by James Phelan
“I sense that there’s another element here.”
“Yep.”
“Well?”
“Our colonel?”
“Yeah?”
“Colonel Brandt,” Hutchinson said. “Our guy from Fort Detrick.”
Walker paused mid-step, said, “The one who went to the site in Iraq.”
“The same. And I just got to Detrick, and was informed that he’s the same colonel who was then killed, get this, just a week after the WMDs arrived back in the US.”
Murphy stopped, looked to Walker.
“Brandt’s dead?” Walker said.
Murphy raised his eyebrows at the news.
“Apparent suicide by firearm, according to the current CO here,” Hutchinson said.
“You think it was a hit?” Walker said. “It’s got to be, right?”
“There was nothing suspicious in what the CO just told me,” Hutchinson said. “But I’m with you. But Walker? The guy’s daughter looked into it. She was an attorney in DC. She was obsessed with it; it’s all in the police file. She bugged them for near-on five years then seemed to go quiet. There’s bio notes in here. They say her life came apart. She stopped going to work, got divorced, became fixated on her father’s death being part of a DoD conspiracy. She went from being a high-paid lawyer in DC to becoming a Federal Agent.”
“Her father’s recent death, her recent employment implosion, her recent divorce,” Walker said. “None of that added up to a negative psych evaluation?”
“Pedigree and patriotism trumps all,” Hutchinson said. “He was a colonel in the Army, third generation. Her joining up, and just a couple years after September 11, would have looked the patriotic thing to do. Recruiters probably figured that she needed the change, and aside from the turmoil in her private life she would have been seen as a star recruit.”
“Jesus.”
“And Walker,” Hutchinson said, “you want to know the best bit?”
“I’m listening,” Walker said.
“Brandt’s daughter. She married, and then divorced, but she kept her married name when she became a Federal Agent. She’s a civilian agent, working for the Navy. And right now, she’s a few paces behind you.”
103
Woods writhed in pain and squirmed from the armchair to thump to the floor.
Squeaker had stopped reading. The book fell to the floor.
The baby boy had stopped crying. Oblivious to the carnage, he just saw movement and action and was distracted.
Jane Murphy had stopped cooing. She started to shake, shock taking over her.
Grant stamped down on Woods’s hand as the agent reached for his holstered automatic. He bent down and pocketed the gun, then transferred the silenced HK to his left hand and kept it trained on Squeaker. With his free right hand he took a cell phone from his pocket and tossed it to Squeaker.
“You’re going to call Walker,” Grant said. “His number’s the last called.”
Squeaker shook her head. She wrapped both the children up in her arms.
Grant motioned with the silenced HK pistol to the form of Woods bleeding out on the 1960s brown carpet.
“You’re going to call him, and tell him that Woods here has you at gunpoint, and that Walker needs to get here, with Murphy, as a trade-off.”
Squeaker said, in a quiet voice, “Trade-off?”
“For your lives,” Grant said. He waved the gun at the Murphy children. “Your lives, for theirs, if they get here fast enough.”
Squeaker looked over her shoulder to Murphy’s wife. Jane was motionless, and she had her hand covering her infant’s face.
“You don’t want Walker to stop what’s coming in St. Louis,” Squeaker said.
Grant said, “Make the call.”
“I’ll do it,” she said, reaching forward, the children now in the crooks of her arms, their faces tight against her chest. “But we do it my way.”
“I don’t think you understand what’s happening here,” Grant said, raising the pistol at Squeaker.
“I will do what you want,” Squeaker said, then motioned to Jane and the kids, “but only if you let them go into the bathroom. They don’t need to witness all this.”
Squeaker got to her feet, the children with her. The phone was in her hand; the pistol was aimed at her head. “You’ve got me at gunpoint,” she said. “And they’ll be trapped in there.”
Grant looked to them.
“Tick-tock,” Squeaker said, something resolving in her. “You’ve got what? Twenty minutes to your deadline? Less?”
“Go,” Grant said to Murphy’s wife, and she ushered her two daughters into the bathroom while carrying her son.
Grant smiled at Squeaker. “Now, make the call.”
Squeaker looked at the phone in her hand. She took a step closer, raised the screen toward Grant, took another step, and said, “This number?”
“Yes.”
Squeaker threw the phone at his face and charged him, crashing her shoulder into his chest.
The pistol went off as they fell to the floor.
Squeaker didn’t feel the first bullet for what it was. It felt like someone had punched her in her chest. The second passed through her arm. That felt like a hot poker had been seared onto her.
Her weight was on Grant. She screamed as he tried to push her off—she clawed at his face, pulled and struck with all of the life left in her.
Another hand appeared.
Woods. He grabbed onto Grant’s neck with both his bloodied hands.
Grant dropped the pistol and tried to fend off the two attackers. Squeaker was a match for him, size for size. Her ferocity and determination were the deciding factor. As she drove a thumb into Grant’s eye, Woods scrambled for the Sig, put it under Grant’s chin and pulled the trigger.
The sound of the back of the skull exploding out was louder than the report of the pistol.
Squeaker rolled off Grant. Woods dragged her to him. The chest wound was catastrophic—she’d bleed out faster than he would, and already bright red foam had formed at her mouth from a perforated lung.
