Going Dark (Thorn Mysteries) (22 page)

He shook Sheffield’s hand, gripping with excessive force, then introduced his three-man team. Rogers, Harris, Pipes.

He and his men were freshly barbered and decked out in versions of the same outfit. Spit-shined shoes, khaki trousers, and dark polos that hugged their brawny physiques. Behind him Sheffield’s SWAT team filed in, a ragtag bunch. They checked out the competition, whispering remarks to one another. His guys looked as if they’d been called away from a variety of Saturday activities. Backyard barbecues, movie dates, yard chores, and little Billy Dean Reynolds dressed as if he’d spent the day busting a string of wild broncos. Dusty jeans, beat-up cowboy boots, a red long-sleeve shirt with white pearl buttons.

After everyone had shaken hands and taken their seats, Nicole appeared in the doorway, standing for a moment in a black tailored suit, her hair piled up and pinned with two strands broken free and framing her face. She struck a pose that was both businesslike and suggestive, as if this very professional woman had just rolled out of bed after hours of spirited lovemaking, which Frank knew was exactly the case.

She walked over to Frank and he introduced her to Magnuson, who seemed utterly unaffected by her charms. Not so with the other eight men, who watched with various degrees of restraint as Nicole walked to one of the last open seats and took her place behind a laptop.

The meeting lasted an hour. Magnuson ran the show, laid out the plan, explained the seriousness of taking down this target.

Paul Chee was a master bombmaker who’d been trained by the best demolition experts the navy had. He’d demonstrated extraordinary skill at both disassembling and assembling munitions of every kind. He’d defused and dismantled IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan and grenades and unexploded artillery shells on battlefields and in sensitive public locations throughout Europe. He’d also planted highly sophisticated explosive devices in a variety of black-ops maneuvers that were classified but which Magnuson hinted were highly successful in removing leaders of various terrorist organizations.

Sheffield’s guys listened, no questions, no whispering. The NCIS guys had obviously already been briefed on Chee’s history, but they kept their eyes fixed on Magnuson. A disciplined bunch.

“During his time as a SEAL, he acquired the reputation for slipping in and out of hot zones with such stealth that some of his buddies began to consider his abilities supernatural. Now that Chee is on the run and has affiliated himself with a terrorist group, he’s still living up to that reputation.

“Four times in the last two years we’ve had him in our sights, and when we moved in, he’s eluded capture. It is important to note that after each of those close calls, he has dropped off the radar for sustained periods.”

Magnuson played a series of headshots of Paul Chee on the laptops. An exotically handsome man. The Navajo blood was clear, but his Anglo genes softened the angles in his face so he might easily pass for Greek or Italian. A strong nose, hard-edged cheekbones, dark, intelligent eyes, lips that seemed sensuous in some shots, severe in others. Chee might have impersonated an international banker, a manual laborer, or even a high-fashion model.

“He’s physically strong, adept at martial arts, in excellent health. He’s a formidable enemy on any field of battle. But the fact that we believe he has in his possession several pounds of HpNC puts him at the very top of our list. HpNC was first synthesized in a lab in California a few years ago. It remains the most dangerous explosive in our arsenal, the one with the greatest density of any nonnuclear device.”

Magnuson called their attention to a series of videos on their laptops.

The clips featured steel-reinforced concrete walls, extrahardened and cast in place, built specifically to withstand direct assault. The kind of wall that surrounded military complexes, diplomatic stations, and the White House.

These demonstrations had taken place at a military testing range in a desert setting where six walls of this type were subjected to different explosive assaults. TNT, dynamite, C-4, Semtex, HMX, and finally HpNC. In the first four cases, after the blasts, the walls were ruptured to some degree, but no breach was made in the concrete.

In the next-to-the-last clip, the HMX opened a hole that a man might have slithered through, but the structural integrity of the wall remained firm.

“Now this is why we’re concerned,” Magnuson said. “HpNC is a different animal.”

And, yeah, the final detonation was something else entirely. No dust and debris sprayed into an explosive cloud. There was simply a bright flash, a whoosh. After the air cleared, only the foundation of the concrete wall remained among some smoldering rubble.

