by Dan O'Shea
Bathroom. The usual shit, although the bottle of Acqua di Gio next to the sink went for something like seventy bucks. Looked like al Din’s tastes had gotten a little too refined for Sandland. Munroe was more of an Aqua Velva guy himself.
Closet. Pants and shirts, all ironed and hung up, couple of sport coats. Munroe checked the labels – Armani, Cardin, all high-end stuff. On the floor, next to a couple of pairs of expensive loafers, an aluminum case.
Munroe put the case on the bed, tried the latches. Locked. Bastard. Munroe pulled a leather case from his pocket, took out a couple narrow metal picks, had to fuck with the case for a minute. Out of practice. Didn’t do that much breaking and entering these days, not personally. Better than usual locks on the case, too. But the latches popped. First one, then the other. Munroe lifted the lid.
The case was lined with stiff black foam, six identical slots cut into it. Five of the slots were empty. In the sixth, Munroe saw a flat black metal tube with a couple of buttons on it. Pretty sure he knew what that was.
The little fucker had deployed the other five, probably some kind of failsafe play. If Munroe made a move on him, al Din could set them off. Or maybe just a safety net, make sure, when he came in, that he had a hole card, something to play if he didn’t think Munroe was honoring the deal. Or maybe he was gonna jack them up for more cash.
The why didn’t matter. Munroe had five devices in the wild that he needed to find ASAP.
He pulled out his phone dialed a number, gave the guy on the other end the address and room number. “I need a runner here soonest. Then get on the phone to Fort Dix, find out the closest Level 3 biohazard lab we’ve got around here, one we can use on the QT. I got a device I needed eyeballed yesterday.”
“Got it,” said the voice. “Anything else?”
Munroe had an uncomfortable thought. Al Din had a phone on him. Gotta figure, if the devices were his failsafe, then he could set them off remotely. That scene in the garage? Did al Din have time to push a button?
“Yeah. Monitor the emergency channels.” Munroe thought through parameters. They’d been tracking al Din as best they could ever since Munroe got the call in Saigon. Fucker’d been everywhere. “Following counties: Cook, Lake, DuPage, Kane, Will, Kendall. Tap their public health systems, too. You start hearing anything unusual, anybody calling CDC for advice, anything like that, I need to know.”
Munroe ended the call, packed al Din’s computer into the laptop bag and closed the metal case. Did a quick scan. Fuck, power cord had come loose from the computer, plugged in under the desk, lying on the floor. Feebs find that, they’re going to start asking about the missing computer. Munroe bent down, yanked the cord, stuffed it in the bag. There was a single knock on the door. Munroe slipped out his Walther, cracked the door. Small guy in motorcycle leathers, Kawasaki Ninja in the spot behind him, next to Munroe’s car, black helmet on the seat.
“I’m your runner,” he said.
Munroe gave him the packages, called Hickman, told him the Feebs could toss the room now, looked at his watch. Not quite 11am. Long day already, and it just got a hell of a lot longer.
CHAPTER 95
The Eagle was in the stairwell at Northwestern Memorial, coming down from eight to seven. Nudged the door open just a fraction of an inch to make sure it was unlocked. It was. Supposed to be unlocked in hospitals, but needed to make sure there was no exception due to the security around the target.
Been on the floor earlier, sticking to the far end, past the nurse’s station. The cop was leaning on the desk, chatting up a blonde who was doing some charts. See where he was tomorrow, then make the call whether to come from the right or the left. Liked the layout, the way the nurse’s station was tucked in to an alcove, the seats facing away from the target’s room.
Already been down the other stairwell, the exit stairwell. Nice little gap under the stairs at the bottom of each flight, space enough to dump the sweater and wig. Be a while before anyone found those. A little variety on the scrubs, but the dark blue was dominant, so go with that.
Nothing more to see here. Time to do a little shopping.
CHAPTER 96
Starshak followed the ambulance to the ER, Bernstein riding with him. Took a while for the docs to finish up with Lynch, stitches on the outside of his thigh from a few inches below his hip damn near to his knee, his whole thigh wrapped in bandages. Starshak on the phone a lot while the docs worked. The brass, DA, review board, seemed like pretty much anybody from any federal agency anywhere that felt like calling him.
