Lone Wolf

by Sara Driscoll

  “Done.” McCord opened the message and held the phone between them where they could both read it.

  I made a mistake. When I wanted to smite my enemies I was decieved into thinking that fancy technology would increase the length of my reach and the power of my stroke. Insted my enemies avoided my vengence and are unpunished. The casualties of my carelessness were mostly ants who blew away as I flew by. I should have beaten them with their own weapons. But thats all in the past now. I dont be thinking you’ll here from me again. I bet the minions of the Non Sequitour Ass-sniffers will hunt me down. The present I left on their doorstep will lead them to me. So I will make sure my last acts are suitable punishments. The pale rider is coming. Fear what he will do to yur cities.

  It was an educational jurney. I hope you learned something to Mister McCord.

  Meg stared at the screen, her mouth going dry as sawdust. “ ‘Last acts’?”

  “You can hear it. He’s winding down. And going out with a bang from the sound of it. ‘And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: And his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’ ”

  “I wouldn’t have taken you for the biblical type.”

  “I’m not, but those early days in Sunday school have apparently stuck with me. It’s Revelation, and he’s referring to the end of days. The apocalypse. The personification of Death, coming to kill untold thousands.”

  “His threat about the cities.”

  “Maybe like McVeigh, he wants his name remembered for his deeds for all time. To do that, you have to make a splash. A bigger splash than perhaps he’s already tried.” McCord tapped the edge of his phone near the bottom of the message. “But notice this time he didn’t actually sign off. It’s like he’s fading away into history.”

  Meg skimmed the letter again. “Who are the ‘Non Sequitour Ass-sniffers’? And he spelled ‘non sequitur’ wrong.”

  “He’s spelled a lot of it wrong. I think he’s being clever there. See it? ‘Non Sequitour Ass-sniffers’? See how it’s capitalized? NSA. He’s talking about his last attempt.”

  “It must be burning his ass to have failed like that. To open the door for the FBI to walk right through to find him.”

  “He’s clearly expecting the trail to lead back to him. That’s why he’s going out with a bang.” McCord turned off his screen and stood. “He’s never going to be more dangerous than he is now.”

  Apocalypse. The end of days. Destruction. Death.

  They rose as one, sprinting for the exit and calling for their dogs.

  Chapter 26

  Fire in the Hole: A warning originating with coal miners that a charge has been set and miners should clear the area because an explosion is imminent.

  Wednesday, April 19, 7:35 PM

  O’Donnell’s Pub

  Moorefield, West Virginia

  The man propped his elbows on wood worn smooth by decades of arms resting on it and pints of beer sliding across it. He cradled a fresh glass of Mothman Black between his intertwined fingers, the dark brew topped with a foamy pale head. He took a long draught of the beer, then set it down on the bar with one hand, backhanding his mouth with the other.

  This was it, a last night with the men of his town before he went down in infamy.

  His eyes were drawn up and over the shoulder of the man behind the bar to the TV mounted on the wall. An aerial shot of the NSA compound filled the screen and then cut to a close-up of a man in a suit and tie talking to a reporter, the dark specter of OPS2A hulking in the background behind them, slightly out of focus yet unmistakable. He ground his teeth and hunched down further over his beer, his shoulders riding up near his ears.

  The bartender, Joe, wiped a damp rag over the dull surface of the bar almost in front of him. Joe had been a fixture behind the bar for as long as he could remember and had served his daddy and his grandaddy before him. “You’re quiet tonight,” Joe said.

  “Not much to celebrate.”

  “Couldn’t talk them down?”

  “The bank?” Hot anger shot through him at everything that was being taken away. “No. They’re foreclosing at the end of the month.”

  “Shit, man. I’m sorry. Your family has owned that land for generations.”

  “Nearly two centuries. But they don’t care about that kind of history. And they certainly don’t think it deserves any kind of credit. I tried to tell them I only needed one more year to get back on my feet. But they won’t go for it.”

