Hidden Order: A Thriller (18 page)

“What if he wanted to know who else you might have told about the Jordanians?”

“Then he could have asked me. Listen, the only reason Durkin could possibly have to snatch me alive is that he wanted to kill me someplace else other than my apartment. And apparently, he didn’t want me to die alone, which means he had something cooked up to explain why you and I died out here together in the middle of nowhere.”

“Did you tell Durkin you were going to talk to me?” asked McGee.

“No.”

“Then that would mean he had a tail on you. So, he not only knows that you talked to me, but that we talked to Johnson. How could he hope to get away with killing us?”

“I hate to say it, but either you’re right and Johnson’s involved, or Durkin came up with something so airtight, he was convinced our deaths could be explained away without even the DNI asking any questions. Either way, I don’t think you and I were supposed to walk out of here tonight.”

“I think you’re right. So now what?”

“Now we get the hell out of here,” replied Ryan as she grabbed one of the MP5s from the bag and moved toward the door.

McGee extended her his hand to help her exit, and then gathered up the duffle. “What should we do about the van and the bodies?” he asked.

Ryan looked inside the cab. In addition to the two corpses slumped over in their seats, the cab was splattered with blood and pieces of brain. “If we had enough time to clean it up and make it look like we took their people hostage, I’d say let’s opt for that. But all we’ve got time to do now is burn it. Let’s burn the entire thing.”

McGee nodded and after throwing the duffle in his 4Runner, he backed it a safe distance away. While he got to work on the van and prepared to set it on fire, Ryan walked over to the spot from where he had been shooting. With a flashlight from his glove box, she began looking along the dirt road for the shell casings from his 1911.

It took several minutes, but she was able to locate all six. “Got ’em,” she said as she pocketed the last one. “You ready?”

“Good to go,” he said, flashing her the thumbs-up.

They drove out of the woods and toward the highway just as the van exploded in a billowing fireball. When they arrived at the junction where the dirt road ended and the pavement began, he stopped and asked, “Okay. Which way? South or north?”

They both knew that neither of them could go home. They had to go to ground, someplace safe; someplace where they could assess and plan their next move.

Ryan removed the atlas wedged next to her seat and studied it for a moment. Finally she said, “South.”

McGee accelerated and turned onto the pavement. “Where are we headed?”

“How long will it take us to get to Fort Belvoir from here?”

“About twenty minutes, why? What’s at Belvoir?”

Ryan looked over at him and replied, “For the moment, sanctuary.”

“What do you mean,
sanctuary
?”

“I mean, Belvoir has one of the last rocks in the world Durkin would ever think of looking under.”

“Knowing Durkin,” McGee countered, “he’s going to be looking under
every
rock.”

“Not this one,” Ryan said. “Trust me.”

B
OSTON

M
ASSACHUSETTS

T
he four-story redbrick office building was a block east of Boston Common at the corner of Washington and Essex streets. On its ground floor was an entrance to the subway station and a smattering of retail space, including a Dunkin’ Donuts. On the fourth floor was the killer’s destination, a Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles office.

Keys, as well as the building’s layout and the RMV’s alarm code, had already been provided for him. He kept a silenced semi-automatic beneath his coveralls, but it had not proved necessary. It was the middle of the night and the building was vacant. No one would have any idea he was there. All he needed to focus on was his assignment.

Using the service elevator, he brought all of his equipment, including the man inside the commercial-grade rolling trash can whom he had drugged with the same paralytic he had used on the woman in Georgia, to the fourth floor. Once he had ascertained where he needed to set up, he positioned all of his gear and began to unpack.

He wasn’t a fan of the coarse hemp rope. It was thick and difficult to deal with. He would have preferred to use a modern climbing rope, but the instructions had been explicit.

Cautious not to be seen from the street, he used his small flashlight sparingly and never near the windows. Even at this hour, there were still people on the street stopping and looking up at the building’s faïade. Most would be armed with cell phone cameras and some might even be disposed to take a picture or two. He couldn’t afford to be caught in anyone’s casual photos. Within a few hours, everyone was going to be talking about this building and anyone who had passed by and snapped a picture was going to be reviewing their footage to see if they unknowingly caught anything that might have warned of what was to come.

With everything staged, he attached the hoses together and ran the end with the rubber faucet adapter to the restroom. Even though the trash can had wheels, it would be difficult to move. He preferred to position it and then fill it in place. Things would be much easier that way.

As the water sloshed into the trash can, he looked at his watch and measured the rate of flow. He had planned for every eventuality: a late office worker, a random security patrol, being accosted by another cleaning company, anything that might have delayed his assignment. For every possible contingency, he knew how much water he would need.

He doubted his figures were absolutely precise, but they didn’t have to be. All that mattered was that his work be done before the first person entered the Registry of Motor Vehicles in the morning. If anyone came in before, everything would be ruined.

He had been told not to get violent with the prisoner unless absolutely necessary. Of course, being told he couldn’t do it had only made him want to do it even more. It was yet another wave added to the tumultuous sea of whitecaps roiling inside him. He tried to focus on the minutiae of his assignment; the importance of completing the job properly and not leaving behind any clues.

