Mortal Fear m-1

by Greg Iles

  “GO! GO! GO!”someone shouts.

  When the lead agents reach Strobekker’s door, the mobile video camera begins to move. Everyone in the trailer is racing across the open space with the second element of the assault team. On the static image I see the apartment door go down like a piece of styrofoam.

  “FEDERAL AGENTS! FEDERAL AGENTS!” scream wild voices, and by then at least five men have gone through the door.

  “DROP YOUR WEAPON! ON THE FLOOR RIGHT NOW!”

  “Jesus!” I grab Baxter’s coat. “They got him?”

  “Shut up, Cole!”

  “Camera’s in,” a tech says softly.

  “Holy shit,” someone hisses.

  The mobile camera shows an apartment as bare as a spinster’s cupboard. Men are still yelling “Federal agents!” but as the camera swings around the apartment I see no one but the commandos of the Hostage Rescue Team.

  “Locked door!” someone screams.

  “Strobekker just went off-line!” shouts a voice from inside the trailer.

  I hear a crash as the locked door goes down, but the camera does not follow.

  “Don’t shoot him!” shouts Lenz. “For God’s sake, don’t fire!”

  I am stunned beyond words when Baxter turns and shoves Arthur Lenz out of range of the mike. Brahma’s fate is in the hands of soldiers now.

  “What the fuck?” says a shocked voice. “Did he go out the window?”

  “Negative!” someone answers. “This is Dallas SWAT leader, no rabbits.”

  “Closet’s empty!” screams a shaky young voice.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Get the camera in there!” yells Baxter. “What’s going on, Joe?”

  “Alpha, there’s nothing in this apartment but a computer and a phone. We’ve been had.”

  “What?”

  “There’s no monitor attached to the computer, but it appears to be powered up. No keyboard either.”

  “Get the goddamn camera in there!”

  Finally the mobile camera squeezes through the crowd of broad black shoulders and shows us the room. Payne is right. There is nothing inside but a harmless-looking white PC sitting on the floor beside a telephone.

  “What good’s a computer without a monitor or keyboard?” he asks.

  “Shit,” I say, not wanting to believe what I am seeing. But I am seeing it.

  “What?” asks Baxter, turning to me.

  “The drive light. The hard drive is active.”

  “Goddamn it,” curses a tech. “The drive’s reformatting itself! Erasing itself!”

  As I watch the tiny flashing dot of the drive light, I know that the tech is wrong. I don’t know why, but I know.

  “Pull the plug!” shouts the tech.

  “Wait!” I say, holding up my hands. “That’s-”

  “Joe!” yells Baxter. “Pull the fucking plug!”

  “No!” I scream. “Get your men out! Everybody out now!”

  Baxter whirls on me with fury in his eyes. Then comprehension dawns. He opens his mouth and yells, “JOE! GET-”

  But he is too late. A black-clad figure has leaped at the electrical socket with his arm extended, reaching into a white flash that seems to sear the screen as it goes blank.

  “Oh my God,” says a flat voice.

  The two static cameras continue recording as yellow flame blasts out the windows on one side of Strobekker’s apartment building. The sound of the explosion is muted after being filtered through countless circuits to arrive here in Quantico, but its effect in the trailer could not be more profound.

  Baxter gapes at the video bank while screams of anguish pour from the speakers. Disjointed voices from the Dallas command post shout at each other to call paramedics and the fire department. Other voices-almost unrecognizable from shock and panic-scream to get the wounded out of the smoke-filled building.

  “What in God’s name just happened?” Baxter asks. Then he snaps out of whatever trance he was in and begins shouting questions and commands over the link to Dallas. The technicians behind him are conspicuously silent. “Was that Joe who reached for the plug?” he asks.

  No one volunteers an answer.

  On the two remaining live screens, wounded or dead men are being dragged from the smoking apartment. I know some are alive, because their agonized shrieks are being transmitted over the radio net.

  “Dan?” croaks a voice. “This is Joe.”

  Everyone in the trailer freezes. Near the apartment building, a black-suited agent has held up his right arm and waved broadly at one of the static cameras.

