The Last Family (14 page)

Paul changed to a shot of Martin in a suit and dark glasses taken in some pigeon-packed Italian plaza.

“Martin’s skills were such that he became a cleaner. He was involved in especially delicate work. He took difficult government assignments where his particular talents were needed. He worked with the Central Intelligence Agency and several other groups who won’t be named. He was what we call a dark angel. Dark by nature of deed, but an angel because they’re on the right side, our side.”

Paul looked around the room. “Factually speaking, this government does not, outside of national emergency or war, employ people like Martin Fletcher. I will say this once and never again. Martin Fletcher is one of a double handful of men we could accurately refer to as antipersonnel weapons.”

“Wet work?” Stephanie said. “A hit person?”

“Let’s just say he was a soldier under exclusive contract to certain of Uncle Sam’s representatives until ten years ago, when he was retired from the field and put into a training position. Normally people in Martin’s field do not retire as we think of retirement. They stay commissioned until they die. Sometimes they die at a rate well beyond the actuarial tables. Accidents without witnesses are not uncommon. Neither are mysterious disappearances. Martin Fletcher was made an instructor at the Democratic College at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he made good friends among some of the future leaders of Central and South America. Those connections have served him well.”

He lit another cigarette and inhaled twice before he went on.

“Let’s assume for a minute that Martin Fletcher was helping certain elements of the CIA move heroin from the Golden Triangle while he served in Nam. Let’s imagine he made some important friends and possibly millions of dollars toward his retirement. While he was working at Fort Benning, let’s say he made contacts within another set of important people. People who were interested in what the DEA knew. So Martin may have used his contacts to attach himself to the DEA in Miami as a member of the Green Team in the guise of field study and evaluation of our troops. He may well have used his position and clearances to sell certain drug lords information and a measure of protection. Let’s say he did help intelligence just to cover his bases.”

“In short,” Thorne added, “he played all sides against the middle with little regard for what tragedy befell anyone.”

“So he’s a real scumbag,” Sierra said.

“Rich scumbag,” Joe added.

“Would be if it were true, but we’re merely supposing here.”

“Why is he killing families?” Stephanie asked.

Paul lit a cigarette and paused while he thought.

“Martin was caught with stolen cocaine secreted in his house, and convicted of possession with intent to distribute. Stolen cash and drugs and a fifty-year sentence of which he would do every single day. Fletcher insisted he was framed.”

“He thinks we, the DEA, sold him out?” Sean Merrin said.

“We’re going to always tell the truth in this unit, and anything said between us is privileged information. Agreed?”

The heads nodded almost in unison.

“The agency suspected him of selling DEA field agents for cash and favors and taking drug profits through a network of Latin bank accounts.”

“Was he framed?” Sean asked.

Thorne’s eye met Paul’s for a split second. Nothing had ever been committed to paper on the operation designed to put Martin away.

“Of course not. He’s just crazy,” Thorne said. “Paranoia is his reality.”

Paul wanted to come clean, but that wasn’t the way it worked. Need to know. Fewer mouths to worry about down the road.

He cleared his throat. “Don’t ever make the mistake of thinking of our target as a human being. Martin Fletcher is an animal just as surely as a mountain lion is an animal. I arrested him and testified against him. I regret not putting one behind his ear and burying the carcass in a swamp. If I had, at least eight innocent people would be alive right now.”

Paul looked each of the new agents in the eye. “Martin, not being the forgiving sort, swore revenge and he has been getting it.”

“How did he get out of prison?” Stephanie asked.

“Friends of friends broke him out.”

“Broke him out?” Sierra said.

He nodded. “It was well planned and executed flawlessly. Out of prison and out of the country within hours. It is my understanding that he had a direct flight. Accompanied by his common-law wife and son.”

Rainey slammed his hand on the table, and all eyes went to him. He smiled nervously.

Paul cleared his throat and looked at Thorne and Joe. “There was an incident with renegade soldiers in the jungle in Guatemala. His wife, Angela, and his son were killed. Martin went off the deep end. We think elements of the CIA set him up.”