  A man stumbled and collapsed unsteadily on the empty bar stool beside him, awkwardly elbowing him and jarring his hand so his glass tilted wildly. Beer and foam ran in a slow ooze over his hand.

  He turned on the drunken man with a flash of bared teeth. “Watch what you’re doing.” He flicked his hand in the interloper’s direction. Beer flew onto the man’s shirt.

  The drunk turned toward him, his small eyes narrowed and his crooked, yellowed teeth flashing behind an overgrown wiry beard. His breath carried the overwhelming stench of stale booze. “Fuck off. I’m here for a beer and don’t need to hear from the likes of you.” His lip curled as he hissed the last three words.

  He froze at the implied insult, his heart rate spiking as adrenaline surged through his veins and his extremities went cold. “What do you mean, the likes of me?”

  “Everybody knows all about you.” The otherman’s words were slurred, but carried clearly through the smoky bar. “You got caught peddling moonshine and uninspected meat by the IRS and the Ag boys. Half your herd of sheep ran off a cliff and you tried to sell it to the DNR as a bear attack, but they were on to you and your lies. You smuggled illegal sheep across state lines to get your stock numbers back up so they slaughtered every animal you had when they came down with scrapie. You’re a fuckup. Your daddy and grandaddy would be turning in their graves if they knew what a fuckup you are. You can’t do anything right. But at least you’ll be doing it somewhere else soon enough.”

  He stood up so abruptly his bar stool teetered momentarily and then toppled to the floor with a crash.

  “Hey, hey! Not in my bar!” Joe tossed down his rag and put a big meaty hand on the chest of each man and pushed back, hard. But with the bar blocking him, he didn’t have much leverage. The other two men simply sidestepped out of his reach.

  Fury filled him. All he wanted was one last night surrounded by his neighbors. The people he’d risked everything for. And instead, they’d shown their true colors. He grabbed the newcomer by his shirtfront and dragged him so close his putrid breath nearly made his head spin. “You have no idea what I do right. You’re so blind, you can’t even see what’s in front of you on CNN. And you’re so deaf, you can’t hear when someone speaks for you.” He gave the man a shove as he released his shirt, grimly satisfied as the man stumbled backward, crashing into another patron further down the bar.

  He glanced back to see Joe, mouth slack and eyes wide, staring at him wordlessly from behind the bar. He picked up his glass and drained it in four swallows, then slammed it down on the bar so hard he heard the glass crack. “Thanks for the drink, Joe.”

  He stalked across the bar to the door, feeling Joe’s eyes on him with every step.

  Chapter 27

  On Scent: Homing in on the source of an odor.

  Thursday, April 20, 7:03 PM

  Jennings residence

  Arlington, Virginia

  Meg opened the door to find Clay McCord standing on her doorstep. “Hey, thanks for coming.”

  McCord stepped through the doorway and then out of the way as she closed the door behind him. “You were very mysterious on the phone. ‘Come now, don’t tell anyone, and bring anything you might need to do research.’ ” He patted the leather messenger bag that hung from his shoulder. “Do I need a password to enter?”

  “Definitely not. But what we’re doing is off the books, so I didn’t want it to be at your office or mine. Come on in.”

  McCord toed off his shoes, then followed her through the front hall and into an open
concept kitchen, dining, and living space. His eyes were first drawn to the pile of dogs flopped on the sofa—two of which he recognized, the greyhound he did not—before he noticed the tall brunette in the kitchen. He actually did a double take, looking from Meg to the woman and back again.

  Meg noted his surprise and laughed. “Clay, this is my sister, Cara. Cara, this is Clay McCord, the reporter from the Washington Post I’ve told you about.”

  McCord and Cara shook hands. “I’ve heard about your magical powers with dogs,” McCord said. “Fix mine and I might want to marry you.”

  Cara’s laugh was nearly identical to Meg’s. “I’ve heard about Cody. He sounds perfectly delightful and perfectly normal. I’ve got a puppy class starting next week,” she said in a singsong voice.

  “As they say on the Internet: ‘Shut up and take my money.’ How do I sign him up?”