“The explosive charge used in this final test consisted of a half pound of HpNC. Like most military explosives, it is detonator sensitive but bullet safe. Can’t be set off during a firefight by a stray round. But unlike all other devices of this type, after an explosion all components of the bomb and its detonator are obliterated. Which of course makes identifying the fingerprints of the explosive virtually impossible. A perfect terrorist weapon.

“We believe Mr. Chee has in his possession about fourteen times the amount used in that video. And furthermore we believe he’s been scouting for some time for the appropriate target. The maximum effect.”

Billy Dean Reynolds came to his feet. “We were told this group, Earth Liberation Front, they’re into arson. Burned down some SUV dealers and a ski development in Aspen. That’s the intel we have. How’s that match up with a guy like this?”

Without looking up from the screen of her laptop, Nicole said, “A new generation is taking over. They’ve evolved from Molotov cocktails, turned themselves into some dangerous fuckers.”

Everyone, including Magnuson this time, took a long, avid look at Nicole. Head down, still focused on her screen, she seemed to Frank to be basking in their attention, then she lifted her head and looked around the room, making eye contact with each one of them until finally settling on Frank. “Wouldn’t you agree, Agent Sheffield?”

The way she spoke his name, the intimate sound of it on her tongue, made his SWAT guys turn to each other with lifted eyebrows and half-hidden smiles. All was revealed. Somehow she’d managed to expose everything that had happened between them with that simple question.

Frank sat back in his chair and looked down at the table. Feeling a flush growing in his face. Had she meant to do that? Then thinking, hell, yes, Nicole was flaunting it, putting herself center stage. You better take me seriously, guys, I’m screwing the boss. Frank raised his eyes, glanced around the room, no one returning his gaze. As if maybe it hadn’t been as obvious as he thought. Either that or they were trying not to make it harder on him.

In the next few minutes they decided they would rendezvous tomorrow at Black Point Marina in south Dade County at 10:00 p.m., hit the island around midnight. The Coast Guard would supply Zodiac rafts with high-powered electric trolling motors for the landing on Prince Key. Forecast was for thunderstorms, possible tropical-storm conditions.

Frank was about to share the reconnaissance photos taken by Agent Sanford in his Cessna when Magnuson clicked his computer mouse and sent each of them detailed images of Prince Key. They were recent satellite images that could only have come from NSA. Frank sighed and pushed his folder of photographs to the side.

The big tent, the obstacle course, a solar panel, and a small lagoon that led to a narrow creek that snaked through the mangroves and joined other creeks and canals, all of them eventually feeding into one broad waterway that led out to the Atlantic. In the various shots, Magnuson counted a total of six ELF members on the island.

They chose the best landing spots for the five Zodiac teams. The attack teams would fan out and surround the island, with one team blocking the entrance channel, and on Magnuson’s signal, all groups would come ashore in unison and head toward the barracks tent, which appeared to be the center of operations.

In addition to the Zodiacs, members of the Special Response Team based at Homestead Air Reserve Base would be manning two UH-60 Black Hawk choppers flying in support. If anyone on the island managed to slip through the net, the choppers would track them.

When Magnuson finished laying out the attack plan, he and Sheffield spent a few minutes hashing out the rules of engagement. Sheffield arguing for operational restraint, Magnuson making the case for a more aggressive approach. In Magnuson’s view, the level of threat that Chee posed was so dangerously high that some collateral damage was acceptable.

“Not to me it isn’t,” Frank said. “I haven’t heard any irrefutable proof that Paul Chee has this stolen HpNC in his possession. Yes, he had the opportunity, and he went AWOL around the time the explosive disappeared, so, yeah, I understand your assumption. But invading a privately owned island in the middle of the Biscayne Bay National Park with guns blazing is not warranted by any information you’ve presented so far.”

“There’ll be no guns blazing,” Magnuson said, looking at his three agents. “Is that clear, men?”

They nodded one by one. Frank studying them, doubting their sincerity.

The meeting lasted another half hour, Magnuson holding forth, going over the attack plan a second time, then a third.

Frank sat quietly at his laptop and replayed the video. That steel-reinforced, indestructible wall disappearing in a whoosh. He played it again and again until the meeting ended.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“HEY, LADY,” WALLY SAID. “YOUR
phone’s buzzing.”

