The Third Coincidence

by David Bishop

  After parking on a tree-lined side street, they quietly moved to the edge of Dalton’s property. The moon, peeking in and out from behind passing clouds, brightened and darkened what appeared by all reasonable measures to be just another sedate suburban home.

  In the distance, the tires of a car squealed rounding a corner. A residential street light, nearly defeated by a canopy of tree branches, brought an illumination similar to a jungle in the refracted light preceding sunrise.

  Jack could see the west side of the garage and enough of the front to know its straw-like yard suffered from neglect. He had limited the number of SWAT agents to four plus their squad leader and two electronic surveillance experts. In foreign ops he had handled tougher infiltrations with less manpower. If they didn’t catch Dalton, Jack didn’t want the neighbors and, through them, the media to learn of this raid. Given the tense state of the union, anything even possibly about LW became instant news.

  The FBI SWAT team used a FLIR scope to confirm Dalton had not applied the heat-generating chemical on his own home.

  SWAT Team Leader Mike Edgerson dispersed his four SWAT men to the four corners of Dalton’s house. These positions would allow two shooters a view of the front, back, and each side of the house.

  “Set. Set. Set. Set.”

  The four shooters whispered in rapid sequence to indicate they had taken their positions out of sight off the corners of the house. It also meant they had set up portable lighting to illuminate the perimeter. The lamps would not be lit unless they heard the command “light it up,” or heard gunshots in or around the house. Everyone involved in the assault was wearing dark SWAT jackets with reflective FBI lettering on the back.

  Jack, Colin, and Rachel crept toward the front door where a vine-covered trellis provided cover from the closest neighbor, while Frank, Nora, and Rex moved toward the back door.

  Jack turned his attention to picking the locks and at 4:23 a.m., with the yet unseen morning sun throwing orange across the eastern sky, he whispered into his radio.

  “Ready.”

  “On your command,” Frank replied, letting Jack know he had also picked the lock in the rear door.

  “Now.”

  The hinges screeched as Jack nudged the door. For a moment he stood frozen to the spot listening for any noise from inside. Hearing only quiet, he pushed the door far enough for them to enter. There were no more squeaks.

  The smells of old food and stale air crowded them as the narrow light tubes from their handheld flashlights bleached out hunks of darkness, beyond their lights the sense of an ancient Egyptian tomb. An arcing light in the kitchen, the size of a quarter, told Jack that Frank, Nora, and Rex had successfully entered through the back of the house. Frank held his hand in front of his flashlight and raised his thumb. Jack raised his. The ground floor appeared clear. Frank’s team moved to check the two-car garage.

  The SWAT team had been instructed not to use their radios once Jack’s squad got inside other than to say one of three words: front, back, or garage. If it came, the one word signal would mean they were about to have company and the expected point of entry. If more than one person approached, a number would be added after the one word. Jack had instructed the SWAT team to let whoever arrived enter without interference.

  Frank came close and whispered. “It looks like he’s gone.”

  “Car?” Jack asked.

  Frank shook his head. “Gone.”

  Jack knew there were reasons why a person might be home without their automobile. He told Frank to stay downstairs with Rachel and Nora in case an entry alert came from outside, then motioned for Colin and Rex to follow him upstairs.

  The three men inched up the stairs keeping their feet to the sides where stairs were least apt to complain to a step. When the stairs creaked anyway, the three men stood motionless, sweat beading on Jack’s forehead. But there was no sign their quarry had been alerted. After Colin nudged Jack, they continued on without stopping until they reached the landing at the top.

  They worked the upstairs landing from left to right, communicating with only their hands. Jack focused on each doorknob. Colin kept his focus on the entire door, and Rex stayed alert for an assault originating from the remaining doors to their right.

  The first door opened into a linen closet. The next, a full bath. The room beyond that was a study with a desk, computer area, and file cabinets. There were framed photographs covering the walls, many of them of a man, but the majority were copies of documents.

