Killer Focus (25 page)

Washington, D.C.

J
uan Chavez studied the apartment block from the concealment of his car. Two vehicles were parked outside apartment eight, which signaled that the two CIA agents who were minding Dennison were in residence.

He checked his watch. On cue, the van belonging to the take-out service that regularly delivered their food turned into the apartment complex to make the delivery. “Let's go.”

His brother, Benito, climbed from the passenger seat, excitement and fear glittering in his eyes. In Juan's opinion the fear was good; the excitement was a liability.

Seconds later, they reached the side door that led to the janitor's quarters. Motioning for Benito to stay outside, Juan tried the door. As expected, it was unlocked. Pushing it open, he glided into the room.

The janitor was eating his lunch, his back to the door. The sound of a radio cut out the small noise Juan had made opening and closing the door.

Extracting a cosh from his pocket, he walked up behind the old man and hit him with precision on the side of his head. Working quickly, he searched the unconscious man's pockets and took the keys he needed.

 

The front door of the apartment popped open. Dennison hit the remote, killing the television program he'd been watching, an exposé on drug cartels in Colombia. Not his favorite subject, even if it had been accurate, which it wasn't. For a start the contacts the interviewer had featured had looked more like gigolos than the sunburned plant bosses and enforcers that had made his life a living hell. Secondly, their teeth were in good shape, which meant they hadn't been chewing on coca leaves and lime. Thirdly, no one had mentioned the salted fish. At casa Lopez, and points south, they had been very big on salted fish.

Agent Grierson answered the door, paid the tab and set two paper sacks on the table. From the aroma, lunch was burgers and fries. No surprises there. For the past few days the schedule had been the same, and so had the food. Grierson and Mathews loved ketchup and fries.

Mathews walked into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of soda from the fridge, some glasses and a bottle of ketchup from the pantry. He sat down, pushed a burger toward Dennison and poured drinks.

Dennison opened his cardboard box and surveyed the burger. Grierson had gone out on a limb and gotten chicken instead of beef. Moving awkwardly, because he had to eat cuffed, he extracted the burger from the container and began to chew his way through it. He didn't particularly like or dislike burgers. To Dennison, apart from salted fish, food was food, and with the constraint of the cuffs, burgers worked.

Just as Grierson finished his burger the doorbell rang. Wiping his hands with a paper napkin, he answered the door. A third agent Grierson introduced as Pete Harris stepped into the room.

Grierson checked his watch and shrugged into his sport coat. “Just to relieve the boredom, I'm leaving. From now on, Harris is going to be taking care of you.”

The door closed behind Grierson. Dennison stared at his new keeper. He didn't know if anyone else had noticed—maybe not, because Harris had a mustache, which distracted—but their facial features were similar. Harris was younger and a little leaner—okay, maybe fifteen or twenty pounds leaner—but, apart from the mustache there was a definite similarity.

Possibilities swirled in his mind. As intriguing as the coincidence was, Dennison had no clear way to capitalize on Harris's appearance unless Mathews disappeared and Harris made him a gift of his gun and the cuff keys.

Mathews unlocked his briefcase, took out the cuff keys and tossed them to Harris, who put them in his pocket.

Dennison set his half-eaten burger down.
Strike two.
Mathews had always kept the keys in his briefcase, which had a combination lock, making the possibility that Dennison could get to the keys remote. Harris didn't have a briefcase.

Mathews's phone rang. It was his wife.

Dennison felt like he was standing at a blackjack table in Vegas, waiting for the next roll of the dice. He reached for a paper napkin and cleaned the grease off his fingers. Harris, who had poured himself a glass of soda, sat down at the table.

Mathews's conversation was disjointed, but Dennison could make out the gist of it. He and his wife were going on vacation and the car had just broken down. His wife was stranded at some garage. Mathews checked his watch. Dennison knew exactly what he was thinking. It was half an hour before Mathews's shift ended and the second new guy clocked in.

In the end, it was a no-brainer. Harris, more interested in finishing off Grierson's fries than Mathews's problems, or the fact that he would be breaking the rules by operating solo until Mathews's replacement checked in, told him to get his ass out of there before his wife divorced him.

Mathews looked uncomfortable. He was a stickler for the rules. The phone rang again. Thirty seconds later, he was gone.

Strike Three.

Ten seconds after the door closed behind Mathews, Harris reached for Mathews's fries. Dennison pushed to his feet, muttering that he needed to go to the john, grasped the neck of the ketchup bottle and brought it down hard on the side of Harris's head.

