World Order

by David Archer

  Noah looked at her for a moment, then turned to Marco. “She’s probably right,” he said. “Still, we are supposed to be acting like investigators. Any ideas?”

  “Yeah,” Marco said. “We need to find the real murder scene, because we might at least find something there to indicate who did it. Closest thing to a suspect I can come up with here is the rat who just ran across my foot.”

  Noah nodded. “Private Latham had an apartment,” he said. “Why don’t the two of you go check it out? Sarah can tell you where to find it.”

  “My pleasure, boss,” Marco said. “Come on, Jenny, let’s go somewhere not so smelly.”

  Noah turned to Neil. “Latham and McRae were into MMORPG’s, one in particular called ‘Lethal Rage.’ I want you to see what you can find out about their activities on it. You and Molly once used a computer game to communicate, so I’m wondering if they might have been doing something similar.”

  Neil nodded. “Does seem a little strange that this murder victim is connected to the one who was kidnapped. You think maybe they were onto something about our real target?”

  “McRae was working on something secret,” Noah said, “and Latham was in his unit. They were friends, so it stands to reason they may have been using their friendship as cover for some kind of clandestine activities. Add the fact that Latham came from Fort Huachuca, which happens to be the Army Intelligence Training Center, and I suspect they probably had some connection beyond what was obvious. If they did, I want you to find it.”

  Neil nodded. “I’ll head back to Ops, then. Once I get these photos downloaded, I’ll get on it.”

  Noah walked over to where Litchfield was finishing up with the alleged witnesses. “Learn anything useful?” he asked.

  “No, sir, not really. A couple of these people claim to have heard noises around the dumpster last night, but none of their stories match up. Nobody saw anything, I’m afraid.”

  Noah looked around the area. “I see a dozen buildings around here where someone might have been looking out a window. Canvas them all and see if you can find anything more helpful.”

  Litchfield looked irritated. “Sir, I was supposed to stay close to you and...”

  “Were you placed under my orders, Litchfield?”

  Litchfield blinked. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Then do what I told you. When you’ve finished, make your way back to Ops and report to me.”

  Litchfield swallowed, but all he said was, “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  Finding the base enlisted housing, where Latham’s apartment was located, was easy, and it turned out to be just a short distance away. It took Marco only a minute to get a key from the housing officer in charge, and then he and Jenny were inside.

  Looking for clues in an apartment that seemed spotlessly clean was an entirely different matter. The apartment consisted of only three main rooms, including a small kitchen, a bedroom and a tiny living room, with a bathroom tucked neatly in between the latter two. Marco took the living room while Jenny went into the bedroom.

  "Found a Ruger, a twenty-two," she called out a moment later, using her gloved hand to take it from the drawer she had found it in. She looked it over carefully, then extracted the magazine and cleared the chamber. "Doesn't looks like it’s been fired, but we’ll let Renée check it out to be sure."

  “These apartments have thin walls,” Marco said. “If he was shot in here, you’d think somebody on this floor would have heard it.”

  Jenny shrugged. “People see and hear what they want to, most of the time. I’ve shot people in public places and seen people pretend nothing happened. If somebody in the building heard a gunshot, they might have assumed it was a car backfiring or something else. That’s easier than thinking someone just got murdered close by.”

  “Maybe so,” Marco said. “I checked the door and there was no forced entry. If he was killed here, then he must have known his killer.”

  Jenny moved into the kitchen but came out again a moment later. “Nothing in there,” she said. “Did you look everywhere in here?”

  “Pretty much,” Marco said. “No blood, no...”

  He started to take a step. But his toe caught on a raised ridge in the throw rug on the floor and he suddenly fell flat on his face. Jenny laughed, but he sat up and felt under the rug, then lifted its edge. A brass casing rolled out from under it.

  “Forty-five caliber,” he said. “Probably rolled under there while they were moving the body.”

