Jad Bell: Bravo Part 23

Bell grabs her then, and she barely keeps from shooting him by accident, gets her trigger cleared, her finger safe, and she hits the floor on her side. Her breath goes, her own elbow in her stomach, and she can't get it back because he's on top of her. Then the shots, burst after burst after burst, and she sees this guy come out of the bathroom that was supposed to be cleared but wasn't, and instinctively she wraps her arms around Bell, holds him to her as tight as she can. The guy is dropping the mag on a motherf.u.c.king a.s.sault rifle and swapping it and she holds on to Bell, clamps his arms against hers, and thank Saint Nicholas or thank G.o.d or thank the f.u.c.king Higgs boson but the shooter doesn't look down at them, he's in too much of a hurry to get to the door and out of there.

Then Bell is up and going after him, and Nessuno is trying to follow suit, fumbling, clumsy, and she sees these men, their broken movement, and through the dulled world behind her ear protection, she hears their pain. The amount of blood spilled on the walls, on the floor, is shocking. She keys her radio, calls it all in. The urge to stop and render aid, to begin triage, is at immediate war with the need to follow Bell, to give him cover, to be his backup.

He is relying on her. She has no choice.

She goes out the door in pursuit, exits the building with no idea which direction to go. She pulls the phones down around her neck in time to hear shots, a pistol double tap, makes the corner in time to see Bell sprinting away from her, in time to see a woman in a parked car screaming. She gives chase, following Bell following the shooter, and by the time she's caught up it's all but over. Ledor turns at the edge of the interstate, and she can see what he's going to do before he does it.

At the bottom of the slope, her angle on the action narrow, she watches him disappear, then reappear suddenly, thrown high into the air. He comes down, vanishing again, and she's racing up the slope, this time ahead of Bell, and Ledor reappears for an instant, tossed once more, body twisting, the angle unnatural. It's not a fall, it's a throw, she thinks.

She reaches the shoulder of the road first, asphalt under her boots, and Ledor is easily eighty feet away, where he's finally come to rest. Traffic is jerking to a desperate halt, cars sliding at angles. She hears metal meeting metal, plastic and gla.s.s shattering. She races along the side of the highway, but part of her wonders, what's the point? Why waste the energy? Michael Ledor has become meat in torn clothes, avulsed, all abraded flesh and cracked bone. She takes a knee beside the body, sees the eyes, one wide open, pupil exploded, the other half lidded and leaking fluid. She checks for a pulse anyway. He has none.

Bell stands beside her, chest heaving, sweat running down his face. She's feeling defeat when she looks up at him, but that's not what she sees. She sees cold anger.

Then Bell squats on his haunches, sets his pistol aside, and begins going over the body, emptying pockets, checking his hands, his wrists, his neck, his legs. He finds a wallet and a cell phone, and he tosses the cell to her, opens the wallet, pulls out a driver's license issued by the state of Utah. He shows it to her. Michael Ledor.

"The apartment," he says.

It's a long walk back, and she sees that Bell is limping slightly.

"Ankle?" she asks.

He grunts.

"This is my fault," Nessuno says. "I thought the bathroom was cleared."

Bell says nothing.

There's chaos at the complex when they return, police and ambulance and crime-scene people, and Bell leads, pushes his way past officers and technicians to get them back inside. Someone from the bomb squad tells them that they found another trip wire, another grenade trap, that it's been disarmed. They should wait outside until they're finished.

"Sure," Bell says and doesn't leave, and so neither does she.

They stay until after dark. They go through everything, every drawer, every cabinet, every closet, every bag. Bell finds three grand in mixed bills wrapped in a plastic bag that's been taped to the back of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Nessuno finds a pa.s.sport hidden in one of the DVD cases stacked beside the television, the photo and name both Michael Ledor, the issuing country Belgium.

The alarming s.h.i.t, she thinks, is what they don't have to search for, what the police have already found and begun to catalog. There's more than twenty thousand rounds of ammunition, half of it for that a.s.sault rifle they've recovered, the rest in 9mm and .40. It's stacked in boxes in the cupboards, stored beneath the kitchen sink. There's multiple magazines for all the weapons and four more grenades. Most of the heavy gear is recovered from a bag in the bedroom closet, not hidden so much as it was placed out of sight, with boxes and boxes of ammunition neatly stacked beside. Bonus items in the bag included a gas mask and a vest that Nessuno thinks is rated at level II, maybe IIA.

She does the math, quietly asks Bell, "If they're all geared like this?"

"Nothing good," Bell says.

Nessuno understands. Six of them working together, armed like this, it's been seen before. The Mumbai attacks come immediately to mind, small terrororist fire teams looking to spill as much blood as possible. This guy, Ledor, he knew what he was doing with his weapon; his fire had been disciplined. If they're all trained like that, the body count will easily reach triple digits.

There's another option that is potentially more frightening. If Ledor was in Provo to stage before moving on to target, before meeting up with the rest of the cell for their action, that's one thing. But if the plan is not for a group action but rather for individual attacks, the result could be truly horrifying. To Nessuno, that would be true terror. Not one target but five, hit all in concert, different places at the same time or in quick succession, one here, one there, sowing widespread panic and, subsequently, terrible paranoia.

Those five could be anything, she thinks. Movie theater on a Sat.u.r.day night, shopping mall in the middle of the day, church on Sunday morning.

She thinks about Ledor, his willingness to fight and his desire to survive right up to and until the moment he knew it was over.

She thinks about five more men, similarly motivated, similarly trained.

Everything in this apartment hints at what they're planning, but nothing tells them when. Nothing tells them where.

Everything tells them they're running out of time.

Ruiz isn't having any of it. He's off the phone now.

"Walk us through it," he says to Heath.

