Counterblow (A Rogan Bricks Thriller Book 2)

by Steve Richer

“Pretend you didn’t get the official memo or something. It wouldn’t be the first time in the history of American bureaucracy.”

  Rogan whistled. “I’m starting to like you.”

  “Until then, I’ll make some quiet inquiries. Here at Counterterrorism we have liaisons with the agency.”

  “All due respect, I don’t think they’re gonna admit to doing anything wrong.”

  “Of course they won’t but at least they’ll know to be on their guard, that you’re not alone out there.”

  Strangely touched, Rogan said, “Thank you, sir.”

  “Then tomorrow you can wrap things up, go back to Anchorage, and write some vague report. In the meantime, dial it down and continue to coordinate the search for Hargrove.”

  “And if I find him? Do I hand him over to Cooley?”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Watch your back, Bricks.”

  “I tried watching my back once, hurt my neck like hell. Should have used a mirror, I guess.”

  “Bricks…”

  “Gotcha, sir. Thanks.”

  He hung up and for the first time today he felt good. He wasn’t alone, at least in spirit. He found a plain Danish near the coffee pot and popped in his mouth. It was stale and tasteless. He briefly wondered if someone had licked the frosting off before putting it back on the plate.

  He ate it anyway while going around the room asking for status reports. As he thought, the skipper and his fishermen was a dead end. Conversely, it didn’t matter now. Rogan knew the big mystery and he couldn’t tell the others.

  Big waste of time.

  On the other hand, none of it mattered, not anymore. He’d been told to stand down, to wrap this up and go home. There wasn’t much sense giving a crap about the investigation anymore. No one else did so why should he?

  He grabbed his phone and started looking through restaurant review sites, searching for a nice place to have dinner. He was out of his district so the Bureau was footing the bill. He might as well get a nice meal out of it. He was craving prime rib tonight, a big chunk of beef, perfectly pink in the middle, with a side of french fries and sautéed mushrooms.

  He was reading a review about a steakhouse downtown, actually located only a few blocks from this building, when Nadine Shoemaker called him.

  “Yo.”

  “Agent Bricks, I have some news.”

  “News? Liberia defeated Germany in a breathtaking backgammon tournament?”

  “No, we have a real lead on Hargrove.”

  Rogan had been looking forward to winding down the investigation but he couldn’t deny that it gave him a thrill that it wasn’t over yet.

  Chapter 26

  It took him and Castro almost an hour in rush-hour to drive back to Ballard and find the strip mall where Pacific Hardbodies Gym was located. The neon sign was the most attractive thing about the place although as he came in Rogan spotted a couple of good-looking women on the Stairmasters lined up side-by-side.

  It had turned out that Hargrove had a gym membership after all and Agent Shoemaker had tracked it down. Not only that but she had discovered that the weeknight manager – Bob Adams – was reportedly Hargrove’s closest friend.

  “Tell me, Castro. You guys have gyms in Colombia?”

  “Yes, but not like this.”

  He was staring hard at the women and their shapely legs. Rogan chuckled but he couldn’t fault him.

  “Wipe the drool off your chin, buddy.”

  Castro did so instinctively even though there was nothing there. An agent noticed them and ushered the two men out of the exercise room, past the locker rooms, and upstairs where there were offices.

  Nadine was waiting in the manager’s office, a space not much bigger than a standard cubicle, but far more crowded with paperwork and old towels. The man sitting in the battered swivel chair was roughly 30 and prematurely balding. What little hair he did have was greasy and in need of a trim. He was dressed in sweatpants and a company sweatshirt although no one would ever mistake him for a customer.

  “Mr. Adams? This is Special Agent Bricks. He has some questions for you.”

  “I told you, I don’t know anything!”

  “How are you doing, Bob?” Rogan said, offering him his hand. “It’s Bob, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can call you Bob, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Awesomesauce! This is my partner, Mr. Castro.”