  From the news accounts he recognized Isaac’s father. As for Isaac himself, Jack had seen one picture, but that was enough. The rest were likely some of the older Dalton’s writings, the stuff Marsha had found in the archives.

  A muted sound came. The three men froze. The low clattering came again. The muscles in Jack’s stomach tensed. He saw Colin rotate his hand in the air before pointing toward a narrowly open window where irregular breezes were pulsing the metal blinds against the sill.

  The next room, a bedroom, was empty except for a tanning bed placed in the center of the floor. A woman’s clothes hung in the closet, inside plastic bags the way they would come from the dry cleaners.

  Then another bedroom, this one stained with the blunt smell of body odor. Clothes were strewn everywhere. Jack’s flashlight found an empty Cracker Jack box, its contents scattered, the beam chased a cockroach into a pile of clothes. Pictures of women crowded the top of the dresser. No. The pictures were all the same middle-aged woman. The room had a messy closet and the attached bathroom was filthy.

  Isaac Dalton’s bedroom. It had to be.

  When the three joined the others downstairs, Jack raised his radio and said, “Clear.” That one-word instructed SWAT Leader Edgerson to send in the two electronics experts. Jack met them at the door.

  “One up. One down. You know what to do. Keep it moving. We need to be out of here as quickly as possible.”

  The experts turned on the small lights in their headgear and spread out to plant cameras and listening devices in the living room, kitchen, the upstair’s office, and Dalton’s bedroom. They would also bug the phones.

  Jack took his squad upstairs. “See what you can, but leave things as you find them. And be ready to go when the electronics guys are done. Estimate twenty minutes. Rachel, get on that computer. The rest of you look for files on the targets. Frank, let’s look downstairs.”

  The next twenty minutes passed like two hours. At 4:59, Jack leaned into the office doorway and looked first at Rachel, then at Nora. They both shook their heads.

  “The electronics are done,” he said. “We’re out of here. Leave everything just like you found it.”

  Rachel turned off the computer and repositioned the keyboard and mouse to the precise places she had found them.

  “Nothing in Dalton’s computer had been encrypted or even protected by a password,” she told Jack. The two teams left the house the same way they had entered. “I copied his files and e-mail onto a CD,” Rachel said. “He had no electronic address book.”

  In the spreading predawn light, Jack saw a FOR RENT sign in the yard of the house across the street.

  “Check that out, Mike,” he told the SWAT leader. “If it’s empty, occupy it and man an observation post until we can get agents here to relieve you.”

  Edgerson nodded and alone started across the street. The others waited in the trees. A minute later, Edgerson’s voice came over their shoulder-mounted radio. “Vacant.” His SWAT team set up cameras to watch the back door of Dalton’s house before they crossed the street to join Edgerson. On their way, one of them removed the rental sign.

  “Rex, as soon as we get back to the CIA, get ahold of that property owner. Have them tell the leasing agent they are taking the property off the rental market. Tell the owner the government will be using the house in an investigation and that the use must be confidential. If the owner is not cooperative see Director Hampton. Within the hour I want a sign on that house designating it as a health hazar
d, with a do-not-enter sign carrying a phone number answered at FBI headquarters. Callers are to be told there’s no danger as long as they don’t trespass, and that an environmental contractor will abate the hazard within a week to ten days.”

  Five minutes later they were back on I-95 heading south. In the distance the headlights from a steady stream of early traffic pierced the withdrawing darkness as if chased by the rushing beams of light.

  After minutes of tense silence, Nora broke the ice. “That upstair’s office was a goddamned shrine. It felt creepy.”

  “He had a beautiful computer desk,” Rachel said.

  “So were the walls,” said Colin. “The room had cherry wood wainscoting with forest green vinyl wall covering above it and a cherry wood floor with an expensive Persian area rug.”

  “I didn’t know you were into interior decorating,” Nora remarked.

  “What can I say? It’s a gift.”

