by Jason Briggs
“I’m flying to Mayland in a couple of hours. Kathleen wants me to go meet with this guy and get the scoop.”
Brad frowned. “Weird. She didn’t mention anything to me about it.”
“She’s keeping you on the Criswell case. Said she wanted her best agent on this one.”
“Which is exactly why I should be on it,” he quipped. We started walking back and entered the welcoming shade of a cluster of palms. “But really, I’m glad it’s you who gets to look into it. Colonel McCleary deserves justice.”
“Thanks, man. He does.”
“Just don’t screw it up. I don’t want to have to come in and clean up your mess.”
Chapter Ten
The cabin pressure started to change a few minutes before the flight attendant announced that we were now entering our descent into Baltimore and would we please set our tray tables up and ensure that our seat belts were fastened.
I looked out the cabin window and watched as the ground started to draw nearer. Cars driving along the eastern seaboard came into view, appearing first as small as ants, and then, as we continued our descent, like the modern modes of transportation that they were.
The plane banked and entered its spot in the rotation to land. It was nearing 7 PM local time. I was tired. I hadn’t slept on the flight. I’d tried, but rest wouldn’t come; my mind was struggling to relax with the death that lay behind me and the investigation that lay before.
There was a delay on the tarmac and we had to wait an extra thirty minutes to arrive at our gate. I deplaned, followed the terminal to baggage claim, and after another fifteen minutes of waiting at the claims counter, turned in my ticket voucher and repossessed my firearm. Kathleen had reserved a midsize sedan for me. The Hertz attendant informed me that all they currently had was an Acura TLX. Not being one to complain about an upgrade, I signed the paperwork and exited the terminal. I walked across the street and found the car in the lot, then started the air conditioning before taking out my phone.
I had programmed Douglas Peterson’s phone number into my contacts. If he was using a burner phone, then I suspected that the number wouldn’t be valid for very long. But I think it was Einstein who said never memorize anything you could look up. That didn’t always apply when working a federal investigation, but it did in this instance. I had tried to call Peterson another three times before boarding the plane in Miami. He hadn’t answered. I tapped the phone number and set my phone to my ear.
It rang and then continued: five, eight, ten... fifteen.
I was starting to get a little irritated. I hung up and called again. It was a perfectly natural response for Peterson to be scared. I understood only wanting to talk in person and the desire to switch to a phone you could easily dispose of at any moment. But that phone didn’t do you any good if you never picked it up. Unless, I started to wonder, something had happened to him, too. My concerns were alleviated when the ringing stopped and the call was answered.
“Hello.” The voice was gruff.
“Mr. Peterson?”
“Who is this?”
“Your friend in Key Largo asked me to meet with you. She thought you might like the gelato from the vendor on Waterside Drive.”
My response to him had been dictated by instructions in the file Kathleen had given to me earlier in the day. It was all a little silly, but I respected the effort. The man was simply doing the best he could to stay safe and out of harm’s way.
“What color is my friend’s hair?”
The question sounded impromptu, as though he hadn’t planned on asking it. But he was still operating out of his paranoia.
“Brown. It’s colored. If you need me to be more specific, it’s a chestnut brown. Her words, not mine.”
That seemed to settle him. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know how to do this. If they took out McCleary, it won’t be long before they try and come after me. If they’re not already.”
“Let’s meet,” I said. “I came up here to help you. Whoever might be after you, we’ll stop them.”
I heard a bout of nervous laughter from the other end of the call. “These aren’t the kind of people you can just stop. You think you can just fly out here, have a chat with me at a coffee house or something and—presto!—it’s all better now?”
Coffee did sound really good. “No. That’s not what I think. Where do you want to meet?”
“Where are you?”
“I’ve just landed in Baltimore. I’m in the rental car about to start driving toward D.C.”
“We’ll meet in Virginia. Call me after you’ve crossed the Potomac.” He hung up.
I set my phone on the passenger seat and pulled out of the Hertz’s parking area. I worked my way out of Thurgood Marshall International Airport and joined the Baltimore-Washington Highway where I began the one-hour drive southwest to D.C.
I punched on the radio and scanned the channels for ten minutes until, finding no music I particularly liked, I just gave up and turned it off.
The sun was starting to set in the west, casting an orange glow across the road ahead and stretching shadows like black taffy. I sat in silence and maintained the speed limit, recalling the last time I had been in the nation’s capital.
It was three years ago, and my wife and I had come for a quick weekend visit. We spent the first day working our way down the National Mall and stopped at the Korean War Memorial. A grandfather whom Michelle never had the chance to meet had died in the conflict all those years ago.
Our second day there we slept in, ordered room service, and spent the morning in bed together. We went to lunch at the Municipal Fish Market and then caught a Nationals game at Nationals Park. It was the last weekend we had away together. Not long after I left the Army, and not long after that, Michelle was gone from my life forever, taken by a man running a red light because he was too busy texting.
I shook the memories from my mind and punched the radio again. I didn’t care what crap might be playing anymore. I just wanted to forget. The memories stirred up a pain that I didn’t have the luxury of sitting in right now.