“Her name is Leslie,” Cameron said. “Stop calling her
lady
.”

In the tent, Leslie lay on the weight bench, pressing a hundred pounds again and again, down to her chest, then pumping it overhead, working up a good lather while Prince spotted for her.

Pauly lay on his cot, flat on his back, eyes open, doing nothing, but doing it with such fierce focus that Thorn couldn’t stop watching him.

“You hear me, lady? Somebody’s calling you.”

“She hears you,” Prince said.

Leslie’s arms were quivering when she grunted for Prince to take the weight. He settled it into the rack and Leslie toweled her face and sat up, breathing hard.

She wore a white T-shirt and light cotton pants with a drawstring. The shirt was damp, revealing the shape of her breasts, the tightened nipples.

She glanced at Thorn, shot him a forced smile, got up, walked across to Wally, and looked over his shoulder at the scrolling code on his screen. “You still inside Turkey Point?”

“Finished it yesterday. I’m just poking around inside another system.”

“What system?”

“South Florida Water Management. These idiots, their security is so out-of-date, it wouldn’t protect a taco stand.”

Her phone vibrated on the shelf, crawling sideways like a wingless bee.

“How long has this been ringing?”

“Hell if I know,” Wally said. “I’m nobody’s secretary.”

“The last hour,” Thorn said. “Ever since you started pumping iron.”

“And nobody told me?”

“I thought you were ignoring it,” said Thorn.

Fiddling with her phone, Leslie slid her finger across the screen, moving through her text messages. She stiffened. Then she drifted off to a corner of the tent and tapped in a number and pressed the phone to her ear. But she’d left the speaker on, and when the connection was made, Thorn heard Flynn speaking. His voice-mail message.

“Hi, listen, I’m going away for a while. Taking a hiatus from the show, I’m not sure when I’ll be back. If this is Mom…”

Leslie fumbled with the phone, switched off the speaker.

Flynn was watching her, his eyes dimming with dread.

Beside the weight bench Prince was doing more curls, oblivious. Pauly stared intently up at nothing while his brother continued to type and type.

Leslie turned her back to them and brought the phone to her ear again. In a minute when she was done, her shoulders sagged and she bowed her head, nodding several times as though counting off sufficient time to gain control of herself.

She stepped behind the dressing curtain that hung before her bed, and Thorn heard her rustling through her knapsack. When she slid the curtain aside, her smile was strained, a failed attempt to hide the distress in her eyes.

“Flynn.” She motioned for him to follow. “We need a minute.”

She took one of the battery lanterns from the storage shelf and headed toward the exit. As she passed by Thorn, she angled her body away from him, but Thorn spotted it anyway. Hidden beneath the tail of her shirt was a hard, angular bulge wedged into the waistband of her cotton pants. Over the years he’d seen far too many of those bulges and knew the grim results they usually signaled.

He let a moment pass before he followed them out of the tent. Staying several yards behind as Leslie led the way, holding up the LED lantern, which sent a cone of harsh light around the two of them.

Stars blazed in a cloudless patch of sky, and a breathless wind was sifting through the mangroves bringing with it the electric scent of rain from out in the Atlantic. He heard the uncertain trill of an owl and the drone of mosquitoes circling in. In the east, muted by the clouds, lightning throbbed like an erratic pulse.

When she reached the climbing wall, she stopped, turned to Flynn, lifted the lantern to his face. He raised his hand to block the glare, but Leslie stepped closer and kept him blinded.

“I heard some disturbing news. What I want to know from you, Flynn, is where you’ve hidden your cell phone.”

Flynn opened his mouth, then shut it.

“I know it’s here. Don’t lie to me.”

He shook his head and sighed in frustration.

Leslie swung the lantern to her left and found Thorn standing at the edge of the sand pit.

“Step over here.” She had the pistol out but held it loose in her hand, pointing at the ground. A stainless-steel revolver. “That’s close enough. Right there. I’d hate like hell to hurt either of you. But if I have to, I will. Make a move, there’ll be no hesitation. So get it out of your mind, Thorn. All your tricks.”