  Jenny took out her phone and snapped a photo of it, then picked it up and dropped it into an evidence bag. “But there’s still no blood. You’d think if someone cleaned up blood, they’d have found this.”

  “Let’s get back to Ops and see what Emerson found out. We can give all this to Renée and let her sort it out.”

  Jenny smiled at him. “You think maybe she’s found her niche in the team? Being like a lab person, I mean?”

  Marco grinned back at her. “She definitely seems to be enjoying herself,” he said. “Up till now, I think she felt like a fifth wheel. Or maybe a sixth.”

  “She’s awfully happy with you, Marco. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I can tell,” he said. “On the other hand, every mission we go out on carries a lot of risks. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t have backed out of her life, rather than bringing her into mine.”

  “Hey, don’t worry,” Jenny said. “You’ve got me and Noah watching your back. We’ll keep bringing you home to her, don’t worry.”

  EIGHT

  Marco stepped into the lab, not a bit surprised to see that Renée was busily concentrating on something in front of her.

  "Hey, honey," he said as he walked toward her. He knew that she didn’t like to be startled, and she was focused so intently on whatever she was doing that he wanted to give her fair warning of his approach.

  "Marco!" she said, turning to him with a grin. “Where is Noah?”

  "He went to see Doctor Emerson, so I came on down to bring you something.” He held up the bag with the cartridge casing in it.

  “A forty-five,” she said. “That matches up with the bullet that Doctor Emerson found in the body. Give me an hour and I’ll be able to tell you whether this is the cartridge it came from.”

  Marco pulled her into a hug and kissed her cheek. “Then we only have one question left.”

  "What's that?" she asked, kissing him back.

  "If Latham was really shot in the apartment, why didn't we find any blood?"

  Renée smiled at him. “You need to go ask Doctor Emerson about that.”

  "There’s a rather simple explanation," Emerson answered a few minutes later, pointing to the X-ray on the wall. "The bullet did quite a lot of damage to the young man's internal organs." He pointed to the bullet hole on the left side of the victim’s chest. "This poor fellow was probably trying to duck, which is why the bullet entered here and went through the left lung, the heart and right lung before coming to rest in his chest cavity. Since there was no point of exit, the blood accumulated inside his abdomen." He looked at Noah. "He died almost instantly, which is good. Bleeding to death internally can be excruciating."

  Noah nodded as he and Marco stared at the X-ray in thought for several moments. “Renée says the bullet was a forty-five,” Marco said. “That matches with the casing Jenny and I found.”

  “But there’s nothing unusual about the body?” Noah asked.

  “Not anything like Lieutenant Belcher,” Emerson said, “if that’s what you’re asking. The only odd point I found was an abnormally high level of dimethyl sulfoxide in his blood. It wasn’t in any way connected to his death, but I found it unusual.”

  “DMSO?” Noah asked, and Emerson nodded. “DMSO is commonly used as a painkiller by athletes, including bodybuilders and such. They rub it in through the skin, and most people find that it stops pain within minutes.”

  Emerson glanced back at the body. “Well, he was obviously into heavy exercise, so tha
t could explain it. Of course, I’m aware of its medicinal properties, so I should have considered that.”

  “I’m curious about one thing,” Marco said. “The bullet was a forty-five caliber, right? If Latham was shot in his apartment, it had to be at fairly close range. I’d expect the bullet to go straight through the guy, and maybe even through the wall behind him. Any idea why it didn’t?”

  “Yes,” Emerson replied, his eyes twinkling, “and I was waiting for one of you to ask that question. Along with the bullet, I removed a substantial amount of steel fibers from the body, scattered along the path of trajectory. Whoever shot Private Latham used a crude silencer, most likely a long metal tube that was stuffed with steel wool. Compressing and punching through that much of the stuff slowed the bullet significantly, so that it came to the end of its energy before it could leave the chest cavity.”

  Noah looked at him for a second, then turned to Marco. “The killer wants us to think he was an amateur,” he said.