The distraction worked at first, but its force soon began to wane. He was tempted, so tempted, to abuse the man; to break him mentally and emotionally, to have him weep and beg for his life. He positioned himself so that the man could watch him knotting the heavy rope and made sure he could also see the backboard that had been prepared specially for him.

He wanted to ask the man if he had ever heard of an engineer named
Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, or simply Rube Goldberg for short. He wanted to share how Mr. Goldberg had inspired the contraption he had built and lay everything out for the man so he could watch the already intense fear in his eyes build to an even greater degree. He knew, though, that if he toyed with the mouse, he might very well end up eating it and that was strictly forbidden. Everything had to be done according to the instructions. Any deviation and everything would be ruined.

He tried to take his mind off the man in front of him. His thoughts wandered to the woman he had taken from Sea Island, how powerful he had felt with her life in his hands, and what it was like extinguishing her. It was like the final wisp of smoke rising from a candlewick. One moment there was pain and fear and death in her eyes, then release as everything just slipped away. But he hadn’t been able to savor it. He had wanted to take more time, especially with her ears, but his schedule meant that he had to keep moving.

That woman, and the one in the cemetery, made two back to back now who had gotten him significantly aroused without his being able to do anything about it. Tonight, after his work here was complete, he would find a way to change that. He deserved a reward. The mere thought of taking a woman shortly sent a pulse of excitement racing through his body. He now had the perfect goal to get him through what he had to finish and he focused on his task like a laser.

He finished his knots, placed everything just so, and even went back and rechecked his calculations for a fifth time. Once he was confident he had everything all set up exactly as it needed to be, he removed his cordless drill and selected a drill bit.

The prisoner’s eyes widened as the killer attached the bit and then gave the power tool’s trigger a quick press to make sure it worked.
It did
.

Satisfied, the killer closed the box of bits and began walking toward his victim. Before he even reached him, the man started to scream from behind his gag. The killer wasn’t listening. Raising the spinning drill in front of him, he reveled in the high-pitched whine and watched the bit as it was transformed into a blur of sharp gray metal. It was so ingenious, easily one of the cleverest ways ever devised to kill.

B
ill Wise had sent Harvath home with a stack of books. The two he wanted him to focus on were
The Creature from Jekyll Island
and
Economics in One Lesson
.

The Jekyll Island book, all about the secrets behind the Federal Reserve, was thick enough to be a doorstop. Thankfully, its author encouraged readers to skip around in it and not read it from cover to cover. Harvath loved to read and if he’d had the time, he might have tackled it from front to back. Instead, he followed the author’s advice and read the summaries at the end of each chapter and then dipped into the chapters that interested him the most.

Economics in One Lesson
was a sliver of a book in comparison. Like
The Creature from Jekyll Island
it was well written and easy to read. He was halfway through it before finishing his first cup of coffee. The slim volume had originally caught his eye because its author was the same Henry Hazlitt whose economics quote had been hung around Claire Marcourt’s neck. He was plowing through the book not only in hopes of better understanding the killer’s, or killers’, mind-set, but also because of how interesting it was and how much he was learning.

Despite not having hit the sack until well past midnight, he awoke at 5
A.M.
feeling rested and decided to go for a run. Four miles in, he could feel his IT band tightening up. He hadn’t stretched as well as he should have and now his body was punishing him for it.

He pushed himself to his five-mile marker and then turned back toward home. It was a cloudy, overcast morning with lots of humidity that hinted at a good rain at some point during the day. It was a good thing he was getting his run in now. As he ran, lots of things passed through his mind, predominantly about the case. He made a mental note to call Bill Wise after breakfast to see if he had made any progress.

Arriving back home, Harvath showered, shaved, and was downstairs with the TV on cooking breakfast when the Old Man called. “You need to get to Boston,” he said without so much as a good morning.

Harvath muted his TV. “What’s going on? What happened?”

“There’s been a second victim.”

“Who?”

“Herman Penning. Boston. I want you to get up there as soon as possible. Lewis says you can use the Fed’s plane. He has it standing by.”

Harvath looked at his watch. “I can be out the door in fifteen minutes.”

“Be out the door in five. I want you there before the trail goes cold or the Boston cops muck it all up. I’ll send what I’ve got to your phone. You can read it on the plane.”

After shoveling his half-cooked eggs into the garbage, he ran upstairs to get dressed. Flying private, he didn’t have to worry about carrying weapons, so he gunned up and grabbed a bunch of extra magazines. He also grabbed his knife, flashlight, a handful of EZ Cuff restraints, his cell phone, charger, and a small digital camera, then laid everything out on the bed.

Studying the items as he hastily tied his tie, he guessed there were probably a bunch of things he was forgetting and would later wish he’d thought to bring, but that was too bad. He had to get moving.

He pulled his ScotteVest trench coat out of the closet, slipped his gear into its multiple pockets, and then, grabbing the overnight bag he always kept ready, headed for the door.