  They all laughed, a bottled-up nervous kind of laugh.

  “The important thing is that he’s our guy,” Jack proclaimed. “There’s no doubt. Did you find anything in his computer?”

  “No. Maybe Millet would have. I could have used more time but I got everything on a CD.”

  The car continued south fifteen miles an hour faster than the posted speed limit, its headlights of limited use against the early gray sky.

  CHAPTER 49

  According to a recent poll, 46 percent of Americans would not accept an appointment to the Supreme Court or the Federal Reserve before LW is caught.

  —USA Today Poll

  JUNE 21, 5:41 A.M.

  “Did you nail his ass?” Millet asked.

  Marsha leaped off the couch. “Did you get him?”

  “Not home,” Rex said before collapsing into one of the Bullpen’s green overstuffed chairs. “We bugged the place and set up an observation post.”

  “Christ,” Nora said. “I hope he’s not off somewhere visiting one of his targets. Rachel, let’s call and alert the protection squads again. Let them know Dalton may be on the hunt.”

  “Use LW, not Dalton,” Jack cautioned. “Let’s keep his identity on a need-to-know basis.”

  Rachel tossed the CD to Millet. “I copied his hard drive. He had no e-mail sent or received. His address book had nothing in it.”

  Lana Kindar, the Kurdish woman Jack had saved in Iraq, and got jobs for her and her husband, Zaro, as a coffee service worker at CIA headquarters, walked into the Bullpen and went to Jack. She reached up and cradled his cheek in her open palm. Her calloused hand somehow felt soft. When she turned to leave, he rested his hand on her shoulder. She stopped and turned. Jack hugged her. She smiled and left.

  “Frank, can you get an all-points bulletin out on Dalton’s Explorer without it getting to the press?” Jack asked.

  “The media and ambulance-chasing attorneys listen to the police radio,” Frank said after shrugging.

  “It’s your town. How do we find this Explorer without tipping off the media and starting rumors? He’ll bolt if he hears the police are looking for his car.”

  “We could go to the station and talk with the watch commander,” Nora said after digging a finger full of raspberry jelly out of one of the fresh pastries Lana had just left. “Ask him to spread the word face-to-face, not use the radio. That might keep the lid on for a while, maybe twenty-four hours, certainly no longer.” Her eyes slightly crossed as she watched her red finger approach her mouth.

  “Keeping it hushed for even twenty-four hours would take a bunch of luck,” Frank said, standing to flex his tall frame. “Certain media people spend a lot of time and money maintaining contacts on the force. This is not just another big city. It’s the nation’s capital.”

  Jack gulped his coffee. “So, if we’re going to get him today, it might be a good idea. If not, it stinks. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  They had found neither the perp nor any conclusive proof at Dalton’s home, and now they were running into problems with what Jack had hoped would be a simple APB on a car. The luck he had prayed would hold was slipping away.

  Frank twisted his shoulders. “You can’t tell anything to that many people and expect it to remain a secret.”

  Millet walked over from his computer. “Rachel had it right, Jackman. That CD had nothing that helps one fucking bit.”

  Adrenaline raced through Jack. He got out of his chair, left the Bullpen, and walked the halls of the CIA complex. When he got back, he had made his decision.

  “If Dalton wasn’t home at four thirty in the morning, it’s a good guess he’s out of town. Rex, take charge of an FBI squad to check the parking lots at D.C.’s airports and Baltimore International. Give them the description and license number of the Explorer. They’re to get inside the car without making it obvious. His parking stub will likely be in the car. Have them get the time on the stub and call you. From where he parked, the entry time on the stub, and the home cities of his likely targets we should be able to shorten the list of possible flights. Maybe make a decent guess at his next target.”

  “Then we can alert that target’s protection squad.” Rachel said eagerly.

  “Something like that,” Jack said. “If we’re lucky.”

  “It sure as hell beats turning in circles,” Frank volunteered. “If he’s out of town, his car may be at the airport.”