  “Thank God,” mutters Baxter. “What’s your situation, Joe?”

  “FUBAR. I just wanted to let you know I made it.” Payne rips off his balaclava and bends over to catch his breath. “I’m gonna be busy for a few minutes. I’ll get back to you when I can.”

  “Do what you have to do, buddy.”

  When Daniel Baxter turns around to face the technicians, his rage is fearsome to behold. “What the hell just happened?” he asks, his eyes flicking from man to man.

  “He knew,” I say.

  “He couldn’t have known.”

  “Not about this raid. But he knew you’d be coming eventually. And he prepared for it.”

  One of the nerds says, “Tell them to check the front door, chief. Look for an alarm. Trip wire. Something.”

  Baxter turns back to the screens but issues no orders. There’s no point until the tragic opera on the video bank is brought under control. HRT commandos crouch over their prostrate comrades, giving what help they can from first aid kits. The radio chatter focuses on the danger of fire until some Dallas SWAT officers go in with extinguishers and hose down the apartment’s interior with chemical foam. The mood in the trailer reminds me of the hotel lobby I was in when I saw the Challenger explode after launch. Suddenly, in a moment of dead air, a broken voice says:

  “He’s gone.”

  The radio chatter stutters, dies. On-screen, a crouching FBI agent wipes a hand across his eyes, then removes his coat and lays it over the face of a man on the ground.

  “God in heaven,” Baxter murmurs.

  As the paramedics arrive and load the casualties into ambulance bays, a black-suited commando with bloody hands and a scorched black face steps up to one of the static cameras. The whites of his eyes seem to give off their own light.

  “Dan?” he says, panting like a man who has run five miles.

  “Right here, Joe. What can I do?”

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “What’s the status of your men?”

  “Four took shrapnel. We got everybody out, but Pete Carelli died on the ground. If it hadn’t been for the body armor, we would’ve had four KIA.”

  “What about you, Joe?”

  “I was outside the bedroom. I caught some stuff in my arms and hands. Nothing to write home about.”

  “Any way you can get in there to check some things?”

  Payne nods wearily, then turns and hustles five men together using hand signals.

  Baxter says, “We’re looking for trip wires, alarms, you know the drill.”

  Payne grunts into his mike. There is no mobile camera this time, but seconds later we hear him and his men and tearing through the apartment.

  “Son of a bitch!” cries a young voice. “I’ve got it! Photoelectric beam. Standard alarm kit.”

  “We’re following the wire,” says Payne. “Runs along a baseboard.”

  “Got another beam on the bedroom door,” calls out another voice.

  “Window too,” says a third.

  “Okay, Dan,” says Payne. “We got a rectangular black box in the closet of the adjoining bedroom.”

  “Good work, Joe. Gimme a sec.” Baxter turns back to his techs. “Somebody lay it out for me.”

  No one offers anything.

  I guess I have the least to lose here. “That apartment’s nothing but a wire with tin cans tied to it,” I tell him. “A perimeter.
Payne’s team broke the beam and the black box alerted the computer. The computer sent out a message to Strobekker, wherever he really is-that’s why it didn’t blow immediately-and then it self-destructed. He knows you’re after him now, Mr. Baxter. Or he will soon.”

  “But how could he not be there? We traced the call to that apartment. He was somewhere else the whole time?”

  “You said the apartment next door is empty, right?”

  Baxter’s eyes narrow. “Joe, did Dallas SWAT check the apartment next door?”

  “Negative. The manager said no one lived there, so I issued orders from the plane. Do not approach under any circumstances. Didn’t want to risk the UNSUB seeing or hearing anything.”

  “Check it now. But for God’s sake be careful.”

  “You heard him,” says Payne.

  We wait in a distinctly uncomfortable silence. Lenz stands sipping his Evian water about five feet from the crowd. When he notices me watching, he gives me a mock salute.

  “Goddamn it!” says a voice over the speaker. “There’s another phone over here! By the wall adjoining the target apartment. The thing’s blasted to hell, but it’s a phone. There’s a modem too, and some other kind of gray box. Looks homemade.”