Bernstein got X-rays: did in fact have a cracked rib. Not much to do for that. Nurse wrapped him back up.
When they were done, Starshak drove them to Bernstein’s place first, Bernstein grabbing a sweater he could work his arm into. Then they headed to Lynch’s condo, Lynch pulled on an old BC sweatsuit, the only thing he could fit over his thigh.
Then the three of them sat at Lynch’s kitchen table.
“You guys OK?” Starshak asked. Bernstein nodded, said nothing.
“Just a scratch,” Lynch said.
“Big fucking scratch,” said Starshak.
“Yeah,” said Lynch.
“That wasn’t what I was asking.”
“I know.”
The three of them quiet for a while.
“Never been shot at before,” Bernstein said. “Never shot at anybody.” He sounded a little hollow.
“You did good,” Lynch said.
“Right,” said Bernstein. “Took a round in my iPhone, emptied my clip, I think I got one guy in the calf.”
Lynch shrugged. “Four guys, three with machine guns, you stood your ground, did your job. You weren’t there, I’d be dead.”
Bernstein nodded. They were quiet again for a while.
“We got lucky,” Bernstein said.
Lynch nodded.
“Hardin and Wilson hadn’t stepped in…” The thought trailed off.
“They say why they did that?” Starshak asked. “They could have walked clean.”
Lynch shook his head.
“You got any ideas?”
Lynch pursed his lips, looked out his window for a moment. “They’re just on the right side, I guess.”
“Running up quite a body count for being on the right side,” said Bernstein.
“I’m OK with the bodies,” said Lynch. “Corsco’s goons? Hernandez’s goons? And from what I can see, nobody that didn’t come after them first. Hardin stole some diamonds maybe, but not in my jurisdiction, and look who he stole them from? And Wilson? Stand up cop, up until this week. You look at their history, what we know about the two of them now, this shit with her brother, Hardin does two tours, then gets chased out of his own country by some punk hood, spends a decade in Africa taking out other people’s garbage. I don’t know. You’ve got the law, and that’s great. Most of the time, for most people. But the law never did shit for either of them. So I think maybe they just go by right and wrong, now, as best they can. I hope they come out of this OK.”
Quiet again. Lynch got up, walked stiff legged to the cabinet, got out a bottle of Bushmills, three rocks glasses, set the glasses on the table, poured them each a couple of inches.
“You were on the phone a lot,” Bernstein said, looking at Starshak.
“Yeah. Lots of new friends.”
“Any idea what’s going on?”
Starshak just shook his head. “You two would know better than I would. Seems you two were participating in an operation vital to national security and helped to derail a significant terrorist plot. That’s what I’m told.”
“Felt like we were just getting shot at a lot,” Lynch said. “There’s something else, though.”
“What?” asked Starshak.
“Hernandez, al Din, I mean fuck it, right? What are we going to do? A couple of Chicago cops? We’re gonna clean up the international drug trade, stop terrorism? But that shit with Ringwald, al Din taking out his whole family, that points at Corsco.”
; “The South Shore thing, too,” said Starshak.
Lynch nodded. “Corsco we can do something about.”
“You got an idea?” Starshak asked.
“Maybe,” said Lynch. “Hey, Bernstein, what do we hear about Fenn?”
“Expecting a full recovery, give or take. They’re keeping him another couple of days.”
“Let me think on that,” Lynch said. He looked up. “Anybody hungry?”
Bernstein looked surprised. “Yeah, actually.”
“We can head downstairs, get something. Big fucking heroes like us; maybe Starshak explains that to McGinty, we get a freebie. Besides, we gotta keep our strength up. You can sweat the moral dilemma all you want, Slo-mo, but you’re going to find out the true human tragedy of pulling your piece.”
“Which is?”
“Paperwork.”
“Actually, that’s the good news,” Starshak said.
“There’s good news?” said Bernstein. “Something from one of your phone calls?”
Starshak nodded. “Yeah. The good news is no paperwork. This was a task force deal, remember? Evidently you were on loan. They’ll write up your paperwork, you’ll just have to sign it.”
“For the best, I guess,” Lynch said. “How am I supposed to write it up when I don’t know what the hell is going on?”
“We get to perjure ourselves?” Bernstein said. “That’s the good news?”
