The Butcher's Bill (The Linus Schag, NCIS, Thrillers Book 2)

by Martin Roy Hill

  Focused on the diner and Butcher's car, the two men never saw Butcher approach. The vehicle's closed windows were fogged over from their own breathing. Butcher watched them repeatedly wiping down the inside of the windshield. Amateurs. They had no idea Butcher was near them until they heard his voice and turned to find the Glock staring at them.

  "Either of you twitch, I blow your fucking heads off," Butcher said. "Driver, put your hands on the wheel. Passenger, put your hands on the dashboard."

  They both did as told.

  "Good," Butcher said. "Now, driver, I'm going to open this door, and you're going to ease out and lie face down on the ground. Passenger, you stay as you are. Understand?"

  The driver, the white guy with the cleanly shaved head, nodded.

  "Do you understand, amigo?" Butcher said to the Hispanic.

  "Y-yes, sir," the darker man said.

  "Okay, then." Butcher opened the driver's door, never letting his pistol divert from the driver's baldhead. The dome light glinted off the man's head. Another careless mistake, Butcher thought. Always keep the dome light turned off when you're following someone or on a stakeout. "Now slide out."

  The white man slid from the car seat and knelt in the snow.

  "All the way down," Butcher barked. "Face in the snow."

  The man did as he was told.

  "Now, hands on the back of your head, fingers interlaced, and cross your ankles." The position would make it harder for the man to attack Butcher. When the man complied, Butcher shifted the Glock to his left hand to cover the Hispanic, crouched, and felt along the other man's waistband with his other hand. He found a .45 caliber 1911 Colt automatic in a holster in the small of the man's back and removed it. Butcher hefted it in his hand, admiring its weight and balance, before turning his attention back to the Hispanic man.

  "Now, what am I going to do with you?" he said. He thought a moment, then turned toward the man on the ground. Without warning, Butcher kicked the man in the temple with his boot. The man's head snapped to the left. He grunted and lay unconscious.

  Butcher grinned. "Always wear steel-tipped boots," he said to the Hispanic. "Safety always comes first."

  Butcher crouched so he was level with the second Gideon mercenary. "Remember me?"

  "Yeah," the man said. "You're that NCIS guy who tried to bust me back in Iraq. Butcher's your name."

  Butcher nodded. "And your name is Ruiz, right?" The man nodded. "What was your first name again?"

  "Hector."

  "Okay, Hector," Butcher said. "I'm going to move around the back of the car. You're not going to move one bit. If you do, I'll blow the back of your head off with either one of these guns. Then I'm going to open your door and you'll slide out—slowly—and lay on the ground. Do you understand, Hector? "

  "Yes, sir"

  Keeping both weapons trained on Ruiz, Butcher moved around to the passenger's side, stuck the .45 in his waistband, and opened the door. He watched closely as Ruiz laid himself face down in the snow, arms and legs stretched at angles as if he were making a snow angel.

  "You know the routine, Hector," Butcher said. "Hands on your head, fingers interlaced, ankles crossed." When Ruiz did as told, Butcher asked, "Where do you keep your gun?"

  "On my side in a belt holster," Ruiz croaked.

  Butcher felt the man's right hip but found nothing.

  "Other side," Ruiz said. "I'm left handed."

  Butcher found the gun and stuck it in his back pocket. He patted down Ruiz's legs, finding nothing. Stepping away from the car, Butcher said, "Okay, Hector, I want you to get up slowly. Do it now."

  Ruiz's uncrossed his legs and unlaced his fingers. Moving with great deliberation, he pushed himself to his knees and stood, his hands held high. Butcher grinned.

  "Well done, Hector. Now move around the back of the car."

  Without turning his back to Butcher, Ruiz sidestepped around the vehicle until he stumbled over his partner. He looked down, then back at Butcher, his eyes large with fear.

  "Is—is he dead?"

  "To be honest with you, I don't know," Butcher said. "But just in case he isn't, you're going to tie him up."

  "Tie him up? With what?"

