The Kill Room

by Jeffery Deaver

  "Because what you do is wrong. The United States is a country of laws, not men."

  "'Government' of laws," he corrected. "John Adams. It's a nice-sounding phrase. But parse it and things aren't so simple. A government of laws. Okay. Think about that: Laws require interpretation and delegations of power, down and down the line. To people like me--who make decisions on how to implement those laws."

  She fired back with: "Laws don't include ignoring due process and executing citizens arbitrarily."

  "There's nothing arbitrary about what I do."

  "No? You kill people you think are going to commit an offense."

  "All right, Counselor. What about a policeman on the street? He sees a perp in a dark alley with what might be a gun. It seems that he's about to shoot someone. The cop is authorized to kill, right? Where's your due process there, where's your reasonable search and seizure, where's your right to confront your accuser?"

  "Ah, but Moreno didn't have a gun."

  "And sometimes the guy in the alley only has a cell phone. But he gets shot anyway because we've chosen to give the police the right to make judgments." He gave a deep, chill laugh. "Tell me, aren't you guilty of the same thing?"

  "What do you mean?" she snapped.

  "What about my due process? What about Barry Shales's?"

  She frowned.

  He continued, "In making the case, did you datamine me? Or Barry? Did you get classified information from, say, the FBI? Did you somehow 'accidentally' happen to get your hands on NSA intercepts?"

  An awkward hesitation. Was she blushing beneath the white mask? "Every bit of evidence I present at trial can pass Fourth Amendment scrutiny."

  Metzger smiled. "I'm not talking about trial. I'm talking about unwarranted gathering of information as part of an investigation."

  Laurel blinked. She said nothing.

  He whispered, "You see? We both interpret, we judge, we make decisions. We live in a gray world."

  "You want another quotation, Shreve? Blackstone: 'Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.' That's what my system does, makes sure the innocent don't end up as victims. Yours doesn't." She fished her keys from her battered purse. "I'm going to keep watching you."

  "Then I'll look forward to seeing you in court, Counselor."

  He turned and walked back to his car. He sat, calming, in the front seat, not looking back. Breathing.

  Let it go.

  Five minutes later he started at his phone's buzz. He noted Ruth's number on caller ID.

  "Hi, there."

  "Uhm, Shreve. I heard. Is it true about Spencer?"

  "Afraid it is. I'll tell you more later. I don't want to talk on an open line."

  "Okay. But that's not why I called. We heard from Washington."

  The Wizard.

  "He wanted to schedule a call with you for tomorrow afternoon."

  Didn't firing squads gather at dawn?

  "That's fine," he said. "Send me the details." He stretched. A joint popped. "Say, Ruth?"

  "Yes?"

  "What did he sound like?"

  There was a pause. "He...It wasn't so good, I don't think, Shreve."

  "Okay, Ruth. Thank you."

  He disconnected and looked out over the busy crime scene at Spencer Boston's house. The sour chemical vapors still lingered, surrounding the Colonial home and the grounds.

  Smoke...

  So that was it. Whether Moreno was guilty or not was irrelevant; Washington now had plenty of reason to disband NIOS. Metzger had picked for his administrations director a whistleblower, and for his defense contractor a corrupt CEO who'd ordered people tortured and killed.

  This was the end.

  Metzger sighed and put the car in gear, thinking: Sorry, America. I did the best I could.

  SATURDAY, MAY 20

  VII

  MESSAGES

  CHAPTER 93

  AT NINE ON SATURDAY MORNING Lincoln Rhyme was maneuvering through the lab and dictating the evidence report to back up the Walker trial and the Swann plea agreement.

  He noted too his calendar, up on a big monitor.

  Surgery Friday, May 26. Be at hospital at 9 a.m.

  NO liquor after midnight. None. Not a drop.

  He smiled at the second line, Thom's entry.

  The town house was quiet. His aide was in the kitchen and Sachs was in her apartment in Brooklyn. She'd had basement problems and was waiting for the contractor. She would also be seeing Nance Laurel later today--getting together for drinks and dinner.

  And dish on men too...