Harris slumped forward then toppled sideways, overturning his chair, his arm sweeping glasses of soda, take-out containers and French fries onto the floor. Cautiously, Dennison studied Harris where he lay, his feet tangled with the legs of the chair, a puddle of soda forming a stain in the carpet beside one outstretched arm. Blood glistened on the side of Harris's head, but he was still breathing, which was fine by Dennison. These days the only person he was interested in offing was Lopez, and he was no longer sure he wanted the opportunity: he just wanted out.

Working quickly, before Harris came to, he slipped the agent's Walther out of his shoulder holster then checked for a backup gun. There wasn't one. Shaking his head at what he considered a sloppy practice, Dennison emptied Harris's pockets, found the cuff keys, a wallet, a set of car keys and a cell phone.

After unlocking his cuffs, he stripped off Harris's suit jacket, shirt and tie, and took the shoes. Dennison's loafers were tan, so he needed to change them. They didn't match Harris's pale gray jacket and blue tie. Maybe it was a small point, but in this business detail counted.

He cuffed Harris, gagged him with a towel from the kitchenette, then quickly changed into Harris's clothes.

Walking through to the bedroom, he checked his appearance in the long mirror set against one wall. The shirt was tight and the jacket strained across his shoulders. Harris was a lot leaner than he'd bargained on, but outwardly the fit looked okay. He fished in his trouser pocket and found the mustache he always carried, smoothed it on and stared at the effect in the mirror. It wasn't perfect, but close enough.

Within a matter of seconds he had shoved his clothes into his case and was out the door. He grinned when he saw Harris's car parked outside the unit. It was a Lexus. If he had time to do anything but save his skin, he would stop and buy a lottery ticket.

After almost twenty-five years of Lopez, finally Lady Luck had cut him a break.

 

Juan Chavez had counted: three agents had gone in, and three had left. Unless Lopez had made a mistake, Dennison had been left alone in the apartment. He drew his gun and, as a precautionary measure, got his fake CIA ID ready, then knocked on the door. Seconds later, when it was obvious no one was going to answer, he used the master key he'd taken from the janitor and let himself in. Benito crowded behind him. Juan stepped to one side, his gaze darting around the room, which at first glance appeared to be empty. For a split second, the fact that the agent who had just come and gone had looked a little like Dennison came back to haunt him. If that
had
been Dennison, they were both dead.

A muffled sound jerked his head around and down. Dennison was on the floor behind the dining table, cuffed and gagged. Juan's breath left his lungs on a rush. Lopez had told him that Dennison would probably have two men with him 24/7. That hadn't happened today. Something had gone wrong when they'd changed shift. Lopez had known about the changeover, which was why they had made their move. He had said the change in personnel would create the opportunity they needed, and it had, but not in the way Juan had expected.

Walking swiftly around the table, he jammed the barrel against Dennison's head, pulled the trigger twice and stepped back, grimacing at the mess.

Jerking his chin at Benito, he exited the apartment then barked a command when Benito neglected to close the door. The sound of a car turning into the courtyard made his heart pound. Ducking behind a screen of glossy shrubs, he indicated to Benito to stay still and quiet. The man who climbed out of the sedan was young, lean and wearing a sport coat: the fourth agent.

When they were clear of the building, he dialed the number he had been given and waited.

Lopez himself picked up.

“It's done,” he said, automatically speaking in Spanish. He took another breath and this time worked to flatten out his voice, steady and smooth the way Lopez did. “Dennison's dead.”

Costa Rica, two months later

S
teve Fischer descended past fifty feet, keeping a check on his depth gauge. The water was murky, courtesy of a recent storm, the visibility no more than fifty percent. Below, in grim shades of gray and lavender, he could just make out the top of the reef. Beside him Taylor signaled to go left.

The stern of the
Nordika
reared out of the reef floor. The fisherman who had brought them out had been precise with his navigation. Jose regularly fished the reef. He knew where all the wrecks were, and still remembered the navy tragedy. Eight
Americano militar
dying in their waters wasn't an event that would easily be forgotten. Like everyone else along the coast, he had scanned the shores and checked his nets for bodies. The fact that none had ever been found had always been remarked upon, adding fuel to the mystery. According to Jose, with the Caribbean current sweeping in against the coastline, the bodies should have made landfall somewhere.