  "Use your belt and his," Butcher said. "I need my belt to hold all these guns I've been taking from you guys." He gestured with the Glock. "Go ahead, do it. And make it tight."

  While Ruiz trussed up his partner, Butcher moved to the driver's door and reached in for the keys. When Ruiz finished, Butcher unlocked the trunk and lifted the door.

  "Put him inside," he said.

  "Wait a minute," Ruiz protested. "You can't do this. You ain't no agent now."

  "But I have all the guns," Butcher said. Ruiz didn't argue.

  With the bald man locked in the trunk, Butcher ordered Ruiz into the driver's seat while he covered him from the passenger seat. He told the Hispanic to start the car and head back to the main road.

  "Where are you taking us?" Ruiz asked.

  "I've got a place a couple more miles up the road," Butcher said.

  "Then what?"

  "I only want to talk."

  " 'Bout what?"

  " 'Bout why you two have been following me."

  "What makes you think that?"

  "Oh, stop it," Butcher said. "I spotted you four hundred miles back. You still working for Gideon?"

  Ruiz didn't answer. Butcher aimed the Glock directly at Ruiz's head. The man flinched.

  "Okay," he complained. "Yeah. I still work for Gideon."

  "And your orders were . . .?"

  "Just to follow you," Ruiz said, with a side glance at Butcher.

  "Why?"

  "'Cause you keep sticking your nose where it don't belong."

  "You mean like where the money went?"

  "I don't know nothing about money."

  That, Butcher figured, was probably true.

  "And what else were you to supposed to do?"

  "Like I said, just follow you."

  Butcher pressed the barrel of the Glock hard against Ruiz's head. The man tried to move his head away but Butcher pushed it harder against his temple.

  "Okay, damn it. Okay!" Ruiz said. "We're supposed to kill you. Make it look like suicide. You know? You got fired from the Navy, separated from the old lady. Who'd think otherwise?"

  Butcher mulled over what Hector told him. His lips pursed, and he nodded.

  "You used to work for . . . what was his name? Cavendish?" Ruiz nodded. "Still work for him?" Ruiz bit his lower lip and nodded again. "Take the next right, Hector."

  Ruiz turned the Nissan down what looked like a rarely used dirt road smothered in snow. The road quickly petered out, and he stopped.

  "What's this about," he asked.

  "Where can I find Cavendish these days?"

  "Down in Campo," Ruiz said. "At the new training camp. He runs it now." He swallowed hard. "You going to let me go?"

  "Sure, I am, Hector," Butcher said. "I can walk home from here. Get out. Let's untie your friend."

  Butcher opened his door and, still covering Ruiz, climbed out. Ruiz slipped out and moved toward the trunk, fumbling with the key to open it. When he looked up, he froze. Butcher was pointing the bald man's .45 at his chest.

  "Thanks for all your help, Hector."

  The pistol jumped twice in Butcher's hand. Thrown backward by the double blows, Ruiz landed heavily in the snow, twitched twice, and lay still.

  Butcher put the .45 on safe and stuck it back into his waistband. He raised his left pants leg and drew a KaBar knife from an ankle sheath. He looked at it once, then at Hector Ruiz, and stepped closer to the dead man, a wide, tooth baring grin on his lips.

  ☼

  That was three days before. Butcher hadn't slept much since then, but he didn't feel particularly tired. After he left Ruiz in the woods, he'd driven the Nissan to his family cabin and left it, then jogged back to the diner to retrieve his own car. He'd spent a day forming his plan, making the improvised bomb, then anoth
er day doing a recon of the Campo training camp, watching the guard routines, and spotting and identifying Cavendish.

  After getting the information he needed from Cavendish, he'd driven the Nissan back to San Diego, breaking into a dive shop along the way, then drove to the Navy's Anti-Submarine Warfare base and rented a room at the Navy Gateway Inn. He stayed there only long enough to get a few hours of shuteye. Outside the inn, he stole the gray Toyota pickup truck he was driving and left the Nissan in the parking lot.

