WINNER TAKES ALL: A Dylan Hunter Justice Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers Book 3)

by Robert Bidinotto

  He found them scattered, crying, shaking, moaning with pain. Some had been hit by flying or falling debris. Tony Ferino, the young researcher, was sitting on the pavement, dazed, his back against the tire of a car. His eyeglasses lay smashed beside him, and he had a nasty gash on his forearm. Hunter tore the kid’s shirt sleeve and made a quick tourniquet to stop the bleeding. He reassured him and moved to find the others. Samantha was lying unconscious, her head resting on Mark Deaver’s balled-up suit jacket; he appeared to be largely unhurt and doing what he could to make her comfortable.

  Heather Summers, the pretty young newsletter editor, was the farthest distant from the blast. She sat in the grass near the other church, shivering uncontrollably. She did not appear to be injured. But fearing that she would go into shock, Hunter sat next to her and draped his sports jacket over her. Wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

  “It’s okay, Heather. It’s all over.”

  Her teeth were chattering.

  “You’re safe, now.”

  Tears gathered in her widened brown eyes. Began to trickle down her cheeks. Cut dark little paths through the chalky dust.

  He felt her shudder. She turned her face up to his.

  “You saved me,” she whispered.

  He gave her a light squeeze. “You’ll be fine, Heather.”

  “You saved me . . . You saved me . . .”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The flurry of gunfire had been quelled quickly, after police cars swarmed the area north of the bomb site. Plumes of white and black smoke still rose from the ruined buildings, hanging above the area like a shroud. A cacophony of sirens echoed over the neighborhood.

  Now he was making his way around the chaos, heading for his car.

  And thinking about what had happened . . .

  Within the first few minutes, Hunter had called for ambulances. They began to arrive almost at once. He waited with the CAP staff, trying to comfort them until the last were taken away. He was relieved when Samantha regained consciousness before being placed on a stretcher. And though he couldn’t know for sure, it appeared that none of them were in critical condition.

  Then he let two EMTs wash the dust and dirt from his face, head, and hands. Let his scalp be treated and bandaged. Swallowed four ibuprofens with two bottles of water, to dull the pain the brief adrenalin rush had masked.

  During the treatment, he spent the time thinking. Working through everything that had happened today. And before today.

  When they were done, he refused medical transport, assuring them he was fine, but yes, of course he’d get checked out later tonight.

  Then, once alone, he texted Annie on her special access phone, to let her know what had happened and reassure her he was all right. He also asked her to contact Garrett and tell him he needed a callback immediately . . .

  Now he was taking a circuitous route around the blast site. He crossed 16th two blocks south, cut across a parking lot, then managed to find an alley that let him return to his car.

  Hunter always kept fresh clothes in his vehicles, along with well-hidden IDs. He changed in the back seat, hung his press credentials around his neck, then headed back toward the bomb site.

  He got barely fifty yards, only to the corner of 17th and P. A carbine-wielding anti-terrorism unit in combat kit and body armor stood guard outside the yellow police tape now spanning the intersection. Behind them, cops and city workers were erecting traffic barriers. In all directions, blinding blue and red strobes pulsed on the police cars, fire trucks, black SUVs, and sedans clogging the streets. His hearing was returning slowly—a mixed blessing, with all the sirens blaring.

  Of course they refused to let him pass. He could only wait there, hoping to hear from Garrett.

  He didn’t have to wait long, maybe five minutes, when the burner vibrated in his pocket.

  “Dylan, this better be important.”

  “Grant, I was there when it happened. Right at the bomb site. I saw them. The terrorists.”

  “What?”

  “We have to talk. Now. Just us. There are things you need to hear, and you’re the only person I can trust.”

  “Where are you?”

  “17th and P. Outside the police lines.”

  “I’m just coming into the neighborhood. I’ll have my team divert your way and we’ll pick you up.”