  Castro nodded to the other man but remained in the doorway, leaving Rogan just enough room to assert his leadership. Meanwhile, Nadine sat on the edge of the desk. Her role was to make Adams comfortable because she had known him the longest among them, even if it was only half an hour more. It wasn’t much but it was a surprisingly powerful tool to gain someone’s confidence.

  “So,” Rogan continued. “You know where your friend Calix Hargrove is.”

  “No, I don’t!”

  “You don’t? I thought you did. I thought that’s why I drove an hour through traffic to learn. Let me tell you, I hate traffic. Hate driving through that stuff, gives me heartburn. And heartburn gives me cramps for some reason. And you know what you can’t do with cramps? Sleep. I can’t sleep with cramps. So now that you know these intimate things about me, how about we start over, okay?”

  “I don’t know where Calix is, I swear!”

  “Pinky swear and everything?”

  “I haven’t seen him in over a week, maybe two.”

  “Tell me about that last meeting, Bob. Did he offer to cut you in with the deadly virus he was smuggling out of the country?”

  That took Adams by surprise. “What? No! A deadly virus? The hell are you talking about?”

  Rogan believed his sincerity, which was unfortunate for his case’s progress.

  “We know about Hargrove’s little smuggling business and there’s no way he was your best friend without you knowing it.”

  “Best friend is a loose term…”

  “So is prison rape, Bob. Don’t make me teach you the numerous definitions of that expression. So I’m gonna ask you some very precise questions and want some very precise answers. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Did you know about Hargrove’s smuggling operation?”

  Adams swallowed before nodding. “Yes. But I swear I don’t know anything about a deadly virus.”

  “What did he usually smuggle?”

  “I don’t know, boxes. I mean, I’m sure even Calix didn’t know most of the time. He was just a middleman. He brought in drugs probably. Smuggled out money. It was easy, never asked me questions.”

  Rogan glanced sideways and saw that both Nadine and Castro were taking notes.

  “What about relatives and ex-girlfriends; Calix have any?”

  “I don’t know his relatives. And he hadn’t been serious with a girl in a while.”

  “Any of these girls ever been serious enough to shelter him?”

  Adams shook his head. “No. Calix has a way of breaking up with a girl so badly that she never wants to talk to him ever again.”

  “Smart,” Rogan said. “I’ll need to remember that one for the future, might come in handy. What else do you know about his smuggling operations?”

  “I…”

  “What? You were about to tell me something I’m sure was very interesting.”

  “No, it’s nothing.”

  “Bob, we’re friends you and me. So talk to me like a friend would. What do you know?”

  “I… I know where he receives packages to be smuggled.”

  Rogan did his best to contain his excitement. “Where?”

  “Kenyon Industrial Park, I went with him once. There’s this quiet spot behind warehouse 42 of Taikuv Electronics.”

  A few minutes later, Rogan was marching out of the gym, this time not even looking at the pretty women working out.

  “What kind of AV capabilities do you guys have at the office?” Rogan asked Nadine who was walking quickly to keep up wit
h him.

  “First-rate.”

  “Good. I want you to get some warrants and send agents to Taikuv Electronics and all other businesses around it. We need their security footage. We wind it back, we match Hargrove’s vehicle and see who he’s been meeting. We’ll see who gave him the virus to smuggle.”

  “Got it.”

  “Maybe we get lucky and get a good look at a license plate.”

  Chapter 27

  South of the city, just off SeaTac International, was Seattle TRACON – an acronym that stood for Terminal Radar Approach Control. The rather new two-story building contained state-of-the-art facilities and the purpose was to monitor all flights in and around the Seattle area.

  On the first floor was where the action was. The main control room was straight out of a Hollywood movie. In fact, Danielle Weathersby had said as much when she’d joined the team a few months ago.

  There were no windows and the place was almost pitch black, the only light coming from the various monitors. Sometimes she liked to imagine she was at the controls of her very own spaceship although she never said that out loud, for obvious reasons.

