Hidden Order: A Thriller (33 page)

“A
ll the way down to my shorts? Seriously?” Wise asked after he had carefully, albeit reluctantly, already surrendered his firearm, as well as his flashlight.

“Please see it as a token of my respect,” Samuel replied as he stood still partially concealed and a safe distance away.

“If you intend to show me proper respect, Samuel, why don’t you tell me why you are here.”

“We’ll have plenty of time to talk, Dr. Wise. Right now, I’d appreciate your cooperation.”

Wise did as his captor asked. After removing his boots, jeans, and T-shirt, he did a 360-degree turn for Samuel with his hands above his head. The hit man then had him face away from him, sweep his arms behind him like a sandpiper with his palms up. Samuel told him to look up at the ceiling as he bent over at the waist. He instructed him to spread his legs so far apart that Wise was forced up onto the balls of his feet and having trouble keeping his balance. That was when Samuel struck.

The first handcuff was on him so fast and was converted into a steel wristlock so quickly, that even if Wise had wanted to react, he couldn’t
have. The pain was exquisite. Samuel delivered so much precise and practiced pressure that Wise’s knees simply buckled and he dropped to the ground. Even the most veteran of street cops would have been blown away with how rapidly Samuel had subdued his prisoner and applied the handcuffs.

Wise was told which knee to bend and then on the count of three, used momentum to bring him back up to standing. An amateur would have simply grabbed him by the chain of the cuffs and lifted, risking tearing the prisoner’s shoulders out. Samuel was no amateur.

He took great care in guiding Wise back to the building’s living area. He knew all too well that a man like Wise would have all sorts of weapons hidden all around. Near the machinist’s bay where Wise worked on his cars and motorcycles, Samuel had placed a chair. He asked Wise to sit there now. Wise complied.

“Now we talk?”

Samuel nodded. “Yes, doctor. Now we talk.”

“I assume that you have a list of specific questions you would like answered?”

“I do.”

Wise pursed his lips. “And what will I get in return?”

“Out of respect and professional courtesy,” he said, unrolling a suede tool bag with multiple stainless steel instruments and a handful of zip ties that had been rubber-banded together, “I will not cause you any pain.”

“That is very thoughtful, Samuel. Pain is something neither of us likes, is it?”

“No, doctor. It is not.”

“Will I be free to go afterward?” Wise asked.

The CIA operative shook his head as he pulled the rubber band from around the zip ties. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

Samuel stepped forward and in a move that belied his thick, lumbering appearance, grabbed a handful of Wise’s hair and snapped his head backward, banging it against the back of the chair.

It was a move meant to stun and disorient, which was exactly what
it did. Before Wise knew what had happened, Samuel had attached his handcuffs to the chair with several of the zip ties. His legs would be next.

Samuel came around front and looked at Wise. The man’s eyelids fluttered like a pair of shades that had just been drawn too tight and his head lolled to one side. Grabbing his left ankle, he slammed it up against the left leg of the chair and had just gotten the first zip tie halfway around both when a shot rang out and piercing and painful darkness overtook him.

For a moment, he had no idea what had happened. Then the excruciating pain came rushing in and he realized that Wise had head-butted him. Then, still cuffed to the chair, he had run.

Samuel reached up and touched the bridge of his nose. It was broken and bleeding. “I understand why you had to do that, Dr. Wise,” he called out as he stood and pulled his pistol. “I even forgive you for it, as I hope you will forgive me for what I have to do.”

The CIA operative looked around as his mind whirled through multiple calculations. It was a large space, but not so large that a man Wise’s size could disappear, especially not when attached to a chair. He would try to find concealment first and then he would avail himself of a weapon. That was, of course, only if he could free his hands.

Samuel settled on Wise’s library and its rows of metal bookcases. They provided the closest and most logical place to hide. He approached the stacks with caution, pausing every couple of steps to listen. All he needed was the squeak of the chair beneath Wise’s weight or the scrape of its legs on the floor to give the man away.
Step. Step. Pause. Step. Step. Pause.
Suddenly, he heard something else.

At the end of the next aisle, a book had been knocked from its place and lay on the floor. He had him now.

Samuel rushed along the row of books and no sooner had he made it to the halfway point than he heard the groan of metal on metal and a wall of books began to rain down on him.
Wise was trying to tip the bookcase over from the other side and crush him!

The bald-headed man ran for all he was worth as the tidal wave of books poured over him. With the case only centimeters from his head, he dove to get out of the way.

He landed hard, his chin slamming into the ground and his pistol clattering out of his hand. He saw stars once more, but he also saw something else,
Wise
.

The man was doing everything he could to break the chair and free himself. Their eyes locked and then both men’s gaze snapped to the gun. Wise was closer and though he was still attached to the chair, it had splintered and he was close to being free.

Samuel pushed himself up to standing and put his head down, his shoulder forward, and ran for all he was worth. This wasn’t about getting to the gun first; this was about stopping Wise from getting to it at all.

The CIA operative built up such an amazing head of steam that when he collided with Wise, it was like a locomotive hitting a fruit truck stalled at the crossing.

