The intruder was sitting sideways to the kitchen doorway taking long, frequent drags on his cigarette, and flicking the ashes on the floor. Whelan wanted to strangle him on the spot; but he didn’t know if this man was the only surviving assassin or if there were others in the house. He was close enough to the man to easily place a kill shot with his own Makarov. Instead, he wanted to take him alive. If he were the only survivor, Whelan wanted to interrogate him. He needed to know who had sent these men and why. More might be coming in the future. Whelan got the man’s attention by saying, “Pssst.”
The smoker slowly turned his head toward Whelan. The last thing he expected was a target who turned the tables on him. His eyes came to rest on the baleful eye of the Makarov’s suppressor. He struggled for a moment to suspend disbelief then his hand twitched involuntarily on his own pistol. Whelan’s finger tightened slightly on the trigger of weapon. He smiled a cold, menacing smile and shook his head slowly back and forth. The man moved his hand away from the Makarov. Whelan signaled for him to raise his hands and stand. As he did, Whelan swiftly closed the gap until he was standing close to his captive.
“Do you speak English?” he said.
The man gave him a blank look. Whelan asked again in Gaelic. The blank stare continued. He switched to Russian.
This time the man responded in nuanced Russian, as if it was a second language but related to his native tongue. “Yes, I can speak Russian.”
“How many of you are there?”
The man paused then smirked a bit and said, “Ten”.
Before the man could react, Whelan’s left hand grasped the collar of his windbreaker while his right hand shoved the tip of the Makarov’s suppressor nearly down the man’s throat. It broke several of his teeth and lacerated the roof of his mouth and tongue. He gagged and tried to struggle, but he was a Norm—a normal human being; no match for Whelan.
Whelan leaned in close to the man’s right ear and softly snarled. “Let’s try that again. How many?” The tip of the Makarov never withdrew from the man’s mouth.
The man’s eyes opened wide in pain and fear. He held up his left hand with the four fingers and the thumb extended, indicating five assassins.
Whelan shoved him back into the chair and placed the muzzle of the automatic pistol against the center of the man’s forehead. “I killed two men upstairs and one in the stairwell. Where’s number five?” He ground the tip of his weapon into the man’s flesh for emphasis. The temperature in the kitchen was in the mid-sixties, but the man was beginning to sweat profusely. His eyes never wavered from Whelan’s face.
Whelan heard a sound behind him. It was the unmistakable sound of a hammer being cocked back. A voice also speaking accented Russian said, “You do not have to look for number five. He has found you.”
Whelan turned slowly and looked over his left shoulder. The fifth man indeed was there, and training a Russian-made PP-19 Bizon submachine gun at his back. It had an AKS-74 type folding butt with pistol grip and cylindrical magazine. His memory told him it held somewhere between 45 and 60 rounds. The man was close enough that he couldn’t possible miss, yet far enough away that Whelan couldn’t spin and deflect the muzzle before the weapon was fired. Smart bastards. Someone warned them to keep a safe distance because of my skill sets.
His stomach suddenly felt queasy as he realized what would happen to Caitlin and their boys. His own fate was of little concern to him. It was his family that mattered. He had let them down; failed to protect them. The thing that bothered him most was the likelihood that there would be no one to track down these bastards and kill them. And kill those who had sent them.
The man with the PP-19 Bizon said, “Put your pistol on the table. Slowly.”
Whelan gritted his teeth and obeyed. Maybe there would be a moment, a nanosecond, when these men would get careless and give him an opportunity to kill them.
The man in the chair picked up his own Makarov, stood and spit out pieces of teeth. Careful not to be in his comrade’s line of fire, he drew back his arm and swung the weapon at Whelan, striking him viciously across the left side of his forehead. Whelan rocked back a bit, but otherwise didn’t move. Puny Norms, he thought, as stars briefly flashed through his consciousness. He felt the warm flow of blood beginning to trickle down his face.