Thorne shook his head sadly.

“The attack on us in Miami happened a few days before he escaped.” Paul ran his hand along the side of his head, the bristles of hair foreign to his fingers. He had cut his hair back into a modified GI, and he felt naked without the additional cover. He reached up to twist his mustache and realized that he was clean shaven. “He left a note at the scene of his last killing with his fingerprints
on it” Paul triggered the remote control, and a photocopy of a note appeared on the white wall.

Masterson
,

We are even for Angela and Macon
.

It’s over if you let it lay, and I am nothing more than a lingering aftertaste
.

Come after me and I will present you with Laura, Adam, and Erin’s hearts in a bowl
.

“What if he does know we’re there?” Sean repeated. “He’ll know you’re after him.”

“I expect him to know,” Paul said. “He knew I would come before he wrote that note. We’re going after Martin with everything we have, run him into a corner and neutralize him.”

They all understood.

Paul looked at the young agents, who were in turn looking at the older men.

“Sir, this all seems highly unusual,” Stephanie Martin said.

Thorne put his head in his hands and sighed loudly.

Paul said, “None of you should stay if you have any reservations about this effort. Although it has been authorized, I assure you that if anything goes wrong, if one innocent civilian goes down under any of our weapons, we will not find a roof over our heads or a net below us. I have no career to consider. You do.”

“But this is a murder investigation. We’re DEA,” she said. “How do we … I mean, what’s the cover?”

Paul smiled. “Officially, the agency is investigating someone dealing massive amounts of drugs, and we’re trying to gather evidence on that if possible. Our cover includes the capture of a federal fugitive if we run across him. In our capacity as bounty hunters our powers are expanded. We may pursue Martin Fletcher wherever we have reason to believe he has gone. We may search any premises where we think he may be hiding. We may use any necessary force to achieve our goals.”

The agents’ faces were hard to read, but Paul was
prepared to replace the whole group if he had to. He sipped from a cup of coffee that had cooled. “This is not a training exercise. This is the real thing, and lives depend on your accuracy, stealth, and speed. You are all to follow my orders, and the orders of these men, to the letter. If you have a creative idea, they’ll want to hear it.”

“Are you … we going to kill him?” Stephanie asked.

Paul frowned as he weighed what he should tell them. He didn’t want to be haunted by the answer. “First off, you people on surveillance in Charlotte shouldn’t fret that one too much. It isn’t likely that your team will ever be faced with that decision. There is another group assigned to follow your target once she has left Charlotte and lands someplace else. They will be faced with that dilemma.”

Paul was aware of Thorne and Joe shifting in their seats and exchanging glances.

“You’ll be following her, monitoring her until she is off the plane at her destination,” he said.

She looked confused by his answer.

Don’t leave it there
. “Ms. Martin, Stephanie, if we do somehow capture him, he’ll never make it to prison again. Kill him? Let me say this for all of you. If you can kill him and don’t, you will almost certainly be sentencing others to death. He
cannot
get away. Think of our Martin Fletcher as a mad dog who’s going to enter a playground filled with children unless you stop him. He will see you as a bug standing between him and freedom.”

Thorne Greer cleared his throat sharply before speaking.

“Do not engage Martin Fletcher one on one under any circumstances. Do not allow him to engage you in conversation. He is a master, and whatever you think of your own skills, remember that he can use anything at hand as a weapon. He has never been seriously hurt, but his adversaries have been—those who lived. Unlike imaginary monsters, however, he is as vulnerable to a lead bullet as any of us.” Thorne said.

Paul scanned the faces of the new agents. For a brief couple of seconds his mind flashed a clear memory of the faces of Hill and Barnett, the two agents who had been standing with him in Miami when the container was opened. He turned away and took a deep breath.