  Two more minutes passed. A pair of black SUVs with strobes flaring and sirens blaring raced up 17th from the south. He stepped off the curb and waved. The lead car swept past and stopped, nose facing the barricades, while the tail car pulled up beside him. The rear door opened. Grant Garrett leaned out.

  “Get in,” he barked.

  2

  Garrett badged their way past the antiterrorism team and around the barriers. They raced down toward 16th, but had to slam to a stop in the middle of the block because of rubble littering the street. They got out, then walked the rest of the way in, surrounded by Garrett’s four-man security team. They stepped gingerly around large pieces of masonry, stone, and twisted metal. A fragment from a roof had crushed the hood of a parked car. A veil of sour smoke drifted in the air. Garrett began to cough and had to cover his nose and mouth with his handkerchief.

  When they reached the corner of 16th, they stopped in shock.

  The devastation was as bad as anything Hunter had seen in the Middle East. The facade of the Methodist church caved inward. The bus stop shelter had been blown to bits: shattered pieces covered the base of the church wall, along with two mangled, blackened vehicles. Next to one of the cars, a group of first responders spread a tarp over what looked like a partial corpse on the ground.

  But the main damage faced them across the street.

  Men from two fire trucks hosed water onto the smoking heaps of rubble. The truck bomb had obliterated the CAP building and the two adjacent ones. A couple of partial brick walls still stood at the rear of the buildings, but the interiors and roofs had been blown inward, upward, and outward to either side. A red Toyota, which been parked behind the spot where the box truck had pulled in, was now in two squashed, widely separated pieces halfway down the block.

  Hunter approached slowly, treading carefully around and over piles of unrecognizable debris, moving past cops and firemen and crime scene investigators and men in dark suits. He stepped to the edge of the smoking, stinking crater where the truck had been. Chunks of its chassis had been driven down into the crater, and the pavement had cracked and buckled all around it.

  “Give us some space, guys,” Garrett growled from behind his handkerchief. “We have to chat.”

  His security team spread out at his command, and he approached.

  “Okay, then. So what in hell were you doing here?”

  “Believe it or not, I was working on a story—visiting an investigative nonprofit, the Center for Advocacy Profiles. CAP. They’re housed in this building.” He stared at the mound before him. “Or what used to be this building.”

  “It’s a miracle you got out alive. How did that happen?”

  “I saw the two guys who left the truck bomb here. Middle Eastern appearance, dark hair and beards. They came out with AK-47s and ran off in that direction. I cleared the CAP people out the back just before the bomb went off.”

  Garrett squinted at the ruins. “If I’m not miscounting, this is the third time you’ve barely managed to avoid getting your ass blown up. First by the Russians in Kandahar. Then by those ecoterrorists this year. Now by Islamist terrorists.”

  “Grant, the reason I needed to talk to you is I don’t think this is about Islamist terrorism.”

  “Hey, you two!”

  A man in a crisp dark suit was hustling toward them. He had dark brown hair, a mustache, and a scowl. He stopped and stood with his hands on his hips.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  Garrett and Hunter exchanged a quick glance. The CIA man pulled out his credentials and held them in front of the guy’s face. The man blinked.

  “Oh! S
orry, Mr. Garrett. I should have recognized you.”

  “I would have thought so, too, Mr. Groat. We’ve crossed paths several times in the C.I.C.,” he said, referring to the CIA’s Counterintelligence Center. “So let me ask: What are you doing here?”

  “The Bureau is short-handed during the emergency. I’ve just been reassigned on TDY as Special Agent in Charge at this crime scene.”

  “So you’re Rick Groat,” Hunter said.

  The agent turned to him, surprised. “Yes. How do you know me?”

  Hunter remembered what Annie had told him about this jerk—how he’d almost blown Muller’s arrest and gotten her shot. “Somebody mentioned your name to me. So, you’re in charge of the FBI team here?”

  “That’s right,” he said, trying to recapture his self-important look. “And you are . . . ?”

