The Beltway Assassin

by Richard Fox

  Shelton shoved his food around his plate until Garcia exited the bus a few blocks from Shelton’s location. He left a couple of twenties on the table but didn’t bother for change. Spending Ritter’s money felt good, and the more of it he could spread to hardworking individuals like his waitress, the better. The few people at the restaurant and most of the wait staff were transfixed on the TV. The talking heads on the cable networks analyzed the latest DC-area bombing rumors and information drips over and over again. There hadn’t been such feverish coverage of an event since Anna Nicole Smith overdosed.

  “Do you have eyes on him? If he goes underground, we’ll lose him,” Tony said.

  Shelton saw Garcia on a street corner, looking around like a rabbit that had heard a hawk’s cry. Garcia pulled his light jacket tighter and crossed the street to a stairwell that led to the underground mall running most of the length of Crystal City.

  Once it had been a particularly nasty slum, a developer had turned the area into a semi planned monument to the symbiotic relationship of American government and big business. Office towers housing government agencies were shoulder to shoulder with the headquarters of major contracting firms, such as Lockheed Martin; Northrup Grumman; and KBR, a division of Haliburton.

  That the main thoroughfare through the city was Jefferson Davis Highway, named for the first president of the Confederate States of America, struck Shelton with a bit of irony.

  “I’m on him.” Shelton hurried across the street and followed Garcia inside.

  Crystal City’s economy thrived at one time of the day: lunch. The throng of government employees and an attendant legion of contractors filled the tables of restaurants, queued up for sandwiches, and shopped for marked-up goods at corner stores. During the evenings, when the workforce had gone home, Shelton swore he’d see a tumbleweed rolling down Crystal Drive.

  A few people, including more than one indigent looking to escape the weather, wandered through the mall’s thoroughfare. Shelton glanced at his phone. Garcia’s trackers were still pinging, but the concrete and steel walls distorted them into several scattered locations deeper in the mall. Shelton pulled his badge from his coat and let it dangle over his chest.

  Shelton heard Garcia through his earpiece. “Man, am I glad to see you.”

  “Tony, where are they?” Shelton asked. He ran up to the entrance of a maintenance corridor branching off the promenade.

  “They’re pinging across from a juice stand…fifty yards north of the entrance,” Tony said, uncertain.

  Shelton took off running, wet shoes squeaking against the linoleum as he tried to make out Garcia past the stalls of cell phone cases and chotskies.

  “Are you sure? I don’t see anyone,” Shelton said. He skidded to a halt in front of a juice stand. A pair of Somali men behind the counter stared at him—him with his badge and gun drawn—waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “Hold on…All the concrete down there is playing hell with everything,” Tony said. “Can you get to the roof? That’s where he’s pinging from now.”

  Shelton growled and whipped out his smartphone. He’s screwing with me, trying to keep me away from Garcia, he thought.

  “What’re you doing?” Garcia said, his voice high with panic. The trackers warbled between a space at the end of the maintenance corridor and a clothing store on the other side of a concrete wall.

  “Tony?” Shelton said with a loud whisper. “Tony!”

  “I swear, I said nothing—” Garcia let out a grunt and fell silent.

  “Goddamn it.” Shelton sprinted down the maintenance corridor, cocking his sidearm as he went. He shouldered his way past a door marked employees only and held his weapon out, safety off and finger on the trigger.

  “FBI! Freeze!” Shelton shouted. The room, jumbled with wheeled garbage carts and the air thick with a mélange of cleaning products, was empty. Shelton saw a shadow move across a double door at the other end of the room right before it slammed shut.

  Shelton mumbled a curse and knocked aside a garbage can to clear his path. He got three steps before he saw the body lying face down on the concrete.

  Garcia had been stabbed, the knife still in his back. He trembled like a fish in the final seconds of suffocating in the air. His mouth opened and closed, his attempts to scream inutile with a punctured lung.

  Shelton ran to Garcia’s side. “Stay still. We’ll get you some help.” He couldn’t remove the blade; that would make the bleeding worse. Garcia would need an ambulance and a surgical ward to survive.