  Rhyme was pleased the women had, against all odds, become friends. Sachs didn't have many.

  The sound of a doorbell echoed and Rhyme heard Thom's footfalls making for the portal. A moment later he returned with a tall figure in a brown suit, white shirt and green tie whose hue he couldn't begin to describe.

  NYPD Captain Bill Myers. Special Services Division. Whatever that might be.

  Greetings were exchanged and the man fell into an effusive tone, with Myers complimenting Rhyme on the resolution of the case.

  "Never in a million years would have seen that potentiality," the captain said.

  "Was surprised at how it turned out."

  "I'll say. Some pretty decent deductions on your part."

  The word "decent" only describes that which is socially proper or non-obscene; it doesn't mean fair or good. But you can't change a jargonist so Rhyme kept mum. He realized that silence had descended as Myers took in the gas chromatograph with an intensity that circumstances--and the equipment itself--didn't warrant.

  Then the captain looked around the lab and observed that they were alone.

  And Rhyme knew.

  "This's about Amelia, right, Bill?"

  Wishing he hadn't used her first name. Neither of them was the least superstitious, except in this tradition. They never referred to each other by their givens.

  "Yes. Lon talked to you? About my problems with her health issues?"

  "He did."

  "Let me unpack it further," Myers said. "I allowed her some time to finish this case and then have her take a medical. But I'm not going that route. I read the report of the take-down in Glen Cove, when she and Officer Pulaski collared Jacob Swann. The medic's report said that her knee gave out completely after the suspect noticed she was in pain and kicked or hit it. If Officer Pulaski hadn't been there she would have been killed. And Spencer Boston too, and maybe a few of the tactical officers as they did a dynamic entry."

  Rhyme said bluntly, "She took down the perp, Bill."

  "She was lucky. The report said afterward she could hardly walk."

  "She's fine now."

  "Is she?"

  No, she wasn't. Rhyme said nothing.

  "It's the elephant in the room, Lincoln. Nobody wants to talk about it but it's a problematic circumstance. She's putting herself and other people at risk. I wanted to talk to you alone about this. We huddled and conjured up a decision. I'm promoting her out of the field. She'll be a supervisor in Major Cases. And we'll rank her. Sergeant. But I know there'll be pushback from her."

  Rhyme was furious. This was his Sachs the captain was talking about in the cheapest of cliches.

  But he kept silent.

  The captain continued, "I need you to talk her into it, Lincoln. We don't want to lose her; she's too good. But the department can't keep her if she insists on being in the field. Desking her's the only option."

  And what would she do post-NYPD? Become a freelance consultant, like him? But that wasn't Sachs's way. She was a brilliant crime scene searcher, with her natural empathy and dogged nature. But she had to be a cop in the field, not lab-bound, like he was. And forensics wasn't her only specialty, of course; if she couldn't speed to a hostage taking or robbery in progress to engage the perp, she'd wither.

  "Will you talk to her, Lincoln?"

  Finally he said, "I'll talk to her."

  "Thank you. It's for her own good, you know. We
really do want the best. It'll be a three-sixty for everybody."

  The captain shook his hand and departed.

  Rhyme stared at the table where Sachs had recently been sitting to work the Moreno case. He believed he could smell some of the gardenia soap she favored though possibly that was just a fragrance memory.

  I'll talk to her...

  Then he turned his wheelchair and motored back to the whiteboards, examining them closely. Taking, as always, comfort in the elegance and intrigue of evidence.

  CHAPTER 94

  THE 110-FOOT GENERAL CARGO VESSEL, chugging under diesel power, plowed through the Caribbean Sea, a massive stretch of turquoise water once home to pirates and noble men-of-war and now the highway of tourists and the playground of the One Percent.

  The ship was under a Dominican flag and was thirty years old. A Detroit 16-149 powered her through the water at a respectable thirteen knots, via a single screw. Her draft was fifteen feet but she rode high today, thanks to her light cargo.

  A tall mast, forward, dominated the superstructure and the bridge was spacious but cluttered, filled with secondhand navigation equipment bolted, glued or tied down. The wheel was an old-fashioned wooden ring with spokes.