“Maybe,” Starshak said. “You gonna be able to prove that anything they feed you isn’t the truth?”
“Will my lips still move when I speak?” Lynch asked.
“Of course,” said Bernstein. “The dummy’s lips always move.”
“Thought I felt somebody’s hand up my ass,” said Lynch.
Starshak’s cell rang. He answered, listened for a minute, then hung up. “We’re supposed to get down to the Federal building, some kind of pow-wow, learn all our lines.”
CHAPTER 97
Munroe was in a windowless conference room in the Kluczynski Federal Building at Adams and Dearborn, and he was in a good mood. Turned out al Din’s computer security wasn’t that great. Still a lot to work through, but Munroe had Atash Javadi cold. That was huge. Javadi, he was the right wing’s go-to guy on Islam, half the politicians in Washington had him on speed dial. Hell, Langley’d had the bastard in to consult more than once. SOG had already snatched Javadi up, nice and quiet. Had him on a Lear out of Mitchell up in Milwaukee, headed for the proverbial secure, undisclosed location. If they could flip him, run him as a double, they’d have their best set of eyes ever into Tehran. Even if they couldn’t, the stuff they’d get out of him? Priceless. And they would get it out of him. They always did.
Munroe had the early rundown on the device from al Din’s room from some slide-rule types down at Argonne National Laboratory in the southwest ’burbs. It was Heinz’s bio-terror cocktail. Really pure, professionally weaponized shit. Remote trigger; ran off a cell phone. But Lynch must have got al Din before he could push the button. Because if al Din had pushed the button, there’d be weird cases popping up in ERs all over hell by now. Techies said give them a week and they’d work out a way to get the receivers to send out a signal. Then they’d fly in some boys from Fort Dix, pick the rest of the devices up on the QT. Said the things should be safe until then.
But you never put all your eggs in one basket. Not in this game. So Munroe kept up the full court press on al Din’s timeline. If he could find the devices faster, he would. All around the room, he had guys cataloging, mapping and time-lining every al Din sighting since he hit town. Data out of the Chicago system, various municipal feeds around the suburbs, the toll way cameras, private security. He’d pulled some strings, had some pocket protector types feeding everything into a couple of Crays out at Livermore. Sped the processing way the hell up. They were filling in the gaps pretty quickly.
He had his chat with Hardin and Wilson. They already had their money and Munroe couldn’t get it back. He’d tried. OK, win some, lose some. They’d gotten what they wanted out of the deal – they got to kill Hernandez. They pretty much knew the rest of the story and were ready to play ball, just so long as Munroe understood that, if he ever came after them, or if they even thought that he was trying, they’d go all Snowden on his ass. They had the whole story spooled up online somewhere ready to pop up in unfriendly inboxes. We’ll see about that, Munroe figured. People get careless after a while. So friends for now. In a year or two, Munroe’s story would go from being news to being history. Once it was history, anything Hardin might say wouldn’t be a competing story in the media cycle; it would be revisionist nut-job conspiracy babble. Munroe would revisit his feelings toward Hardin and Wilson then.
Munroe’s phone pinged. The Chicago PD crew was on its way up. The last bit to lock in place.
Starshak, Lynch and Bernstein got off the elevator, some suit with an ID badge ushering them to the end of the hall and into a big conference room on the right overlooking the Calder statue in the plaza below, Lynch gimping along stiff-legged. The suit stood in the corner like a chaperone, hands clasped in front of him.
Hardin and Wilson sat at the table, backs to the windows, Hardin finishing the last couple bites of a sandwich. Nothing on Wilson’s plate but crumbs. Mess of food on the credenza against the wall to the left: big basket of kaiser rolls, cold cuts, pasta salad, fruit, platter of cookies and brownies.
Wilson looked up. She had a bandage on the left side of her face, near the hairline. “You guys here to get your minds right?”
“That seems to be the plan,” Lynch said. “Food any good?”
She shrugged. “Better than no food. I’ve been hungry for lunch all day. It was looking like I wasn’t going to get any.”
“I know what you mean,” Lynch said. “If I’d known breakfast was going to be my last meal, I would have paid more attention.”
Hardin swallowed the last bite of his sandwich. His left arm was in a sling
“You OK?” Lynch asked.