  Garcia’s eyes locked on Shelton, then lost focus. He went limp as his life ended.

  The killer had done the deed with one, and only one, strike. Whoever had killed him knew how to use a knife; the blade had sliced Garcia’s heart and pierced a lung. But such skill wasn’t what gave Shelton pause. A plastic bag was pinned between the wound and the blade.

  Shelton knelt beside the body and poked around bag; the plain white plastic could have come from a thousand different stores. The side of the bag against Garcia was bloody. The killer had used the bag to keep Garcia’s blood off him or her. Walking around with blood on one’s hands and clothes was a sure way to get noticed during a getaway.

  “You need an ambulance?” Tony finally asked.

  “Too little too late. He’s dead,” Shelton said. Blood seeped from the wound, creeping through Garcia’s jacket. A copper tang joined the smell of bleach and window cleaners. “We’ll need local police on this…Wait.”

  The blade’s hilt was familiar. A blackened metal spike on the pommel, the miniscule steel checkerboard pattern on the grip, the upturned copper hand guard—he’d seen this knife before. During his first tour in Iraq, a fellow lieutenant had carried that kind of combat knife everywhere. That same man had the knife years later and had used it to kill an Iraqi insurgent, who stumbled into an army-occupied house during a sand storm.

  Ritter.

  Once before Shelton had handled Ritter’s blade, a masterwork of balance and lethal design. Ritter had said the blade was a gift from his last unit; he’d never expounded on that statement in the years he and Shelton had known each other. By Shelton’s memory, the blade had an inscription.

  Shelton, his training for preserving the crime scene forgotten, wrenched the blade from Garcia’s back. The blade came loose with a wet pop. Fresh blood burbled from the wound. Shelton wiped the blade clean on Garcia’s jacket.

  The words cry havoc were engraved on the blade of the Applegate-Fairbairn combat knife.

  “Son of a bitch,” Shelton said. That was why Tony had sent him chasing after shadows—to give Ritter the window he needed to murder this witness. The blade felt cold in his hand, as if the malice behind the murder had become part of the weapon.

  Shelton dropped the weapon next to the body and stood up. Garcia’s vanished criminal history, Ritter and the CIA’s involvement in a stateside murder investigation, and their distrust of the FBI…All this made Shelton feel like a pawn in a much larger game.

  This was just like Ritter to use a Byzantine plot to cover his involvement in some grand scheme, and Shelton would be left holding the bag when it was all over. Ritter had used their friendship to obfuscate his crimes in Iraq. Now he was using his leverage over Shelton to string Shelton along like a fish on a hook.

  Shelton’s adult life had been service before self. He’d fought in his nation’s wars without fanfare or hubris for the sacrifices he’d made: his injured body, a strained marriage, and daughters who barely knew their father. Yet beneath the humble exterior, there was still a sense of pride. Pride trampled by Ritter’s betrayal and worn out by keeping his mouth shut for so long.

  Now Ritter had finally given Shelton the leverage he needed to expose Ritter for what he really was: a murderer. The blade in Garcia’s body was the first modicum of physical evidence damning Ritter.

  One thing the FBI had taught him was that one piece of evidence wouldn’t convince a jury beyond the shadow of a doubt. He didn’t have enoug
h to take down Ritter yet. Jefferson, whoever he was, was the key to the murders and the connection Shelton needed to tie Ritter to a web of injustice and broken laws.

  Shelton left the body behind. He’d have to keep playing this game until it came time to make his move. Even a pawn can trap a king.

  ****

  Jefferson plodded through the muddy ground leading to his tent, arms wrapped around his body, head low and a steady stream of nonsense coming from his mouth. The smell of marijuana and burning camp stoves was around him. He fell on his knees at his tent and took a whole two minutes to unlock his tent with palsied hands.

  He tore through a black duffel bag until he found a pill bottle. Three pills went into his mouth, which he chewed like they were made of ambrosia. He dry-swallowed the mush in his mouth and wiped his hands over his face the requisite thirty-seven times to satisfy his OCD.

  He curled into a fetal position and quivered for thirty minutes before the pills took hold.