  Garrett interrupted. “He’s with me. Undercover. Let’s keep it that way. The Agency has an interest here, too. We’re checking the dead terrorist names the Bureau shared with us against our databases and the DNI’s. My people already have leads on some international Islamist connections.”

  “Well, this is an active crime scene, Mr. Garrett. You understand that we can’t have people wandering through here now, possibly contaminating evidence. I’m going to have to request—”

  Garrett took a step forward. He had three inches on Groat, and a lot more presence.

  “Listen carefully, sonny,” he growled, not loud. “I have friends at the Bureau, way above your pay grade. You either get out of our faces, right now, or I make a phone call to the director, and you’ll be spending the rest of the day sharpening pencils back in your office.”

  Groat blinked. “Oh, I didn’t mean to insult you, Mr. Garrett! I only—”

  “Go manage your crime scene, Mr. Groat. My associate and I were trying to figure out who did this when you interrupted us.”

  Groat opened and closed his mouth. Nodded curtly. Then stalked off.

  3

  “Groat,” Hunter muttered, watching him go. “Good God. Annie told me about him.”

  “I could tell you more. The Bureau won’t get anything useful out of this site for days, with that jerk running the show.” Garrett coughed again into the handkerchief. “Damn, this stench is getting to me. Smells like ammonia.”

  “Ammonium nitrate. I also got a whiff of something that smells like isopropyl alcohol. That would be nitromethane. The ingredients in ANNM. That’s the main explosive McVeigh used in his Oklahoma City truck bomb.”

  “You were saying this is not Islamist terrorism. But you’re wrong. You probably haven’t heard: They hit three other sites around town, too. The Jewish community center right up the street. Two guys came in and shot up the place, killing and wounding a bunch of people. A patrolman nearby nailed one coming out, but the other is still on the loose.”

  “I heard the gunfire. No doubt the same pair from the truck here.”

  “Right. So about the same time, a third guy in a suicide vest blew himself up inside a Jewish deli in Georgetown. And a fourth shot tourists at the Holocaust Museum before the guards took him out. Early witnesses say they were all yelling Allahu akbar. And the Bureau just ran the drivers’ licenses on two of the dead ones. Both are in the databases—well-known Islamists, self-radicalized over the internet. So, how can you say this is not Islamist terrorism?”

  “Because it’s more than that. Grant, this isn’t what it seems to be on its face. Somebody went to a hell of a lot of trouble to make it look like Islamic terrorism. So that everyone would go running after false leads, distracted from what is really going on.”

  Garrett spread his hands in exasperation. “Dylan. Get real. These dudes are Islamic terrorists.”

  “Sure they are. But I’m positive they’re only part of something else. Something much bigger.”

  “What in hell are you talking about?”

  “You said the other attacks were with automatic weapons and a suicide vest, right?”

  “Right. So?”

  “So ask yourself: Why did they position their most devastating weapon, the truck bomb, here, and not at one of the other more obvious and more symbolic targets, like the Holocaust Museum or that Jewish center just up the street? And before you say, Maybe they meant to take out that church over there: Why did they park the truck on this side of the street? Does that make sense to you?”

  Garrett looked around, taking in the blast area while Hunter went on.

  “See, the front of the church is badly damaged, but it’s still standing. The real devastation is over here. They stopped in front of this building—the very one I happened to be visiting—and even pulled right up onto the sidewalk, to get closer.”

  Garrett looked incredulous. “Wait a minute. Are you claiming it was you being targeted?”

  “Of course not. First of all, they had no way of knowing in advance that I would be here. This scheme had to take weeks of planning, and I hadn’t even decided to come here until last night, when I texted CAP’s boss. Nobody outside of the organization could have known I’d be here. Besides, if someone wanted me dead, why would they devise this enormously complicated plot, when they could have just sent some shooters at me? No, Grant, every way I’ve looked at this, my presence here was just a bizarre coincidence.” He paused. “But maybe only partly a coincidence.”