Paul remembered the two dead agents, the wives, the children of Joe Barnett, a Mississippi boy with an accent as thick as a gambler’s flash roll. Jeff Hill’s young wife had sent Paul the flag that had been taken off Jeff’s casket. Paul believed he knew what her message was: You killed those two boys.
Did I? Maybe I did. I must have. Else why do they haunt me, wander about in my dreams?

Paul’s mind went back to the Miami office that had been, and still was, the nation’s epicenter of drug activity and the springboard for his promotion to deputy director of the DSF. God, he had been driven in those days. The dealers with their big houses, expensive cars, and women, the glitz and glamour—he had gone after them like a hellhound.

He realized that Thorne had finished his speech pertaining to the technology they would be using in the field. His eye met Woodrow Poole’s, and for a split second he read something disquieting in them.

“I’m sorry. Sometimes I …” He looked around the table. “I’m delighted with the team we have here. I asked for the best and brightest and most enthusiastic agents. There isn’t anything for me to add about Martin. Except one last bit of advice. If you have him identified, shoot to kill. You get a chance during a moment of weakness or vulnerability on his part, use it. I promise you … God will smile.”

The projector clicked, and the next picture on the wall was of a large, awkward-looking woman watering a bush.

“This is the surveillance team’s target in Charlotte, Eve Fletcher. This woman is Martin’s mother and his only known weakness. Learn this face.”

“How could you forget it?” Sierra said.

Laughter.

“Looks like Rod Steiger,” Thorne said. “I met him once.”

“I doubt that she knows where her son is most of the time. She may know where he is at the moment and surely where he will be in the near future, but she will never tell of her own free will, and we are not authorized to beat it out of her.”

Nervous laughter.

“This woman is an emotional anchor for Martin, and whatever has happened, or wherever he is, he contacts her and sees her on or around his birthday. We’re banking on it. The year after he escaped from prison, she made reservations for four separate flights and then flew to Heathrow. She was followed to her hotel but somehow got out of the hotel and disappeared. Interpol picked her up when she surfaced in Madrid four days later. That was how they knew Martin was in Europe. We believe he had reconstructive surgery and no one has a picture of the new Martin Fletcher. Intelligence is that every year they get together. Last year she took a bus tour through Mexico. The surveillance team, a group of professionals, lost her for an afternoon.”

He crushed out a cigarette and lit another.

“This time we will not lose her.” He held up a small plastic box with something that looked like dark nails inside. “These are the latest thing from the technological whiz kids. They are transmitters capable of sending a continuous signal that can be picked up for a range of fifty miles. By utilizing a plane or a helicopter the pickup team can triangulate her whereabouts. Once she lands, we will be able to follow her without having to be on her tail.”

“Do we put them in her pockets?” Stephanie asked.

“We have decided that the most effective place to plant them is in the heels of her shoes. There’s a gun that fires them in so the transmitter head is just below the surface. No matter what else she sheds, she’ll most likely keep her shoes on. She wears custom-made orthopedic shoes.”

“How are we going to get to her shoes?” Stephanie asked.

“Simple. She wears slippers unless she goes out, which is rare. So they’ll be in her closet or under her bed. One in each heel.”

“And how do we get into the closet?” Sierra asked.

“We have that worked out,” Joe said.

Paul took a tennis ball from a small black bag and began squeezing it in his left hand.

“Martin’s birthday, our target date, is October third. That is seven days from today. Now, he may meet her on the first or the fifth. So far, according to intelligence, these yearly visits have all fallen within two days of the third. The one variation was a missed visit six years ago.”

“Did he at least send a card?” a voice asked. There was more nervous laughter from the young agents.

Paul turned his eye on the source of the words. It was the female agent named Sierra. She shifted uncomfortably beneath his frosty gaze.

“McLean’s team is to be in place in Charlotte by seven hundred hours tomorrow. As unlikely as it seems, my sources believe Martin will arrange a rendezvous with her in spite of the murders hanging over his head. His psychological profile targets her as his one compulsion, and she may provide our only shot at isolating or at least identifying him before he strikes.”