  A cold realization came over him; he’d thrown away the armor of anonymity when he killed that woman in the library. The library’s cameras and a dozen people with cell phones must have his photo. His face must be on every TV screen by now. Even the true believers in the Occupy camp would rat him out once they heard of what he’d done. A little more time and his crusade would end in the back of a squad car.

  There was option left for him, a last ditch effort to stave off capture he’d planned with Garcia. With a little luck he could give his final gesture both meaning and purpose.

  “There’s no choice now…I have to do it,” he said. “Have to, have to—that bitch!” Jefferson pressed his palms to his temple and forced himself to focus. Even at the end he had a ritual to follow. That’s how he knew his cause was righteous, just like the Iranian had taught him.

  A sheet of paper in a book bore a list of targets, men and women responsible for the travesty in Iraq. Cowards who’d sent others to bleed for them. But the list was incomplete; he’d told the Iranian that much. That was why he’d added to it.

  Jefferson highlighted Congressman Hawker’s name. Once the deed was done, someone would find his work, see what he’d meant to do, and cross Hawker’s name out for him and continue his crusade. Yes, the revolution would begin with his final strike against the oppressors.

  The suicide vest in the duffel bag was mostly assembled. Jefferson sank the detonators into the explosives and slid the vest over his shoulders. The weight felt like an angel’s touch, the promise of heaven for his divine work. The other vest, meant for the coward Garcia, would remain behind. Let it be a gift for whoever would continue his work.

  There were one set of respectable clothes in the bag and a shaving kit. He looked at his watch. There was enough time to clean up and blend in with the oppressors; his success was virtually guaranteed.

  ****

  An hour after Garcia’s death, the Iranian sat in the first-class lounge at Ronald Reagan International Airport, which the more liberal residents of DC still called “National” airport out of petty spite. The TSA’s knee-jerk reaction to the recent bombings was to turn the screening apparatus up to eleven and throw away the knob. The Iranian had skipped security with a wave of his Paraguayan diplomatic passport, courtesy of a well-compensated government employee in Asuncion.

  He sipped his Old Fashioned and called Zike from his cell phone. He noticed a drop of blood on his shoe as the phone rang. He wiped his shoe against the carpet and sighed. Killing Garcia had been a rush job. A little more time and planning, and the Iranian could have eliminated that worthless junkie without having to sacrifice his favorite pair of wing tips. The shoe had evidence on it and had to be disposed of.

  “What?” Zike said.

  “I took care of a loose end,” the Iranian said. “The lesser of the two, unfortunately. So you still have some work to do.”

  Zike grunted. “The trap has baited. One problem might take care of another if we’re lucky.” His words sounded muddled to the Iranian, like his jaw was swollen after a visit to the dentist. “There’s a complication. The DNA tests we suppressed were stolen and smuggled out before we could stop them. The techies swear it’s the Chinese, but it has to be Caliban.”

  “And what do they know?” the Iranian said.

  “Jefferson’s true name. With enough time they’ll track him down. Even if they do get him, the damage he can do is minimal. He doesn’t know the plan or who you are beyond a description and nickname,” Zike said. The Iranian heard a waver in Zike’s voice; he was hiding something. Now, on an open line, wasn’t the time to press the issue.

  “They’re capable. Best not to discount them. Should we be concerned? Solve the problem piecemeal instead of all at once?” the Iranian asked.

  “They won’t act on a suspicion. Time is on our side,” Zike said.

  The PA system in the lounge announced his flight to Phoenix. The Iranian stood and smoothed out his camel-hair overcoat.

  “I have a reunion to make. We’ll be in touch once we’re situated.” He ended the call.

  The terminal was abuzz in fear. Passengers, even after the near body-cavity search at the first security screening, faced ticket and identity verification at the gate, along with another search with a metal-detecting wand. The Iranian smirked as he passed parents assuring their two children that “the bad bomber man” wasn’t going to blow up their plane.