  Lack of sleep and the adrenalin rush from the last few days' activity was making him giddy. He couldn't stop grinning, and he found himself humming along with the music on the radio. It wasn't a song he'd ever heard, but he seemed to know every note. He reached down to turn up the radio's volume, but couldn't feel the knob. He glanced down to find it, but all he saw was an empty slot where the radio should have been and a rat's nest of wires. The music in his head stopped, and Bill Butcher was suddenly very worried for himself.

  CHAPTER 4

  MONDAY

  San Diego Naval Station

  National City, California

  1030 Hours

  THE FIRST U.S. NAVY WARSHIP to enter San Diego Bay was the frigate USS Cyane, which landed Marines as part of the American takeover of California from Mexico in 1846. A hook-like peninsula pointing like a finger to the south toward Mexico formed the bay. Called Point Loma, the peninsula provided a natural barrier from the onshore westerly winds and storms. The U.S. Army recognized the importance of the natural harbor and six years later began building coastal fortifications to protect it. However, other than a small coaling station, there was little naval presence in San Diego Bay until after the First World War, when the Navy purchased a small tract of land on the east shore of the bay to build a repair depot.

  Today, the bay is homeport to the Navy's Pacific Fleet. The peninsula that once bristled with Army coastal artillery is now home to hunter-killer submarines moored near where the old coaling station once stood. Across from Point Loma is Coronado Island, largely man-made and home to Naval Air Station Coronado. In the days before air power made them obsolete, battleships tied up here. Today the island provides moorings to some of the world's most powerful aircraft carriers.

  Farther south, along a narrow strand of beach, is the West Coast home of the Gator Navy, the amphibious ships used to set Marines ashore anywhere in the world, and the Navy's commando elite, the SEALs. Across the bay from the amphibs, where the Navy built its small repair depot in 1919, now sits the San Diego Naval Station. Better known to locals as the 32nd Street Naval Station due to the name of the street in the suburb of National City where its main gate is located, the base is home to the fleet's "small boys," as cruisers, destroyers, and frigates are called. It is also home to the NCIS Southwest Regional headquarters.

  The Navy guard at the main gate gave Schag's credentials a cursory look, and waved him through. The agent steered the rented car through a labyrinth of narrow streets cutting between office structures and warehouses until he came to the moorings and dry docks that stretched into the dark, sheen-covered waters of the bay. Rolling down the driver's window, Schag's car filled with the scrape and clang of shipboard maintenance and the briny smell of the bay. He felt he was home.

  He wound through the bayside parking lots for a good ten minutes before finding an empty slot within reasonable walking distance to the building housing the Southwest Regional offices. Squinting against the glare of the sun, he could barely make out the two-story building's red-tiled roof as he put his sports jacket on. After walking for five minutes, he could see the building's white outer walls and the entrance to the parade area it surrounded. Built as a public works project during the Great Depression, it originally served as barracks and chow hall for the sailors stationed there. Construction of better facilities decades later allowed conversion of the old barracks and chow hall into offices, and the parade area became a parking lot.

  Another large, white structure drew Schag's attention. The USNS Mercy hospital ship, its sun-glistened white hull punctuated by medical red crosses, towered above all other ships moored nearby. In the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, the Navy converted two commercial oil tankers into 1,000-bed sea-going hospitals—the Mercy and her East Coast sister ship, the Comfort. Designed to care for large numbers of casualties in a Soviet Union vs. NATO conflict, both ships had become relics, too slow to keep up with a fast-moving fleet and too large to be staffed by a smaller, post-Cold War navy. Instead, both ships sailed humanitarian missions, showing the flag while giving medical care to Third World nations. These days, with continuing government belt tightening, even those missions were fewer and farther in between.

  "Schag?"

  Schag turned at the sound of his name and saw his boss, Tom Riley, walking out of the one-time barracks building. He was shorter than Schag and stockier. His hair was jet black, well cut, and so stiffly lacquered into place the ocean breeze couldn't ruffle it. With his dark business suit and power tie, and the briefcase he carried in his left hand, Schag thought Riley looked more like an attorney than a law enforcement agent. Schag grinned slightly at the irony of that thought. Schag himself had once been a Wall Street lawyer.

