The Patrick Bowers Files - 05 - The Queen

by Steven James

  A quick and quiet transition.

  Alexei gripped the steering wheel.

  Paused.

  It was impressive that this agent had tried to save Ellory, had actually jumped into the water to go after him. Not many people would do that, especially with an ice floe just downstream.

  And now he was going to die for his courage, if he hadn’t already.

  Alexei’s eyes found the photo he’d tipped upside down. He had a job to do, and there would always be casualties and consequences in this line of work, yes, of course, but he’d killed two people in the last five minutes, and that was more than enough.

  A federal agent brave enough to rush into an icy river to save a drowning man deserved to live.

  Alexei pulled out his cell.

  For a moment he watched the snow pelt the windshield and waited to see if Bowers was moving.

  He was not.

  Alexei made his decision, tapped in 911, and told the dispatcher the location of the agent.

  He found a tarp in the back of the cab, took it to the river, and wrapped it snugly around Bowers’s body to at least afford him some protection from the wind. Then he carried him closer to the bridge, and jammed a tall stick into the snow beside him so EMS would be able to find the agent if the snow covered him before they arrived.

  It might not be enough, but it was something.

  Then he returned to the vehicle, released the air brakes, and took to the road to put some distance between himself and the river.

  It was time to find out who was really leading Eco-Tech, and what exactly they were up to.

  Cell phone in hand, he punched in Valkyrie’s number and access code.

  34

  Alexei waited twelve rings, but Valkyrie did not answer.

  He lowered the phone.

  Nothing about this felt right on any level.

  Maybe it’d all been a setup from the start, from that very first conversation with his mysterious employer last spring. But why? Just to make him look guilty for the death of a woman and her child? Could that be all? There had to be more.

  He’d never had any trouble with Valkyrie before.

  Yesterday, when Alexei had first heard about the Pickron murders, he’d tried to let the news of their deaths slide off him, tried not to let it distract him, but it’d crawled around in the back of his mind ever since. Bothering him.

  You do not kill children.

  And you do not kill women.

  Alexei had eliminated his share of targets over the years, but it was not in his nature to take the lives of those he felt the need to protect.

  And now as he thought about the woman and her daughter dying yesterday, a fresh gust of anger swept through him.

  You do not kill women.

  You do not.

  He remembered the day he found Tatiana in their apartment in Moscow.

  The argument they’d had earlier in the afternoon. Telling her that he never wanted to see her again. Words he didn’t mean. Words he would always regret.

  And then discovering her body.

  The bullet wound in her forehead.

  The blood still spreading out, soaking into the creamy white cotton sheets.

  His frantic and fruitless search for her killer.

  After his wife’s murder, Alexei had vowed that when he found the person who’d killed her, he would return the favor, but her killer’s passing would not be as quick as hers. At first Alexei would make that person beg for his life, but he was confident that there would come a time when the murderer would beg for the opposite. Alexei planned to make death the most desirable outcome of all, and then, to withhold that from his captive for as long as possible.

  And Alexei had skills. The process would go on for a while.

  But now, shaking those thoughts loose, he tried to direct his attention to the matters at hand.

  The wise move at this point would be to leave the area, but before he did that, he wanted some answers.

  He doubted that Valkyrie would have left the remaining $1,000,000 at the dead drop, and it didn’t look like he would be delivering the money to Eco-Tech after all.

  But he could put it to other use—if he could retrieve it.

  He phoned Nikolai Demidenko again and said, “I need whatever you can get me on this number.” He passed along the phone number and the alphanumeric pass code for reaching Valkyrie. “Trust me when I tell you that if you can lead me to Valkyrie, I will make it worth your while.” He also told him the information he’d gotten from Rear Admiral Colberg the day before.

  “All right, my brother. I will find this Valkyrie for you. You have my word.”

  Alexei had an idea of where to go from here, but it meant switching vehicles and then returning to the house where he’d left his equipment—after picking up the remaining $1,000,000 from Valkyrie’s prearranged drop site.

  If it was even going to be there waiting for him at all.

  Tessa was having a hard time.

  The roads were a mess.

  She’d passed a small roadside motel about a half hour ago but had figured she should press on. Now, she wasn’t so sure that’d been a good idea.

  She didn’t even know where she was, but at this rate she guessed it would still be another couple hours to Woodborough, where she was gonna meet up with Patrick. To make matters worse, the rental car hadn’t been handling the cold or the roads very well, stalling out twice and not grabbing the pavement like it should. Three times in the last twenty minutes she’d slid precariously close to the ditch when she hit patches of ice.

  So, status report: in the middle of nowhere, not making good time on roads that were becoming more and more impassable.

  Brilliant.

  Though she wasn’t looking forward to his reaction, she decided she needed to call Patrick, tell him what was up. But when she tried his number, Sean answered.

  After a quick greeting she asked if she could talk with her stepdad.

  “He’s working on the case,” Sean said simply. “Where are you?”

  “I have no idea.” She explained her situation, that she was on her way and caught in the middle of the storm.