  Marco’s eyebrows rose. “Or maybe he really is,” he said. “Could be this isn’t related to McRae and the other things after all.”

  Noah shook his head. “A real amateur wouldn’t use steel wool in a tube. A pillow, maybe even a pop bottle would do almost as much to muffle the sound of that big a gun, but they’d take less time and effort to improvise. This is someone who knows enough to want it to look like an amateur killing, but he took it a bit too far. We’re dealing with someone who has some experience at killing for hire.”

  Noah left the autopsy room and headed back to the main office area with Marco trailing behind. Neil looked up when they came through the door.

  “Anything?” Noah asked.

  “You hit it, boss,” the skinny kid said. “I got into both of their gaming accounts, and it looks to me like Latham and McRae were involved in tracking activity around our flying saucer compound. They used the game to cover their private communications, but it wasn’t only the two of them. There are three others working with them, and two of them are at the forward observation base in Catamarca.”

  “That’s the base Lieutenant Jorgenson and his squad were working out of,” Noah said.

  “And the one Gallagher was delivering to when he saw the UFO,” Marco added. “Boss, if they had people out there working with them, they could be next on the target list.”

  “I’m way ahead of you, Marco,” Neil said. “I’ve identified all three of the other players. Here locally, we’ve got Corporal Darrell Latham, no relation to our most recent victim; he’s with the Supply Depot here, and may be the guy who was actually in charge of their operation. At the forward base, we have Staff Sergeant Paula Graves and Warrant Officer Wayne Smith. WO Smith is a helicopter pilot, and Sergeant Graves is an infantry machine gunner.”

  Noah nodded. “Go get Corporal Latham,” he said to Marco. “Neil, come with me.” Noah motioned for him to follow them into Allison’s office.

  Allison was already looking at the door as they entered. “What have we got?”

  “Somebody is running a secret operation to learn about the target compound,” Noah said. “Our kidnap victim wasn’t just a soldier, he was part of it, and our murder victim this morning was one of his team. We don’t know who is running them, but Neil has identified three more, and I’m bringing one of them in for questioning now. I wanted to ask if you have any idea who could be behind it.”

  Allison’s eyes were round. “No,” she said. “When we were handed this mess, the President said everyone else was pulling off it. Noah, do you have any idea what they’ve learned so far?”

  Noah looked at Neil, who stepped forward. “All I’ve seen so far are major communications, talking about when they might get someone out to take a closer look. McRae was working with Latham on isolating radio signals from the compound, but hadn’t managed it yet. Other than that, I don’t know anything more.”

  Allison turned back to Noah. “What does Mr. Litchfield say about it?”

  “I sent him to canvas the area around where this morning’s victim was found,” Noah said. “He hasn’t gotten back yet.”

  Allison sat in silence for a couple of seconds. “You distrust Mr. Litchfield?”

  Noah shrugged. “I think there’s something off about him. When we showed him the image of the thing that got Lieutenant Jorgenson, he acted like he’d just met a movie star. I can’t help wondering which side of this thing he’s going to be on when we get close to finding out what’s really going on.”

  “When we were talking this morning,” Allison said, “I noticed you putting on the deception-detection glasses. Did you get anything?”

  “Litchfield is good,” Noah said. “The best I got was a couple of instances when they lit up with ‘Possible Deception.’ To be honest, I don’t think he was truthful when he said that there weren’t any UFOs at Area 51, but I don’t know if that’s important.” He glanced at Neil, standing beside him. “It also triggered when he said he didn’t know anything about aliens.”

  Neil’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t say anything. Allison regarded them both for a couple of seconds before she continued.

  “I trust your judgment, Noah,” she said, “but this is something beyond our usual line. He’s supposed to be an asset, but I’ll leave it to you how you use him. In the meantime, I’m going to get on the phone and try to find out who else is in country and working on this. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  Noah recognized the dismissal and left the office immediately. Neil followed him and waited until they were back in the main office before he spoke.