  “There’s a registration form on my website. Before you go tonight, we’ll get you set up.”

  McCord cast his eyes heavenward. “It’s a miracle.”

  “It’s consistency and rules, and I’ll teach you how to do it all.”

  “Thank God.” He looked from one woman to the other. “Has anyone ever told you ladies you look like twins?”

  “It’s been mentioned a few times,” Meg said dryly. “Like anytime anyone meets us together. Cara’s a year and a half younger, but you’d never know it by looking at us.”

  Cara slipped her arm through Meg’s, a devilish grin lighting her face. She dropped her voice as if sharing a confidence in a crowded room. “When we were in high school, we’d occasionally sit in each other’s classes for fun. We’d wear the same pants and leave class halfway through, swap sweaters in the washroom, and then go back to the wrong class. We never got caught.”

  “We came close. Remember the time Mr. Eldridge nearly caught you but you talked your way out of it?” Meg turned to McCord. “She’s got the best memory and reasoning skills of almost anyone I know. She can get herself out of almost any jam.”

  “So why aren’t you in law enforcement too, then?” McCord asked Cara.

  Cara cast a look over her shoulder at the dogs, a loving smile curving her lips. “Because the animals always come first with me. They make me happy and they need me. It’s fulfilling to take an animal who might be lonely, or scared, or sick, and help them become loved, well-behaved companions who will enrich someone else’s life.”

  “Not to mention, she’s always been my secret law enforcement weapon.” Meg motioned to the living room. “Let’s sit down and I’ll catch you up. You’ve shared your leads with me. Now it’s my turn.” Moving to the couch, she gave Hawk a gentle shake. “Hawk, shift over.”

  He immediately shuffled sideways on the couch, the other two dogs raising their heads as they were jostled. Cara took an oversized armchair and propped her stockinged feet up on an ottoman. Saki, seeing her chance, jumped off the couch and up onto the ottoman, lying down with her head in Cara’s lap. She gave a deep sigh of pleasure as Cara automatically started to stroke her wide, square head.

  “Come on, Blink, you too.” After Blink and Hawk settled at the end of the couch, Meg sat down and patted the cushion beside her before pulling the laptop on the coffee table closer. “Sit here so you can see this. Cara and I have already been through it.”

  McCord’s gaze flicked to Cara. “Your secret weapon?”

  “And if you breathe a word of it to anyone, I’ll deny it to my dying day. This stuff isn’t to be shared, but I know from past experience that Cara can see patterns that would take me weeks to work out on my own. We know what we’ve got here, but we’re not sure where to take it. This all has to be on the QT.”

  “How did you get this information?” McCord pulled out his own laptop, setting it on the coffee table beside Meg’s and booting up.

  “I called in a favor.” She turned to meet his eyes to be absolutely sure of his sincerity. “Your word that this goes nowhere. Also your word that you sit on this story until we’ve got him. We can’t afford any leaks to tip him off. Once he’s in custody, you can run with what you know, which is far and away more than anyone else. You’ll have a great head start.”

  “Deal. And don’t forget who you’re dealing with. I’m the king of anonymous sources. If you can get me something to run with, they’ll never find out where the information started.”

  “Good enough. I have a friend who is ex-CID. I wanted him to get me in contact with someone who is still in CID because we got some information back about the C-4 used in the bombings. I went after this when the evidence results were in from the first bombing only, but we’ve since had it confirmed that the second and third bombings have identical signatures. What’s special about this C-4 is that it’s marked with a military taggant.”

  “Military grade C-4. I assume it’s stolen?”

  “That’s what I wanted to investigate. There was a theft from an army reserve in Wheeling, West Virginia, last November and I wondered if it was linked. So rather than waiting for the FBI and the army to make connections, I went for the back door.”

  “The contact inside CID.”

  “Right. It wasn’t even really clear what happened that night. News reports said explosives were stolen, but didn’t specify what kind or how much. I figured going to the source was the best way to find out.” She brought up a file on the computer. “He just sent me the entire case file.”

