The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2)

by A. J. Scudiere

  More information came in from Walter about Rollins, but it didn’t make any sense. “Where the fuck is he going?”

  “Here.” Walter rattled off a link complex enough to take three tries to enter it correctly. He didn’t want it recorded on email, not that it would be good much longer, but they were already at a huge risk out here on the road. No system was secure enough.

  After he finally got it entered right, a map popped up and he was seeing what Walter was. And it was just as crappy as what Walter thought.

  He sighed, and when Eleri gave him a look, he shook his head. “Rollins was headed north at driving speed, but hit an intersection and turned almost due east. Looks like he’s on foot now.”

  “It’s as though he’s trying to keep people from following him.” She mused.

  “But he told us to follow him.” Donovan countered. “We have a tracker on him, unless he lied.”

  “I don’t even want to contemplate how he might have gotten that tracker on someone else.”

  Donovan made a face. “So it’s him.”

  “Should we follow him more closely?”

  Despite fighting traffic, they’d made good progress. While Cooper had turned and was no longer on a course that would cross theirs, they weren’t far away. Donovan pointed this out to Eleri, and almost in tandem, the two cars turned east to see where Cooper was headed.

  Ten minutes later, Eleri spotted him walking up the street, backpack slung over his shoulder.

  “People don’t tend to walk much in L.A.,” she commented. There were some people about. Some loitering on street corners. Others walked briskly with someplace to go, but it wasn’t like New York or even downtown Chicago with foot traffic being the norm. “If Rollins is trying to shake a tail, that means he thinks he has one other than us.”

  Donovan wanted to call the man, but that was an impossibility. If they called him, it might alert whomever he was working with. If someone was tailing him and saw him on a phone, that could be problematic, too.

  Donovan turned to Eleri. “They haven’t made me. Can I get a device, a microphone, to Cooper? Bump into him on the street?”

  Marina Vasquez spoke first from her spot in the back seat. She’d been tapping away in the back until now. “You can’t be sure they didn’t make you. Marvel Deen got a tracker on Eleri. So who’s to say they don’t know about you, too? About me?”

  “That’s a valid point.” Eleri conceded. She looked at him and shrugged.

  “What if I looked enough different?” He tried to put just a little emphasis on the last two words for Eleri to understand. If he could find a spot to change, he could walk right up to Cooper Rollins as the wolf. If the wolf handed him a tracker, then Rollins would understand that the dog he’d seen downtown was a trained asset. But maybe that was worth it. It seemed they were coming up on an endgame.

  “How in hell would you get . . . enough different looking to make that play?” Eleri looked sideways at him.

  For a moment he thought she hadn’t understood him. That she thought, as he hoped Vasquez did, that he was talking about some sort of disguise. But she’d understood.

  “I could drop you off, but you’d have to find somewhere to head into, and change enough to make a difference, and that place would have to be so private . . . Just in case someone else is following him. Then you’d have to change back and get back here.”

  Shit. For a moment he’d thought he could duck somewhere, but as he played it out further in his head, he couldn’t think of that place. They were in North Hollywood. Though there were a few abandoned buildings downtown, there wasn’t much up here that would allow him to walk in as a man and walk out as a dog. Or leave his clothes behind untouched for when he came back.

  The idea of returning and finding his clothes had been taken would leave him either naked or running around as the wolf. “You’re right. There’s not enough time nor is there a good place. Shit. I want to talk to him.”

  Eleri kept her eyes on the road, making random turns and staying out of sight, but close. “We can only do this a little while. Someone’s going to realize there are two cars out here driving like drunks.”

  Marina stayed on Donovan’s topic, and at least made him feel a little better about his probably really stupid idea. “Even if you got an open line to him, there’s a good possibility he still can’t talk. If someone else has a line on him, he won’t be able to say anything to us at all for fear of alerting the other line.”

  Donovan sighed as Eleri took a turn away from Rollins and looped around a block. She was right, they were starting to look very, very suspicious.