The few miles I’d moved away from the city must have cleared up a rural station. Tom Petty came through the car’s speakers, and I rolled down my windows and I sang along to It’s Good to be King.
Chapter Eleven
An hour later I turned off Route 295 and merged onto Interstate 695, where I crossed over the Anacostia River and drove parallel to the National Mall on my right. I caught a glimpse of the Capitol dome and then the bright white obelisk that was the Washington Monument. I loved D.C., if for nothing else than for what it represented: the seat of a government that was of the people and by the people, a republic that was a beacon of freedom for so many around the world. I loved the city for what it was supposed to stand for: the ideals of liberty and the reminders of the weighty costs that were paid to maintain it. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence reside here, and the Vietnam, WW2, and Korean War memorials stood a sobering testament to the reality that freedom is not free.
I passed L'Enfant Plaza and Benjamin Banneker Park before getting to Rochambeau Memorial Bridge and crossing over the Potomac. I picked up my phone and dialed Peterson again.
“Where are you?” he asked by way of greeting.
“Just crossed the river. Where am I going?” It was silent for several moments. I started wondering if Peterson was having second thoughts. “Where am I going?” I repeated. On my right, the Pentagon rolled by.
“Potomac Falls Park. Call me when you get here. And make sure you’re not followed.”
I drove for two more exits and then got off the highway, took a right at the light, and drove beneath the overpass. I slowed as I neared the park, keeping my speed under the marked ten-miles-per-hour, and followed the edge of the park until I spotted an empty parking lot. I pulled into a space and shut the car off. I called Peterson again.
“I’m here. Where do I go?”
“I’m at the north end of the garde
ns.”
I removed my Glock from its travel case and stepped out of the car, then tucked the weapon into the rear seam of my jeans. Only the faintest glow of blue and orange brushed along the western edge of the sky. It would be full dark in ten minutes. Dim lamplight covered the bricked sidewalk as I passed beneath the low-hanging branches of crepe myrtles and worked my way toward what I assumed were the gardens. My feet left the sidewalk and echoed softly along a boardwalk sitting above the wetlands that lay on the edge of the Potomac. Reaching the end I saw a darkened figure leaning against the wooden railing. Somewhere a frog croaked. “That’s close enough.”
I stopped. “Douglas Peterson?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?” he asked. His voice was shaky.
“Ryan Savage.”
It was quiet for a long time. “I don’t know what to do. They killed William McCleary.”
“Who did?”
I couldn’t see his face and he seemed to be assessing me. “Follow me,” he finally said.
I followed him off the boardwalk and onto a well-defined dirt path, where a bench sat beneath a maple tree. He sat and I joined him on the bench. A lamppost spilled light from five yards away and I could make out the contours of his face as the tree’s leaves danced over us.
Douglas Peterson was of average height and slim build. His dark hair was cropped short but appeared to be thinning out on top. He wore dark slacks, a dress button-down shirt, and dark circles resided beneath his eyes. His features looked tired and gaunt, his skin sallow, like he had not been afforded the luxury of much sleep in recent days.
“It might be best if I started at the beginning,” he said quietly. “I work for a relatively unknown agency within the DoD, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Have you heard of it?”
“DARPA,” I said. “Yes, I have.”
“And what do you know about it?”
“You guys are one of the DoD’s research arms.”
“Yes. We’ve created technologies intended on reinforcing the country’s defense. I was behind one of those, an IR laser that can temporarily incapacitate an enemy's nerve function. In fact, that’s the project I was managing when all this started.” He stopped speaking and craned his neck as he looked up and then down the path. “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is just getting to be too much.” He leaned back and his knee bounced nervously up and down. “A year ago we had a research scientist who was working on a biologic treatment that could help astronauts with vertigo and re-entry fatigue. It was a pretty straightforward and unassuming project. Except that this scientist, rather than sending his research through the proper DARPA channels for testing and approval, gained a back door patent.” He looked over at me in the dim lamplight. “So I went to my superior with it and he said he’d look into it. Three months later I never heard anything else. So I went back to him and followed up. He said that the information was in the proper hands and thanked me for my concern.
“Now, I’m not a cop. I’m not an investigator. Sometimes I can’t even find the right sock in the laundry pile. And that’s why I reached out to McCleary. We were college roommates for a semester but, as you can probably see, Westpoint wasn’t for me. But he and I kept up over the years. When I learned that he was working for the DoD as a contracted investigator, I brought this to him. After waking up to a text telling me he was dead, the only person I could think of taking this to was Kathleen.”
“Do you know what Colonel McCleary might have found?”
“He and I had lunch across the river last week. He didn’t have much at the time, but he said it looked like our scientist—Dr. Parker—had sent his research to MercoKline.”
My brows went up. MercoKline was a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical company. “So Dr. Parker sold his research off to big pharma?”
“I think that’s exactly what happened. And three days ago I really started to get nervous. I was working late and stepped out to get something to eat from the cafeteria downstairs. When I got back, there was a note on my desk. It looked like it was created in a standard word processing program. Printed on standard paper. All it said was ‘You and your friend need to stop looking into Dr. Parker’s work. If not, there will be consequences to your actions.’”