  “I will have someone’s ass,” says Baxter. “Where’s the manager of the complex?”

  “Outside, Alpha,” says a different voice.

  “Put that son of a bitch on camera.”

  A command is barked. Then two Dallas SWAT officers pull a middle-aged man with dark skin and black hair into view. He looks like an Arab.

  “Arrest and Mirandize him,” says Baxter.

  I stare as a Dallas police officer arrests the terrified apartment manager and reads his Miranda rights.

  “Put a headset on him,” Baxter orders. When this is done, he asks, “What’s your name?”

  The man swallows and says, “Patel. Mohandas Patel.”

  I close my eyes in disbelief. An Indian.

  “You manage these apartments, Mr. Patel?”

  “I own them. With my brother, resident of Houston.”

  “One of the murders was in Houston,” says one of the nerds.

  Baxter asks, “Why did you tell the police that apartment was empty, Mr. Patel?”

  “I did not say that. I said no one lived there.”

  “There’s a telephone inside that apartment, sir. Someone must have put it there. Someone who rented the apartment.”

  Patel’s eyes brighten. “Ah, yes, apartment was rented. But no one ever moved in. They pay the rent, I don’t ask questions. Police ask who lives in that unit, I tell them no one. I tell them correctly, yes?”

  Baxter expels air, trying to suppress a fury I can only guess at. “Who rented that apartment, Mr. Patel?”

  “Nice lady,” he says. “A lady from my own country.”

  “An Indian woman?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  A sigh of satisfaction from Dr. Lenz’s direction.

  “How old was she?” asks Baxter.

  Patel rocks his head from left to right, estimating from memory. “Between forty and fifty. Hard to tell these days. Well-spoken lady. Very lovely.”

  “Who rented the other apartment?”

  “Mr. Strobekker. Almost a year ago.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I already described him for the police.”

  “Describe him again.”

  Patel hesitates, then looks at each of the officers holding his arms. Both are at least a foot taller than he is. “I believe I would like to call my brother,” he says in a shaky voice.

  “At least he didn’t ask for a lawyer,” murmurs a voice behind me.

  “My brother is an attorney,” adds Patel, driving the final nail into Baxter’s interrogation.

  “Alpha, this is Bravo Leader,” says Payne, his voice cool and professional again. “Dallas police advise they do a lot of business at this complex. High-dollar call girls, drug busts, you name it. The rent is high but it buys privacy.”

  “Damn,” Baxter mutters.

  Someone pulls the headset off Patel. “What you want us to do with him?” asks a heavy Texas accent. The voice of a cowboy.

  “Book him,” says Baxter. “Let him call his brother, then sweat them both. Threaten them with RICO, terrorism, whatever it takes. I’ll send my regional profiler over to consult. We’ve got a hostage out there somewhere. Copy that?”

  “Yessir,” says the cowboy. “Let’s take this one back to the barn, boys.”

  “This is Bravo, Dan,” says Payne, off camera. “You want us back in Kansas City?”

  Baxter thinks for a few seconds. “No. Get your wounded squared away, then get back here ASAP. Sorry, buddy.”

  “No problem. We may doze, but we never close. Mount up, girls.”

  The video screens wink out.

  “Why didn’t we trace through to that second phone?” Baxter asks, turning toward the techs.

  “He could have blocked it,” one answers. “With the right equipment. Some kind of relay. Probably that gray box.”

  “Equipment notwithstanding,” says a calm voice on the periphery, “I believe Mr. Strobekker’s ruse worked on a deeper level.” It’s Lenz, of course. “He led us through a dozen states, overseas, then through that little burg in Wyoming-which we assumed was his piece de resistance-and finally to the Dallas apartment. That was the first actual residence we tracked him to, so we assumed it was where he lived. I’ll bet the technicians didn’t even try to look beyond it.”

  I think I see a couple of sheepish faces among the techs.

  “The question,” says Baxter, “is can we trace the call now that it’s been terminated?”

  “There’ll definitely be a record,” a tech says brightly.

