Terrorbyte

by Cat Connor

  His eyes shrouded with confusion, he shook his head from side to side. “I don’t understand.”

  “Pig is a slang term for police, or it could be a reference to Hudson Hawk and the song ‘Swinging on a Star’,” I explained.

  Praskovya nodded. “I see now, a sentence with two meanings.”

  I moved to the far side of the kitchen and viewed the body from a different perspective. Mostly it was the same as the other victims. Mostly. She lay on her back with her legs bent at the knees in a pool of blood and bourbon. Blood congealed into gelatinous lumps near her back. The bourbon was concentrated more towards her feet, thinning the blood into a shiny puddle. The first notable difference was her clothing – it was intact; she was fully clothed. The second thing was gold ribbon laced at her ankles. Crisscrossed and then wrapped, like a ballerina would lace her pointe shoes.

  Lee stepped back to stand beside me. “That’s freaking creative,” he said, cocking his thumb at the victim.

  In a quiet voice, Praskovya said, “Selena was ballerina. In her youth. With the Russian National Ballet.”

  “Thank you,” I said. At least I had an explanation for the use of the gold ribbon this time. “Do you by any remote chance have anything to add regarding the gold ribbons on each victim – other than this one?”

  “On all victims, not ones you think killed by Selena?” he asked.

  “On all.”

  “Perhaps this is Selena’s idea. Maybe for her, he does this and she for him.”

  “Why?”

  “She always wore gold ribbon somewhere.” He looked back at the victim. “Even when in Spetsnaz, she had gold ribbon tied in bow sewn inside her clothes.”

  That was interesting. I suspected the ribbons were messages but never imagined they could be messages between the killers. Which made me wonder if the cameras weren’t so much to watch us carry out scene investigations but for each to see the other’s handiwork? My skin crawled.

  “Let’s go. We’re done in here,” I said.

  Outside the apartment door, we huddled for a short conversation. Praskovya began to offer more of his thoughts.

  “The orphanages, the ones we think harbored these killers, could they also harbor missing children?”

  “That would be a great place to hide the children before auctioning them off to the highest bidder,” Lee commented.

  “Praskovya, see if you can find out if any of the orphanages have new children, foreign, English-speaking children,” I said, hoping my tone conveyed the urgency of the request.

  “I’ll do it now. I will make phone calls from outside.”

  “They don’t have swimming pools do they, these orphanages?” I wasn’t being entirely facetious. I’d build a pool for orphans if I had millions handed to me.

  Praskovya gave an indulgent smile. “You are thinking of country clubs, not orphanages.”

  I turned to walk down the hallway towards the front of the building and the apartment where the woman was held.

  There was a pop, pop noise from outside, followed quickly by screaming and more popping. Lee stepped past me, his gun in his hand. Praskovya took my arm and moved me into a doorway. He towered over me. I was unable to see down the hall and couldn’t tell where Lee had gone.

  The popping stopped but the screaming and shrieking continued. I flipped my cell phone open and called Mac.

  His phone rang and rang.

  The ringing stopped. I heard his voice. His voicemail introduction started up.

  I hung up and called back.

  Same again.

  I shut my phone and put it back in my pocket. Staring at Praskovya’s back was less interesting than wondering why Mac didn’t answer his phone.

  I tapped Praskovya on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”

  “Yes.”

  We made our way to the foyer of the building with care and caution. Neither of us knowing what lay ahead.

  Screaming.

  Shrieking.

  The smell of fear.

  I guessed the crowd of gawkers now had water-cooler stories that would make them the envy of the workplace for weeks to come. It was a good bet that they’d also need counseling and that the FBI would be paying for it.

  Lee was nowhere to be seen as we entered the foyer, nor was Josh. Three armed police officers crouched in defensive positions near the doorway.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, trying not to scare anyone by sneaking up behind them.

  “Two gunmen opened fire on an FBI car outside.”

  And that statement stopped my mind from spinning.

  Stopped it dead.