  Danielle found the job stressful but she liked it a lot. It was certainly better than the much less busy ATC job she’d had in the Air Force before, posted in South Dakota. Here she wasn’t only responsible for commercial traffic at SeaTac. The airspace was extremely busy thanks to other air fields in the area such as Paine Field, Kings County Airport, NAS Whidbey Island, and Boeing Field which served the plane factory.

  She was thinking about her upcoming break. She was going to the gym they had in the building as it was a terrific way to wake up her body. She liked listening to some music as she ran on the treadmill. Okay, she didn’t actually like it so much as she was looking forward to it offsetting the two doughnuts she shouldn’t have had this morning.

  The lingering taste in her memory made her grin and she wondered if she ran a few more miles she could allow herself to eat a third one. The maple-glazed were off the charts!

  Suddenly, her eyes drifted down to a blinking light on her screen.

  “What the…”

  The bright little square reappeared, stayed on course for a few seconds and disappeared again.

  She thumbed her headset. “November Six-Eight-Niner-One-Seven, this is Seattle Center. Come in.”

  There was no response.

  “November Six-Eight-Niner-One-Seven, this is Seattle Center. Come in.”

  Danielle promptly forgot about the doughnuts and the running and the stress of the job. There was a situation at hand and she was ready for it.

  Most of all, she remembered that her boss had said something about the FBI looking for a situation exactly like this.

  Rogan focused on the road as he drove back downtown. His wipers were set on medium speed not only because the rain had picked up but the cars ahead of him splashed water all over the windshield. This made the red taillights look like colorful crystals in the twilight.

  “You have any plans for dinner, Andres?”

  Castro glanced sideways, probably stunned that the FBI man had actually used his real first name for once.

  “No, I don’t have plans.”

  “There’s this steakhouse I’ve been looking into, sounds promising. The Bureau is paying, maybe we can throw in a nice Chablis. It’s the least they can do, right?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re not gonna tell me you’re a vegetarian, will you?”

  “No, I like meat.”

  Rogan grinned. “Next time, say that with a different intonation. Sounded like you were coming on to me just now.”

  Castro didn’t grasp the joke right away but before he could ask for precisions his phone rang. He answered.

  “Yes? This is Castro.” He listened and his jaw dropped. “Hold on, I am putting you on speakerphone, Agent Bricks is here. Say that again please.”

  “We just got a call from Seattle TRACON.”

  The voice belonged to one of the agents at the office, Rogan recognized. He said, “What do you got?”

  “They have a plane going off flight plan. It just dropped off radar as it entered Puget Sound. Has to be Hargrove, yes?”

  Rogan stopped breathing, his eyes never leaving the road. He gripped the steering wheel tighter. That was the bitch of investigations; it was like combat, really. There were long periods when nothing happened and they were followed by moments of pandemonium.

  “So we don’t know where the plane is headed?”

  “No, sir. We do know it’s a Twin Otter seaplane from Anchorage. We’re going over range and possible landing spots.”

  “Good. They’re going to avoid commercial airports and anything with government ties. Run down a list of places and factor in the trajectory before they dropped off radar. The Twin Otter has limited range, they probably had to fuel up on the way somewhere in British Columbia. They won’t take that chance again and they won’t circle back. So keep following their trajectory. I’ll be at the office soon.”

  As Castro hung up, Rogan took a deep breath. He didn’t need to tell the other agent to get the SWAT units ready. They were most likely already in their vans with their machine guns, prepared for the final assault.

  Calix Hargrove – a.k.a. Rusty Brandt – looked out the window of the aircraft. Seattle was down below, a million bright stars in an otherwise black sea. The pilot had been right after all, they were getting to the city just after nightfall. Initially, he’d wanted to land in the middle of the night but the pilot had suggested that getting in earlier would be better, it would look less suspicious.