As the thick-necked bull of a man barreled into him, Wise’s chair shattered and he was sent tumbling backward. His head cracked against the floor and his vision dimmed. The pain was off the charts and he teetered on the verge of unconsciousness. He couldn’t allow himself to slip into that dark, cold void. He had to fight. He wouldn’t get another chance.

Flipping onto his left side, he planned to lash out with a kick, either to push the gun farther away or to incapacitate his attacker. As he looked up, though, he saw he was too late. Samuel had already retrieved the weapon. He had also wisely taken two steps back, once he was able to stand. He was too far away for Wise to make contact. He had had one chance and he had blown it. Samuel was back in control.

Neither man spoke. Both stood or lay where they were catching their breaths and trying to overcome the pain of their injuries. Wise could see that he had opened up a pretty good gash at the top of Samuel’s nose. It was going to require stitches. At least there was that.

Out of habit, Wise started analyzing his own injuries and then almost laughed at the absurdity of it all. He wasn’t going to live to see another hour, much less anyone who could give him medical attention.

Samuel, who must have sensed something in his expression, said, “What’s so funny?”

Just then a man stepped from behind Samuel, pressed a Taser against his jugular, and said, “This.”

B
OSTON

M
ASSACHUSETTS

H
arvath and the Old Man spoke for more than two hours. He had gone through everything that had happened since he had arrived in Boston and then the Old Man had asked him to repeat it, twice. He asked question after question and expected Harvath to drill down to even the minutest details.

When they were done talking, Harvath not only needed aspirin, he also needed a drink, and he helped himself to a glass, some ice, and two bottles of bourbon from the minibar.

Even that, though, wasn’t enough to help him unwind. He thought about turning on the TV, but he knew it would only keep him up for hours. He also knew that pouring another drink wasn’t the right path. He might get a couple of hours of sleep, but it wouldn’t be quality sleep. Instead, he fished out one of the books Bill Wise had given to him and which he had tossed in his overnight bag on the way out of his house yesterday.

The reading did the trick and he soon found his eyes growing heavy. As soon as he couldn’t keep them open any longer, he tossed the book aside, turned out the light, and fell asleep.

Much like the night before, he felt like he had just drifted off when his cell phone rang. He snatched his Kobold off the nightstand and looked at the time. It was just after 3
A.M.

It was Cordero. “The killer struck again,” she said.

“Wait. What?” Harvath replied, as he tried to shake off the cobwebs. “Where? Boston?”

“North End. Close to where we ate dinner. I’m already in the car. Be downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

Harvath was downstairs in ten and Cordero showed up a minute and a half later.

“Tell me what happened,” he said as he got into the car and Cordero sped away from the hotel.

“Apparently, another elaborate scene like the Liberty Tree Building.”

“Who was it?”

“We don’t have an ID on the victim yet,” said Cordero as she weaved through the sparse traffic, her lights blazing and Klaxon blaring. “They’re saying it could take a while.”

“Why?”

“A lot of his flesh is missing. It sounds like he was boiled to death.”

“Boiled to death?”
Harvath replied.

“That’s what Sal said. He told me I’d see for myself once I got there.”

“Who found him?”

“Fire department, apparently. The killer used a timer of some sort to start a controlled fire with lots of smoke. It didn’t do any real damage, but it scared a lot of folks. The guy lit a tire in the bathtub or something.”

If you want to get someone’s attention, that is the way to do it.
Tires burned with thick, acrid black smoke. Harvath had seen more than his share of tire fires across third-world countries. It was a smell you never forgot and one he absolutely hated.

“The ME is going to need dental records from the two males on your missing persons list,” said Cordero.

“Being boiled to death is pretty unusual, so is a timed tire fire, but how can you be sure this is our killer?”

“Because,” she replied as she swerved and narrowly missed a car that
had slammed on its brakes, rather than pulling over to allow her to pass, “the killer left a note, along with a picture.”

“Of a skull and bones with the crown floating above.”

“Yup.”

“Do you know anything about the address we’re going to? Any reason why it might be significant?”

Cordero shook her head. “No. It’s not one of the ones we passed last night, I know that.”

“Do you know anything about the area at all?”

“It’s near the intersection of Fleet Street and Garden Court. I think that’s the neighborhood where JFK’s mother was born or grew up or something.”

Or something . . .
If that was the case, it didn’t make any sense. What would Rose Kennedy have to do with a vendetta against the Fed? And why would the killer switch tactics like that all of a sudden? It had to be something else.

When they arrived, narrow Garden Court was blocked off at each end by police cruisers and all of the buildings up and down the street were awash in the glow of emergency vehicle lights.

“We’ll end up getting blocked in if I try to get any closer,” Cordero said. “Let’s park here.”

Harvath agreed and after parking her car, they got out to walk the rest of the way.

“Did you get any sleep?” he asked as they made their way to the scene.

“A little. How about you?”

“Not nearly enough, but I’ll be okay.”

“We’ll get coffee after,” she promised.

Because it was a one-way street with parking only on one side, most of the responding vehicles had parked on the west side, many of them all the way up on the sidewalks so as not to block through traffic for the fire trucks.