  “Did you get them?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “We think they were in the crowd, ma’am,” the officer replied. “Both carried an Albanian passport and tourist visas.”

  Albanian. Interesting.

  “Casualties?”

  Before the officer could answer, Lee strode back in the door. He shook his head at the officer. Who promptly fell silent.

  Lee addressed him, “Thanks, Tim.”

  Officer Tim Whoever-he-was nodded.

  “With me,” Lee said to Praskovya then looked at me and chose careful words. “You need to come, Agent Conway.”

  I didn’t feel like arguing, mainly because I knew something bad had happened. Mac wasn’t answering his phone and Lee had gone all Special Agent on me.

  I tried to determine how I felt as I walked with Lee and Praskovya back out onto the street.

  Numb.

  From the front steps, I could see our car. The windscreen was shattered. A buzz of activity around the car drew everyone’s attention. I saw flashes of white shirtsleeves and high visibility vests from the paramedics working on someone beside the car; the police and FBI agents were standing around looking helpless. The medical examiner stood by the back of the car, near the other opened door. His face bore the telltale signs of stress and horror.

  I figured the kid was hurt. Mac was hurt.

  Or they were both dead.

  “Lee?”

  “They’re working on Mac. He took four rounds to the back.”

  “What happened to his vest?” I had a horrible thought. “Were they armor-piercing rounds?”

  “No, he wasn’t wearing his vest. He put it on the kid.”

  “Where’s the kid?”

  “In the back of that ambulance.”

  “Shot?”

  “No, she’s fine. Shaken but fine. Mac must’ve seen something. He used his body to shield her.”

  “But he’d already given her his vest!” Idiot! He should’ve kept it on! “Fuck! I’m going to interview the woman. Before they kill her too.”

  My eyes seized on the paramedics. I couldn’t process what I knew was happening and turned away. There was nothing I could do to help. I wanted to shove them out of the way, to scream, to make Mac stand up. What I did took every ounce of my strength.

  Praskovya and I hurried to apartment 3A. Two police officers stood outside the door. They greeted us with concerned expressions. They’d heard.

  “Is someone with her?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Have you checked on them, since the gunfire started?”

  Panic flared in the young officer’s eyes.

  “You haven’t checked?”

  “There’s been no noise.” He looked at his partner, who verified that all was quiet.

  “Good thing people don’t die quietly,” I snarled. “Open the door.”

  The officer swung the door open. He was right, it was quiet. He was also a numbskull who would never make that mistake again.

  From where I stood, I could see legs. Someone wearing police issue trousers was lying on the living room floor.

  “Praskovya,” I indicated to the left.

  He drew his gun. We swept the apartment and found an open window, a dead officer and a dead suspect. Without thought, I made the sign of the cross over the dead police offic
er. I moved to the suspect and sniffed her hair. Chlorine.

  I don’t want to be here.

  Praskovya spoke, “What did you do?”

  “She’s been swimming, I could smell the chlorine just like on Carla’s mom.”

  A sinking feeling hit my gut. They were cleaning up loose ends and moving out. As soon as they saw we had the kid, it was over. I flipped my phone open and pressed a few numbers.

  I was in no mood for chitchat or to even be polite. “Caine, they’re on the move.”

  “We’ve alerted Customs and all airports.”

  “What about Air Force bases?”

  “Air Force?”

  “Anything military that involves offshore travel. Navy. Army. Air Force. They had a link to an army base, they might use the military as an escape valve.”

  “Ellie, Director O’Hare called me earlier. Anything we need, we just have to ask.”

  “I’m asking. Shut everything down before these pricks get out: they’ll either be back or set up operations in another country; that’s more kids in danger.”

  “Everyone is on standby. Go do what you need to do, let me handle this.”

  I hung up. He didn’t know.

  Praskovya began searching the apartment for anything that might hint at the next move. He found a laptop cord still plugged into the wall, but the laptop was missing.

  The chlorine irked me.

  A piece of blue caught my eye.

  “Misha!” I called. “Stop.”