  “I don’t want to rain on your parade, guys,” I chime in, “but I think you’re going to find that telephone simply dialed an Internet on-ramp, and from there sent a message to some anonymous bulletin board a thousand miles away. Strobekker dropping off-line during the raid was probably coincidence. He wouldn’t risk a direct link to his physical location. If you get the phone records, you can find out where that computer sent its warning message to, but if it’s a big BBS, thousands of people will log on over the next few days and see it. And you’ll never be able to track them all.”

  Baxter’s face tightens with frustration. “We have access to some excellent cryptanalysts. If we could find the message, we might be able to break it down.”

  “That’s not the point. We already know what it says. It might be only one character. It might be a ‘test’ message, of which there are thousands. It might even say, ‘Dear Daddy, somebody just blew me up.’ ”

  “Goddamn it!” curses Baxter, his anger like a kerosene heater in the room.

  “You need Miles Turner,” I say bluntly. “He can nail this bastard for you.”

  “Turner may be this bastard,” says Lenz, stepping through the tech desks.

  “Bullshit, Doctor.”

  Baxter is studying me intently. “Is Turner that good?”

  “He is truly scary, Mr. Baxter.”

  “I’ll hire him as a consultant. Plenty of precedent.”

  “Not Turner,” Lenz says firmly.

  Baxter waves his hand and the crowd of techs scatter like leaves. When they are sufficiently dispersed, he says on a low voice, “We’ve taken casualties, Arthur. We’ve got a hostage out there. Hopefully alive. You’ve got a proactive plan, but it’s a long game. We’ve got to get this SOB before he kills Rosalind May or anybody else.”

  “Using Turner would be a mistake, Daniel. If you want an electronics wizard, call the NSA. If you want Strobekker, give me Cole.”

  Baxter considers this long enough for me to get edgy. Then he says, “The Bureau was slow to get on the computer crime bandwagon, Arthur, and I’m not ready to say we’ve caught up. Cole came close to saving a life today, and he says Turner’s better than he is.”

  “Daniel,” Lenz says evenly,
“if my past work means anything to you, trust me now.”

  Baxter bites his bottom lip and probes Lenz’s eyes. A silent conversation is taking place based on years of professional association, and maybe more than that. It might as well be in Farsi. Lenz is the first to speak aloud.

  “How’s my alter ego coming?”

  Baxter does not respond. Then, almost grudgingly, he says, “Another hour should do it. It’s tough to get access to some of those offices after hours.”

  While I have Baxter close, I take a chance. “Mr. Baxter, I’m ready and willing to assist Dr. Lenz, but I’d like to do as much of it as I can from home. There’s no reason we can’t work together that way. And quite frankly, I promised my wife I’d be back by morning.”

  Baxter’s mind is miles away. “How long do you need Cole to get you started, Arthur?”

  “Impossible to say.” Lenz glares at me. “He won’t make a commercial flight anyway. Not back to Mississippi.”

  Baxter checks his watch, then looks at Lenz. “I’d prefer not to use the regional SWAT teams for this. At oh-one hundred hours I’m deploying a second Hostage Rescue unit from Quantico to a more southern-lying city. Jan Krislov offered us the use of her corporate jet, and I took her up on it. Cole, you get Dr. Lenz set up and running in three hours, you can hitch with HRT. I’ll have the pilot set you down in Jackson. Good enough?”

  “That’s where my truck is. I appreciate it, sir.”

  Lenz looks like he might argue, but Baxter doesn’t give him the chance. With a curt nod he is away and reaching for a telephone.

  Lenz motions me toward the door of the command post. Keeping my arms close to my body, I move carefully down the narrow aisle between the shelves of humming equipment, past Baxter, past the short-sleeve poly-cotton shirts glowing in the pixel light. Someone rises to let me out of the trailer, and when my feet hit the pavement I expel the conditioned air from my lungs and drink in the cool forest breeze.

  Hearing the scrape of a shoe behind me, I turn and find the square-jawed face of Special Agent Schmidt staring from the darkness.

  “Why don’t you wait in the car?” he suggests, opening the door of Lenz’s Mercedes.