  “Boss? You think Litchfield is a plant?”

  “I’m not sure,” Noah said. “I want you to see what you can find out on him. I already read his official file, but I think there might be more to the story.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” Neil said. He went to his desk and sat down at his computer once again.

  “Noah?” Sarah asked, walking up to him. “Something’s bothering you, I can tell.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Turns out we’ve got somebody else working on the same mission, but we don’t know what their orders or objectives are. Since Allison is unaware of it, that makes me suspect that it may be something off books.”

  His wife looked at him for a moment. “I know you better than that,” she said. “You’ve already figured out who’s behind it, haven’t you?”

  “I’m not certain,” Noah replied. “It bothers me, though, that Army Intelligence seems to be involved. To those people, the things we are up against could look like potential new weapons. The thought of things like we are seeing ending up on the battlefield, even on our side, just doesn’t sit right with me.”

  * * *

  "Boss, this is Darrell Latham," Marco said, as Noah stepped into the interrogation room. "Mr. Latham, this is Special Agent Noah Wolf."

  "Agent Wolf," Latham said, and he stretched out a hand in Noah’s direction. "I understand this has something to do with one of my war game buddies?”

  "It does," Noah said, shaking hands with the man. “You are familiar with Private David Latham?”

  Latham grinned. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “What’s he done now? I told him he was going to get himself in to trouble if he didn’t stop being such a jackass, always back talking his superiors, that kind of stuff. I don’t suppose there’s some way we can settle this without him ending up in too much trouble, is there?”

  Noah glanced over at Marco. “I take it you didn’t tell him?”

  "Tell me what?" Latham said, curious. “Is David in some kind of serious trouble? Is he all right?”

  “Corporal Latham, I think it might be best if you have a seat."

  "Why?" the corporal asked, his voice taking on a nervous tone.

  “Corporal Latham, your friend Private Latham was killed last night. Someone shot him to death in his apartment."

  Latham’s eyes went wide, and stared at Noah for several seconds. He sank slowly into a chair behind him, then whispered, “Oh my
God.” He sat there staring at Noah for a couple seconds more, then leaned over and put his face in his hands. “Do you know who did it?”

  “Not just yet,” Noah said. “We are working on it, though, and that’s why I needed to speak with you. I need to know just what it is you and Private Latham were working on with Specialist McRae.”

  Latham continued to sit as he was for a moment longer, then slowly raised his face to look at Noah. “Specialist McRae? I’m afraid I don’t know who that is,” he said.

  “Corporal Latham, you, Private Latham and Specialist Daniel McRae were working on a covert assignment that involves a secret compound in Catamarca Province. My people and I are here for the same reason, so don’t try to deny it. I can assure you, I have sufficient security clearance to hear anything you got to say.”

  Latham continued to look confused. “Agent Wolf, with all due respect, I don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about.”

  “Corporal,” Noah said, “I have reason to believe that you may be with Army Intelligence. Private Latham has been murdered, and Specialist McRae has been kidnapped. We’ve already cracked the communications you are using through the computer game, ‘Lethal Rage,’ so you need to drop the pretense and work with me, here.”

  Latham’s eyes had gone wide. “Danny’s been kidnapped?” he asked. “All I knew is that he had gone silent. When did this happen?”

  “Couple of days ago,” Noah said. “We’ve already got the people who did it, but it turns out that the kidnapping was arranged by a couple of strange looking characters who dress in black business suits. Since two of your people are already victims of this thing, I think you might want to cooperate with us a bit so we can try to keep the rest of your team from ending up on that list.”

  Latham stared at him for another moment, then slumped in his chair. “My current identity is a cover,” he said. “I’m actually Captain Jack Swaggart, Military Intelligence Corps. Specialist McRae was assigned to my team because of the unorthodox nature of the mission, looking into possible extraterrestrial activity. Private Latham was also MIC, and I have two others on my team.”