  “Did you get to Hayward yet?”

  All these little towns ran together in her mind. Besides, the snow was distracting and the visibility horrible. “I don’t think so. I’m not sure.”

  “What kind of car are you driving?”

  Okay, odd question.

  “Some kind of Chevy sedan thing.”

  “All right, that’s all right. Are you good with gas?” She could sense an underlying urgency in his questions, though it seemed like he was trying his best to downplay it.

  She’d been so focused on the roads that she hadn’t even been keeping an eye on the gas gauge and now saw that she had less than a quarter tank. She told Sean, and a moment later passed a sign that announced it was ten miles to Hayward. She relayed her location to her stepuncle.

  “Tessa, in about five miles you should come to a bar called Lindberg’s; just explain that you’re my niece and that I told you to wait there for me, and Larry will let you in. It’ll be on the right. I’m coming to get you.”

  “It’s okay, I—”

  “You don’t need to be out in this weather, not in that car. Pat would never forgive me if I let you drive the rest of the way.”

  “No, seriously, I’ll be—”

  “I’m coming to get you.” His voice rang with the same resolve and assurance that Patrick’s so often held, and in a way it comforted her. “Go to Lindberg’s. Get a burger. Wait for me. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  Ew. A burger.

  Not.

  But this wasn’t exactly the time to tell Sean she was a vegan.

  “In this weather it’ll take me at least an hour,” he told her. “I don’t want you on the roads. Be careful. I’ll see you soon. I’ll be driving a blue Ford pickup.”

  Honestly, she didn’t want to be driving in this weather or this car anyway. At last sh
e gave in. “Thanks. Seriously.”

  “I’m on my way out the door. I’ll keep Pat’s phone with me. Call me if you run into any trouble. And let me know when you get to Lindberg’s.”

  “Okay.”

  She hung up and stared out the windshield at the blinding snow.

  Five miles to go.

  At this speed, fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty.

  As long as the stupid car didn’t stall out along the way.

  35

  The Schoenberg Inn

  Elk Ridge, Wisconsin

  Lower level, north wing

  Cassandra Lillo had almost missed locating the radio transmission wires in the duffel bag that Alexei Chekov had dropped off with her team, the bag she’d had Becker drive toward the base in order to lead Chekov away from the hotel. The transmitter was very high end. Chekov obviously knew his stuff.

  And now.

  Now.

  She knew from monitoring the police dispatch frequency that the sheriff’s department had found the knife with Chekov’s prints, the one she’d had Ted deposit in the snow beside the Pickrons’ house immediately following their meeting with Alexei.

  And they already had the helmet that Becker had left in the water this morning before daybreak. On the police radios one of the officers had mentioned that the strap was buckled. How could Becker be so stupid? How could he make a mistake like that! He might be good at stopping loggers and whaling ships, but he was not proving to be especially gifted in this current line of work. Cassandra could only guess that, if the cops were thinking at all, the buckled strap would be enough to tip them off.

  And now a deputy, Bryan Ellory, was unaccounted for, and even more fascinating, an FBI agent who was investigating the Pickron killings had been found beside the Chippewa River.

  He’d been pulseless and unresponsive when the EMTs found him; however, from her scuba diving days, she knew the old adage that “you’re not dead until you’re warm and dead” was buttressed by an awful lot of medical research. Cold water immersion, as well as extreme hypothermia, slow the body’s metabolism, and in numerous cases, clinical death had been reversed thirty, forty, even up to eighty minutes after it had occurred.

  But whether or not this man would survive, she was intrigued by his presence here because she actually knew him. Patrick Bowers was the federal agent she’d met last year in San Diego—in fact, he was the one who’d caught her when she was working on an earlier project.

  But her stay in prison had been relatively short-lived, and she had nothing against Bowers personally. He’d just been doing his job and she’d just been doing hers, but she knew that he typically worked serial homicides, so she found it informative that he’d been assigned to the Pickron murders.

  Agent Bowers might recover, he might not, but in the meantime, the FBI’s involvement was something to keep an eye on.

  And use to her advantage, if possible.

  Law enforcement is like a bull with a ring through its snout. You can lead them wherever you want, if you know the kinds of things they look for.

  Which she did.

  Her father had taught her all about that.

  The original plan had been to keep the police focused on Donnie and only later direct the investigators’ attention to Chekov. Admittedly, however, law enforcement had moved a little faster than she anticipated. Prudently, she’d been prepared for that contingency. An international assassin in the area was just too big a carrot to pass up.

  At first, she’d intended for Clifton to disable Alexei but keep him alive so they could time his subsequent “suicide” appropriately. But when Alexei showed some skills and so easily overpowered Clifton White, she’d decided it would be more profitable to let Chekov go free, and then direct law enforcement toward him while he was on the run. It would be less work for her, less of a distraction. This way it would make for a good old-fashioned manhunt and galvanize law enforcement officers, keep them occupied longer.

  Let Chekov lead the bulls around for her.

  With only one good arm left, Clifton hadn’t been of any further use to her.

  She’d had to put him down.