The
Nordika
still lay balanced on the edge of a ravine, its hull broken in two, its barnacle-encrusted rudder visible. Water welled coldly from the trench as Steve examined what was left of the deck area. The bridge was gone, and any sign of the onboard crane. The trench had already been searched by a specialist team and nothing further had been discovered, no bodies and no sign of the cargo the ship had carried. As a wreck, the
Nordika
remained as enigmatic as it had been almost twenty-five years before when his father had dived on it. At a guess, Reichmann and Chavez had offloaded the cargo and disposed of the crew at another location, then scuttled the ship over the trench.

Saunders had a lead on a small fishing settlement on the Colombian coast that had a deepwater anchorage, and the testimony of an elderly fisherman and his son who claimed they had seen the
Nordika.
The fact that Juarez was one of the few places a ship the size of the
Nordika could
anchor in close made it a strong candidate for the offloading of cargo and the execution of the ship's crew.

The discovery just days ago of a plank, which had been used in the construction of a seaside shanty, and which had a partial swastika stenciled on one side, had finally provided Saunders with the leverage he'd needed. He had gone through diplomatic channels and pulled some heavy-duty strings. For the past two days the area had been sealed off while they had searched.

Juarez, Colombia
One week later

Steve watched as the team of forensic archaeologists painstakingly uncovered what had proved to be a mass grave, on not one level, but two.

The first level contained the remains of Todd Fischer, his SEAL team and the launch skipper. Identification of individual remains would take time, although the divers's neoprene dive suits had helped preserve the bodies. A further two bodies had also been found. At this point their identities remained a mystery, but it was conjectured that they could be local men who had been employed to dig the grave before being executed themselves.

The second level contained remains that were much older. From the scraps of clothing and the rotted documentation that had been found—the
Nordika
's log and manifest—it had been ascertained that they were the original crew of the
Nordika.

The discovery of the graves had sparked an international furor. People had started to arrive, filtering through Saunders's tight security. A Colombian woman who had been certain her son had died in the area, but had never been able to find him, came to the site. Representatives from the families of the naval dive team—Verney, Downey, Mathews, Hendrickson, Salter, McNeal and Brooks—were quietly waiting. An elderly woman from Germany, Bernadette Reinhardt, the granddaughter of the captain of the
Nordika,
Erich Reinhardt, had flown in that morning with her son.

Flowers had also started to arrive, piling up to one side of the open pit where they wouldn't interfere with the delicate work in progress.

Steve watched as the numbers around the grave slowly expanded, men in uniform, somber women in dark clothing. That morning he had positively identified his father's remains, courtesy of the tattoo on his Dad's right arm. The moment had hurt.

There would be a funeral service with full military honors back in Shreveport, a postmortem presentation of medals and an official apology. The record would finally be set straight, but as far as Steve was concerned it was over, here. Todd Fischer had already found his rest.

Chest tight, he crouched down and picked up a handful of the damp, crumbly soil. Rising to his feet, he let the soil slide between his fingers and remembered Todd Fischer as he had been, not as a soldier but as his father…and finally let go.

 

White rose petals and delicate sprays of jasmine blew across the muddy ground as Taylor slipped her fingers through Steve's. She was unwilling to intrude on his grief, but at the same time she was determined to pull him back from the solitary place he'd retreated to.

Steve had found his father and, against the odds, she had found hers. Her relationship with Jack wasn't perfect, but she no longer expected it to be. He was in the picture, despite his past, and was determined to stay for her sake and for Dana's. Dana hadn't said anything, but she didn't have to. The glow in her expression was all Taylor needed to see. Somehow, despite the passage of years and the twists and turns their lives had taken, she and Jack still fit together. More than that, they were
happy.

Steve's fingers tightened on hers as he pulled her away from the lingering grief and sadness of the now-empty grave. His arm came around her waist as they picked their way through the expanding press of humanity that had sprung up around the site, his palm cupping her abdomen. Her stomach was still flat and there was no visible evidence of the small life growing inside her, but the baby was there, and already the center of the new life they were planning, courtesy of WITSEC.

They all had a chance at a new beginning, and they were taking it. Wedding arrangements were under way, although Taylor had stipulated that the ceremony had to take place
after
the memorial services. When Steve walked down the aisle, she wanted his focus firmly on the future, not the past.

His gaze met hers as they reached the mud encrusted four-wheel-drive truck they had rented in Cartagena. He dug the keys out of his pocket and tossed them in one hand, and the grimness of the past few days dissolved, replaced by warmth and a piercing sweetness. “Time to go home.”

And in that moment she knew he was finally free.

Wrapping her arms around his waist, she held him tight.

Freedom felt good.

Love felt even better.