  He turned to look at me with his hand resting on a cupboard door handle.

  “There is a problem?”

  I pointed at his feet. He picked up a blue square of paper. He showed me. A Post-it note.

  “Read it,” I instructed.

  “It says, ‘It’s been a blast.’ Booby trap?”

  With a sheepish smile he touched the cupboard door handle, then let his hand fall to his side. “In here?”

  “Yes.”

  I flipped open my phone and called the bomb squad, letting them know there could be a canister of weapons-grade chlorine somewhere. Then cleared the room.

  On the way out I ran my eyes around every inch of the place. The rest of the apartment held nothing of interest. It was sparse. Nothing personal in it. No pictures, no reading material, no personal effects of any kind. I ducked into her bathroom. The cabinet was open and empty. Empty?

  A woman with an empty bathroom cabinet?

  Our Russian woman had an empty life. A controlled life.

  All that control and care, yet she still ended up with a slit throat, lying next to a cop with a broken neck. Despite what Praskovya had told me, I still felt there was much we didn’t know and maybe would never know about Selena.

  Then I remembered. “She has another apartment.”

  Praskovya stiffened beside me. “Here?”

  “Yeah, the kid said 7A. She called from this one but apparently lives in the other. I had them lock it down,” I replied.

  “Probably rigged to explode. We leave now.”

  As I stood there looking at the carnage in the empty apartment, it occurred to me that we were going to lose.

  The country was too damn big to shut down before they could get out. We couldn’t possibly close all the gaps in time. A photo; a name; but only one man. We had no idea who else was helping him. My gut said Hawk had a safe way out and was already gone.

  Screwed sprang to mind.

  Praskovya took my arm and escorted me through the door and outside. Everyone was outside, the entire building evacuated. The door guarded.

  Paramedics still worked on Mac.

  Why haven’t they transported him yet?

  I pushed Praskovya’s hand off my arm and walked through the throng of police officers to the car. The crowd stood silently watching. I edged my way to Mac’s side and knelt on the wet road. A paramedic turned to me and said, “We’re trying to stabilize him for transport.”

  I nodded. My cold fingers brushed Mac’s hair off his face. His eyes flickered but didn’t open. I wiped away foamy blood from his lips.

  “You saved the kid. Now fight, damn you,” I hissed into his ear. Blood came from so many places on his torso I couldn’t pinpoint the worst injury. So I opted for words of encouragement. “It’s a flesh wound. Fight, dammit.”

  I watched his face, his closed eyes, waiting, hoping and desperately wanting him to do something that meant he knew I was there.

  “He needs to be in hospital, now!” I said to the nearest paramedic. “Has he spoken?”

  “Are you Ellie?” the man replied, signaling to another paramedic for something.

  “Yes.”

  “He loves you.”

  I leaned over Mac and kissed him. Tasting only blood. His eyes flickered, his mouth moved. I stayed close. He whispered or tried to. His mouth moved and I read the words. “I’m okay.”

  “That’s my line. Get your own …” I replied, squeezing his hand. He didn’t squeeze back. His fingers never reacted.

  Lee crouched beside me. I recognized his cologne without having to look. His hand covered mine and Mac’s.

  “They’re taking him now, Chicky. Let him go. You and me, we’ll follow.”

  I don’t remember standing up, or getting into a police car. Not my car. My car was full of blood and glass. I knew Lee was next to me; I knew Praskovya was in the front; I knew we had a police officer driving.

  There were sirens, lights. Lee spoke on his cell phone several times. I didn’t listen. It all happened outside my bubble.

  Outside my bubble the harsh reality of life was hitting everyone we loved and rippling through the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. The ill-fated case that saw Special Agent Sam Jackson stabbed, children and parents traumatized – their lives changed forever – and Special Agent Mac Connelly in critical condition, would be ripped apart and glued back together as we all searched for answers. We’d saved six kids and that wasn’t enough. Okay, seven, I added Carla to the total in my head.