  Something else her father had taught her to do well.

  And now it was time to move forward.

  Cassandra’s partner had explained it all to her last month. “To hack into a computer system with a USB stick you just insert code that’ll automatically execute when it’s plugged into a computer. Two approaches. One: leave a Trojan horse that’ll spread to any additional USB memory device that’s connected to the computer, and from there—”

  “Spread computer to computer every time a memory stick is inserted.”

  “That’s right. And have them transmit back information. That’s why the military has banned USB jump drives from use on all its networks—but the computers still have USB ports. In this case, we’ll do option two: a self-replicating algorithm that’ll move through the system at the root level until it finds the files we need. We’ll just need one USB device, strategically placed.”

  She already knew that computers respond differently to external hard drives than they do to portable USB devices. Every hard drive has a different individualized code, a sui generis fingerprint that allows programmers to identify when and where a drive is used. But, if you know the fingerprint of another drive, it allows hackers to mask the true identity of a drive by overlaying the original code on top of its own.

  So you can stay hidden.

  Even in plain sight.

  And there was no better person to do that than her partner.

  While she listened to the police dispatch channel, she studied her computer monitor, looking over the submarine information Becker had accessed and downloaded from Donnie Pickron’s home computer.

  Clicking to the Department of Defense’s Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System, or JWICS, Cassandra confirmed that the USS Louisiana would be ideally positioned in the Gulf of Oman at just the right time, 03:00 GMT.

  That’s when her partner’s algorithm was set to register the signal. That’s when they had to send the transmission—not a minute earlier, not a minute later. No hack goes unnoticed forever, and the sub’s computers would eventually notice the discrepancies in the code and respond with countermeasures.

  Yes, countermeasures in some areas, but carelessness in others.

  After all, the United States military doesn’t just subcontract weapons systems to civilian contractors, but also hires private security firms and civilian companies for less mission-sensitive services.

  Logistics.

  Food service.

  Custodial services.

  No one in the Navy is excited about cleaning the heads or emptying the leftover raw sewage that hadn’t been deposited in the ocean from a 150-crewmen sub after three months at sea.

  And so, the US Naval Forces Central Command in the Persian Gulf used a private firm, Khdmāt Tjāryh at-Tnz̧yf al-Bḩryn, the Commercial Cleaning Service of Bahrain, to clean their heads and drain their waste storage tanks. Since those areas were located in the sections of Ohio Class submarines that were designed to allow for civilian access, it wasn’t a security threat. Besides, the cleaning crews were carefully vetted.

  They would need to pass through the galley to get to one of the heads.

  The computers in the galley were used primarily for meal planning and inventorying supplies, but of course, they were networked to the other computers on the sub—if you knew how to access the passwords and authentication codes—something a Navy cryptologist would be able to do, given the right kind of access to the system.

  She put the call through to Bahrain, to her man who was assigned to the cleaning crew of the USS Louisiana while it was in port tomorrow.

  Allighiero Avellino, an Italian expatriate and Eco-Tech loyalist who’d moved to the Middle East two years ago, assured her that everything was still in place.

  “We will finish at the sub,” Allighiero stated in his somewhat stilted English, “tomorrow
afternoon at 3:00.” Cassandra knew that was Arabia Standard Time; so here in Wisconsin that would be 6:00 tomorrow morning.

  Yes, good.

  She hung up.

  Checked her watch.

  5:41 p.m.

  She would give it a little more time, then check on her captive in the next room and see how the project was coming along.

  36

  I dreamt.

  And here was my dream.

  Ellory sways in a pool of rippling water spreading out all around me. He’s staring at me from a foot beneath the surface, his eyes open, his face grayish-blue, the color of death.

  He’s mouthing something, trying to speak to me.

  I lift him and he’s heavy and limp, the way only dead people are.

  His face emerges and the water flows, drips off his skin, and he murmurs to me with a voice wet and thick, “It’s cold.” Water gurgles from his mouth. “So cold.”

  I’m repulsed, but I want to tell him that things will be all right, that I’ll get him to shore, that I’ll save him, but he’s sinking and I can’t support him any longer and there’s no shore in sight, just vacant sky and lonely water in every direction—

  “So cold.”

  Then I hear a woman’s voice and she’s whispering my name: “Patrick . . .” The word comes from another place and collides with the nightmare.

  “Patrick . . .”

  Suddenly I’m spinning free of my dream, watching Ellory’s face disappear into the water, within the blurry fog of sleep.

  “Cold, so cold.”

  Then the voice again. “Pat, are you okay?”

  It’s Amber and I want to reply, but I can’t seem to open my eyes, move, speak. Anything. A thick weight is pressing on me.

  I struggle to speak, and at last I manage to whisper her name. “Amber.”

  “He’s waking up!” The words are liquid, floating and shimmering around me as if they were real things that could be touched, held, squeezed.

  At last I work my eyes open and see her leaning over me, her face backlit by the sharp, white hospital room light, which forces me to shut them again.

  “Oh, is it good to see you, Pat. Thank God.”