“No damage to the joint, just the meat. I’ll be fine. You?”
“Just stitches. Thanks again, by the way.”
Hardin shrugged. “Hey, thanks for not shooting us on sight. I’ve got a feeling that was the plan with pretty much everybody else.”
“Couldn’t have shot you if I wanted to,” Lynch said. “My trigger finger was tired by that point.”
The door across the hall opened, Munroe stepping out. Lynch just got a glimpse into the room before the door closed – pictures and street maps wallpapered everywhere, mess of guys in shirtsleeves and ties milling around, mess of laptops on the table.
Munroe crossed the hall, stepped into the big conference room.
“You guys get enough to eat?” he said to Hardin and Wilson.
“Sure,” Hardin said.
“Yeah,” she added. “Stunned by your largesse.”
Munroe smiled, turned to the suit in the corner. “Nobody was talking out of school in here, where they?”
“Just small talk,” the guy answered.
“OK, take Hardin and Wilson upstairs. I’m gonna have a word with these guys.
The suit paused a second, opened his mouth once, then closed it, then opened it again.
“Sir, Hickman asked that an agent witness all interviews.”
Munroe chuckled. “You’re taping all the interviews, right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Seems kind of redundant then, doesn’t it?”
“Yes sir, but I have orders from Hickman.”
Munroe’s smile went away. He stepped up close to the agent. “You piss off Hickman, what’s the worst that can happen to you?”
“I could lose my job sir.”
“You piss me off, what’s the worst that could happen to you?”
The man didn’t answer for a moment.
“I’ll take Hardin and Wilson upstairs, sir.”
The suit left the room, led Hardin and Wilson down the hall toward the elevators.
�
��You guys hungry?” Munroe asked, his smile back. “Help yourselves. Want something we don’t have, I can get it.”
“Beluga caviar, maybe a bottle of Moët Chandon,” Bernstein said.
Munroe laughed. “Fucking Jews. Always busting my hump. I hear you were asking about Pardo a little ways back. You want some pastrami, I’ll send for it. You want Beluga and champagne; I’ll call Chuckles the Suit back and have him shoot you.”
Hickman came storming into the room.
“Damn it, Munroe, you agreed I could have an agent at all interviews. We need to do things buy the book now.”
“Now?” said Starshak. “Gee, that would imply that maybe some rules got broken earlier. Hard to imagine.”
Hickman reddened a little.
“Yeah,” Munroe said. “Tell the nice police officer what you mean by ‘now’.”
“I mean by the book now and always,” Hickman said.
Munroe smiled again. “And when we get to the interview, we’ll call the agent back. Right now, we’re just a few old warhorses shooting the shit over lunch. Anybody with a battle scar is welcome to stay. That leaves you out, counselor.”
Hickman’s face got even redder.
“Don’t feel bad about the scar thing,” said Bernstein. “I just got mine this morning.”
Munroe closed in on Hickman, his smile disappearing again.
“Hickman, why don’t you go take a leak or something, so you don’t hear anything you’ll have to deny at a confirmation hearing someday.” Hickman stood his ground for a second, then walked out of the room. Munroe closed the door.
“Shut it off Morty, all of it,” Munroe said.
“OK,” came a voice from the ceiling. “You’re clean.”
Munroe got up, walked to the coffee pot over on the credenza, poured a cup. Walked back to the table, sat down. “I’m going to play it straight with you three, see how that works out. What I tell you, there’s no record of it, not anywhere, so you start shooting your mouth off, it’s your word against mine, and I don’t exist. So basically you’ll be talking to yourselves about what the voices in your head told you.” Munroe took a sip of the coffee, set the cup down. “Shit got out of hand. But the bottom line is this. We were flipping al Din. Hadn’t wrapped the deal yet, but we were close. He gave us the scoop on Iran running a fake Al Qaeda op here in Chicago. Seems, Khamenei and the mullahs over in Tehran were worried that, with us pulling out of Afghanistan, that was going to free up our resources to start paying more attention to them and their nuclear ambitions. So they were planning 9/11 the sequel. Plan was to pin that on Al Qaeda, keep us chasing ghosts around Waziristan for another decade or so. So that’s one thing.