  McCord gave a low whistle and angled her laptop so he could scan down the screen, giving a running commentary as he read. “C-4 packaged as M112 demolition charges. Two M183 demolition charge assemblies stolen.” He glanced up at Meg. “That means the C-4 was packaged as one and a quarter pound elongated bricks. Sixteen M112 charges make an M183 assembly. So the guy took thirty-two bricks of C-4. That’s enough to do some serious damage.”

  “We had to look all that up,” Cara said.

  “I was overseas in a war zone with our boys for years. I picked up a few things.”

  Cara tipped her head in a silent acknowledgment of his experience.

  He turned back to the laptop. “The reserve depot is only open from eight to four, Monday to Friday, and isn’t manned during off hours. The only security is a fence and motion-sensitive cameras mounted on the outside of the building. So the guy got in overnight when the place was locked and dark. Track marks show he came in on foot from the west and scaled the fence. Security footage showed a hooded figure wearing gloves and carrying tools. He broke a window to get in. . . .” McCord paused for a moment as if not believing what he was reading. “Then used a saw and a pry bar to cut through the ceiling of the weapons vault?” He looked up. “Gotta give the guy points for ingenuity. Such a simple solution—brute force. But still easier than going through the vault door.”

  “It looks like the vault was constructed of steel and plywood and wasn’t nearly as sturdy as one would hope when you’re storing this kind of weaponry,” Meg said. “Pretty poorly done.”

  “Bet they’ve already reviewed their systems. Okay, so the guy gets in and gets out with two cases of C-4. Leaves the tools, but goes back over the fence with the C-4. Good thing that stuff is stable as hell unless a charge is applied. He would have had to throw it over the fence.”

  “That’s what we thought. Then he carried the cases to a vehicle, which is why he didn’t take more.” Meg pulled up another window, showing a pair of buildings, just to the west of the crossed runways of an airport. “Here’s a map of the reserve. See how it’s located right next to the Wheeling-Ohio County Airport? Security cameras show that he got in just before two AM, so the airport was also dark and uninhabited. CID found evidence to the west of the reserve on Short Creek Road”—she ran a fingertip along the meandering line of a county road to the west of the forest that bordered the reserve to the south and west—“of a truck parked on the side of the road. Unfortunately, being November, the ground was pretty solid, so they weren’t able to get any definitive evidence as to the brand of tires.”

&nb
sp; “So he carried the boxed C-4 back to his truck and drove away.”

  “In any of about six ways in all directions, north, south, east, and west. But we may have gotten lucky. This is a pretty remote area, but there are several army buildings in the area and, like the reserve, they all have security cameras. There are several post offices, a couple of bars and convenience stores, all with security cameras. So CID got all the video from that night and captured any images they could in a window following the time the reserve security cameras show him leaving the building.

  “They timed his escape and then padded it for thirty minutes on either side just to be sure and then added the travel distance from Short Creek Road to the location of each security camera. Even though the traffic level was exceedingly low, they still came out with eleven possible vehicles.”

  She quickly started flipping through a series of fuzzy black and white pictures of trucks, cars, and SUVs. None of the plates were clear, but in most, a small portion of the plate could be discerned. “The only good thing is that every single one of them is a West Virginia plate. But not one of them was a full plate and some of the vehicle makes couldn’t be determined, which means they were looking at possibly thousands of vehicles of which one could be the real match.

  “They tried to follow it further, but without any evidence to corroborate—fingerprints, fibers, definitive boot or tire tracks—they couldn’t make any connections leading to a short list for which they could reasonably argue for a warrant. In the end, the trail went cold.”

  “So how do you think I can help?” McCord asked.

  “Because we now have this.” Meg pointed at a stack of file boxes across the room. “I went back to the Hoover Building tonight while Cara was combing through this file. I picked up all the files that I and my two colleagues have deemed possible suspects based on interactions with the targeted departments. I also knew where another few groups were keeping files on suspects and I grabbed them too. I don’t have all of them at this point, but I’ll bet I’ve got most of those that have been short-listed so far.”