  Pirates...

  At the helm was squat, fifty-two-year-old Enrico Cruz. This was his real name, though most people knew him by his pseudonym, Henry Cross, a New Yorker who ran several nonprofit organizations, the largest and most prominent of which was Classrooms for the Americas.

  Cruz was alone on the deck today because the man who was to have accompanied him today had been murdered by the U.S. government in suite 1200 of the South Cove Inn in the Bahamas. A single shot to the chest had guaranteed that Roberto Moreno would not make this voyage with his friend.

  Cruz and Moreno had known each other for decades, ever since Moreno's best friend, Cruz's brother, Jose, had been murdered too--yes, that was the right word--by a U.S. helicopter gunship in Panama during the invasion in 1989.

  Since that time the two men had worked together to wage a war on the nation that had descended blithely into Panama, his country, and decided that, oh, sorry, the dictator we've been supporting all these years is a bad man after all.

  In their campaign against the United States these men differed only in approach. Moreno was outspoken and publicly anti-American, while Cruz remained anonymous, which allowed him to set up the attacks and get the weapons and money where they would do the most good. But together Cruz and Moreno were the backbone of the unnamed movement.

  They had engineered the deaths of close to three hundred U.S. citizens and foreigners who kowtowed to Western values: businessmen, professors, politicians, drug enforcement officials, diplomats and their families.

  These attacks had been isolated and small, so authorities wouldn't make any connections among them. But what was planned today was just the opposite: a massive strike against the political, social and corporate heart of America. Moreno had prepared for months--renouncing his citizenship, severing all ties to the United States, moving his money from the States to the Cayman Islands, buying a house in the wilderness of Venezuela--all in anticipation of what was about to happen.

  And the weapon at the heart of the attack? The ship that now was plowing through the waves.

  Cruz, as a native of Panama, had been steeped in the shipping trade for much of his early life; he knew how to drive vessels this size. Besides, nowadays one didn't really need to be more than functional at the helm. A competent crew in the engine room, GPS and autopilot on the bridge were all you needed. That was about it. The computer was doing the donkey's work of getting her to the destination. They were plodding north-by-northwest through the three-foot seas. The day was brilliantly blue, the wind persistent, the spray kaleidoscopic.

  The vessel had no name, or did no longer, having been purchased through a series of real but obscure corporations, and was known only by her registration number. There had once been a file on her in a computer in the Dominican Republic, along with a corresponding entry into a registration book, regarding her vital statistics, but they had been, respectively, digitally erased and physically excised.

  She was anonymous.

  Cruz had thought about informally christening her before they set sail from Nassau--Roberta, after his friend, suitably feminized. But then decided it was better to refer to her simply as the ship. She was faded black and gray and streaked with rust. But to him, beautiful.

  He now gazed at their destination, the black dot some kilometers away. The GPS tweaked the navigation system to compensate for the wind; new directions went automatically to the rudder. He felt the ship respond. He enjoyed the sensation of such a large creature obeying commands.

  The door opened and a man joined him. He had black skin, a bullet-shaped head, shaved shiny, a lean body. Bobby Cheval wore jeans, a denim shirt with sleeves cut off so that it resembled a vest. He was barefoot. He glanced to the horizon. He said, "Too bad, don't you think? He won't see it happen. That is sad."

  Cheval had been Robert Moreno's main contact in the Bahamas.

  "Maybe he will," Cruz said. He didn't believe this but he said it to reassure Cheval, who wore a horsehair cross around his neck. Cruz didn't accept the afterlife and knew his dear friend Robert Moreno was as dead as the heart of the government that had killed him.

  Cheval, who would lead the Local Empowerment Movement in the Bahamas once it was up and running, had been instrumental in putting together today's plan.

  "Any ships? Signs of surveillance?" Cruz asked.

  "No, no. Nothing."