  The other car did a slow track past Rollins then headed up the street. He kept a good clip for being on foot but the cars couldn’t follow without being obvious. Eleri had just taken a cross street as the other car passed, and Donovan caught a glimpse down the street. He didn’t see anything.

  But Walter did.

  Eleri grinned even as Donovan heard the low chirp of Walter’s voice in Eleri’s ear, and he waited for Eleri to relay the information. “He’s in a holding pattern.”

  “What does that mean? Can he tell her where he’s going?”

  Eleri asked then replied a moment later. “It’s military signals, not sign language. It’s pretty generic stuff. The teams apparently have better language, but Walter was MARSOC, not even Army.” She shrugged. “I think we’re lucky we got this.”

  Then she grinned. “He worked out a code with Walter, we can head off but stay close and follow him when he’s on track again.”

  It took four minutes to find a parking lot with two spots adjacent to each other. Actually pretty lucky for a weekday in Los Angeles. It was easier to pay the fee than to flash badges and alert anyone that anything was up. Soon they were all out of the cars, standing around and talking.

  He and Eleri looked almost like random kids. Walter bordered on military goth, with an out of place cheerful ponytail. The agents looked like . . . well, FBI agents in street clothes, but there was nothing Donovan could do about that. They’d come in to be part of the home base. They hadn’t planned on being on the road. To be fair, if they needed to draw down on anyone, these two would wield a whole lot more authority than either him or Eleri in their jeans and hoodies.

  Marina Vasquez was the one who first gave up anything useful. “If he’s in a holding pattern then he has both a direction and a time.”

  “What?” Walter asked her.

  “If it doesn’t matter when he shows up, he’d keep going.” Vasquez explained. “The fact that he’s biding time means there’s an important or planned time of arrival and being early and hanging out is not an option.”

  Eleri looked back and forth between the rest of them. “Coordinated arrival . . .”

  “So if they’re all going different places, then they each arrive at those places at the same time?” Donovan asked.

  “Makes sense.” Eleri and Vasquez both said it at the same time, though Vasquez seemed contrite about speaking over her senior agent. Eleri didn’t even seem to notice. Donovan was trying to pay more attention to these things, but maybe now wasn’t the time.

  “Can we figure out where they’re going?” He asked.

  None of them looked at the other. Six brains, all intelligent, all working overtime, were trying to crack what was going on. And they’d all been trained to throw out what they had, no matter how crappy.

  Walter went first. “How many backpacks are out there?”

  “Five.” Vasquez knew that one. “But that’s just backpacks. Assuming you mean all the bags? That’s twenty. Maybe twenty-five.”

  Eleri frowned. “It’s fifteen. Five backpacks, five from the Calabasas group, five from the Valley group.”

  But Donovan saw where the junior agent was thinking. “But we know there’s an Indian cell, too. At five from each group that’s twenty. The militia or another group would put us at twenty-five.”

  Even as they tried to calculate the number, Donovan got another tra
nsmission.

  “My guy—Officer Davies—had no bag when he left, he just picked up a black leather bag sitting under a bench.”

  “Who dropped it?” Donovan nearly yelled into the mouthpiece. He hadn’t even told Eleri what they had.

  “No idea. I’m still following him.”

  “How did it go down?” Donovan was desperate. Not only were a handful of terrorists out and about with bags—at least one of which contained a bomb and a remote detonator, and most likely all of them did—now there were multiple hand offs.

  “He drove into Hollywood. Parked. Hit a shop, then walked up LaBrea and over on Franklin. There’s a little park there. He sat on a bench and a moment later he’d pulled the bag from where it was stashed under the bench.”

  Holy shit. Coordinated tradeoffs between groups that might not even know the other existed.

  Donovan told Eleri. “Do we know of a group with . . . hold on.” He spoke into the receiver. “Can you describe the bag?” Then he turned back to Eleri and Vasquez. “Black leather messenger bags?”