  My bubble opened enough to let a question glide free. “Lee, who was that kid? The sixth one?”

  “Her name is Lily Dean,” he replied. His voice sounded strange. Gone was the deep smooth tone I was used to, replaced instead by misery and distress. The materialization of pain twisted his expression as he struggled to talk. “Caine’s en route to the family home now. He believes Lily was the first child taken. She’s in the worst physical condition.”

  The soothing cold walls of my bubble closed. Lee’s voice faded away.

  Inside my little world everything felt unforgiving and empty.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Kidnap An Angel

  “What did it feel like?” She didn’t make eye contact as she spoke. Her fingers traced the seam of her jeans. I sank back into the chair opposite. A small coffee table sat between us, with a box of tissues and last week’s Time magazine featuring an article about Internet safety and sexual predators.

  “Which bit?” My mind was running a video clip of that day. How do I explain how it felt without feeling all over again? Simple answer: don’t.

  Her eyes flicked up to mine as she said, “When they told you about your husband. How did you feel?”

  “What about him?”

  “That he was wounded, let’s start with that.”

  “They didn’t tell me anything. I saw him lying on the road.”

  The psychologist coughed lightly, reminding me she’d asked a question.

  I looked her straight in the eyes and replied, “I didn’t feel anything.”

  Her gaze held. Tears prickled in the backs of my eyes. I didn’t want to go over this, not ever. A lump formed in my throat; it hurt to swallow.

  She pushed forward. “What did you do?”

  “I carried on. I was at a crime scene and ready to interview a suspect before the Unsub got to her too.”

  “You carried on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t that feel unusual to you?”

  “No
, it didn’t.” I sensed her frustration at my answers. For some perverse reason it gave me satisfaction knowing she had to work for every word I uttered.

  “What happened next?”

  “I told you. I went back to work.”

  “Right away?”

  My eyes wanted to roll skyward but didn’t. My voice even remained level, “We were trying to stop a child trafficking ring that operated at least one terror cell. I went back to work.”

  “Couldn’t someone else have taken your place?”

  “I was the Supervising Special Agent; it was my case.” And then what was I supposed to do – sit around uselessly? Get in the way as paramedics tried to save his life? Hold his hand and pretend he was going to be okay? I did that. I did that later.

  I had glimpsed him as they worked on him. I pulled up the scene of carnage and mayhem and played it in my mind. No, I really didn’t see much of him then, just blood and wounds. A bloodied torn body was what I saw but it didn’t feel like my Mac.

  A large internal sigh vibrated around my rib cage; I shut my mouth – tight – to stop it escaping and counted to five slowly. She had no idea what it was like being a field agent.

  How could she possibly understand that no one had time to assimilate what had happened until much later? My turn to ask the silly questions.

  “Do you know what we do?”

  “I think so.”

  She had no clue. We do the things no one else wants to do. We choose to do those things. She picked up her pen and wrote something on her steno pad. Probably how uncooperative I was being. She looked at me again, words forming. I could almost see them. I waited.

  “When did you get to see him?”

  “After I’d determined the woman I wanted for questioning and a police officer were dead and that the possibility of a bomb was high. I also attempted to get the borders closed. So it was at least twenty minutes later.” I managed to remain emotionless while retelling the sequence of events.

  Her pen tapped on the arm of the chair as she studied me for a few minutes.

  I knew what was coming.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because I have to be.”

  “You don’t think I can help, do you?”

  “No one can help.”

  I looked at the carpet under my feet. That Sunday replayed for me in the pattern on the carpet. Lee and Caine emerged from a doorway at the end of the hall. Behind them I saw a surgeon. They both stopped and spoke to him. Then to each other. Caine and the surgeon hung back. It was Lee who walked towards me. A noise behind me made me turn. And I saw Sam. He was walking slowly, but he was walking. Sam stepped up beside me. There were no words that needed to be said. He stood so close I could feel the air pressure change as he breathed. We waited for Lee to deliver the news. Lee told me what I already knew.