  If these people were afraid now, just wait until what the Iranian had planned came to their doorstep.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ritter took a cold pack from the medical chest and pressed his fingers into the pouch. He felt the two packets sliding beneath his touch: water and ammonia nitrate pellets. So simple to open the pack and use the ammonia nitrate as the explosive in a bomb. Ritter crushed the pack in his hands and felt the endothermic reaction of water as the two packets’ mixture leached heat from his fingers.

  Jefferson, Ritter decided, wasn’t so much a mad genius as a man with a decent appreciation for basic chemistry.

  Ritter set the now-eponymous cold pack against his cracked ribs and wrapped an elastic bandage around his torso. Breaking small bones was more of an inconvenience than anything else; there was no treatment but to let them mend on their own accord and not aggravate the injury. At least he wouldn’t have to see a doctor, as he’d had to for the nearly healed bullet wound on his shoulder.

  He looked at himself in the floor-length mirror. Bruise mottled skin that hadn’t seen sunlight in months. He looked rundown and felt like whatever key in his back kept him going was on its last rotation. Maybe he and Cindy could get away to Florida for a few weeks when this latest crisis had subsided.

  “You look like hell,” Shelton said from behind him.

  Ritter shrugged and tossed on a fresh white dress shirt.

  “Where were you? We might have arrested whoever Garcia met with if you’d been there with me,” Shelton said. He watched Ritter for the slightest variance in body language. Knowing Ritter for years gave Shelton a good baseline on his tells.

  “Irene needed to be picked up. There was some sort of explosives accident at TEDAC, and the building was shut down,” Ritter said. He turned back to the mirror and put on a red silk tie.

  “She can’t drive herself?” Shelton asked.

  “She was at the embassy in Baghdad in March 2008, when Sadr and his bunch of butt buddies were slamming it with rockets and mortars several times a day. Her trailer went up, along with a roommate. She’s had a touch of PTSD ever since. The unexpected explosion triggered some bad memories…and she needed a ride out.” Ritter’s focus stayed on his tie, which he had to redo while talking.

  Shelton couldn’t read him. Subjects normally couldn’t maintain a lie while doing something other than concentrating on their lie, but Ritter was a pro.

  Shelton looked at the office chair, which had Ritter’s shoulder holster draped over it. Shelton gave the chair a little push, and it spun around to reveal…a combat knife fastened inside a sheath. The knife was d
ifferent, with a wooden handle hilt and brass pommel and hand guard. Shelton resisted the urge to challenge Ritter on the new knife, but that might tip his hand.

  “Will Irene be okay?” Shelton asked.

  Irene popped into the room, holding two pizza boxes in front of her, a smile on her face.

  “We got pepperoni for us and onions and pineapple for Tony,” she said. She gave Ritter an even bigger smile. “You hungry, Eric?”

  “Sure, we’ll be right there,” Ritter said.

  Irene’s gaze lingered on Ritter as she left with a skip.

  “She seems devastated,” Shelton said. A few questions to Irene would wreck Ritter’s alibi for Garcia’s murder. But not now. Not on Ritter’s turf. He’d take them apart in detail when the time was right.

  “Resilient little thing, isn’t she?” Shelton asked. Maybe there was more there, another chink in Ritter’s armor. “How long have you two been an item?”

  Ritter did a double take. Finally, an unforced error.

  “What? No, we…”

  Shelton watched the lie form in Ritter’s mind. Shelton had seen them together at TEDAC, her hand grasping his rear end. Then the doe eyes from Irene when she stopped by. Why would Ritter deny a connection?

  “Just an office fling. Our boss is a ball buster about that sort of thing,” Ritter said. The hint at Ritter’s higher echelon of leadership was thin but might prove useful to Shelton in the future.

  “You think you can keep it quiet?” Shelton asked.

  “Wouldn’t be very good at my job if I couldn’t.” Ritter looked out the door, obviously anxious to change the topic. “You hungry?”

  ****

  Tony was two slices ahead before Ritter and Shelton joined him and Irene at a folding table. Parmesan cheese and pepper packets were strewn across the table alongside a two-liter bottle of soda. The pizza was bland and as greasy as one Shelton expected from the restaurant next door. Yet hunger proved to be the best sauce.