The Collective

by Jack Rogan

  These thoughts filled the space between two heartbeats. Her finger started to squeeze the trigger a second time, tracking the two survivors, the knife, and the gun, but knowing the bullet that would end her was on the way.

  The gunshot made her flinch, resounding across the night sky. He had fired first, or so she thought until his gun hand drooped and he staggered aside, then crumbled to the grass and sprawled there, a bloody hole in the back of his shirt.

  Leyla started wailing again.

  Cait and the knife-man turned at the same time to see a pair of men in dark suits coming around from the front of the house. Only seconds had passed since she’d come out the back door. These two must have been on standby in front, but the gunshots had drawn them around back.

  The knife-man dropped his blade, reaching for his gun.

  Enemies. They were enemies.

  Cait leveled her weapon at the men in suits, hoping the knife-man would shoot them before he’d try putting a bullet in her. They want Leyla. Why do they want to hurt my baby?

  Her finger tightened on the trigger, but then she saw a third man coming around from the front yard—a black man in shirt and tie, no jacket. Him she knew.

  Detective Jarman planted his feet and took aim, shouting.

  “Police! Drop your—”

  Three shots rang out in quick succession and Detective Jarman spun around and fell, and only then did Cait see the skinny blond weasel hanging halfway out the broken apartment window, gun clasped in both hands.

  Knife-man took aim at him, put a bullet in the window frame, and then the two who’d come from the front shot him dead, there in the yard, and the gunshots echoed into silence. The sounds drifted away like smoke.

  “Get her, damn it!” the weasel in the window shouted.

  Over the cries and choking sobs of her baby, she heard the distant banshee wail of police sirens, but by the time the cops came, this would all be over. She shot the one closest to her and ran, headed for the shed at the back of the yard. Shouts followed her, and so did bullets, one shattering the window in the shed, but though she braced for impact, none of the shots hit her.

  A glance over her shoulder showed her the weasel using his gun to smash the rest of the glass out of the living room window. He crouched on the sill and jumped down, but the other guy had a twenty-foot lead on him, sprinting.

  Cait knew then that they would catch her. The shed would block bullets, but offered no hiding place, and she would never make it through the backyards to the next street before they caught up with her. This wasn’t going to work, which left her only one option—to be the last one standing.

  She rounded the corner of the shed and stopped. Using it for cover, with Leyla’s terrified shrieks filling her ears, she took aim at the black-suited gunman who was closing in on her. The weasel sprinted to catch up to him.

  An engine revved, out on the street. Headlights swept the darkness of the yard and then the car’s growl turned into a roar. The two men in suits spun around, silhouetted in the headlights as a silver, mid-’90s Cadillac El Dorado tore across the lawn, ancient Rolling Stones blaring on the radio. Weasel bounced off the front grill with a sickeningly wet crunch of bone and vanished underneath the car. The other guy lifted his gun, ready to fire at the Caddy’s windshield, but the driver leaned out the window and shot him twice in the chest.

  As the guy fell, she got her first clear view of the grim-faced old man behind the wheel, his hair as silver as the El Dorado’s finish. He lowered his gun the moment he saw her—a comforting change of pace. But she wasn’t in a trusting mood, and kept her own weapon trained on his face.

  “Caitlin McCandless,” he called, over the growing song of police sirens and Leyla’s diminishing cries. “My name is Matthew Lynch. If you want your daughter to live through the night, you’d better get in.”

  “The police are coming,” she said.

  “They’ll buy you a few hours, no more,” Lynch said quickly. “You’ve got dead Feds and terrorists in your yard, honey. This is bigger than the Podunk P.D. Please, get in. For your daughter’s sake, if not your own.” The sirens grew louder.

  Lynch put his car in reverse, staring at her. “Decide!”

  “Shit!” Cait snapped, and ran around to the passenger side.

  As she climbed in, she kept her gun trained on Lynch, but he ignored her. She hadn’t even closed the passenger door when he floored the car in reverse, tearing up the grass. He bumped over the sidewalk and into the street, jammed on the brakes, threw the car in Drive, and took off so fast the door slammed shut on its own.