The man he had abused spit in his face. It was bloody spittle from his injured mouth. There might have been small specks of teeth in it. He stuffed the pistol in his waistband and stepped backwards a few feet. “Now,” he said, “we kill you then we kill wife and sons. I am told your wife is beautiful woman.” He leered a bloody leer. “She will be good fuck. Your sons will watch. Then we kill them all. Slowly.” He nodded at the man holding the PP-19 Bizon. The man took a few steps backward to avoid being spattered by Whelan’s blood.
Chapter 4—Albuquerque, NM
It was just after six o’clock in the afternoon when Mitch Christie left the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office. The large, T-shaped building on the southwest corner of Roma Avenue and 4th Street NW, occupied the entire block. The five-story portion fronted on Roma. The base of the tee was a three-story structure that stretched south toward Marquette Avenue. Like every building in New Mexico—residential or commercial, or so it seemed to Christie, it was a boring buff color. Must be a local fetish, he thought. Blends in with the sepia, russet, and sandstone hues of the high desert.
Average temperatures in Albuquerque, New Mexico in April range between the mid-forties and high sixties Fahrenheit. Christie paused and buttoned the jacket of his lightweight suit. The sun was dropping quickly toward the western horizon. Albuquerque was in the grasslands transition area between the northern reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert and the beginning of the pine forests and high plains that stretched north to Santa Fe and into the mountains beyond. The barren countryside didn’t retain heat at night, and a brisk breeze added to the chill factor. He shivered briefly and thought about the warmer clothes in the closet of his small apartment twenty miles away.
Christie glanced at his image reflected in a side window of a car parked at the curb. What he saw disturbed him. The face staring back at him was gaunt, skin stretched tight over cheekbones and brow. Bloodshot eyes held a haunted look, framed by dark semi-circles like the black smudges football players use to reduce glare. The clothes he wore were badly rumpled and hung loosely on his thinning frame. His five o’clock shadow had lost several additional hours in its battle with the clock. He stared at the reflection for several seconds. I used to a decent looking man, he thought. Athletic and trim, but far from gaunt. I’m starting to look like a man who’s running out of time on this planet.
He was startled by a hand clapping him on the shoulder and a voice that said, “This is not the kind of weather a man stands around in, not when he’s dressed the way you are.” He turned to see Tom Burkhardt, the sheriff’s captain who co-chaired the OCDETF with him.
“You look like a guy who lost has last friend, Mitch. You okay?”
Christie hesitated for a couple of beats, searching for the right thing to say. Finally, he said, “Yeah, Tom, I’m fine.”
Burkhardt looked him up and down and said, “You don’t look like a man who’s doing fine. You wanna grab a drink and talk?”
Again, Christie was slow to respond. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not much of a conversationalist these days.”
“I noticed. Your body was in the meeting this afternoon, but the rest of you was someplace else.” He paused for a moment then took a firm grip on Christie’s arm and said “C’mon. There’s a nice watering hole in the next block.”
Christie offered little resistance and the two men walked down the street to a small bar. It was a narrow space between a bail bondsman’s office and a pawnshop. The windows looked as if they hadn’t been washed in a long time, if ever. A fading neon sign identified it as Black Jack’s Tavern. Christie assumed it was named in honor of General John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing. He had led the 1916 expedition into Mexic
o to find and punish the Mexican revolutionary and thug, Pancho Villa. The bandit and his ragtag followers had crossed the border and raided Columbus, New Mexico in March of that year. Ultimately, Pershing had been unsuccessful, but he was still a beloved hero in the area a full century later.
Burkhardt pushed the door open and held it for Christie to enter first. The place smelled musty and stank of stale beer and accumulated generations of body odors and cooking grease. There was an earthy smell that reminded Christie of mushrooms. Must be dry rot, he thought. Fungi are fungi; the smell is the same. He was grateful for New Mexico’s ban on smoking in public places, including bars. The room was long and narrow with the bar on the left and booths on the right. Both men blinked a couple of times trying to adjust to the dim light, most of it produced by neon signs covering the walls and advertising a variety of beers. A few tubes had burned out in a couple of them, making for an occasional odd turn of a phrase. The place looked like it had been there for a long time. The furnishings were old and scarred. The barstools and booth benches were covered in Naugahyde. Several had been patched with duct tape. The wooden floor was well worn by the shoes and boots of generations of patrons.