  “Does it have any Christian insignia on it?” Vasquez asked without looking up from the pictures she scrolled through.

  It took just a second for the relay, but Donovan told them what he got, “No.”

  “Good.” Vasquez didn’t look up until they all stared at her.

  “Well, currently we have five bags per group. This trade off tells us that there’s at least one other group out there running bags. Like I said, probably twenty. If there’s another cell involved or if the militia is involved, then there’s another set of bags.

  “Shit. She’s right.” Eleri plucked her phone out and called the agents from earlier. “Are your militia members all still inside?”

  By the look on her face, the agent confirmed it. They had satellite eyes on the compound and noted that none of them had left. But if the Bureau started plucking these guys off the street, there was every possibility of a tipoff of some kind and the raid on the compound would be compromised. There was a second, worse, possibility, that if they pulled any one of these people, they would activate a backup plan.

  And they had no clue what the backup plan might be.

  “Are we still on hold?”

  “Yes,” she answered, hanging up even as she turned back to the assembled group. “They’re all in the compound. So unless someone snuck out some super-top-secret passage that these guys don’t believe exists, they’re waiting. There is activity at the compound, but it’s all internal.”

  “Do you think they could be on the line with all the people with bags? Are they coordinating the movements?” Vasquez asked.

  Eleri and Donovan both shook their heads at the same time, but he spoke. “That would require the whole compound being part of the fracture. They would have to know as much as Ken Kellen and there’s no evidence of that at all.”

  Vasquez was nodding along with him even as he said it. “In fact, there’s evidence to the contrary. Okay, so we have all these people and all these bombs out on the move. They aren’t converging, even though they looked like they might be. So twenty-five separate targets?”

  “That would be impressive.” Eleri considered it, folding her arms against the slight wind that had come up. Then she stopped for a moment and Donovan saw her thinking. “What’s the capacity of that bomb?”

  “I don’t think it’s that big.” Donovan said. He didn’t know bombs. Cooper Rollins might, but he wasn’t here. “Show them.”

  Though the words themselves were unclear, Eleri understood, and she pulled out the burner phone and showed the others the pictures of the bomb in the backpack.

  It was Walter who managed some initial assessments. “It will take out the immediate area. But it’s not Oklahoma big. Not by a long shot. It’s . . . . suicide bomber big. Does that help?”

  They all nodded.

  They all knew there was at least one bomb in the pack Cooper Rollins was carrying. And they knew he’d been allowed to pick his pack, insinuating that there were bombs in all of them. “What if the others are dummies? Maybe Rollins just drew the short straw?”

  “Could we get close enough to tell?” Eleri looked at him and Donovan stared back. If they hadn’t made him, he could. He could smell it if he got close enough. But how in hell would they be able to tell the others that?

  Eleri didn’t even pause with that, she was already on the line to home base. “Is there anyone else carrying a pack near us?”

  She looked up excitedly. “There are two, maybe three depending on how we want to go.” Then she turned to the others. “You stay on Rollins; Marina, come with us. Donovan has a really good sense of smell, if he can get close enough maybe he can tell.”

  “You have a really good sense of smell?” She looked at him quizzically.

  He didn’t get a chance to answer, Eleri did it for him. “He gave up a life of sniffing armpits or perfumes for one of the big corporations to fulfill his dream of smelling dead bodies all the time.”

  She always had a ready comeback for whatever was weird. Except when it was her. Her dreams were “normal.” Her visions were sometimes devastating, and her eyes? She still wasn’t even acknowledging that, but Donovan? She could sell his special ‘talents’ to anyone almost like a used car salesman.

  They made Marina drive. At the first place she let him out three blocks in front of the woman the agent was tailing. Donovan put on headphones and pulled his hood over them. He shoved his hands in his pockets and walked down the street moving a bit to music he wasn’t even playing. He took deep breaths as he went, cataloging the background smells, and as he passed the woman he tipped his head slightly and inhaled.