  Cait had made her choice. She put her gun on the floor and grabbed the seat belt, strapping it across her chest, holding Leyla in her lap. As she adjusted the belt, she caught sight of an empty car seat in the back, like Lynch had come ready to take the baby with him, and she turned to stare at him, wondering how different he was, really, from the other men.

  Silent now, Leyla stared up at her, eyes wide with shock and probably exhausted from all of the crying.

  Lynch reached Powder House Circle at the same time four police cars poured into it from three different directions. He slowed down, just an old guy in his well-preserved Caddy, and went around the rotary, headed for Route 16, or maybe Route 93.

  As she stared at him, Lynch wrinkled his nose.

  “Jesus, your baby smells like piss.”

  Cait laughed in disbelief. “I didn’t have time to grab her diaper bag.”

  Lynch tapped the accelerator and shot through a yellow light. “I’ve got one in the trunk.”

  A terrible chill, growing too familiar by now, spread up Cait’s spine. What the hell had she gotten them into now?

  “I could do without the fucking entourage.”

  Josh Hart ran a hand through his hair—a nervous habit that showed up whenever he was in a crowd. Not that there were actually that many people in the baggage compartment of the plane. Him, Voss, Turcotte, a woman named Aria who was the mouthpiece for Massport security, and Special Agent Ben Coogan out of the FBI’s Boston field office. The guy must have asked to be posted there because he was a local boy, South Boston Irish born and bred, with squared-off boxer’s shoulders and a nose crooked from being broken in a bar fight. And that wasn’t Josh stereotyping. Coogan had slipped the story into conversation within the first four minutes of their introduction on the tarmac.

  “There’s not much I can do about it, Agent Hart,” Aria said, crouching down to glance out at the group gathered around the rear of the plane. “It’s my people, your people, and the Boston P.D. It isn’t like there are any media or civilians out there.”

  Josh and Voss exchanged a glance. Her eyes crinkled with amusement but she didn’t quite smile. She didn’t have to. They knew each other well enough that communication might as well have been telepathic. Aria worked airport security, and as much as she and her employees were a vital part of protecting the nation, for her to refer to others as civilians—as if scanning suitcases and patting down old ladies was the same thing as hunting terrorists and serial killers—made them both want to choke.

  “I’m sorry, Ms.…?”

  “Fernandez.”

  “Ms. Fernandez,” Josh continued. “I’m mostly referring to the various departments and agencies that we’re accumulating on this case. It’s snowballing, and you know what they say about too many cooks. Plus, I have some issues with crowds.”

  Aria smiled. “Everybody’s got an issue with something.”

  Josh glanced around the compartment. The crime-scene team had been in hours ago. The body had already been removed and there was no blood, but the signs of a struggle were evident everywhere they looked.

  “My issue’s tight spaces,” Agent Coogan said. “Can we get the hell out of here?”

  Voss and Josh glanced at Turcotte. Unless they played their trump card, it was his case.

  Turcotte nodded. “Absolutely. Nothing to see anyway.”

  Coogan made a beeline for the exit, stepping onto th
e platform that had been pushed up against the aircraft and hurrying down the stairs. Josh and Voss followed, with Turcotte and Aria Fernandez bringing up the rear.

  On the tarmac, Nala Chang strode toward them accompanied by a pair of Boston police officers. Amongst the muddle of Massport, FBI, Massachusetts State Police, and Boston P.D. personnel were Lieutenant Arsenault from SOCOM and Norris from Black Pine. They had corralled a local detective and Josh didn’t like the huddle the three men seemed to be in. Turcotte held the reins on this case; they shouldn’t be speaking out of school to anyone without the FBI’s go-ahead.

  Don’t jump to conclusions, he told himself. Easier said than done, though, considering how much Norris got under his skin. Arsenault seemed like a straight shooter, though. Maybe they’re just talking about the dead terrorist in the baggage compartment.

  “Cozy little tête-à-tête,” Voss muttered as she joined him on the tarmac.

  Josh nodded.

