, Mr. Jensen.”

He almost reminded her to call him Nick but didn’t bother. He watched them walk to their unmarked Bureau car, then closed the door and prepared to face another night alone. Enjoying his evening was out of the question. Nick’s goal was simply to get through it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The Tucson police officer crouched behind the open door of his vehicle, bracing his weapon in the crease between the hinges and the cruiser’s frame, keeping it trained on the men trapped in the glare of the spotlight. Nothing happened for what seemed like minutes, although it was undoubtedly only a few seconds. Then the cop eased the door fully open and stepped slowly and cautiously around it, eyeing the surreal scene in front of him. “Let’s all just take it nice and easy, and nobody gets hurt, all right, boys?”

As he finished the upward inflection on the word
boys
and took one step away from the patrol car toward the men, a burst of automatic weapons fire erupted from behind him.

#

Tony’s weapon roared and bright orange fire flashed from the muzzle as he strafed the cruiser and swung his barrel slightly to the left, cutting down the officer.

The cop’s body stuttered forward from the impact of the gunfire, twisting and writhing before falling to the ground. He thudded to the pavement with the slightly hollow, moist squishing sound of a pumpkin being smashed in the street on Halloween night. He died without uttering a sound.

The sharp smell of gunpowder filled the air, the sudden quiet disorienting after the AK’s throaty roar. Nobody moved.

Finally Tony spoke casually, almost lazily. “Well, what are you waiting for? Let’s wrap this thing up and get out of here. Undoubtedly that cop radioed his location to his dispatchers and advised them he was checking out a possible breaking and entering. When he doesn’t report back within a few minutes, they will send more police out here to investigate. Maybe they already have. It would seem to be in our best interest to get as far away from this place as possible before they arrive, so let’s pick up the pace.”

While the men hurriedly finished transferring the last few crates and lashing them securely into the cargo box of the panel truck, Tony bent down and put both hands under the armpits of the fallen officer. With a grunt, he muscled the man’s still-bleeding body into the back of his own cruiser. Blood immediately began pooling on the vinyl bench seat beneath the corpse.

Tony then slipped behind the wheel and put the idling Crown Vic in gear, moving it the short distance from the scene of the massacre to the chain-link fence at the very back of the dealership. He nosed in behind the rusting hulk of a decades-old used Airstream trailer, hoping the cruiser’s semi-concealment behind the big rig might buy the team a few more minutes before the authorities became aware of the murder. It was their third in the last two hours, and Tony knew they were tempting fate as the bodies piled up.

He shut down the engine and jumped out of the patrol car. He thought for a moment about taking the dead cop’s riot gun—after all, he reasoned, the cop certainly didn’t need it anymore, and you could never have too many weapons, especially high-quality ones like the Remington 870—but ultimately decided that it might be detrimental to his freedom if he were to get pulled over with a murdered police officer’s weapon lying on the front seat of his vehicle.

Tony had no doubt he could shoot his way out of any confrontation if necessary, but it was important to keep his eyes on the big picture, on his sacred destiny. Getting into a shootout with the police during the drive back to D.C. was a distraction he didn’t need when he had been given the honor of ridding the world of the President of the United States, the oppressor of so many of his people half a globe away, Robert Cartwright.