  “Now what are you talking about?”

  Hunter took a couple of minutes to explain the suspicious death of Arnold Wasserman.

  “So Wasserman reports he’s uncovered money laundering into this year’s presidential race,” he said, summing up. “That same night, he dies. My researcher finds evidence it was murder, but the crime scene is meticulously staged to convince the cops and M.E. it was an accident. Then CAP, which Wasserman was freelancing for, picks up his investigation and starts following the same trails. Now, within weeks, this happens”—he nodded toward the smoking ruins—“but it’s also staged, this time to look like Islamist terrorism.”

  Garrett raised a brow. “You’re telling me this CAP group was the main target today . . .”

  “. . . and the positioning of the truck bomb proves it. All the other smaller-scale terrorism around town was just a smokescreen, to throw the investigation off track. I think the same parties that murdered Wasserman recruited these Islamists as cannon fodder, gave them resources and a list of targets they’d naturally choose anyway—except for this one. Islamists have no interest in targeting CAP. But clearly, it was the main target. Why? Because they and Wasserman were getting too close to exposing something big—something that could affect the election outcome.”

  Garrett snorted. “Dylan, that blast must have rattled your brain. You’re talking like a whacked-out conspiracy theorist. Who the hell in American politics would do something this crazy and extreme?”

  “Have you already forgotten that, just months ago, Senator Ashton Conn conspired with ecoterrorists to commit murder and terrorism, just to put himself in the Oval Office? Who would have believed that?”

  Hunter kicked absently at a pile of debris at his feet.

  “And that’s what got me thinking,” he went on. “Because this reminds me of the bombing by Boggs in Pennsylvania. The one that took out that scientist, Adam Silva, and almost killed his son. That was meant to look like something else, too. But it was part of a conspiracy that ran right back here, to Washington. Right back to a United States senator running for president. And he might have made it, if I hadn’t stopped him. But the terrorism and killing hasn’t stopped. The election is still in play, and people are still dying.”

  “Wait. Are you drawing a connection between this and all that ecoterrorism, too?”

  “When cold, hard facts and logic eliminate all the conventional theories, then what are we left with? Conn was headed to the White House, and people who got in his way wound up as targets of terrorism and murder. Now, other candidates are running for the presidency, and people investigating the money trail are targets of terrorism and murder, too.�
��

  He kicked harder at the pile of junk, venting anger.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences, Grant. And if I’m right, think about what it means. It means very powerful people, deeply invested in the outcome of the election, are plotting a coup to take over the country.”

  “You’re really serious! And completely nuts. But okay, I’ll bite. Which very powerful people?”

  “Qui bono? Ask yourself that: Who benefits? That’s what I’ve been doing for the past hour.”

  “And?”

  “I have some suspicions. But no solid evidence. Not yet.”

  Garrett lowered the handkerchief. His eyes watered, but his craggy features remained immobile.

  “Well, I don’t buy it. It’s too wild. Oliver Stone crap.”

  Hunter gave the pile another hard kick. Something colorful, incongruous, dislodged and rolled out.

  He stared, disbelieving.

  Then shuddered.

  Then stood motionless while life drained from his body.

  “Hey.” Garrett’s voice, from some faraway place. “What is it?”

  While he still could, he forced himself to bend, slowly.

  Pick it up, carefully.

  In his palm, the remnant of a child’s doll.

  Just the head.

  With a long, thin metal shard impaling its cheek.

  Somehow, the thick golden curls were still intact.

  “No,” he whispered.

  “Dylan . . . What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

  “No!” he shouted.

  His burning eyes sought Garrett’s face. He held up the doll’s head before him.

  Garrett’s face started to blur.

  “No!” he screamed. “No!”

  4

  Garrett led him back across the street. Sat him on a blown-off truck tire. Knelt beside him.