  "I thought that was you," Riley said, shaking Schag's hand. "Glad you could make it. What were you watching?"

  "Just admiring the big, white target," Schag said.

  "Big white rust bucket's more like it." Riley took Schag by the shoulder and guided him toward a car. "You're just in time. There's been a report that Butcher was seen at the Anti-Submarine Warfare base. We're heading there now."

  "We?" Schag asked.

  "Special Agent Parker," Riley said, pointing to a white, unmarked sedan ahead. "He's waiting in the car."

  When they reached the vehicle, Riley motioned Schag into the back seat. Behind the wheel was a younger man in a gray suit. Thinning blond hair framed a long, narrow face punctuated with a prominent sharp nose.

  "Special Agent Linus Schag meet Special Agent Timothy Parker," Riley said.

  As the two shook hands, Schag recalled Riley had a habit of referring to all his agents with the former title of special agent, even in the office.

  "Call me Lin," Schag said.

  "Tim," Parker said.

  Riley impatiently waved his hand at the two men. "Okay, enough with the introductions," he said. "Let's get going."

  Schag waited until Parker pulled out of the parking slot and wended his way onto the street before speaking.

  "Are you lead on this investigation, Tim?"

  Parker started to answer, but Riley jumped in.

  "None of us are," he said. "The county sheriff has the lead. Bill Butcher is no longer connected with the Navy. The man—or men—he killed were civilians and killed in county territory."

  Schag's stomach lurched.

  "The news story I head on the way down mentioned only one victim," he said. "There were more?"

  Riley nodded.

  "At least two," he said, and explained about the severed head. "Anyway, it's a county case. We're only liaising and providing manpower and support as needed."

  Parker drove out the gate and guided the car toward the Interstate 5 freeway.

  "But you just said Bill was seen at the ASW base—"

  "And if he's there, that changes everything," Riley said. As they merged into the northbound lanes, three black-and-white police patrol cars flashed past, followed by two motorcycle units. All five vehicles had their red and blue lights flashing. Riley added under his breath, "Or maybe not."

  Schag watched another two police vehicles flash past. "There's an awful lot of cop activity in this county. I've been seeing black-and-whites everywhere since I crossed the county line. Is it connected to Bill?"

  "What do you think," Riley asked brusquely, "they're going to the Policeman's Ball?" After a moment, Riley apologized. "You've been on the road. You haven't been briefed on the latest developments. Here."

  The agent reached into his briefcase,
removed a swath of stapled pages, and handed them to Schag.

  "This list of accusations and demands was discovered on a Facebook page used by Butcher," Riley explained as Schag leafed through the pages. "The media got hold of it, and they've already given it a name—The Butcher's Bill. Sweet, huh?"

  "I don't understand that name," Parker said. "I mean I get the reference to Butcher. Obviously, it's his name. But why call it a bill? It makes it sound like the Bill of Rights or something."

  Riley shrugged. "Maybe it refers to the old days when people use to run a bill with the local meat shop?"

  "No," Shag said, still flipping through the pages, "it was probably a reporter with knowledge of naval history."

  Parker shot Schag a questioning look in the rear-view mirror. Riley turned to him and said, "What?"

  "The butcher's bill is an old naval term referring to the number of men killed and wounded in a battle," Schag said. He looked up at the two other men. "What I don't understand is how the media learned about Bill's nickname, The Butcher. It's not mentioned anywhere here." He gestured toward the pages in his hands.

  "He's ex-Navy," Riley said, facing forward again. "Maybe one of his old buddies ratted on him."

  "Bill didn't get that nickname until we were at the academy in Glencoe," Schag said. "None of his Navy buddies would call him that. Only NCIS agents."

  Riley shrugged. "Who knows?" With an irritable wave of his hand he added, "Let's speed it up, Parker. Hit the lights."

  ☼

  A light bar secured to the inside of the windshield flashed red and amber as Parker sped through traffic. Schag read the so-called The Butcher's Bill quickly, then again with greater care. His jaw clenched harder as he read.