A small group of men were clustered near the middle of the bar. They were drinking beer and watching a sports show on a flat screen TV mounted on the wall behind the bar. The barkeeper was leaning against the bar glancing back and forth between the TV and the men’s glasses. Christie recognized it as universal bartender behavior. Keep a close eye on the patrons’ drinks. When there’s only a swallow or two left in the glass, be quick offer a refill before the drinker can think about calling it a night. Christie likened it the behavior to the speedy strike of a rattlesnake. The more drinks the higher the tab; the higher the tab, the bigger the tip. Christie, ever the cop, quickly sized up the men at the bar. They didn’t look like big tippers. One was wearing a postal worker’s uniform. Another had on a jacket with a delivery service’s logo. The clothes worn by the others suggested construction work.
Burkhardt led Christie to a booth opposite the group of drinkers. The bartender watched them. He had an unhappy look. Probably wishes we’d gone to the bar and saved him having to walk over here, Christie thought. As if to emphasize his displeasure, the bartender ignored the two men for several minutes. Finally, Burkhardt yelled at the man. “Hey, can we get a coupla’ drinks over here?”
All of the men at the bar turned in unison and looked at them. They knew cops when the saw cops. Again in unison, they turned back to the TV screen. The bartender sighed and threw his cleaning rag on the bar. He sized up the two cops as he approached their booth. One was younger and looked like he spent a lot of time in the weight room. His suit was still crisp looking and wrinkle free this late in the day, his hair short and neatly parted. A pretty boy, he thought. Probably banging every broad in the Sheriff’s department. The other guy didn’t look too good, kind of pasty faced and bent over like he wasn’t well. His clothes looked like he had stolen them from a homeless person; a homeless person who was a size or two larger. For a cop he had a messy, unkempt appearance. His hair, which was receding, looked like it was overdue for an oil change. It was obvious that he hadn’t had a date with his razor in a couple of days. The bartender didn’t like cops, but grudgingly admitted they were a necessity in his line of work. There were those occasions when fights went beyond his ability to quell them with the sap or baseball bat he kept behind the bar.
He nodded at Burkhardt. “Whatcha’ havin’, Mac?”
“A shot of Patron Silver and a beer.”
“What kind of beer?”
Something about the man’s attitude irritated Burkhardt. “I don’t give a fuck as long as it’s cold.” It came out in a semi-growl.
The bartender played stare-down with Burkhardt for a couple of seconds then turned to Christie. “What about you, Chief?”
Christie was very conscious of his volcanic stomach. Almost any food or beverage contributed to an eruption. “Do you have cream or half-and-half?”
“What’s this look like, a fuckin’ Starbucks?”
With surprising speed, Christie grabbed the bartender’s tie close by the knot and yanked his head down so the man’s eyes were level with his. “You seem to have an attitude problem. But if you want me to, I’ll show you a whole new meaning of bad attitude.”
The bartender had both of his hands on Christie’s fist, trying to pull it away from his throat. He looked in his assailant’s eyes. What he saw there frightened him. “I got milk,” he stammered.
Christie released the man’s tie. “Scotch and milk then.”
As the bartender scurried away, Burkhardt leaned back in the booth and laughed. “That’s a side of you I wasn’t aware of, Mitch. Is that standard Bureau behavior or are you just having a bad day?”
Christie wagged his head, trying to shake off the sudden burst of anger. It wasn’t helping his stomach issues. He looked down at the tabletop and said, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost it like that.”
“Don’t sweat it. He had it coming.”
“Truth is, things haven’t been going all that well lately.”
Burkhardt leaned forward and put his hands on the table, fingertips to fingertips, forming a vee. “Yeah, I don’t mean to intrude, but I’ve heard things to that effect.”
Christie looked up. “Like what?”