  Turcotte headed straight for Chang. Josh and Voss held back, letting Coogan and Aria pass them. Troubleshooter had many meanings, but for now they were just helpful observers.

  “What’ve you got?” Turcotte asked.

  Chang glanced momentarily at Josh and one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile of greeting. Nala Chang seemed a formidable woman and, unlike so many he had encountered over the years, her sense of justice did not appear to have been corrupted or compromised by her experiences in the field. That was a rare commodity.

  “Preliminary report from the medical examiner’s office—” Chang began.

  Coogan scoffed. “The body’s only been there a couple of hours. No way the autopsy’s done.”

  “As I said, preliminary,” Chang said. “I pressed for something, and what the M.E. gave me is this: bruising shows the guy took a beating, ligature marks on the throat and neck indicate strangulation, but the neck was broken as well. Someone murdered Gharib al-Din with their bare hands.”

  “You made a positive ID?” Voss asked.

  “Oh, it’s al-Din. He’d altered his appearance recently. Haircut, shave … and the swelling and bruising doesn’t help with an ID. But it’s him.”

  Coogan puffed up like a rooster. “I told you it was your guy. What, you think my eyes don’t work the same as yours?”

  Josh opened his mouth to say something, but a glance from Turcotte silenced him.

  “Agent Coogan, you made the right call, no question. But this isn’t your first case. You know how it works. If we’re going to put it into our files that our guy is permanently off the board, we need to verify that ourselves. You’d do the same.”

  Coogan grunted but didn’t seem mollified. Turcotte clearly didn’t give a shit.

  “All right,” Voss said. “We’ve viewed the scene. You’ve got a confirmed visual ID. Anything more from the witnesses?”

  Before they had even arrived, Aria had gathered all of the airport and airline staff who had been in the area from the time the plane taxied in until the discovery of the corpse. Only about a third of the passengers had still been at baggage claim when the corpse had been discovered. They’d been interviewed by Massport and the Boston P.D., but the others had already scattered to the winds. The short flight meant most of the people on board were traveling only with carry-on luggage. For the last few hours, the Boston cops had been following up with the rest of the passengers.

  “There are still three passengers unaccounted for,” Chang reported, dark eyes grim. “But unless one of them turns out to be our killer, we’ve got nothing new. A couple of them saw a mysterious white-haired man coming out from under the plane seconds after it rolled up to the gate. Statements don’t vary much from the half-dozen employees who saw the same thing. Other than the hair and general height, weight, and race, it’s all vague.”

  Josh noticed Norris edging closer to them, listening in. He wanted to tell the guy to back off, but if Turcotte wasn’t going to stop him, it wasn’t Josh’s place to speak up. Chang went on, but the substance of her report had already been delivered. The white-haired man might have been an employee, but the rest of the staff on the ground didn’t think so. It seemed likely that he’d come from the plane’s baggage compartment, which meant that unless some unknown third person had been in that compartment—highly unlikely—the white-haired guy was the prime suspect in al-Din’s murder.

  Josh would have liked to pin a medal on him.

  Norris’s phone must have vibrated or beeped because he unclipped it from his belt and glanced down at what was apparently a text message. A ripple of disgust passed across his features before he composed himself and started keying a reply.

  “… should only be a few hours before we can pin down the last three people on the passenger manifest,” Chang was saying, “but they’re all female, so Mr. White Hair is not among them.”

  “Which means he had to have been in baggage with al-Din,” Turcotte said.

  “A short flight. I assume it doesn’t hit extreme altitudes, or they would have suffocated,” Voss noted, turning to Aria.

  Turcotte’s cell phone tweeted, but he ignored it, waiting for an answer.

  “Agent Turcotte,” Norris said, drawing their attention. “You’re going to want to answer that.”

  Turcotte narrowed his gaze as the implication of this sunk in. As usual, it seemed Norris knew something they did not. Josh hated the guy, hated that Black Pine operated outside of the government’s protocols, and he knew he wasn’t alone.

  “Ed?” Voss prompted.

  Turcotte plucked up his phone and thumbed TALK, pressed it to his ear. “I’m listening.”