  So he had decided to trust him. After all, they were in a mutually beneficial relationship. Hargrove was desperate to get out of Alaska and to the mainland where he could disappear while the pilot wanted to see the $50,000 he’d been promised.

  In just a few minutes it would be over at last.

  The young man couldn’t wait. So much had happened that it seemed he hadn’t slept in a week. First there’d been the stress of being out on a fishing boat, pretending to be a greenhorn for the crew’s sake, and this had been compounded by the mysterious hit. There was no other explanation as to why people were after him, after what he’d been smuggling. That’s why he had jumped into the ocean.

  Floating in the freezing water all that time, death becoming more and more inevitable, Hargrove had concluded that he’d made wrong choices. High risk for fast money no longer seemed like an appropriate career path. Hell, when he’d peeked into the box and discovered he was transporting hazardous materials he had considered not going through with it.

  But the money had been so attractive! A quarter of a million dollars. No way a dumb kid like him would ever get an opportunity like this ever again. So he had decided to do it. He’d even escort the package himself this time.

  The skipper knew him but not the crew. He would pretend to be just another greenhorn for a few days or weeks. The plan was foolproof. Then he would move far away and drink piña coladas until he became old or poor, whichever came first.

  Those killers had changed everything. It was only a matter of time before the FBI discovered what he really did for a living. That’s why he’d been protected by US Marshals. It wasn’t so much for his protection as it was to keep him under surveillance.

  Escaping had been surprisingly easy. No one really pays attention to someone who’s supposed to be down and out in a hospital bed. He’d gotten dressed, slipped his hospital gown over it, and he’d waltzed out under the pretense of stretching his legs. Of course, a federal agent had followed him but he’d been sleepy, easy to knock over the head.

  From there, Hargrove had found himself a pilot for one of the local shoddy air charters. These small companies were often teeming with employees with questionable pasts and ambiguous morals.

  It hadn’t been difficult to convince a pilot to take him down to Seattle for a hefty payment. Once they landed, he’d take him to his safe house just outside of town – actually a st
orage unit where he kept emergency cash – and they’d part ways.

  “How long?” he yelled at the pilot.

  “Any minute now. That’s Lake Union down there.”

  Hargrove nodded. Almost home free.

  Chapter 28

  Rogan’s hands were too sweaty to get into a gunfight, he decided. The memory of the shootout on Kodiak Island was still fresh and even though at first he had waited with his pistol in his hands, he had since holstered it.

  Lake Union had two seaplane bases but it was also conceivable that neither would be used. That was the beauty of a plane with floats; it could go wherever once it had landed, drifting to the closest shore to disembark.

  Nevertheless, the lake was a busy place and there wasn’t much ground that wasn’t covered by wharves, docks, or businesses. There were even floating homes lining the shores. So it was determined that the plane would end up at one of the two seaplane bases or Gas Works Park.

  The FBI had agents and SWAT teams at the three locations, augmented by local police officers. Rogan was himself at Kenmore Air Harbor, crouching behind his rental car in the parking lot. Even though he was unarmed, Castro was next to him in solidarity.

  “You know,” Rogan began. “This might be a big waste of time.”

  “I know.”

  He didn’t have to explain to Castro that it was conceivable that Hargrove and his pilot were heading for Lake Washington to the east instead. It was a much larger body of water, the waves choppier, so landing wouldn’t be an easy feat. But it was possible for an experienced pilot.

  It also meant that finding Hargrove would be near impossible.

  They had sent agents and SPD officers out to Lake Washington to keep an eye out with binoculars and night-vision goggles but their hopes were pinned on a Lake Union landing.

  “And I’m sorry.”

  Castro looked at him with curiosity. “Why are you sorry?”

  “I put the steakhouse idea in your head and instead we get to freeze our asses off here waiting for somebody who may not even show up.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No, it’s not all right. I really wanted that prime rib tonight.”