  Cruz was sure no one suspected what was going to happen. They had been so very careful. His only moment of concern had been earlier in the week when that sexy redheaded policewoman had shown up in the Chambers Street office of Classrooms for the Americas to ask about Roberto's visit on May 1. He'd been surprised at first but Cruz had dealt with some truly despicable people--al-Qaeda operatives, for instance, and Shining Path rebels--and didn't get rattled easily. He'd distracted Detective Sachs with the true story of the "white guy" who'd tailed Roberto, from NIOS undoubtedly. And distracted her further with some fiction about a mysterious private jet.

  A red herring about a blue plane, he thought to himself now and smiled. Roberto would have liked that.

  "Is the skiff ready?" Cruz asked Cheval.

  "Yes, it is. How close will we get? Before we abandon, I mean."

  "Two kilometers will be fine."

  At that point the five crewmen would climb into a high-speed cigarette boat and head in the opposite direction. They'd follow the ship's progress on the computer. They could steer remotely if the GPS and autopilot broke down; there was a webcam mounted on the bridge of the vessel and they'd be able to watch the ship approach its destination.

  At which the men now gazed.

  The Miami Rover was American Petroleum Drilling and Refining's only oil rig in the area, located about thirty miles off the coast of Miami. (And named rather ironically; it didn't rove anywhere anymore and its journey here had been straight from Texas, at the meandering rate of four knots.)

  Months ago Moreno and Cruz had decided that the oil company would be the target for their biggest "message" to date; American Petroleum had stolen huge tracts of land in South America and displaced thousands of people, offering them a pathetic settlement in return for their signatures on deeds of transfer that most of them couldn't read. Moreno had organized a series of protests in the United States and elsewhere over the past month or so. The protests had served two purposes. First, they'd brought to light the crimes of AmPet. But, second, they lent credence to the proposition that Moreno was all talk. Once the authorities saw that mere protesting was what he had in mind they largely lost interest in him.

  And so nobody followed up on leads that might have exposed what was going to happen today: ramming the ship into the Miami Rover. Once it hit, the fifty-five-gallon drums containing a poignant mixture of diesel fuel, fertilizer and nitromethane would detonate
, destroying the rig.

  But that in itself, while a blow for the cause, wasn't enough, Moreno and Cruz had decided. Killing sixty or so workers, ruining the biggest oil rig in the Southeast? That was like that pathetic fellow who suicide-crashed his private plane into the building housing the IRS in Austin, Texas. He killed a few people. Caused some damage, snarled traffic.

  And soon, back to business as usual in the Lone Star State's capital.

  What would happen today was considerably worse.

  After the initial explosion destroyed the rig, the ship would sink fast. In the stern was a second bomb that would descend to the seafloor near the wellhead. A depth-gauge detonator would set off another explosion, which would destroy both the well's ram and annular blowout preventers. Without any BOPs to stop the flow, oil would gush into the ocean at the rate of 120,000 barrels a day, more than twice what escaped in the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf.

  The surface currents and wind would speed the oil slick on its mission to destroy much of the eastern coast of Florida and Georgia. And might even spread to the Carolinas. Ports would close, shipping and tourism would stop indefinitely, millions of people would take a huge economic hit.

  Roberto had said, "Americans want oil for their cars and their air-conditioning and their capitalist companies. Well, I'll give it to them. They can drown in all the oil we'll deliver!"

  Forty minutes later the ship was three kilometers away from the Miami Rover.

  Enrico Cruz checked the GPS one last time and he and Cheval left the bridge. Cruz said, "Everybody in the speedboat."

  Cruz hurried to the gamy forward hold, in which slimy water sloshed, and checked the main bomb. Everything fine. He armed it. He did the same with the second, the device that would destroy the blowout preventer.

  Then he hurried back to the rocking deck. A glance over the bow. Yes, she was making right for the rig. He scanned the massive deck of the structure--easily a hundred feet above the surface. No workers were visible. This was typical. Nobody on oil rigs wasted time lounging on the fiercely hot iron superstructure, taking in the non-view. They were hard at work in the interior of the unit, mostly in the drill house, or asleep, waiting for the next shift.

  Cruz hurried to the side of the vessel and climbed down the rope ladder and dropped into the speedboat with Cheval and the others of the crew.