“The divorce, the shakeup at Bureau HQ…and the less than warm welcome you’ve gotten from Wojakowski.”
Christie looked down again. Unconsciously, he turned his hands palms up. “Can a man have no privacy anymore.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“The cop community is pretty tight knit across all agencies. No one has any secrets for very long.”
“A hell of a note,” Christie said glumly.
“But hey, I’ve got something that ought to cheer you up.”
Christie looked up and hesitated for a moment then, with a suspicious note in his voice, said, “Yeah?”
Leaning back in the booth again, Burkhardt smiled. “There’s a lady in the BSD that has an interest in you, a secret admirer.”
Christie looked puzzled. “So, what are you saying?”
“Do I need to draw you a picture?” Burkhardt said with a smile. “She’s pretty hot, recently divorced and looking to get back in the game. She wants to meet you. Whaddya say?”
“Who is she?”
“Name’s Camila Ramirez.”
“Ramirez? She’s Hispanic?” Christie realized how that sounded and said, “Not that I have a problem with that.”
“You’re out of touch, dude. The term is ‘Latina’,” Burkhardt said. “She’s got a pretty face and a hellova body.” He paused briefly then said, “Pardon the pun ol’ buddy, but opportunity’s banging on your door.”
The bartender arrived and set their drinks in front of the two men. He didn’t look at either one of them and left quickly.
“I don’t know,” Christie said. “I’ll think about it.”
Burkhardt smiled. “Don’t wait too long. The department’s full of skirt chasers and they’re starting to circle.”
* * *
The FBI field office in Albuquerque was located at 4200 Luecking Park Avenue NE. It was a large two and three story building with a brick façade, sandwiched between I-25 and the North Diversion Channel in Luecking Park Complex. The area was a mix of office, industrial, and residential uses. There were modest residential communities to the east and mixed-use commercial and industrial areas to the south of the complex. The FBI and other governmental agencies learned a costly lesson in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The Bureau’s field offices now were fenced, gated, well illuminated at night and guarded 24 hours a day. The Albuquerque office was no exception. A deep trench recently had been dug around the building to prevent a modern day Timothy McVeigh from crashing an explosives laden vehicle through the fence.
The moat amused Christie. The concept had been sold to the local planning commission as a water m
anagement structure. He chuckled at the thought. New Mexico was bone dry, as his bleeding nasal passages and itchy spots attested.
He thought about his conversation with Tom Burkhardt. He instinctively liked Tom. Maybe it was just professional respect, but it seemed like more. Tom was more than just competent and intelligent. He picked up on things quickly and seemed genuinely interested in the well being of his fellow law enforcement officers. He felt comfortable with him and sensed he may have found a friend. This thing with the Ramirez woman, however, made him a little uncomfortable. He didn’t feel he was ready to start dating, even though he knew Deborah had begun seeing other men. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been with any woman other than Deborah, he thought. Would he know what to say, what to do? Worse yet, what if it came down to intimacy and he was unable to perform? He feared his current physical and emotional conditions might be an impediment. That’s the kind of thing, he thought, and gritted his teeth, that would spread like wildfire through the law enforcement community. He’d have to think of some way to graciously avoid involvement. Besides, he was working on a personal project that was more important to him than anything else in his life at this time.
It was after nine o’clock in the evening and Christie had mixed feelings about returning to the office. If Wojakowski was still here, her presence would prevent him from doing what he was there to do. On the other hand, it might impress her favorably if it appeared he was putting in long hours. He hadn’t seen her car in the parking lot, but he walked past her office just to be certain. The door was closed and no light seeped from beneath it. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Entering his own office, Christie closed and locked the door behind him. He sat at his desk and fired up his computer. Mumbling under his breath, he said, “Now comes the tricky part.” He browsed to a chat room established by INTERPOL Washington, the United States National Central Bureau. It served as the designated representative to INTERPOL on behalf of the Attorney General and was the official U.S. point of contact in INTERPOL's worldwide, police-to-police communications and criminal intelligence network.
Endangered Species: PART 1 Page 3