“Do you still have it?” I asked.
“Are you kidding me?” he scoffed. “Whoever these people are, they’re not amateurs. I work in the Pentagon for crying out loud. You don’t just walk right in there and put a note on someone's desk. You have to have clearances for that kind of thing. Whoever made that note wasn’t going to be stupid enough to leave prints on it. Besides, who was I going to take it to?”
“Do you think Dr. Parker may have left the note? Or your boss?”
“My boss was in Bali celebrating his wedding anniversary. And Parker’s gone. He left a few months ago and went to work for MercoKline.”
Somehow that last bit of information didn’t surprise me. “The Colonel had a partner at Pursuant,” I said.
“Yeah. Travis Barlow. I don’t think he’s privy to any of this. It’s my understanding that he’s somewhere over in Asia working a case with NCIS. McCleary was the only dog on this trail.”
“What about his daughter, Charlotte? She worked with him.” I thought about my conversation with Charlotte at breakfast this morning, how she seemed to think that her father’s death was no accident either. I wondered just what she might know.
“She had a mid-level role,” Peterson said. “I don’t know what he may have told her because I don’t know what he may have uncovered this past week. I think she was mostly interfacing with DoD’s contract acquisition department and also assisted with case research. Their secretary did all the billing, travel booking, and accounting.”
I went on to describe the two men I’d seen on the hotel rooftop last night; the well-dressed European man and the frumpy white man. For all I knew, they had been the ones to get rid of the Colonel. “It didn’t seem to me that they were friends there to celebrate his retirement,” I said. “If I had to guess, they were talking shop.”
Peterson shook his head. “I don’t think I know them.” He leaned forward, placed his head in his hands, and sighed.
I thought through everything he had said: the crooked scientist and his transition over to MercoKline, of his direct report lacking the proper motivation to look into it, and the note placed on his desk by someone from the inside. But even though I was now armed with this information, I wasn’t sure where to go with it. I had a dead friend, possibly a corrupt scientist, and a government employee who was scared for his life. Not much to go on.
“Douglas,” I said. “Can you think of anything else? I want to get to the bottom of this, but I’m not sure that I know how to proceed from here.”
He tensed and sat up. “Yeah—I completely blanked.” He started patting his pants pockets and then stood up and moved his hands to his rear pockets. “I had a… a flash drive for you. But I think I left it in my car.” He looked toward me again. “I’m sorry. It’s been a hell of a day. I’m not thinking straight.”
“Where’s your car?”
“It’s in a space on the other side of the park.”
“I stood up. Let’s go get it.”
I fell in beside him as we walked down the trail opposite the direction I’d come in. Peterson left the bricked path, and we cut through a copse of trees before coming out onto a narrow field with a soccer goal at either end and a playground perched in the center. “I’m sorry for being so paranoid,” he said. “I’ve known something’s been going on for a while now. But that note, it scared me. And with McCleary being—”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence. I recognized the distinct zip of a bullet cutting through the air just as it made contact with Peterson’s chest.
Chapter Twelve
The force of the impact flung Peterson backward, and he collapsed on the grass. A second round whizzed by just inches from my face, and then another as the shooter tried to ma
ke good his aim once again. I yanked out my Glock and dropped to my stomach, then rolled behind the limited cover of a thick pine tree.
Between my overseas deployments with the Army and the two years I’d been with the FID, I’d been shot at dozens of times.
It wasn’t something you got used to.
My heart was racing, my adrenaline pumping overtime as my autonomic nervous system did everything it could to ensure that I stayed alive.
Another round punched into the tree trunk, making me flinch involuntarily.
The other side of the field was hemmed with trees and tall grass—a black curtain of darkness that provided adequate cover for an active sniper. I was a sitting duck, with no safe means of retreating and no way of going forward. The limited cover of the pine was my only hope, but that wouldn’t be the case for very long if the shooter repositioned himself and altered his angle.
I glanced toward Peterson and studied him for a moment. He lay on his back. His chest wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing. Another bullet hit higher on the tree and pieces of bark flew out into the grass. I flattened out on the ground.
The rifle was operating with a suppressor. Instead of a report echoing loudly across the park and the surrounding areas, the only sound produced by the weapon was a soft “click,” like a young boy was playing with a BB gun. I guessed the distance to be forty or fifty yards, and with no way of pinpointing his position, returning fire would be pointless and would only expose me unnecessarily.
I turned my focus to the end of the field and the direction that Peterson had been heading when he was shot. At the end of the field was the north end of the road I’d driven in on. There the road swept around and disappeared. I could just see the roofs of an adjacent apartment complex about a hundred yards away, nearer to the highway. That’s where Peterson must have parked.
Another bullet chewed into the ground two yards to my right. That’s when it occurred to me. The sniper was no expert. He’d hit Peterson when he was walking at a steady pace in an unvaried direction. But he’d missed me after I responded to Peterson getting shot. He missed twice in fact, and now, a third time. And at no more than fifty yards away, the shot was a piece of cake, even for an amateur.