Woods fumbled with his cell phone—his hands were thick with the blood from his stomach wound. He reached over, took his service pistol from Grant’s pocket and fired two shots straight up into the ceiling.
The sound of the .40 caliber in the small hotel room was deafening. It would alert the agents outside as it carried across the distance. Squeaker’s eyes were closing.
104
Police had set up bollards and roadblocks. They held the high ground, too, with snipers on rooftops. They all looked buzzed, jacked; this was a last-minute thing, all of them pulled out of regular duty and ordered here, told to expect the worst.
“What is this?” Walker asked a uniformed cop.
Levine showed him her ID.
“Some rally in support of the government and cops re the Ferguson unrest,” the cop said. “But all we got so far are those against it. It’s looking like becoming Ferguson all over again.”
Walker nodded and moved on with the crowd.
Near Walker, news crews did their thing. A dozen vans, a couple national, the rest city- and state-wide. Satellite dishes went up, cameramen shouldered their equipment, sound guys plugged in and hoisted booms. Newscasters added final touches to make-up, and checked notes and then image and sound. All of it happening fast.
So far, there was nothing to see.
Walker kept the headphone in his ear. Somerville said, “I’ve had Homeland Security admit this as a credible security threat.”
Walker said, “And you can’t get the rest of the crowd dispersed?”
“Not without about a thousand cops,” Somerville said. “The National Guard will take an hour to get deployed.”
Walker looked around. Buildings, and the Arch. “This is about mass panic, mass hysteria. It won’t be a repeat of New York. But have your agents checked the news camera trucks, just in case?”
Somerville replied, “Three times.”
“All legit,” Somerville said. “This is a small town, as far as cities go. This isn’t about a demonstration—it’s an unveiling.”
Walker nodded, still scanning the area. Then he looked up. The sun glinted on shiny stainless steel.
And then he knew. Symbolic. A demonstration: we can get you anywhere, anytime. The Gateway to the West. A delivery platform for a backpack full of chemical or biological agent.
“We’re going up the Arch,” Walker said, and he started for it at a run, Murphy and Levine behind him. “Double-check all security footage in and around the Gateway Arch.”
“You think it’s being detonated from up there—not from in the crowd?” Murphy said, keeping pace with Walker.
“Maybe, but either way I think they’ll be up there,” Walker said. “Watching it. Filming it even.”
“They might drop it—if it’s in a backpack?” Murphy said. “It might have a GPS rigged to the trigger, set for detonation thirty feet from the ground.”
“That’d disperse it,” Walker said. “Somerville, did you hear that?”
“Heard it,” she replied. “We’re re-scanning all footage from the Arch. Stay on the line.”
“Copy that,” Walker said.
They passed a couple of uniformed police. Levine flashed her badge, and after a quick explanation the police joined them as they continued to move faster than the crowd, pushing their way through. Walker felt a weight on his chest.
What is she up to? Is this reprisal, for her father’s death? What’s the connection to Zodiac? And what triggered it?
•
Squeaker was on the floor, flat, arms and legs out, like a kid making snow-angels on Christmas Day who had run out of energy. Woods fought the searing pain in his stomach as he pressed his hands against her chest. The blood flowed warm and sticky through his fingers. Arterial. Nothing to be done about it; she had seconds to live.
“I’m sorry,” Woods said.
“It’s . . . okay . . .” she said to him. “I saw my cousins, right? The kids are safe?”
“Yep, they’re safe.”
“The . . . kids. Look after them.”
Woods, in a daze, said, “Always.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sh. It’s okay, Walker . . . Tell me about Philly.”
“Walker? Philly?” Woods said, then saw she was delirious. “Oh. Well . . . Shit. It’s a good town. City. On the water. You’ve got all you need. It’s got—it’s got sports, and cool bars and places you can hang with friends. It’s friendly. It—it kind of feels like your home town. Small. Everyone knows everyone who’s important to them, you know?”
Squeaker smiled. “I wish I saw it. With you.”
“Yeah, Squeak. I wish you did too.”
Squeaker fell silent. She never made another sound. Woods called out for Jane. She came out, leaving the two girls in the bathroom and holding her infant boy all swaddled up in her arms. She bent down to Squeaker and held her hand and cried.
105
“Menzil sighting,” Somerville said, her voice rushed. “Headed toward the Arch, eight minutes old.”
“He’s in the area, though,” replied Walker, eyes darting between faces in the crowd.
“Correct. Still wearing the black coat, cap and carrying the backpack. I’ve got ten plain-clothed DEA agents here. Where do you want them?”
Walker checked his watch: 17:12.
“Send two guys as back-up to the Murphys,” Walker said. “And send the rest to the Arch, looking out for Menzil.”
“On it,” Somerville said, and he heard her relay the orders. “There’s almost thirty uniformed officers from St. Louis PD around the Arch, and a few plain-clothed among the crowd. I’ve had their captain send out pics of Menzil.”
“Good,” Walker said as they started to slow for the crowd. “Make sure they know to approach with care—we don’t know what kind of detonation this guy will have. And get the Guard moving with chem suits.”