  His expression darkened then he shot Norris another withering glance. Moments later he ended the call, but he kept the phone clutched in his hand like he held a set of brass knuckles and had every intention of using them. Turcotte studied the people gathered around him and obviously came to a decision.

  “Ms. Fernandez, I think we’ve got what we need. You can take it from here.”

  Aria blinked in surprise. “Of course.”

  “Wait, what?” Coogan said, flushing pink. “My office called you in as a courtesy, Agent Turcotte. You don’t have the authority to turn my case over to anyone. We’ve got a dead terrorist and a murder suspect at large—”

  “Coogan,” Josh snapped.

  His tone brought the other agent up short. Coogan looked like he might take a swing at Josh, but then he glanced sheepishly at Aria and the Boston cops, apparently realizing how out of line he was, talking like that in front of non-Bureau personnel. Arsenault and Norris were one thing—they were part of the federal investigation, at least the way Coogan must have seen it—but locals were another thing entirely.

  Maybe there was an apology coming, but Turcotte didn’t wait for it. He spun on his heel and headed for the cluster of vehicles that had been driven onto the tarmac, several of which had been arranged for them in advance. Chang fell immediately into step beside him, followed by Arsenault and Norris.

  “After you,” Voss said, gesturing to Coogan.

  Lips pressed together in a tight line, he hurried to catch up to Turcotte, and Josh and Voss followed. Rachael looked like she wanted to kick Coogan’s ass, and Josh couldn’t blame her. When they were out of earshot of the local and airport police, Voss finally spoke up.

  “You going to tell us what’s going on, Ed?”

  Turcotte didn’t slow down. He reached the cars and a young agent from Coogan’s team sat behind the wheel of the first one. The guy started the car, engine purring. As Turcotte opened the front passenger door, he turned to look at them.

  “More than a dozen people were killed a short time ago at a house in … what was it? Medford.”

  Josh stared at him. “Caitlin McCandless lives in Medford. We were heading there right after this.”

  Turcotte nodded, standing inside the open door. “It’s her residence.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Voss muttered.

  “A Medford detective is among the dead,” Turcotte
went on. “One civilian, female. The rest are apparently pretty evenly divided between what looks like two teams of professional hitters, half of them obviously of Middle Eastern descent, including, we think, al-Din’s two buddies from Fort Myers.”

  Josh exhaled. “Holy shit.”

  Arsenault shot a dark look at Norris. “Is that what you meant when you told Agent Turcotte he would want to answer that call? You knew about this?”

  Norris shrugged. “Not the details. A text I received from the home office.”

  Coogan stared at him. “How does that work? You know this shit before the Bureau?”

  Josh began to adjust his opinion of Coogan. Right then, he could have kissed the guy. It was the question he wanted to ask, but they were all supposed to be playing nice with Black Pine.

  “Not before the FBI,” Norris replied coolly, almost smugly. “Just before Agent Turcotte.”

  “Maybe there’s something you don’t know,” Turcotte said, glancing from Norris to Arsenault. “The woman the local police think was the target—this Caitlin McCandless—apparently escaped with her infant daughter in a car driven by a man with white hair.”

  “What the hell is this, now?” Nala Chang muttered, her eyes lighting up.

  “If we’re lucky, maybe the answer we’ve been looking for,” Voss said.

  They broke, hurrying to climb into three separate vehicles—Josh and Voss together, Chang and Coogan getting into the backseat behind Turcotte, and Arsenault riding with Norris in a silver Lexus that clearly did not come from the FBI’s motor pool—and Josh thought about Turcotte’s words. Maybe there’s something you don’t know.

  Norris had not seemed fazed by the revelation at all.

  Cait’s only comfort was the gun. When Lynch had pulled into a Burger King parking lot so she could change Leyla’s diaper, she had taken it into the backseat and never let it get more than a few inches from her reach. Lynch had watched without comment, but the tension inside the Cadillac had a language of its own. Whoever the guys back at the house had been, they’d all wanted Leyla, and for the moment the only difference between them and Lynch was that he seemed content to get the mother along with the child.