  “Include the train and bus stations,” Jack said as Rex waved back over his shoulder on his way to the door.

  JUNE 21, 9:00 A.M.

  Jack held a cold, sweaty bottle of spring water against the back of his neck. Three hours had passed without hearing from Rex. He called Mike Edgerson. Nothing had happened at Dalton’s house either. Jack noticed Nora playing the children’s hand game of here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the door and see all the people. Colin, working on calming his nerves, sat hunched building a card house. Rachel reclined in her chair, her arms dangling toward the floor, staring at their paper graveyard. And Millet, having found nothing meaningful on the CD Rachel had brought back from Dalton’s house, kept swigging cranberry juice between his dog-in-heat gawks at Nora.

  A few minutes after nine, Rachel’s phone rang. She answered to hear Special Agent Martin, the agent in charge who had relieved Mike Edgerson’s SWAT team. Martin reported that no one had been seen coming or going at Dalton’s house.

  At nine thirty Rex called. He had fifty agents on the job but with three-quarters of the lots at the airports, bus stations, and train stations checked, they had not found Dalton’s Explorer.

  “We’re going back!” Jack said, after rapping his knuckles twice on the table. “Millet, you’ve never been on a field op. How’d you like to come along?”

  “Just watch my back. I’m no fucking secret agent man.”

  JUNE 21, 10:00 A.M.

  Press Secretary Addiena Welch stood on her tiptoes to speak into the microphone that had been raised to the setting for her boss.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “the President of the United States.”

  President Schroeder strode directly to the microphone. “Thank you all for coming. This will be short. I stood before you a few days ago and spoke of the bipartisan effort to expedite confirmations. Late last night, in special session, Duncan Carillo and William Ladd were confirmed by the Senate’s Judiciary Committee and approved by the vote of the full Senate to take seats on the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court. I’m pleased to announce the U.S. Supreme Court has a quorum and is back in business. In addition, Dr. Elizabeth Hancock took a seat on the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System. To facilitate their prompt relocations to D.C., these appointees will not appear before you this morning.

  “Throughout the history of our great country, patriots such as these three appointees have always stepped up to the plate in our times of need. America’s greatest strength continues to be our citizens and their commitment to serve their country.

  “My thanks go to Senators Marshall Leland and Ruth Ann Mitchell
, the chairpersons of the Senate’s Judiciary and Banking Committees, for their tireless attention to this matter. Senators Leland and Mitchell have assured me their committees will soon confirm more nominees.

  “Ms. Welch has the background handouts standard to such appointments. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

  The president tamped straight his two-page statement and turned to leave.

  “Mr. President! Mr. President!”

  “I refer you to the confirmations committees for any details or updates,” Schroeder said, and again started to leave.

  “Mr. President! Mr. President!”

  The president turned back and leaned toward the microphone. “I said no questions. There will be none. However, I will take this opportunity to make a brief statement on the matter of this self-appointed Commander LW and his band of renegades.”

  He cleared his throat. “I and the leaders of your government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies have recently met with Jack McCall. Mr. McCall reported that his team remains positive and hard at work. Beyond that, it would not be appropriate for me to comment. I assure all Americans that their president and the intelligence community continue to support Jack McCall as the right man for this nasty job. Anything you may hear to the contrary is without merit.”

  CHAPTER 50

  President Schroeder continues to stand firm: “McCall remains in charge of the LW case.”

  —Mel Carsten, D.C. Talk.

  JUNE 21, 10:17 A.M.

  Rachel twisted around and looked at Millet sitting behind her in the van. “There have to be files on his targets.”

  “Dalton killed Roberts in his mistress’s apartment,” Jack said, twisting to the left as Frank turned the wheel hard to the left and accelerated around a FedEx truck. “Neither the FBI nor the Supreme Court Police knew about Jenny Robinson. Dalton did. The details of that information about Roberts and the others must be in that house.”