“He wouldn’t blow himself up, would he?”
“I doubt it.” Walker did a double-take on a guy in a black cap—but it was a cop. “But if he’s got no way out and he knows it, he just might.”
“Do you have eyes on Levine?” Somerville asked. “Hutch briefed me just after you. About her father.”
“Yes,” Walker said, watching the NCIS agent. “I’ve got her.”
“How are you going to play it?”
“Still trying to figure that out,” Walker said quietly. “I need her to show her hand.”
•
The nation’s tallest monument, the Gateway Arch, gleamed in the setting sun. Built as a symbol of the westward expansion of the United States, it was the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, a ninety-one-acre site that sprawled along the Mississippi. The area immediately under the Arch and all the way to the river was already massed with more than five thousand people, most of them jeering at the police.
Levine showed her ID at the security checkpoint. The woman staffing the metal detector called for her supervisor, who ushered them around the device and toward the tram.
“Special Agent Somerville just called in advance,” he said to them. “You sure we shouldn’t close down the memorial?”
“Not yet,” Levine said, putting her slim ID wallet back in her inside breast pocket.
“Has anyone suspicious come through?” Walker asked him.
The supervisor gave a vague wave of his hand toward the security screening area. Tourists were lined up for the last tram ride of the day up to the top. Young and old and everything in-between. “Everyone now looks suspicious to me,” he said, visibly shaken by the notion of a threat on his watch. “Everyone who lines up here gets scanned. All bags get scanned.”
Walker saw that the two St. Louis cops came around the scanner and were looking through the crowd. Alert, but not alarmed, as though they were doing a routine check.
“Just make sure you check every passenger,” Walker said.
The guy nodded.
“How many still up there at the top?” Levine asked the supervisor.
“I’m having my guy topside do a headcount now,” he replied, and then talked into a radio handset. Within a minute the reply came through. “Forty-two.”
“That’s not many,” Murphy said.
“Trams are running every five minutes, forty passengers per trip, so that’s about 480 passengers up and back each hour,” the security supervisor said. “We’ve got a full tram coming down right now.”
People started to stream out from a series of small doors.
“Last tram to the top!” an usher called out.
“That’s your ride,” the supervisor said.
Levine headed for it, and Walker followed. He watched the outline of her body. Aside from the bulge of her Sig at her right hip, there was nothing showing beneath her dark suit. What if it’s as simple as a vial, dropped out a shot-out window up there? Or put into the ventilation system?
Menzil had to be up there, with the WMDs, and an exit plan for them both. Maybe with another guy? Or more?
Walker followed Levine inside the elevator, with Murphy close behind them. He turned and gave the slightest hand gestures to Murphy—watch Levine. The SEAL nodded. He didn’t yet know why to be suspect, but he trusted and respected Walker enough to do as instructed. The tram consisted of eight small connected cars, each with five seats, the journey taking just a few minutes. Levine sat next to the door on the left. Walker sat opposite her, and Murphy beside her. A mother came in next, followed by her son of about ten. Walker pulled his legs aside to let them through, and then the doors closed.
The tram car was a cylinder that turned on a gimbal to keep level as it followed the curve of the arch up and down. Levine looked from the civilian woman, who was wiping her protesting son’s face with a licked handkerchief, to Walker. He held her gaze.
Walker’s phone rang. As h
e listened, he looked from Levine to Murphy. And then his gaze dropped to the floor.
106
“Walker?” The man’s voice over the phone was weak.
Walker said, “Who is this?”
“Woods . . . NCIS.”
Walker’s eyes shifted across to the front, but he still looked down, now at Levine’s shoes. The tram car was making all kinds of whirring and mechanical clicking noises as it ascended.
“Yes?”
“Susan . . . she’s—she’s dead.”
Walker’s hand tightened on the phone, his knuckles white. He kept his gaze focused on the floor as he felt his heart rate climb faster and higher than the tram car.
“Did you hear me?” Woods said.
The cell phone crackled.
“I heard you. How?”
“Grant. That son of a bitch . . .”
Walker closed his eyes for a moment. Grant. In this, with Levine. “You sure that’s what happened?”
“I saw him do it. With the silenced HK. After he shot me.”
“The others?” Walker asked.
“All fine. Just Susan. She stopped him before he could—” Walker heard the effort it was taking Woods to keep talking. “He . . . he was going to hold the family at gunpoint, to get you and Murphy out of there. She stalled him. They grappled. The gun went off. She bled out fast.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. And you’re right, Walker, something’s going down there. Grant wanted you guys out of the picture. You have to warn Levine—she’s not answering my calls.”
“That end is compromised.” Walker opened his eyes. “Copy that?”
Woods was silent, then he said, “Okay. Okay. I get that. They—they were having an affair. Grant and Levine. For a year, or more. A few of us knew. But—but why? What is this?”
“Where’s your suspect?” Walker asked.
“KIA.”
“Repeat last.”
“I shot him. But not before . . .”
Walker could hear commotion in the background: a door breaking down and loud voices—Somerville’s FBI agents crashing the room.
“Get the help you need,” Walker said, and ended the call.