  A block later, he heard Eleri in his ear, the FBI earpiece tiny and still in place. “Agent confirms she didn’t suspect you. Not anything that showed anyway.”

  “The bag’s positive. Pick me up at . . .” He looked up at the street signs. “Radford and Vanowen.”

  In less than a minute the car pulled up and he hopped casually into the passenger seat. Marina Vasquez already had them on the way to the next one. This one was male, Eleri hopped out with Donovan, insisting they hold hands like a couple for cover. He argued. She reached for his hand. Since he had to lean in close to the bag, it might look weird if they were holding hands. He pulled his hand back. Well, now they looked exactly like a couple.

  Though they moved slowly, the man with the bag was coming right up, but unlike the girl before, he held the bag down at his side. It might reek of explosives but Donovan wasn’t taking a chance. Pulling away from Eleri’s hand again, he said, “There’s something in my shoe.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” She pulled off ‘exasperated’ very well. He was already leaning over, his head down by his feet and he had the shoe off as the bag went by. He put the shoe back on and declared his foot better and even held Eleri’s hand. When they climbed back in the car they got confirmation of success from the agent tailing the man. He didn’t seem to have noticed them.

  Donovan nodded at them. “He’s positive.”

  “You can smell it?” Vasquez asked.

  He nodded, and shrugged. “Some explosives are really stinky.”

  “Hmm, I handled some C4 before and I don’t remember it having a smell at all.”

  “C4 really doesn’t.” He lied through his teeth. He could smell C4 on someone’s hands. “But a lot of the liquids involved have low vapor pressures and they leak fumes and smells.”

  These were pretty tightly sealed, but he didn’t tell her that. “Do we want to do a third?”

  Eleri shook her head. “We are one hundred percent positive from our spot checks. We know Cooper has one. We know this woman from the Calabasas cell has one, and we know that man from the Valley Glen cell has one. Unless these three each drew the short straw . . .” She shrugged, pointing out the unlikelihood of that.

  “But what if they did?” Donovan perked up, his brain in overdrive. “These three are all heading one way. What if the ones wi
th bombs are converging?”

  Eleri went a different direction. “It’s been almost an hour. Rollins is still in a holding pattern?”

  Walter’s voice came in reply. “I haven’t gotten the signal yet.”

  “Do you trust him not to slip the knot?” Eleri’s voice held the exasperation that Donovan suddenly felt. Had they trusted Rollins and he’d screwed them?

  “I have to.” Walter answered. “Yes, I do.” Then she laughed. “We just got the signal.”

  Donovan jumped in. “He’s headed south isn’t he?”

  “No, north.”

  Donovan frowned. They were down at Hollywood and Western. Cooper was up in North Hollywood still. The other woman was in Burbank heading south. They sat in the car, confused.

  Just then they heard a comment. “My guy just got on a bus. I’m on with him.”

  “I’ve been walking north, but just turned west.”

  “Rollins just hopped a bus.”

  The information started sounding off like popcorn. Everyone was on the move, changing direction, hopping busses. It was time.

  Then, the info Donovan had been waiting for. “Rollins’ bus says it’s headed toward Griffith Park.”

  He turned to Eleri. “Griffith Park is one of the points!”

  She was frowning at him, but he was already on the line to home base. “What if there isn’t one convergence and there aren’t twenty-five targets? What if there are five? Five bags, one member from each cell to each place?”

  Eleri got it then. He could see it in her eyes. “Shit. Griffith Park is one of the targets! Hit it, Marina.”

  42

  Eleri felt the car lurch forward, felt herself being thrown around more in the back seat. Her brain was too busy to think about bracing for turns. She picked up her tablet clocking Cooper Rollins’ movements. Then she called in to the Bureau.

  “We’re thinking we have multiple points of coordination. Five of them. One is Griffith Park.”

  Then she held her breath. The statistician didn’t speak for a few minutes, then, “I’ve been considering multiple points as well. That these people will meet up. But you said they don’t seem to know each other, so why would they meet up and work together?”