"That's the problem, there isn't an 'it.' There're two things here." Heath holds out her hands in fists, straight ahead of her, looks at Ruiz, at Nessuno, at Bell. She opens her left, palm up. "Here's the attack in California, bought and paid for, and another one coming up. According to Heatdish, it's one that's been built by Echo for the same buyer. That's what you found in Provo, right? One of those elements. That's Ledor, that's Zein, Alexander, Hawford, Dante, and Verim. We have anything more on those guys, by the way?"

"Working on it."

"That CIA guy, he's leading?"

"Wallford, yes."

"We know he's solid?"

Ruiz nods.

"Fine." Heath opens her right fist, turns it palm up.

"Thing two, 'it' two, is Brock. The guy who's having the chief and me confirm Heatdish's death and who CI confirms accessed Indigo personnel files and who has been sharing G.o.d knows what with G.o.d knows who-Echo, certainly, maybe others."

Heath lowers her hands, sets them on her thighs, rubs her legs as though she's trying to make fire with the friction.

"Brock didn't lean on Steelriver," Bell says.

"Doesn't look that way, no, at least not directly. His movements put him out of the running for the death of O'Day's family."

"Which means it was Echo."

"Jesus f.u.c.k," Nessuno says. "Brock isn't working for Echo, he's working with him."

"You said Echo was about money," Bell says. "General may be well above our pay grade, but he's not into that kind of money."

"But Jamieson was," Ruiz says. "And men like Jamieson have friends."

Bell makes a noise, almost a growl. "We get anything off Ledor's cell phone?"

"It's a burner, and clean. We've got it on, if a call comes in."

"a.s.suming they think Ledor's still alive."

"I'm not holding my breath."

Ruiz's phone bleats. He turns away to answer it.

"This is follow-the-chain," Bell says. "There's a cutout in here somewhere, has to be, someone between Brock and Echo."

"At least one, maybe more," says Heath.

"We squeeze Brock for the cutout, that should lead to Echo."

"We jump on Brock-" Nessuno says.

"a.s.suming we get clearance to go after a f.u.c.king general," Heath says.

"-and Echo will know," Nessuno continues. "Just speaking from experience with Tohir, now, but if that cutout gets a whiff that Brock's compromised, he's going to vanish. We'll get nothing."

"We can't sit here and wait," Bell says.

Ruiz is getting off the phone again. There's something in the way he says "Yes, sir" before hanging up that catches their attention.

"Here's what's going to happen," Ruiz says.

Bell drives, Nessuno beside him. She slides the seat back, draws her knees up to her chest, stares at the road appearing ahead of them in the predawn hours. The traffic is light, and the drive from Westminster to Chevy Chase should take only an hour, but Bell is lead-footing it, and she knows it'll take less. There's at least one counterintelligence team moving in on Brock at the moment, their orders to maintain surveillance until Bell and Nessuno can get on-site and to break off entirely if there's fear of exposure. Bell has a reason to speed.

"How you holding up?" Bell asks. The tone of the question surprises her more than the content. He asks it like a human who cares, not like a soldier who's worried.

"I'm still in Provo."

"With the bends."

"With the bends, yeah."

"You need to set Provo down," Bell says. "You can't carry that, not right now."

"You're not the one who blinked."

"You'll have plenty of time to pick it apart later, trust me."

"The voice of experience?"

"I've made more mistakes than you can count, Chief. Find me someone who hasn't."

"How many have gotten men killed?"

He shakes his head slightly, then reaches out and sets his hand on her arm. She takes it in her right, laces her fingers with his. His hand is large, and strong, and everything she likes.

"I can't read you," Nessuno says.

He laughs.

"What?"

"It's mutual, Chief." He glances to the mirrors, then to her, and she's surprised again, because he's grinning. He goes back to looking at the road. "We didn't f.u.c.k."

"What?"

"In Hailey, when I asked who you were. You said we f.u.c.ked. It's schoolboy, I know it. I'm soft on this, I know that, too. But if that's what you think, you need to know you're thinking it alone. That's not what that was."

Nessuno stares at him, trying to understand what she's feeling. When she does, she looks out her window, sees her own smile in the reflection.

She doesn't let go of his hand.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

CI HAS A command post established and operational before Bell arrives at Find Your s.p.a.ce Storage in Chevy Chase, pulls up to the gate as dawn is creeping into the sky. Nessuno has been asleep, or nearly so, for the last twenty minutes of the drive, head against the window, but she opens her eyes as Bell comes to a stop, and she releases his hand at long last. The plainclothes on the gate ID's them and lets them through, pointing the way to the row of units that's been commandeered for the operation. One is being used for command, another for commo, and there are soldiers sorting wardrobe choices for quick change and checking gear as Bell and Nessuno approach.

In the command post they find a sergeant who identifies himself as Lopez.

"Warlock?"

"Warlock," Bell says. "Blackfriars. What's the word?"

"We've got a watch on the subject at his residence." Sergeant Lopez checks a sheet on his clipboard, looks at the digital clock that's been hung on one of the unit's walls. "His wife left four minutes ago, alone. We've got a team following her now."

Bell looks at the maps that have been taped to the wall, the photographs of the house and of the man. "What's on the residence?"

"Three teams, one static."

"Stand off?"

"We're under orders not to spook him."

"Positive he's still there?"

"As positive as we can be without getting into bed with him."

"Radio? Phone?"

Sergeant Lopez grins. "We're a.s.sured a warrant is on its way."

Nessuno has moved to one of the two long tables pressed against the side of the unit. She pulls two radios from their chargers.

"We need another vehicle," she says.

Sergeant Lopez looks to one of the soldiers, who immediately nods and heads out of the unit.

"My understanding is that we're to render all aid to you for this operation," Lopez says.

"That is correct."